Siberia (6 page)

“What happened!” Rose gasped.

“We thought you were a goner. We thought we’d next see you on a plate.”

I shrugged. “Nothing much. We chatted. I think she used to know my mama.”

I didn’t understand.

News of my experience spread: I was famous. Some Bugs thought I would be taken to the city next, and have expensive treatment to fix my knee. Some were saying the principal wanted to adopt me. Suddenly I had a crowd of friends, wanting to get close to me, in the hope that my luck would rub off. Bird and Ifrahim and Tottie weren’t so sure. Nor was I. A visit to the principal’s office could not be good news.

But I seemed to have got away with it, whatever “it” was.

March began, and I had my eleventh birthday. I didn’t tell anyone; nobody celebrated birthdays. My trip to the principal’s office faded from my mind, except for a strange, nagging uneasiness. . . . Then there was a blizzard that went on for days. The running club was suspended. When we had to cross between the buildings we were lost in a world without outlines, where the air you breathed was made of snow. If there were buds on the branches of my tree, I would not have been able to see them. One evening in the blizzard we walked from the study hall to our dormitory, the night warden swinging her keys behind us. When we got into the room, I saw that my bed was stripped. My things had been turned out of my locker and put on the mattress. A strange warden, with different flashes on the collar of her white coat, was folding up a sheet. The other girls looked at each other, and went very quietly to their own beds.

I heard someone murmur,
Is she really going to the city?
Someone else muttered,
Shhh!

The strange warden set down the folded sheet, stacked my things on it, and briskly tied the small bundle. She handed it to me.

“You take that with you to Permanent Boarders, Sloe.”

“Permanent Boarders? Wh-why do I have to go there?”

“Because you’re a Permanent Boarder.”

“But why am I suddenly a Permanent Boarder?” I quavered, tears beginning to start in my eyes. I had never cried at school, but I had such a sense of utter doom.

The warden’s mouth was a hard line. I could see she was one of the soft ones. Some of them were like that: they had to be on their guard, or they’d have been tempted to protest at the harsh way we were treated.
Trouble rubs off,
and you can’t be too careful. They were always the worst kind.

“It’s not my business, and it’s not yours, but I believe it’s something to do with your mother. She’s been practicing her profession, although she was disgraced: and that’s forbidden. She’s been taken away. There’s no home for you to go to, and you’re a Permanent Boarder. Get a move on, I haven’t got all night.”

In a dead silence I limped out of the dormitory, clutching my bundle. My mama had been taken away, like my dadda. She was gone.

I suppose days went by, and nights passed. I suppose I went to lessons, sat in the canteen, finished my food. I know I was taken to the principal’s office a second time, and told officially that I was now a Permanent Boarder, because my mother had taught me science, and they had a recording of me saying so, so there was no way Mama could deny it. It was a grave crime,
an act of criminal insanity,
for someone sentenced to exile in the Settlements to teach science. What if she had taught dangerous rebels how to make a bomb? But it was all right, it was over now, and my mama was getting the appropriate treatment.

The principal said I mustn’t worry, I was not in trouble. New Dawn was proud to be teaching the daughter of such distinguished scientists, even though my mama and my dadda had fallen into wicked error. I could have a shining future, and make up for their unfortunate crimes. I could be Rehabilitated Settlement Child Number One. I suppose I said thank you. . . . You have to say thank you. It isn’t enough to nod and look at the floor. You can’t keep anything for yourself, not even your anger. They want it all. They want everything.

She didn’t tell me where my mother was. I didn’t ask.

She’s been taken away.

She’s been taken away.

Taken away like my dadda, and hung, or shot.

And I knew who was to blame. Not the police, or the Commission for Settlements, or Madam Principal: it was me. I was eleven years old, and I had killed my mother. She was dead for two pieces of cake, and a taste of fake berry jam.

