Maddigan's Fantasia (18 page)

A sudden sound, a throb in the air around him, intruded
again. Timon hesitated, for the beat seemed to be altering him, calling him. Blinking he slid the medallion chain up and over Eden’s sleeping head and, as he did this, Timon saw his own hands and paused … for surely those hands were not
his
hands. Those hands in front of him holding the silver chain seemed to be green – green and covered with scales.

Timon dropped the medallion and crouched down, feeling a confusing battle inside his head, but not sure just who was battling with who.

‘Timon!’ a voice was hissing at his elbow, and Timon thought he could hear, not only the voice, but a beating heart as well. Someone seized his shoulder and shook it desperately. ‘Timon! What’s happening, man?’ the voice cried. Timon turned and saw Boomer, standing beside him, one hand pushed forward and grabbing at him, the other thumping his drum with one clenched fist. ‘What are you doing?’ asked Boomer.

‘I don’t know,’ said Timon, sounding dazed. ‘I was – I must have been dreaming.’ He looked down at the medallion in his hands, then bent and slipped it back over Eden’s head once more. ‘I was … I don’t know … taken over. Having a
nightmare
.’

‘You were scary,’ Boomer muttered, ‘and this whole place,’ he looked around him, ‘I think that everyone’s been drugged or something. Everyone seems to be dreaming.’

Timon looked down at his own hands – perfectly ordinary hands – and then stared around him at the dim lamps, the straw and the sleeping Fantasia.

‘Let’s wake everyone up,’ he said. ‘This isn’t the place we went to sleep in.’

He made for Garland.

Garland was dreaming. She dreamed about her diary and ran to seize it, eager to write in it, but it rose like a wild moth, flapping its pages like dark wings. It flew … it flew … and as
it flew from somewhere between the flapping pages of that dark-moth-diary Ferdy slid like a lost bookmark and advanced towards her smiling, happy to see her.

‘Ferdy,’ Garland cried. ‘Ferdy! Oh Dad!’ And she ran to meet him, but as she ran a curious beat sounded in the air beside her … boom! boom! boom! and Ferdy seemed to retreat, stepping back in time to that sound. ‘No!’ cried
Garland
. ‘Ferdy! Dad! Don’t leave me!’ But he faded … he
dissolved
, and Garland woke up to find Boomer beating his drum in one ear and Timon singing in the other, humming the Fantasia theme and shaking her awake.

‘Why did you wake me?’ she cried. ‘I was in a – in a happy place. Soft, all soft! I was in a wonderful bed.’

She looked around at the straw, finding it hard to believe in what she was now seeing.

‘It’s nothing,’ said Boomer, shaking her shoulder. ‘It was a trick. They’re tricking us. You all ate and drank things, but I didn’t, so I wasn’t tricked. I looked at those cakes and things and all I saw was worms.’

All around them there was movement now, as people, driven out of their dreams by the drumbeat, began to blink and stir. To the right and left of them Fantasia people now sat up blinking incredulously and began to shake the people next to them, saying their names urgently, waking them up once more. There was Penrod, stretching. There was Bannister yawning and running his fingers through his hair. There were Byrna and Nye, blinking and staring as if they did not quite believe in each other.

‘Why do they want us?’ Garland asked the air around her. ‘Do they want us to be slaves?’

‘Maybe!’ said Boomer. ‘Or …’ his eyes grew round ‘… or maybe we’re to be like cattle. Maybe they were planning to eat …’

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Timon said urgently, just as Maddie helped Yves to his feet.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ Maddie agreed, sounding like an unsteady echo.

‘If we can,’ said Yves, staggering a step or two forward, looking towards the door as he did so.

But Boomer now drew the key from his pocket and waved it around, like a man in danger drawing a gun that will hold enemies at bay.

‘Let’s go!’ he cried. ‘And we’ve got to stamp and shout and sing. That sort of breaks through the power of the mind-weed. That why they took my drum away from me.’

‘My hero!’ said Maddie, snatching the key from him. ‘Wake up Tane! Bannister! Hey, Nye! Stop dreaming! Someone’s pulled a fast one on us. But we’re waking up again. Hey! Hey! Hey! We’re on our way.’

