London Wild (89 page)

Myajes looked down at the wires on his arms, seeing them for the first time. Well
, it was a dark cellar and he felt them more than saw them. Likewise, he felt the wires on his legs, which he couldn’t actually see at all because he couldn’t move enough to look, even though he could feel that they were there. There was even an electrode attached to his chest. Funny too how he hadn’t noticed these little wires earlier, and yet he knew without a doubt that they had been there long before the voice had spoken to him.

‘Please understand, you’ve been a prisoner of the Elite Guard for over a week
, and there’s no telling what they have done to you in that time. This is why you are bound. For all we know, you have been brainwashed, and we need to be sure before we can release you back amongst our people. We’re going to ask you a few questions, and we want you to answer truthfully. So long as you’re truthful with us, you will be allowed to return to your duties. If you lie at all, you will be dumped back outside the gates of the Cattery to fend for yourself. Is that understood?’

‘Yes,
’ Myajes replied weakly.

‘Good,’ replied the voice calmly
. ‘The first thing we are going to do is ask a couple of control questions to make sure that we have the lie detector calibrated correctly for your metabolism.’

‘Okay,’ Myajes commented.

‘Are you ready?’ she asked.

‘Ready,’ Myajes replied.

The male buzz seemed to sigh with impatient irritation.

‘First calibration question, are you male or female?’
the voice asked brusquely.

‘Male, last time I looked,’ Myajes replied with a smirk.

‘It’s working.’ This was from the male buzz, and as such Myajes ignored it.

‘Good,’ the woman commented. ‘Second
calibration question, how about, what is the current address of the woman known as the Lesser Matriarch?’

‘That’s not something I can impart to just anybody,’ Myajes complained.

‘I’m not asking you something that we both don’t already know?’ the woman asked him calmly.

‘I knew it was too good to be true,’
scoffed the male buzz.

‘You already know that?’ Myajes seemed surprised.

‘Of course I do,’ the woman replied. ‘I am the Lesser Matriarch, after all. Don’t you think I’d know my own address?’

Myajes almost kicked himself with how stupid he had been. Of course that was who it was. He had recognized the scent and the voice immediately
when he had heard it, and yet he just hadn’t been able to put a name to it until she had told him herself. Besides, who else amongst his kind would have the authority to question him like this? ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her, embarrassed. ‘You must think me a real idiot.’

‘So the answer to the question
, please,’ the
Matriarch asked, adding, ‘so we can calibrate our machine properly.’

‘Well,’ Myajes replied
, happy now that he was with the people he trusted the most in the world, ‘when I last visited you, you were living in a large detached bungalow in Fobbing, not too far from the main road that takes you to Benfleet and Sou’nd. Is that enough?’

‘No,
’ replied the woman’s voice, ‘I need you to tell me the number or the name of the house.’

‘I don’t remember,’ Myajes replied anxiously
. ‘It was pink; that’s all I remember. A pink house situated on the final ‘S’ bend of Fobbing Road, in Fobbing, not too far from the main road. Surely that’s enough? As you know, that bend isn’t very big; there are only two or three houses on it.’

‘Okay,’
interjected the male buzz again, ‘take him back to his cell. And inform the authorities to check out the address he’s just given us. If he was lying then I may have to try the truth drug on him after all.’

‘I don’t think he was lying,’ the woman replied simply.

‘I’m not lying,’ Myajes commented, confused. ‘Surely your machine told you that!’

‘Hopefully not, you were very convincing,’ the male buzz continued its
tittering on insensibly. ‘Good work, Doctor Jones.’

Myajes was lifted out of the chair by one of the two male figures that had been in the room. He was confused for a moment. Didn’t the Matriarch have questions she wanted to ask him about his time in the Cattery? Or had he answered those
? He had a vague recollection that if they were helping him out of the cellar then they must already have asked all the questions that they were going to. He was also a little confused with the way that the ropes binding his limbs seemed to just melt away as he was aided from the chair, and the way the wires connecting him to the lie detector had just vanished. But then he remembered that the man helping him had undone them before lifting him. What a stupid thing to have forgotten.

The man helped Myajes out of the cellar into a lit hallway and then through two plastic, pseudo-wood doors into a fairly fresh
-smelling and wonderfully decorated bedroom. There were flower designs on the curtains and toys scattered haphazardly about the room. It was vaguely reminiscent of Lara’s bedroom, back when she was no more than twelve years old. The Matriarch had moved since then, but Lara’s room had been on the upper story of their previous home. And yet Myajes didn’t remember being brought up any stairs to get here, nor could he remember being carried up stairs just to get out of the cellar. He was sure it would all make sense in the morning. Maybe the man that had helped him had carried him up the stairs.

When Myajes woke, he was in the small cell on Mars. His head was throbbing with the pain of yet another headache. Headaches seemed to have been a constant thing ever since his arrival on Mars. He had little doubt that it was due to all the drugs they had kept pumping into him. Drugged to the eyeballs in the Cattery and now drugged constantly here. He chose to see it as a sign that everyone was scared of him.

He looked around the small cell
, wondering what time it was. There weren’t any windows in his cell to help him judge it, not that that would have made a lot of difference, as each section of the Martian Colony kept its own time regardless of where the sun was in the sky. He remembered he had turned down the offer of a clock; he hadn’t seen the need for one at the time.

He blinked a couple of times in the illumination of the cell, the lights that always stayed on even when he wanted to sleep. Slowly he began to remember the dream he had had. There was something about it that worried him more than just a little, and there was a surreal aspect to the whole thing that bothered him.

