Siberia (15 page)

I woke hugging my knapsack. It felt emptier, and the blackness had turned gray. It was the cold that had woken me. The corner was a mass of sawdust. There was a gaping hole, easily big enough for my head and shoulders, gnawed through the log wall, and a seething carpet of small brown and white furry animals.

“Wake up! Everyone, grab your stuff! It’s time to go!”

Satin was already awake, and staring at the horde. Emerald lifted her head and peered through her tangled black curls, shivering. Bakkial woke with a start, and gasped, and crossed himself against the evil eye. The girl with the corn gold braids said, in a scared, awed voice, “What are those things? Are they muties?”

“No,” I said. “I promise you they’re not. They’re very important, and I have to take them somewhere. I have to go north, but you can all come with me.”

Five faces stared at me, dirty and weary in the gray light.

“We’d die of cold,” whispered Emerald.

“But we won’t be slaves.
. . .
We won’t head off straightaway. It’s a
fairground.
It’ll be full of stuff we can steal, and people not paying attention. Come on!”

“I can’t,” said Tanya, her eyes fixed on the Lindquists. “I don’t dare. I’m afraid. It isn’t so bad here. I might get a good master.”

“We can’t run away,” said Bakkial. “Little Father would lose face, and be mad as fire. He’d hunt us down, and what would happen to us then?”

“Who cares? They won’t catch us if we go
now.
”

There was a low muttering from behind us. Then one of the slave children said clearly, bitterly, “They’re breaking out. They’re getting away.”

Another voice took it up. Somebody started to bang on the floor. Soon they were all banging on the floor and chanting, “
They’re getting away, they’re getting away, the pretty ones
are getting away!”
They didn’t care that we were children like them. They were so sunk in misery that we were just the enemy.
. . .
In another minute the auctioneers would come to see what the noise was about.

“
Please!
” I begged. “
Please
don’t make me leave you behind!”

“You have something important to do,” said Satin. “You should do it.”

“Go on, Sloe,” said Tanya. “You’re a good kid, but we’ll be all right.”

The Lindquist horde was already pouring through the gap like a furry waterfall into the gray space beyond. “I’ll pay you back,” I wailed. “One day, I promise!”

There was tremendous rattling at the barred door, and the chanting rose to a shout as I dived through the hole.

I’d forgotten that the hut was on stilts. I fell about two meters onto frozen snow and got to my knees. The Lindquist horde swarmed around me. But they were withering like dry leaves, only faster, they were shriveling up: they were nothing but little gray pellets of dust. There was only one brown and white animal, with her tiny paw on my knee, looking up in total trust, her cranberry eyes like drops of shining blood.

There were trucks parked next to the hut on stilts. I could see the underneaths of them, at my eye level. I scooped my Lindquist up, tucked her into the front of my clothes, and swarmed across the snow on my belly, dragging my knapsack with one hand: under one truck, then a dive and a roll under the next, and so on. A couple of times I was nearly spotted, by people lighting fires under their engines to get them moving after the night: but nobody really saw me. I reached the end of the row, got to my feet, and quickly walked away.

Somewhere behind me I could hear shouts and pounding feet. Maybe that was for me, but I didn’t run. I buried myself in the crowd. I found a black waterproofed blanket, that someone had draped over a parked motor sled to keep it from icing up. I wrapped myself in that, and my bright clothes disappeared. I wandered between rows of flaring torches, turning pale in daylight; I lingered by the hiss of bonfires and braziers. An old woman cooking maize cobs gave me one for free. I tried staring at another man who was grilling dog meat, but he didn’t give me anything. Once, I found a roost in a big stack of rapeseed oil drums, and felt safe enough to take my Lindquist out and stroke her. She was bigger than Nivvy’s small form, but not so big as spiny Nosey. Her red eyes were rather strange, but she had a very gallant, cheery air. “I know who you are,” I said. “You are the Lindquist who becomes many, order
Rodentia
. I called you Toothy, when I was a little girl.”

I stroked her and praised her, and gave her the last of my corn. I was slightly afraid that she would
become many
again, if anything threatened us. If anyone saw that happen we’d be in big trouble. She’d be killed with all her children, and so would I, probably. I tried to be very calm. I told her I was an expert thief and I’d soon collect supplies for the next stage of our journey.