At the end of March there was a day of blue skies. The town’s waste tips, which you could see through the mesh of the main gates, were smudged with brown where smoldering rubbish had melted through the snow. Scavenger gulls were on patrol, screaming to each other in a harsh, alien language. I huddled in the place where the running club stopped for a breather. My leg had stiffened badly since I’d given up running. Today the physiotherapy teacher had ordered me out with the others: but he hadn’t forced me to keep up. . . . I could see my tree, but I couldn’t make out if there were buds on its scrawny branches. I tucked my cold hands up into the sleeves of my uniform coat, and pressed my face against the icy mesh.

I wondered what I would have to do to get myself shot.

“Better off staying here,” said a gravelly deep voice, behind me.

It was one of the guards. They all looked the same in their gray uniforms: heads shaved to stubble, big shoulders, hard faces, but I thought I hadn’t seen this particular man around before. He was tall. A pair of deep lines pinched the flesh between his arched brows, his nose was long and straight. He looked quite old, for a guard. He had his rifle slung on his back, a gun in the holster at his waist, and a bottle tucked under his arm. His uniform tunic was open, as if he didn’t feel the cold. The shirt under it was very dingy.

“You’re called Sloe,” he said, with a grin. “From Wilderness Settlement 267, Third Brigade, East Sector?”

“What if I am?”

He slipped the bottle from under his arm, popped the cork out with his thumb, and took a big swallow. Then he handed it to me.

“Yagin’s the name. You look as if you’re planning a break-out, that’s all, and I’m saying you’d be better off staying here.”

“What’s it to you?”

“Oh, nothing. But think about it. Forget the lessons.

Think about three meals a day, a dormitory bed, vitamin pills. There’s the physio too. You know it’s done you a lot of good. My advice is, stay put until you’re grown. You won’t be ready for the trek before then, and where could you live better? Back in 267 you’d starve. You wouldn’t last a winter, without her to support you.”

I shrugged. I was too deadened to be surprised. The smell of liquor stung my nose: I wondered what I was supposed to do with the bottle.

“You don’t know if you can trust me,” said the strange guard. “I know. So let me put it this way. Spring’s a dangerous time for little animals. Worse than the winter, in many ways. The safe blanket of snow is melting away, and all your enemies are hungry. But things aren’t as bad as they seem.
It’s not
as bad as you think, little girl.
You hang on, you’ll see. Hang on, and lie low.” He tapped me on the head with his hard fingertip (he wasn’t wearing gloves). “And I’ll be here. Look around, anytime, and I’ll be watching over you.”

I took a swig from the bottle, handed it back, and started to limp off toward the school buildings. I heard him laughing, deep and strong, behind me.

I didn’t know what to make of this strange meeting. But later, as the day went wearily by, I realized that somewhere inside me the flame of hope had started to glow.

* 4 *

After they took my mama away, I gave up the idea of getting an education and having a chance in life. I kept the hope that Yagin had given me, but I hid it deep in my heart, and tried never to think about it. One day I’d be old enough to leave this dump, and I would go and search for my mama. Meanwhile I was here for the three meals a day, the warm clothes, the vitamin pills, and whatever else was going.

Rose went on being friends with me, when I was a Permanent Boarder, and I went on being friends with her. There wasn’t a school rule keeping Permanents and Termers apart, it was something the students had decided themselves: but my self-appointed guardian didn’t like it. Once he found me sharing a weed (that’s a prison cigarette) with Rose, behind the kitchen rubbish bins. He took great pains to catch me alone after that, and told me Rose was bad company, and she would do me harm.

I knew Rose wasn’t to be trusted. It was the spice of danger that made her interesting. “I’m bad company myself,” I said. “Warn Rose.”

Yagin watched me, as he’d promised. He had an annoying way of looking—as if he knew every naughty thing I’d ever done, but he would always forgive me. It gave me the creeps. But there wasn’t much he could do about my being friends with Rose. He couldn’t hang around near the students without getting into serious trouble. I often avoided seeing him for weeks at a time.