‘Lilith! Wake up Lilith!’ cried Yves, but Lilith slept on, dreaming that she was being hailed as the greatest dancer in the Fantasia. Boomer beat the drum close to her ear, but she slept on, and in the end Yves lifted her and carried her against his shoulder as they clustered around the door … as Maddie unlocked it, then flung it wide, leading them out into the
corridor
beyond. It was only an empty corridor and yet it felt like being out in the real, wide world again.

In the Greentown kitchens Brewer and Missy were entertaining Ozul and Maska. Ozul lifted a great glass of the green mead and drank it with relief and pleasure.

‘And you?’ Missy was holding out a similar glass to Maska, but Maska pushed it away.

‘That’s not very polite, chicken,’ said Missy reproachfully, but Maska ignored her.

‘They have the children,’ he said to Ozul. ‘And that means they must have the medallion too. Let us take advantage. Let
us go and get them while they sleep.’

‘Just a moment,’ said Ozul. ‘We’re entitled to a little entertainment … a little rest … a little luxury.’

‘Indeed you are, sir,’ said Brewer, topping up the green mead. ‘And Greentown is the place for pleasure.’

He slid a plate of delicate food in front of Ozul who exclaimed with pleasure at the sight. Seizing the knife and fork he began to eat greedily. But Maska, watching with his own strange way of seeing, saw the food on the plate writhing and twisting in and out of itself. He drew himself up and, for a moment, though he did not quite know it, Brewer was in great danger.

But there was an interruption. Distant music made itself heard – not the mere twangle of the Greentown harps this time, but the sound of a trumpet, revelling its own triumphant sound with the solid thud of a drum beating below it. Brewer stiffened, then rushed from the room.

‘Delicious,’ said Ozul. ‘Bring me more.’

The Fantasia moved through the corridors of the Greentown cellars, playing their music and singing their songs, opening doors as they went. Other people, bewildered strangers, staggered out, blinking and confused at first but then joining in with more and more confidence. They marched up the stairs. Bannister escorting the band and brushing aside any servants who tried to stop them … for, after all, Bannister was the strong man. The Fantasia marched along yet another corridor, climbed yet another stair and came out at last through great arched doors into that same main square in which they had performed earlier in the evening, cheering as they came, victorious, welcoming the rush of fresh air and the light of a half-moon. Their familiar vans were there, unpossessed and empty. They marched on. There was no way of stopping them.

From one doorway Maska saw them and cursed to himself. He wanted – he desperately wanted to charge across the square, to snatch Jewel from Goneril’s arms and overpower Eden and Timon, but he was encumbered by Ozul, limp and smiling, babbling of happiness, even though he was slung across Maska’s iron shoulder.

All Maska could do was to watch the Fantasia people crowding into their vans, singing and cheering as they did so. The motors started. The whole Fantasia shouted. Those not yet on board threw up their arms, before leaping into those vans, hanging out from doorways and waving out through windows. Wheels began to turn. While the Greentown people stood around helplessly, the Fantasia made for the road beyond the town.

In the leading van crammed in between Maddie and Yves, Boomer took from his pocket the two brooches he had stolen from that room full of strange objects and set them out in front of Yves.

‘I saw these brooches down there,’ he said. ‘I thought they looked – sort of important in some way. And they’d stolen my drum, so I stole their jewels.’

Yves shot a glance down at the brooches, then looked hastily at the uncertain road again. At first he frowned, but then his expression changed.

‘Take a look,’ he said to Maddie, suddenly (it seemed) possessed by a sort of fury.

‘They’re Solis badges, aren’t they? I reckon they’re the badges of that other lot,’ he said ‘the lot that were sent out from Solis before us … those men that vanished and were never heard of again.’ He shot a sideways glance at Maddie. ‘Aren’t they?’

‘I’d say it’s a dead cert that the last party Solis sent to Newton – the ones that never made it to Newton, wound up in Greentown,’ Maddie said.

‘It was my fault that
we
almost wound up there,’ said Yves in a quiet bitter voice. ‘My fault.’

‘Forget it! It’s part of the risk we take, isn’t it?’ Maddie answered. ‘But we set a lot of people free from those rooms there down below the kitchens … a lot of people, and Boomer left them with the secret of freedom. They need a good
drumbeat
. So I’d say the ones that were set free might take over, wouldn’t you? I’d say the Greentown people were well and truly outnumbered by their slaves.’

Sitting behind Maddie, Garland stirred restlessly.

‘Boomer saved us,’ she said a little blankly. ‘He was the brave one. The clever one. The one who beat the drum.’