It was about twenty-five, maybe thirty below. I wasn’t dressed for the cold, and I was very tired and hungry, but I didn’t know it. I thought I hadn’t been doing anything, I’d just been sitting in that hut for a day and a night. Something dangerous happens when you get very tired and hungry, and it’s really cold. You stop thinking straight; and you don’t feel it coming over you. I decided to go back to Little Father’s trucks, and steal my own sledge. I knew exactly where it was, hooked up on the side of the truck with the short skis and their poles.

I needed my sledge so I’d have somewhere to put the food I was going to steal. I’d given all the food in my knapsack to Toothy, when she was rescuing me from the slavers’ hut. I needed to start the stealing soon. My teeth were chattering, the wind went through my raggy old blanket and my pretty clothes like a knife. Maybe it would be easier to steal from Little Father’s tribe, because I knew everybody’s habits.

It took me ages to find my way back. My head was swimmy, and it was getting hard to concentrate. At last I saw the trucks I recognized. Little Father must be at his picnic table, because everybody was gathered around there (unless they were off at the fair). It hurt me to see the familiar scene. I wanted so badly to climb through the felt-lined door in the tailgate, to sit by the stove in that cozy, colorful cave, and eat porridge with Emerald and Satin. Instead, I walked round the back and took down my sledge. Nobody saw me. I slipped my shoulders into the harness, and wrapped the black blanket over my head again.

Then I decided I’d better see what was going on at the picnic table. I casually drifted to the edge of the crowd, and found a place where I could get a good view. Not too close, but with nothing in the way
. . .
I saw a group of four men in long, sweeping dark coats, standing in front of Little Father’s table. I saw the colored flashes on their collars, and the blazons on their sled helmets.

Fitness Police!

That looks like trouble for Little Father, I thought. The Fitness Police were the only authority the bandits feared. They didn’t just hunt for muties. They were entitled to search any vehicle, and confiscate the goods of anyone suspected of trading in factory animals, or transporting them without a license. These were the worst crimes you could commit in the wilderness, aside from trying to get into a city.

Then I came out of my daze, with a jolt. What if the Fitness Police were looking for
me
? What if they already knew what had happened at the slavers’ hut? I had to get away at once! Forget about stealing, I would head straight for the forest. I had my fine felted boots, my sledge, my blanket. I would find food and warmth and shelter somehow. My magic Lindquist would save me.

I walked away, trying not to hurry. I circled around the edge of the fair, until I came to a break in the ring of snowy slopes, where a road from the north entered the arena. The sky had been thick and low since daybreak: snow started to fall as I left the crowds behind. Before long, the great blot of the fair had been wiped out behind me. I was alone in a whirl of white.

I was so dazed, I thought that was a good thing.

They’ll never find me now, I thought, as I headed into the blizzard. Soon I realized I’d lost the road. I took out my compass and found north instead, and kept on. The Lindquist was getting heavy. She was so heavy I had to hold her in my arms, with her head over my shoulder. Her fur had turned dark, and her whiskery face was chunky, her teeth were big long yellow chisels. At least she was keeping me warm.

“Are you going to get too big for me to carry?” I muttered. “Right now, it would be good if
you
were big enough to carry
me.
”

I hoped she would not change too much. I remembered that Nosey had changed too much, and Nosey had died.
. . .
My head was very swimmy. I should be in the forest by now, but it had melted away. When the wind parted the snow I saw only a tree here, a tree there, with starved and leafless branches. The trees were sick, like the tree I used to watch when I was at New Dawn. Mama had said that the forest would shelter us.
. . .
I couldn’t take another step. I sat on my sledge at the foot of one of the sick trees, with my blanket over my head and under my bum, and Toothy in my arms; the only warm patch in the world.

“The trees will shelter us, Toothy. We’ll make a shelter of branches.”

I could see nothing but whirling powder, it was getting in my eyes.

“I’m very tired,” I said. “I’ll lie down.”

I curled up on the sledge and closed my eyes. Toothy climbed out of my arms. I heard the grind, grind of her teeth. She was attacking the sick tree! I tried to sit up, mumbling, “No! It will shelter us!”

She just slapped her fat, flattened tail against the snow, and went on gnawing.

“Not enough to eat,” I muttered. “Not enough to eat. I have no fire inside. Mustn’t go to sleep. If I go to sleep I’ll never wake up.”

