Siberia (9 page)

“Will you give me a lift?”

“Where to?”

“I want to get to the railway.”

He shook his head, joggling the earflaps of his fleecy cap. “Can’t do that, Sloe. I’m not going that way: and if I was, you should stay away from there. They’d never let you on a train, and that’s the first place anyone’ll look for you.”

“I don’t want you to take me to the platform. I know that’s no good. I want you to take me to the cutting where the freight cars have to slow down, on the fur farm spur. There’ll be a train, probably, tomorrow or the next day, because it’s the end of the month. I’m going to jump a ride.”

“Right, I get it.” He thought about it. “You know there’s guard dogs, don’t you? They attack to kill.”

“I can look after myself,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”

“My mam would let you stay with us for a while.”

“Thanks, but I’d just be an extra mouth to feed, until the police came to take me away. Unless the gangsters came around first, and
your
hut got torched.”

“All right then, up you get.”

It was warmer in the cab than outdoors, in spite of the broken window. I tried to spread my tarp out on the engine housing, so it might get a bit dry. Storm didn’t talk and neither did I. After a few minutes he reached for a bundle of jerky sticks, stripped two off, and handed me one. I chewed, and my mouth ran with saliva. Now
that
is meat, I thought. I knew I was chewing on a strip of salty, smoke-dried cat. Or maybe rat: I wasn’t fussy. The tractor juddered on. I kept wanting to look over my shoulder: I felt as if the Mafia must be close behind. I looked at Storm’s cap with the earflaps, and thought of the lookout on the corner, when my mother’s hut was being trashed. Someone with a cap just like that . . . I wondered if I was a fool to trust him. But you can’t tell somebody’s loyalties by what they do for pay.

At last we reached the place where the fur farm spur, heading north from the main railway line, ran in a cutting, no more than a half mile or so from the tractor track. I started bundling my sodden tarp: it wasn’t any drier.

Storm shook his head. “You don’t want that crap. It’s a liability.”

“I
do
. I left my coat in the hut. I don’t have anything else to shelter in.”

He reached behind him, to the shelf under the broken window, and tugged out a spare jacket that must have belonged to him, not Nicolai, because it was fairly clean. It was brown, slick on the outside, and it had a fleecy lining.

“You can borrow this.”

He wanted me to get out first, and he would hand me my stuff, but I wasn’t going to let anyone else touch the knapsack. I scrambled out, in my new jacket.

“Thanks for the loan, and the lift. I’ll pay you back, soon as I can.”

“
Did
your mother leave you anything tasty, girl?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing but a few tins of food, which I had to leave behind. It was just one of those rumors that gets around.”

Storm looked at the knapsack, and shrugged. “Well, if anyone asks, that’s what I’ll tell them.” He took his cap off, leaned down, and dumped it on my head, and then, as an afterthought, plonked the rest of the jerky strips into my hands. “When you get where you’re going, send me a postcard, eh?”

I nodded, and walked off into the snow.

I made my camp in a stand of tall dead reeds. I ate freely of my food, because food is like having a fire inside, and I had to keep warm. I also burned two of my candles, which kept my tarpaulin bivvy cozy at night. The Lindquists were all right, in their nest. I opened the nut and talked to them often; but I didn’t open the shield, so they didn’t get cold. It was a great comfort having them there, even though I was scared the whole time that the bandits would turn up. I hoped I’d see them coming, and have a chance to bury the nail box (I had a place ready) under a cache of stones, before they reached me. I would never tell them where.

No one came. I would never know who had tipped off the Mafia that I was coming home (I suspect it must have been old Nicolai). But it seemed Storm hadn’t told tales. The sun was an orange split in the clouds, getting on toward setting on the third day, when the freight train turned up at last. I was waiting by the line, wishing I had some more jerky. My feet were blocks of ice, I didn’t know if I
could
jump onto a freight car. I only knew that if I didn’t make it, I was probably done for. The engine came in sight, rose up like a snorting, choking old dragon, and hauled itself by. I’d broken out in a sweat despite the cold, but then the long trucks started crawling past me, groaning like old ladies with rheumatism, and it was no problem at all. The fourth truck had an open gap in the side. I threw my bundle of tarp and scrambled on board after it, onto some piles of old sacking.

I flopped down, incredibly relieved and triumphant. Sacking! What a luxury! And dry shelter! Maybe I could take my boots off, and get my feet dry. . . . Somebody coughed. I realized I was not alone. My eyes got accustomed to the darkness and I saw that the shadowy length of the empty goods truck was littered with bodies: tramps like me. Someone even had a little brazier going. I remembered what my mama had said: the country looks empty, but it isn’t. Some of the people will help us. . . . Already Storm had helped me, and my neighbors had given me food.

I’d been thrown out of school, burned out of my home. I was sore and filthy, cold and wet, and I knew I should be terrified of the vast journey ahead. But I had hope. It came to me that this was my mother’s gift. It was because she gave people hope, because she
glowed
with it, that our neighbors had cared about her, and felt that she mattered. I didn’t understand what the Lindquists meant, and I longed for peace and quiet so I could try to put together what I had learned as a child. But I felt that I was carrying that hope with me, like a burning flame.

The goods truck rattled on, slower than Nicolai’s tractor. None of the other unofficial passengers took any notice of me. I unfastened my knapsack, and lifted the lid from the nail box. The magic nutshell had grown, the wrinkles had filled out a little. When I opened it the kits looked up at me, with identical pointed faces. Five of them were just slightly bigger. The sixth, the one who’d eaten the jam, was about as big as the first joint of my thumb. The last time I’d looked, this morning, it’d been only a little larger than the rest.