Tane’s van edged up beside them, and Boomer found he was staring across at Timon. Timon looked back at him and smiled.

‘Great work there, Boomer!’ he shouted through the open window, sounding as if he meant it.

All the same there was still something in that smile that reminded Boomer of the savage mouth, its corners dragged down, of the face that Timon had worn, as he bent over Eden. Boomer gave Timon a rather weak smile, and a wave then looked away in a hurry. He really had been clever, he thought, but without meaning to. And now he was frightened of Timon, without being sure just why. It was hard to be sure of anything in this life, thought Boomer. That was the great thing about machines. Things happened because something else happened, and if you thought about it you could understand why and how. And he was one of those who really longed to be sure of
everything
. He sighed deeply. Perhaps that was the way it was when you were a Fantasia man. Things were always twisting into other shapes around you. In the end, there was nothing much you could do about it, except to march boldly ahead, beating your drum and singing.

So yet again the Fantasia
rolled on, zigzagging up through a familiar mountain pass, then struggling to wind their way along a rutted track strewn with rocks … struggling even more to ride the road, when it reared up, trying, it seemed, to flick them into space. Once or twice they stopped because they had to stop, and Yves, Tane and Banister unpacked long, interlocking boards and rods of steel from the roofs of the vans and built bridges over deep clefts in the road. Then, when the vans had crawled safely across … when they had dismantled and packed the bridges up again … the Fantasia inched onwards and came, at last, out from between the sharp, almost perpendicular slopes, and onto a high plain they knew well. Once, during the Chaos there had been battles fought here and even now, so very many years later, the damage and the left-over signs of battle survived. There they were, those big machines left behind to rust … to flake away … almost melting into the land, yet rearing up defiantly every now and then, like natural
sculptures
of rock. But now spring came to meet them, draping the remains of the old battle with blue and pink flowers – flourishing periwinkle and fumitory.

And Yves, taking a turn to drive Maddie’s van, tried to talk to Garland about it all.

‘I never get used to it,’ he said. ‘It’s more like the setting for some old story than a real countryside, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Garland and, though she was secretly agreeing with Yves, she heard herself sounding guarded. She did not want to get too friendly with Yves … she wanted to keep him at an arm’s length, even though she was simultaneously remembering all the times he had been brave and hard-working and brought the Fantasia along its difficult road. But perhaps trying to talk to her, trying to be nice to her, was just part of his way of working himself more deeply into Maddie’s life.
Perhaps
he was trying to take her over, just as he was trying to take over the Fantasia, and make it his own.

Yves might have detected her caution, because after a while he stopped trying to talk to her and simply drove, looking ahead. Then suddenly he seemed to see something in the far distance … something he had been hoping to see.

‘Look!’ he shouted. ‘Newton! Newton at last.’

Garland looked eagerly, but at first she could not make out any sign of the city. The horizon was smudged as if huge, dark thumbs had somehow rubbed along the edge of things,
blurring
them forever. Determined to see what Yves was claiming to see Garland screwed up her eyes, squinting at the horizon and then suddenly she recognized a different sort of smudging … a darker mark against the clear sky. Newton! It wasn’t the biggest city in the world – not as big as Solis, anyway – but it was supposed to be the cleverest. It had inherited the wisdom of the men who founded the city and and enclosed it – wisdom which included a way of drawing the power of the sun out of sunshine, a way of imprisoning that power, a way of compressing it and locking it into cells, which other cities with the right technology could then use to turn wheels and drive pistons. Men and women who understood such things, or who
longed
to understand them, all made for Newton, and often found work
there. However they had to swear oaths of secrecy, so that
Newton
could stay ahead of other cities. Once you became a citizen of Newton you had to be loyal to Newton alone.

‘Will they actually trade a converter?’ asked Garland
suddenly
doubtful. ‘I mean will Fantasia’s performances be enough to buy one?’

‘Oh, a performance wouldn’t buy the fraction of a converter,’ said Yves. ‘We’d have to perform for years, and even then they’d probably shrug us off. But Ferdy brought stuff from Solis … some old discs – ancient, really – that contain records from the past,
and
a few clues about the way things fit together. Newton doesn’t know everything when all’s said and done. People want to know their histories and Solis has a thousand histories. And then there’s the whole question of how parents pass things on to children. Ferdy had red hair and you’ve got red hair. Boomer’s dad used to be a great drummer and Boomer can beat out a good rhythm too. The wise men of Solis know how things like that are passed on and we think Newton might be glad of the knowledge. They’ve always been fascinated with their children in Newton. So we’re hoping to trade wisdom for wisdom … history for mystery.’