The snow fell. I thought about Emerald and Satin, and Tanya and Bakkial, and the girl whose name I couldn’t remember. I hoped they’d be sold together. Toothy kept on working, like a creature with an important plan. She was a very purposeful Lindquist, but her purpose was always the same.
Gnaw . . .
The tree was not very thick in the trunk. She gnawed until it was near to breaking, then she stood on her hind legs and pushed. The torn wood screeched, and the tree fell down. She had made a house for us, a log cabin with only one log. She dug the snow and shovelled it over me and the sledge and the fallen tree together. I would be cozy and warm.

“Not enough to eat. No fire inside. Mustn’t sleep without eating.”

But when she’d made the house and burrowed into it beside me, I couldn’t help falling asleep. I hugged Toothy’s warm body, with only my nose and a scrap of blanket peeping out of a breathing hole, and it was blissful.

I stayed asleep for a long time. First I was truly asleep, then I was in another state, where I knew I was drifting close to death. I wasn’t cold. There was no difference between warm and cold. I was like a stove with only the faintest thread of red on the dial, and that faint thread was fading. I passed from there into a deep blackness, without dreams, without feeling.

I woke suddenly, all of a piece. I thought I was in the dormitory at college: soon the warden would come along with her jangling keys. But I could smell a wood fire. I opened my eyes, enough to see I was lying on a bed piled with blankets, in a little room with a fire glowing in the open stove. There was a man sitting near it. He must have heard me move, because he turned to look at me.

It was Yagin.

* 9 *

Artiodactyla

He had looked round, but he hadn’t seen that my eyes were open. He turned back to the fire. I was still dressed, except for the outermost layer of my pretty clothes. My red sprigged skirt, and the ruched blouse that went with it, were hanging over the back of a chair beside Yagin’s chair, close to the stove. My boots stood on the floor, steaming. My knapsack was on a table that stood in the middle of the room, and Toothy was lying beside it on a clean white cloth. She had changed back to her soft, small brown-and-white form. She was on her side, her upper lips retracted from the brave stumps of her gnawing teeth. I could see that she was dead. I had distressed her, she had changed too much and this had killed her.

I wished she was not dead. I wished my mama’s magical creatures did not keep having to die to save me. I was supposed to be their guardian.

Yagin looked up. He didn’t say anything. He came over to the bed, with a steaming mug. I sipped the heavenly sweetness of fruit tea with honey in it. He’s drugging me, I thought, and fell back into a deep sleep.

When I woke again my head was clear. It seemed to be night: there was a lamp glowing on the table. Yagin was sitting by the stove reading a book, with a pair of spectacles on his nose. My red skirt and blouse lay at the foot of the bed. I got up, very quietly, and put them on. My boots were there too. I looked at the door of the room. It was bolted and barred, and sure to be locked as well. My sledge was propped against the wall; which was made of rough logs, like the slave-auction hut. My knapsack was still on the table. On the white cloth beside it, where Toothy’s body had been, was a small gray cocoon. Yagin knows everything, I thought. He knows
everything
.
. . .
Oh, Mama, I’m sorry. I padded over in my socks and stood looking down at what had been Toothy, tears stinging my eyes.

“Are you going to harvest that?”

His hair had grown. It was rough as dog’s fur, a mixture of black and gray. He looked healthier than he had looked at New Dawn College. His face was ruddy: his eyes had a light-colored, penetrating gaze, and the crease between the brows that I remembered. I stared at him, and said nothing. I was in his power and maybe I had nothing left to hide, but that didn’t mean I was going to cooperate.

Yagin laughed. “Come and eat.”

He had a pan of con stew bubbling on the stove. I realized I was terribly hungry, shrugged, and went to join him. He handed me a spoon, took another for himself, and we ate, passing the pan between us, until the savory mixture was all gone. I felt the warmth of it running through me, and hope returned.

What if I’d been wrong? What if I could trust him after all?

“Who are you?
Why
have you been following me?”

“My name is Yagin,” he said. “I am your guardian angel. I am here to help you fulfill your quest. What more do you need to know? Nothing! That’s plenty.”

“Where are we?”

“Safe in a cabin in the forest, as you see.”

“But there was no forest. The trees were sick.”

“The forest is sick at the margins where I found you, but now we are much farther in. I brought you here. Don’t be afraid, no one will find us here. There’s a hell of a blizzard going on, it has been snowing for two days, it could snow for a week. I only just found you in time, girl. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“You got me expelled,” I said. “And you
. . .
you tracked me to the fur farm.”

“If you hadn’t been expelled,” said Yagin, “you’d have ended up in the Box yourself, or worse. I think they’d have sent you to an insane asylum, since you’re too young to go to prison. It’s very difficult to get someone out of one of those places. If you are not crazy at the start they keep you in a rubber cell, they put poison in your veins until you are really crazy, then they throw away the key.”