My tree down the road put out its leaves. It was never much of a green cloud, but made the best show it could manage. I went to the gates to look at it sometimes: until the summer faded. New girls moved into the dormitories. After they’d been issued their uniforms, we old Bugs took anything worth having, substituting our own worn-out stuff. We threw shoes at them when they cried at night, and warned them they would be killed if they complained. . . . Deep inside, where my hope was buried, maybe the person I used to be survived. But I had betrayed my mother, and the only way I could live with that was to become hard and hateful; so I just let it happen. At least, as the winter went on, the crying stopped. It was a relief not to have to be cruel anymore. On very cold nights I wrapped my stolen extra blankets tightly around me, hid my head under the pillow, and dreamed I was in the snowy forest. Mama, I whispered in my heart. I’ll come and find you.

I knew she was probably dead; but you have to believe in something.

I knew I wasn’t the little girl she had loved anymore, but I couldn’t help that.

The winter passed. By March my tree emerged from the blizzards, looking more sickly than ever, but at least it was alive. So now I was twelve.

It was during my second year that we started the real stealing. I don’t know what Yagin would have done if he’d found out: but he didn’t. Maybe he was fooled by the way I still worked at my lessons and got high marks (which I did because it was easy and it was good cover). Or maybe it was because it happened very gradually.

First we were taking things from the new Bugs, same as the year before: a nasty game, but it kept us warm and fed. Then Rose talked to one of the townspeople, one of those bad lots who hung around the New Dawn College gates in the hopes of some kind of pickings, and set up a regular trade. That’s what she told us, anyway. Maybe it was really something to do with that friend of her mother’s: I never knew. I left that side of it to Rose.

My job was to organize the stealing. We Permanents had chores, around the kitchen and the housekeeping stores, and we weren’t too well supervised. I recruited Rain, and a couple of other Permanents. Later there were more people involved: Bird and Lavrenty, Tottie and Ifrahim. We’d recruit anyone useful. It grew to be an empire. On my thirteenth birthday I didn’t go to look at my tree: I’d forgotten all about it. We’d just traded a stack of blankets and a box of canned food over the fence: I sneaked out of the dormitory (we had a lockpick in our gang by then) after lights-out, and celebrated with my thieving friends, on vodka and plenty of greasy chocolate.

The third summer break was endless. We got short rations when the Termers had gone home, on the grounds that we weren’t doing brain work. But the Cats liked us to be exhausted, because it made us easy to handle, so they didn’t cut our chores. Hours of scrubbing floors that didn’t need scrubbing, and not even a full stomach to look forward to. It was awful. And we didn’t steal during the “holidays,” not even food for ourselves. It wasn’t safe. There were only a few students, which meant the Cats could watch you every minute. . . . Also Rain was ill, and they took him to the school clinic. I tried not to think about it, but I missed him, and I worried about him.

It was a big relief when the Termers came back, and Rain was let out of the clinic. I was tempted to concentrate on my schoolwork for a while just to relax. I was getting bored with being a criminal. But this was the fat time of year, with a new crop of Bugs to be fleeced, and kitchen opportunities it would have been a shame to miss. I told myself I would quit once the harvest was over.

One of our meeting places was a disused watchtower, north of the Dogs’ barracks (the wardens were still Cats, and the guards were still Dogs). It was out of the way, but near enough to the school buildings so we didn’t look suspicious heading in that direction; and we weren’t afraid of the guards. They wouldn’t do anything except under orders. It was the wardens we feared: they
enjoyed
being nasty. . . . Our safeguard was that the stairs to this tower had been taken apart, to stop anyone from doing what we were doing. You had to climb the metalwork of the struts, and get in through the open trapdoor in the floor of the tower. It was a challenge, especially for me: and you were a long way off the ground when you got to the most awkward bit. But that added to our security.