Garland began to grin a little, then hesitated halfway through her grinning. In spite of herself she was enjoying her gossip with Yves. Quickly she pinched the corners of her mouth back into seriousness, determined not to be entertained by anything he might have to say.

‘Of course Newton’s got its own dangers,’ Yves went on. ‘It’s bang on the top of a fault line.’

‘A fault line?’ Garland asked curiously.

‘It has a lot of earthquakes,’ Yves explained. ‘That’s why their buildings are so close to the ground. Apart from their old tower of course. Goodness knows how that has survived the quakes and shakes.’

‘Are there any sweet shops?’ asked Garland. ‘We’ll have to watch Lilith all over again if there are.’

Perhaps Yves thought she was criticizing Lilith.

‘Well, make sure you do watch her,’ he said. ‘She’s an
impulsive
little thing.’

So the Fantasia jolted forward, along one of those roads that kept dissolving and disappearing, and then struggling out of nothing once more, but even when the road vanished it did not much matter. Now they were able to see their goal … and, as they travelled on, ever on, Newton slowly took shape before them … a city of tall glassy buildings … stretching up out of the wild country around it, but spreading out too, as if
determined
to make certain it was in charge of the world.

KNOWLEDGE IS STRENGTH said the great words over the city’s old arching gate.

‘Just bear in mind,’ Maddie was saying to Timon and Eden, ‘that this city is devoted to the pursuit of learning.’

‘Bear in mind that they are as mad as cut snakes,’ said Yves, but in a quieter voice.

‘As we go through that gate, they’ll have us checked out,’ said Maddie. ‘They’ll turn the lights on us and they reckon they can read our minds, so – pure thoughts everyone.’

They were there at last – ready to enter the city. The band assembled and the performers put on their costumes, as Newton’s own sounds came flowing towards them … the sound of many voices shouting, arguing, it seemed. Rather an anxious sound.

‘Some crisis!’ said Maddie sounding dubious. ‘Some huge argument! Shall we wait?’

‘March on!’ said Yves. ‘It’s our job to make people forget their arguments!’ And the rest of the Fantasia agreed with him.

So they began their great Fantastic March, and came in through the gate. Suddenly long arrows of light appeared,
aiming themselves at the band … the vans … the horses. Garland blinked as the lights passed across her face, imagining the light soaking into her through her eyes and reading all her secrets. She tried to keep her thoughts as pure as possible.

They moved on between the first houses and sheds, dancing and spinning, then moved triumphantly up the main road only to find themselves dancing and spinning between lines of children, who suddenly treated them as no other children Garland had ever treated the Fantasia before. Usually it was children who welcomed them with the greatest excitement, the strongest happiness, but the children of Newton seemed challenging – even hostile. They shouted, pointed derisively, made aggressive darts at the jugglers and acrobats and even threw rotting fruit at them. One girl ran at Garland, grabbed her arm and tried to swing her out of the Fantasia line.

‘Join us!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t be a traitor! Don’t let the Biggies boss you around!’

But Garland was strong. She twitched her arm free quite easily, then pushed the girl back into the crowd she had come from. Something struck Lilith, who screamed, putting her hand to her head. She stared unbelievingly at fingers stained red.

‘I’m dying,’ she called. ‘They’ve killed me.’

‘You’ve just been hit by a rotting tomato,’ Garland said, but she sympathized with Lilith, thinking that she too would have been terrified at finding her fingers stained scarlet like that.

‘I haven’t been here for ages,’ Garland heard Maddie saying. ‘I don’t remember children – certainly not children like this.’

The Fantasia persisted. And then, quite suddenly, it seemed they had worked their way through the mocking hostile crowd behind them. The children peeled away into side streets and Garland heard one of them, a tall boy, shouting ‘To the Fort!’ ‘To the Fort!’ as if he were the one in charge of this wild band.

A few minutes later the Fantasia found themselves marching
towards the offices of the ruling council.
Knowledge is Strength!
said the words over the door, which opened cautiously, and then was flung wide. At last they were being welcomed, greeted by white-robed adults, quiet and courteous. Bowing a little, they walked alongside them, escorting them to the centre of the town which spread out like a great green lawn edged with tall buildings, some of them very old.