I had worked this out, or something like. I nodded, warily.

“That’s what would have happened to your mother,” said Yagin. “When they took her from your Settlement, they put her in a secure hospital. But friends spirited her away from there, she’s safe now. And I came to New Dawn, to watch over you.”

Mama was alive! Mama was safe!
I don’t know how I stopped myself from crying out. My head was spinning, but I just nodded again, straight-faced. He had given me hope at New Dawn, and that was all he’d given me now. Hope, and a whole lot of unanswered questions.

“You tried to buy me from Little Father.”

“Ha! You mean I tried to save you from being sold as a slave. You’re lucky I stuck around. I’ve been looking for a chance to get you away from that nice, kindly child thief of yours. That’s how I came to find you in the snow.”

He got up and went to the table, opened my rucksack, and took out the nail box. It was a shock to see him do that, even though I knew he knew about the Lindquists. I had to follow him to the table, I couldn’t stop myself.

“You really must harvest that pellet, they shouldn’t be exposed to the air for long, the DNA will deteriorate. So you grew another kit, eh? What a reckless girl you are. Didn’t your mother tell you, never take a kit to second stage unless you are perfectly secure? You can’t tell what will happen to a second-stage Lindquist under stress! You’re supposed to be keeping a secret, not playing games.”

He was letting me know that he knew Mama’s secrets, to convince me that he was her friend: but something jarred. Something made me hold back.

“I needed them.”

I didn’t know what to believe, but I was still the guardian. Without looking at him I took out the lab case. I opened it, put on gloves and a mask; transferred Toothy’s remains to a fresh tube, and capped it. (Toothy’s color was green).

“You know your job, I see,” said Yagin.

The praise warmed me, in spite of everything. I’d been alone with this mystery for so long, with only a child’s knowledge of what it all meant: always afraid I was making terrible mistakes. Yagin reached into the knapsack again, and drew out the nutshell. It had filled out, and was turning from brown to red. I remembered with a shock that the kits were alive in there. He laughed at my expression, and turned the nut in his hand, running his finger along the seam. Nothing happened.

“See? They are safe from me. Only you can open the incubator, my dear Sloe. You, or your mama. Now, shall we talk this over?”

Without a word, I went and got my chair. We sat down, on either side of the table. Yagin reached inside his jacket, brought out a folded card, and handed it over. I found I was looking at colored pictures of animals. They were not very
good
pictures, not much better than what a child might draw, but
. . .

Yagin was watching me with a strange, intent, almost hungry look.

“Have you seen any of these almost mythical creatures, Sloe?”

I recognized Nosey, in her spiky form: with the word
hedgehog
printed next to her. Nivvy was called a
weasel
. Toothy, in her “many” form, was a
lemming
, but she had been a
beaver
when she chewed down the sick tree. The animal I had met on the plain, a true wild creature, not made by my mother’s magic, was a
snow hare.

My mother’s magic, the real wild animals.

“Where did you get this card from?”

“That? It’s the official guide issued to the Fitness Police, so they can tell the true wild animals from muties. Usually the recruits have never seen the creatures they are supposed to protect, not even in pictures. The guide is considered sufficient.”

“But it isn’t! I mean, that’s got to be Nosey in her full-sized form.” I pointed to the
hedgehog
. “But you can hardly tell that she has spikes instead of fur. And the
beaver
looks the same size as a
lemming,
which is completely wrong.”

Yagin drew in his breath, and his eyes shone.

I felt caught out, and angry with myself. However much he knew, I’d just told him even more. I shoved the card back at him.

“How did you get hold of that, if it’s issued to the police?”

“I stole it. You’re in big trouble, little girl. The Fitness Police don’t know for sure what you’re carrying, but they’re on your trail. It’s only by keeping close to them that I’ve been able to protect you.” His eyes were still shining. “So,” he added, staring at me as if I was something magical myself. “They survived. And they are still viable.”

“Why would the Fitness Police have a guide that’s no use?”

“There’s a simple rule,” said Yagin, gravely. “If you don’t recognize the animal, it must be a mutie: kill it. If you think you recognize it, kill it anyway, because it may be tainted, who can tell?” He pointed his finger at me, and sighted along it. “Shoot them and burn them all! That’s the way to keep nature pure!”

“But that doesn’t make sense!”