I met Rose there, after lights-out, to discuss what to do with our plenty. The watchtower was heaped with stolen blankets, plus a big stash of canned stew, and fat jars of pickle. We wrapped blankets around us, opened one of the cans, which was full of con—our favorite, protein concentrate— stewed in savory gravy, and sat there, with our dark lantern, slurping stew and gnawing on pickled cucumbers. Rose counted the blankets with an expert eye. She didn’t need to touch them.

“You sure there’s no fleas or lice?”

“College issue, just fumigated. The same blankets as we sleep in ourselves. What d’you think you can get? Chocolate? I can get unbelievable prices for chocolate from my Permanent customers. New shoes, pens, really good stuff.”

She narrowed her eyes impressively. “Maybe I can get chocolate. I’ll consult my associates.” I never asked her who these associates were. It was better not to know. She grinned, suddenly. “Hey, Sloe, I’ve got an idea. We’ve got all this stuff. We’re doing so well. Why don’t we throw a party up here?”

“What, you mean at night?”

“Yeah. After lights-out, with cards and liquor. No strangers, just the gang.”

I said, “No one would hear us. It’s that time of year: the dorms will be full of screamers, sobbing like strangled cats.”

We both laughed. I savored a lump of cheesy, delicious concentrate.

“I never cried,” said Rose.

“Nor did I. Not even when they made me a Permanent Boarder.”

Rose gave me a brooding look. She leaned over to fish for another pickle. “D’you remember the day you were moved up to the seniors, back at home?”

I shrugged. “Maybe I do. So what?”

“You walked up from the babies’ end as if you owned the place, and you went straight to the globe. That light-up globe on the bookshelf ?” Her eyes caught cruel yellow gleams from our shaded candle. “Not even the big teenagers dared to
touch
it without special permission. You went over and casually started pushing the buttons. You were so far above us. We could tell you’d had lots of things like that, when you lived in the city. You and your mama . . . I wanted to
be
you, back then. Or I wanted you to be me. Maybe I still do, and that’s why I told the warden—”

“I wanted to be
you,
” I broke in, quickly. “I still do. I want yellow hair.”

I had realized long ago that it must have been Rose who got me my invitation to the principal’s office, and caused me to betray my mother. Teachers didn’t report students for crimes against the Settlement Commission, like boasting that your mother had taught you science. They’d be too scared of being questioned themselves. . . . Wardens did things like that. But how would a Cat have got to know about something that had only happened in a school lesson? Somebody must have told tales. Rose had been there, she’d seen Mr. Pachenko looking shocked. She must have realized she could get me into bad trouble, and she wouldn’t have been able to resist an opportunity like that.

I
knew,
but I didn’t want her to confess. I didn’t want to be told for sure. I didn’t want to have to do anything about it.

How can I explain about Rose? I think she truly liked me, but she hated me too. She hated me because I
belonged
in the city. I had been born there, and nothing could take that away from me. But Rose had been born in the Settlements, and it didn’t matter how many pretty things she had, she could never be like me. . . . And I knew she hated me, but I never tried to get away. I suppose I thought if I could handle the danger of being friends with Rose, it proved I was tough enough to survive. Yet I sort of really liked her too. Life gets very twisted, in a prison.

“We’re a team,” I said. “A mutual admiration society.”

Rose hiccuped, giggled, and put her hand over her mouth. Her hands were soft and pretty: somehow Rose managed never to be the one scrubbing floors. Her nails gleamed, like little pink claws, in the candlelight.

We called the party our Annual General Meeting, and held it on a night when the moon was dark. We’d been out of the dorms together before. It wasn’t too dangerous when you knew the wardens’ routine; if you had a skeleton key. Ifrahim was clever like that. He could make a key out of a pin or a paper clip, and he’d taught us all how to pick simple locks. In third year, top juniors, they didn’t patrol the dorms through the night the way they did with the younger Bugs. They locked us in, and came around to look through the glass of the door at intervals. They trusted in the red lights to keep us behaving ourselves: but we knew how to avoid the camera eyes.