‘Scrimshaw!’ announced their leader holding out one hand to Yves while patting his own chest with the other.

‘Maddigan’s Fantasia,’ said Yves, shaking the held-out hand.

‘Of course,’ said Scrimshaw. ‘You were here some years ago. I loved the juggling … the arcs through the air. And I loved the way you whirled and danced on the trapezes … like strange irregular planets. We’re so glad to see you.’

Almost at once they were being offered food and drink. ‘We need distraction. We need a lure,’ Scrimshaw was telling Yves. ‘Come through into the Cortex – our centre of government, that is. I am sure our elders will welcome distraction every bit as much as the children will.’

‘Oh we’re not just a distraction on this occasion,’ Maddie said, determined not to be left out, ‘we’re traders as well. We’ve got something to trade … our treasure for yours …’

Garland tried to hear what was going on, but she was interrupted.

‘What are you doing?’ Boomer asked coming up, drum and all, on one side of her. ‘Look! They’re giving us a party.’

‘You and your mother don’t have to do the deals any more,’ Lilith said, bouncing up on the other side. ‘My father will work it out. We can just eat stuff and leave it to him.’

‘But something’s happening,’ said Garland impatiently. She could see Eden and Timon drifting towards them. ‘Why did all those children attack us as we came in? That’s never happened before.’

‘Hey!’ said Timon, almost like Garland’s echo. ‘Why did all those children throw things and shout at us? You’d think they’d be thrilled to see a show like ours.’

‘Ours’ he had said as if he were part of the Fantasia. Garland found herself looking at him with a kind of soft longing though she did not quite know what she was longing for. Company
perhaps
. The company of someone her own age or maybe a little older … someone who was certainly older than Boomer and Lilith, those jiggling irritating children dancing around her.

‘They must be jealous of our cleverness,’ Lilith was saying, while Garland, sternly shaking herself out the unexpectedly soft mood that had sneaked out of nowhere and taken her over, tried to listen past Lilith’s bouncing cries to hear what Yves and Maddie were saying. She edged towards the adult group,
working
out who was who. She knew the Fantasia people of course and she knew Scrimshaw by now, but there was also a thin serious-faced man called Doppler and Doppler’s wife, Rosalind, listening gravely to Maddie.

‘… these records we’re bringing you are unique,’ Maddie’s voice came drifting across to her, sounding rather taken aback. ‘They’re treasures.’

‘I well remember your past visit,’ Doppler said, totally ignoring Maddie’s offer of records. ‘I remember your clowns. I imagine children must love the clowns. That is a fact, is it not?’

‘Oh yes, children love clowns,’ agreed Yves. ‘Adults do too. But if you don’t mind we’d like to discuss the possibility of buying a solar converter from you. Trading knowledge for knowledge, because, as you know, knowledge is power …’

‘But we are already committed,’ said the deeper voice of one of the Newton officials. ‘We have sold the only available converter.’

‘And the prices we have already agreed to may be even better than anything you have to offer,’ said another, and then there
was a mixed-up mumble of talk, the voices weaving backwards and forwards. The deep voice suddenly emerged again.

‘… besides we also have problems at the present. We are having to cope with a curious chaos of our own. Our children are in revolt. They say they are tired of being told what to do by their parents. They say they want to run their own lives.’

‘It seems they are desperate to have their own way,’ said another official.

Boomer and Lilith were arguing about just where a
drummer
should march in a Fantasia band. Garland turned towards them in astonishment.

‘Did you hear that? Shut up you two. Did you
hear
it?’

They stood staring at her, their mouths hanging open.

‘Hear what?’ asked Lilith.

‘I heard,’ said Eden. ‘The children are revolting.’

‘They are not! They’re just kids like us,’ said Boomer indignantly.

‘No! He means they’re having a revolution,’ said Timon. ‘There’s a mutiny against parents. The children want to take the world over.’

Behind them Maddie’s vice rose, sounding both astonished and indignant.

‘Well,
make
them! Make them do as they’re told. I mean children should have a lot of freedom … I agree to that … but they shouldn’t be in
charge
.’

‘You don’t understand,’ said Doppler. ‘These children –
our
children – are our treasures. You know that back before the Remaking the people who lived in Newton couldn’t have children … the war had poisoned the land … poisoned the water. Of course the earthquakes didn’t help. But then the trace element was sourced.’