“Ha! Your mama thought the same. That’s how she ended up a convict.” Yagin tucked the picture card away, and leaned forward, arms folded on the table.

“Listen, little girl. The populations of wild animals have been in catastrophic decline for a hundred years or more. If you don’t know what that means, it means there are very, very few of them left. It was our pollution, our monster farms. It was loss of habitat caused by human numbers; and then the great cold.
. . .
The birds, the fishes, the flowers and trees and fungi are all in trouble too, but the wild mammals were maybe the worst off. So the government ordered that seed banks should be made, DNA storehouses for all the diversity that we were losing. The idea was that the animals—and plants, and birds and all—could be saved that way, so that one day, when the climate improves, we could repopulate the earth. Your mama and your dadda, who were scientists at the Biological Institute, were the leaders of the team who developed the wild mammal seed bank. They made these amazing, wondrous creations we call the Lindquist kits. Do you know this story? Did she tell you?”

It was for telling me about her science that my mama had been taken away.

I shrugged, and kept my face as blank as I could.

Yagin laughed. “Well, I’ll tell you again anyway. Your mama and your dadda made the Lindquists. Then they discovered that the government had no intention of repopulating the world with wild things. The Fitness Police are exterminators. The junior officers don’t know it, but the senior officers know: the real plan is to get rid of the last of the wild mammals. Then human beings will have no competition for the scarce resources of our winter world. Nothing will live except for man, and his vermin, and the monster things we breed for use.”

“But then why did the government want the Lindquists?”

“Oh, the
seeds
are useful. The wild mammal genes have many properties that could be valuable in factory animals. The Lindquist kits were meant to be kept as insurance, or money in the bank, purely for industrial use. When your mama and dadda found out, they decided to smuggle the kits out of the Institute. They destroyed their records, destroyed everything but one set of kits
. . .
which your dadda was to take to another city, a more enlightened place. This was ten years ago, when things seemed to be changing. He believed he was doing what the
good
side of our government wanted, and that everyone would soon know he was right. But that was not the view of the police. He was arrested.”

I was still trying to keep my face blank, but maybe Yagin saw something there that made him pause. He began again, in a gentler tone.

“Your dadda was caught, but he managed to destroy the kits before they could be taken from him. Your mama was sent to the Settlements, with you, for the crime of being married to him. But no one suspected how closely she had been involved, and no one knew there was a duplicate set. I was their friend, and I always suspected the truth. I knew your mama: how gentle she seems, how bold she is in her soul. But I didn’t know where she had been taken, and I didn’t dare try to find out, in case I drew suspicion onto her. The wilderness is a vast place, and there are many, many prison Settlements.
. . .
So the years passed, your mama patiently waiting, I suppose, for the chance to take the Lindquists to safety. Until one day a little girl was sent to New Dawn, and a new episode of the story began.”

I didn’t want to talk about New Dawn.

“So, what happens now?” I asked.

“You’ve given me a great deal of trouble,” said Yagin sternly. “But I forgive you. What happens now is that we wait until the storm is over, and then I take you, with the kits, north to the frozen sea: avoiding our pursuers. We make the crossing, and deliver them, as your mama intended, to the city where the sun always shines.”

“All right.”

He looked at me suspiciously. I risked a timid smile, and he grinned.

“Good! That’s agreed, then. The incubator is live,” he added, in a strangely wistful tone. “I can tell by the color. Will you let me see them, eh?”

I thought of the principal’s office, at New Dawn. I knew his whole story could be another cruel trick. But I needed him to believe I trusted him: so I opened the shell. The kits had grown. They were about the size of the top joint of my thumb. Five little pointed faces peeped over the parapet of their nest: five pairs of tiny berry black eyes lit up, when they knew I was there. Yagin said nothing, he just watched: riveted and fascinated, as the kits gained confidence, and scrambled out, one by one. They came trundling over to me, on their little stripey bowlegged limbs.

“Why are they called Lindquists? Mama never told me that.”

“It’s the name of a great scientist of long ago,” said Yagin, softly, his eyes fixed on the kits. “She was the one who worked out that mutations—the natural, tiny changes whereby animals evolve—can be stored in the genome, and then revealed all at once, at the flick of a genetic switch, which can be attuned to stress.
. . .
You know that every animal holds a tiny instruction set, written in the DNA of each of its cells? Each of your Lindquists holds several
different
instruction kits: the DNA instruction sets for a whole order of wild mammals.”