Rain and Amur (another Permanent I’d recruited for his criminal skills) and I left our beds stuffed with blankets. We sneaked out of the Permanent Boarders’ block and met the Termers up in the tower. There we feasted among our spoils, wrapped like savages in stolen New Dawn blankets, in the smoky, smelly light of stolen New Dawn candles; playing cards while we passed the bottle round. Someone drunkenly called for a speech. I stood up, arm in arm with Rose, and explained how much I’d learned at New Dawn College, and how rehabitu-witulated I was.

“Here’s to a life of crime!” cried Rose.

We were getting dangerously loud. We didn’t hear the lookout scrabbling down from the roof, until he catapulted into the room, headfirst. It was Amur, and he was scared. “Out of here!” he gasped. “The guards are coming, a bunch of them, out of the main gates guardhouse. They must have had a tip-off!”

“How d’you know they’re coming here?” cried Rose.

“Where else? Come on! Come on!”

“But all our stuff!” groaned Bird.

“Don’t be stupid,” I hissed. “There’s always more.”

The candles in the dark lanterns were doused, all but one. Amur was already shooting down the struts: Rose and Bird, Lavrenty and Ifrahim followed. Tottie grabbed a last spoon of stew, stuffed it in her mouth, and dived wildly through the trapdoor. We heard her gasp and choke as the metal bar on the other side of the gap connected with her midriff, then she was gone into the dark. Rain and I looked at each other. We were the weaklings, the ones doomed to think too much.

“What if they get us by our fingerprints?” whispered Rain.

“They haven’t got the things they’d need. They’re not trained police. They’re idiots, guarding a lot of half-starved children.
They
don’t care.”

“Why did we get into this, Sloe? Why did we go to the bad? It’s crazy. It was a privilege to come to school, and we’ve wasted it. Why were we such fools?”

“It’s not a privilege. You finish your course, then you end up back in the Settlements. Oh, I don’t know. It’s a rotten world, we were desperate.
Go on,
Rain.”

Rain put out the last candle. “You first.”

I flung myself through empty space, grabbing ahead of me for that cold metal. I was flying, I was falling, then my hands hit the bar and locked on to it. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear the guards coming. The tramp of their boots was like thunder. I was always scared of that gap; and Rain was more scared than me, but I knew he’d jump now I’d done it. I scrambled down, slipping through several handholds once, and wrenching my weak leg.

I dropped to the ground.

“Rain!”

“I’m right behind you.”

I could see him moving. He was high up, but he’d made the leap. I thought he was safe so I hobbled and stumbled for cover. I was in the undercroft of the Dogs’ own barracks when they hit the watchtower, surrounding it, flashing their torches, letting off rifles. When they started barking and yelling in triumph, I knew they’d got Rain.

There was nothing I could do. I sneaked into my dorm again, before they really began hunting for the rest of us. I found out next morning that everyone else had got safely away too. But we’d lost all our stuff, and Rain was in deep, deep trouble.

A general assembly was called in the great gymnasium hall, with the teachers up onstage. Madam Principal was at her rostrum: her most trusted stooges, the chief wardens, in a half-circle behind her, and all of us Bugs lined up below. Permanents on the left, Termers on the right. She said how shocked and appalled she was that a Bug (she said a junior, of course), a mere child, had been involved in the crime ring that had been uncovered. She said the ringleaders had corrupted his innocence, and deserved no mistaken loyalty from us. Any Bug who gave information would be treated firmly but kindly, and she was sure somebody knew something. . . . I didn’t listen, any more than I’d listened at Midwinter Break, when she was telling us what a wonderful place New Dawn was. I looked at Rain, who was standing on the stage between two guards. His uniform had been taken away, because he was in disgrace. He was wearing a dirt-colored T-shirt and patched, knee-length pants that must have been in his baggage when he first arrived. They were far too small for him.