Doctor Foster’s image appeared on the main screen almost immediately after Myajes sat up. The Doctor had probably been monitoring his prisoner most of the night, waiting for him to come round. ‘You cats do sleep for a long time.’

‘No more than you herd,’ Myajes countered aggressively.

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Doctor Foster replied, ‘though since you got here—how long has it been, three days now?—you do seem to have spent more time asleep than awake.’

‘I’ve been here three days?’ Myajes blurted out. Suddenly he was both alert and more than a little bit shocked.

‘Well,’ the doctor offered, his voice calm by comparison and perhaps even a little bit aloof, ‘today is your third day in that comfortable cell. Did you sleep well?’

‘No too bad
,’ Myajes told him.

‘You had some funny dreams
, though?’ the Doctor asked, genuinely interested.

‘I dreamt I’d escaped from the Cattery
,’ Myajes replied.

‘And you were answering questions to prove that the Matriarch could trust you?’ Doctor Foster asked simply.

‘Yes,’ Myajes commented. Then he paused and asked, ‘But how could you know?’

Doctor Foster gave him an almost sickly smile and pressed a button on a consol
e in front of him.

A moment later a voice that Myajes recognized
as his own was piped into the little cell and he heard himself as he surrendered the address of the Lesser Matriarch. ‘My dream!’ he exclaimed suddenly, and he sat bolt upright on the bed.

‘I told you we would get the information out of you, even though we did have to drug you again to get it
,’ the Doctor explained, ‘but I thought you might like to know that that part of your job here is over and we can get on with my experiments. We have already sent a copy of it to our soldiers on the ground. I expect we’ll hear all about it on the news tonight. I might even have the story piped through to you so you can enjoy it as well.’

‘What have I done?’ Myajes dropped his head in his hands with a sigh.

‘If it’ll help at all,’ the Doctor offered, ‘think of all the lives you’ll save by having told us. It’s a shame you couldn’t give us the actual number for the house, but there can’t be too many pink houses in that part of Fobbing. According to the local map, it’s only a relatively small place. So don’t worry, we’ll find it.’ The Doctor then paused for a minute before continuing, ‘Anyway, if betraying your people really bothers you, just remember that you really had no choice. It’s early in the morning, so I’ll send someone to you in a minute with something to eat.’

‘If anyone steps through that door, I’ll kill them,’ Myajes snarled at the image.

‘That’s not a very good idea,’ commented the Doctor. ‘If you do that, then you’ll go hungry. I’d much rather you ate, though; I’m less likely to get accurate results in my experiments if you don’t eat.’

Myajes’ first thought was that he would much rather go hungry than help this Doctor and his experiments in any way. After just a few seconds
, though, he realized that it would be a lot harder for him to escape from this place if he was starving. ‘Okay, Doctor, you win. I’ll let whoever you send leave unmutilated.’

‘Good lad,’
the Doctor replied, and at a signal from him the screen went blank.

Myajes watched the blank screen for a minute and then turned his attention to the glass door of his cell. There wasn’t a lot to do except wait for his breakfast to be delivered.

He had to escape, and soon; he had to get home and warn the Matriarch. It would help if he knew something more of the layout of Mars, but the only things he knew about the planet had come from the occasional news story that had been reported here and there. He couldn’t ever remember them even mentioning the laboratories. Then another problem occurred to him. The fact that he hadn’t seen it sooner was probably a reflection of how many drugs he had had floating about his system lately, or had he already considered this and forgotten about it again because of the drugs? Just say for a moment that he did somehow manage to break free of his captors. How long would he last running along the corridors of the Martian Colony with his stripes on full display? Everyone he bumped into would hand him in to the authorities as soon as look at him.

Maybe he could find something in the laboratory itself. There were at least three women in the place, including the guardswoman. Maybe he could get some makeup supplies from them
, and with any luck they would be suitable to hide his stripes. Of course that would mean that they would have to be his color, and that alone would probably take a small miracle. It would also mean that he would have to be able to wrest the items in question from the women in question and then spend the necessary time applying the makeup to the visible areas of his flesh. And what about the clothing he was wearing? He’d have to change out of these pet rags and get something far more in line with what the modern Martian dressed in.

As promised
, the door to his cell opened shortly afterwards and his breakfast was brought in. This time it was brought in by Doctor Suttcliff, and by the look of her, she certainly seemed to know her way around makeup.

Myajes decided to try to direct approach
. ‘Doctor Suttcliff, I’m fully aware that I’m never going to see any others of my own kind again, but nevertheless, I’d like to keep my hand in with certain skills. Besides, at the same time it’d give me something to help keep me occupied. Do you think you could supply me with various types of makeup?’

Doctor Suttcliff just looked at him for a moment as if unsure he was serious. She put the breakfast tray on the bed beside him, coming dangerously close to her prisoner
, and yet there was no fear from her. As she turned to leave, she commented, ‘I think it’s unlikely that Doctor Foster would agree to anything like that, but I can ask.’

‘Perhaps the good Doctor could observe me putting makeup on and learn something from how I do it
,’ Myajes suggested hopefully.

As the door to his cell closed behind Doctor Suttcliff, the image of Doctor Foster appeared back on the big screen again. He was only there for a second
, but in that second it was clear that he had been listening in on the conversation. ‘Request denied,’ was all he said, and then the screen went blank again.

Doctor Sut
tcliff, in the area between the two locked doors of his cell, turned and looked at Myajes through the glass of the cell’s main door and mouthed the words, ‘I’m sorry,’ to him.

Oh well
, he thought to himself. He sat on the bed and considered his breakfast. He hadn’t really expected the doctor to agree to it in the first place. The whole thing had been a bit of a long shot.