Oh, this isn’t good, I told myself. Now I have a second-stage Lindquist to look after, and it’s soon going to be too big for the nutshell. But really, I was delighted. I felt that my mama had given me a faithful friend.

“Nivvy?” I whispered. “Are you Nivvy, come back again?”

No, this wasn’t Nivvy, pressing tiny naked paws against the shield. It was a different animal, with a drooping nose, a pelt dark as ditchwater, and a skinny naked tail. Teeth glinted white under the curling edge of its whiskered lips.

I opened the seal. Confidently, it hopped into my palm. The rest of the kits huddled down and didn’t try to follow. I was holding what looked like a rat, a miniature rat with a drooping nose, and there was something wrong with its eyes, I didn’t like its bleary little eyes.

“You’re
not
Nivvy. But who are you?”

The memories began to come back. The orders, those strange long words.

There was a phlegmy, throat-clearing noise next to my ear. I jumped, and found an old man’s face peering over my shoulder. I glared at him, and closed my hand over the Lindquist. The tramp retreated, muttering, but I saw other faces turned toward me from the shadows: dark eyes, gap-toothed mouths. People were supposed to kill muties on sight. Would tramps do that? I slipped the creature back into the nest and sealed the nutshell again, trying not to let anyone see what I was doing.

My spine tingled. What kind of magic treasure is this?

* 6 *

Insectivora

The sacking was full of bugs. I dozed and scratched in misery, somehow never getting warmer. The thought of the miniature rat kept me awake. I was afraid something had gone wrong. . . . I’d made a mutie, instead of making Nivvy, and it was because I was a bad person, because of all the awful things I’d done at New Dawn. In the end I sat up. The tramps all seemed to be asleep. I got the makings of my lamp out of the knapsack pocket, and took out the nutshell as quietly as possible. I lit my lamp, and opened the shell. The strange kit was awake, the others were snuggled down asleep. I opened the shield and picked it out. It peered at me, with those dim, sunken eyes I didn’t like. I checked it over and couldn’t find anything wrong, except that it looked like a doll’s house rat. “It” was a she, a female.

She liked to sniff and nuzzle, and like my Nivvy she had no fear. I let her investigate me a little. Instantly, she crept up my sleeve and found a louse: brought it out and sat on her haunches chomping neatly. “Is that what you do?” I asked her, softly. “You’re a bug-eater?” Nivvy had never eaten bugs (in spite of what Mama had told Nicolai the Nail Collector once). He’d sometimes kill roaches, but never to eat: you could see they disgusted him. The new creature sniffed at me, that nose going up and down, as if it was nodding its head. I felt the presence of a little
person
, a living, animal person, trusting me to be its friend.

The magic lessons were coming back to me, things I’d learned by heart before I was ten years old. It all sounded so different now.
Insectivora,
that was the long name for the bug-eater Lindquist. I’d shortened it to Nosey, when I was a child.

“You are
Nosey,
” I whispered. “And you’re all right, just not what I expected.”

I woke again with a shock. Something was clanging and banging. For a moment I didn’t know what was happening or where I was: I couldn’t remember going to sleep. . . . Then I remembered. My lamp had gone out, and Nosey was curled up in Storm’s cap, beside my head. I nearly sat up, terribly shocked that I’d been so careless. Then I realized there was somebody walking through the truck. A man with a light was shaking the tramps by the shoulder, one by one. I tried to see what was happening. Were they giving him money? Could there be a ticket collector on a freight train? Did tramps have to show their papers? I saw the outline of a peaked cap, and knew that this ticket collector was in uniform.

That decided me. I stuffed the lamp away, put my cap on my head with Nosey safe inside, grabbed my precious knapsack (I’d have to leave the tarp behind), and began to edge toward the opening in the side of the truck. I almost made it, I was ready to jump . . . but I couldn’t see what was out there. I hesitated too long. The light shone in my face, dazzling me. The man’s words ran into each other, the way the fat nurse had talked in the clinic. “What are you doing on this train?”

“I’m traveling north.”

“You have no business on this train.”

I didn’t have any money, prison scrip or any other kind. I didn’t know what to say: I could hardly see the man’s face. The light jerked at me. “Up. Come.”

I had to follow him. At the end of the truck he threw the bolts in an iron plate, with a lot of clanging and banging, and it opened like a door. We had to step out into the night air to cross the coupling. I stood clinging to an iron ladder, while he opened another plate in the back of the next truck. I thought of jumping: but wouldn’t you know it, just then the train was rattling down an incline, faster than it had moved all night. I’d have been mashed to bits, and I wasn’t as desperate as that. We went through another empty truck, which had closed sides and no tramps in it, and over two full ones, and so, by swaying ladders and rusty, greasy handholds, down to the fire cab, where the stoker was tending the orange cave of his furnace—and to the engine driver’s swaying den.

It was a steam engine, burning brown coal. The driver’s cab was very dirty, and choky with coal smoke, but warm and dry. There was a teakettle sizzling on a hot plate. The driver, a thickset man with a black mustache and rosy cheeks, turned from his dials and levers. My ticket collector muttered something I couldn’t make out, poured himself a mug of tea, and settled on a metal seat bolted to the wall. He started to roll himself a cigarette. The driver looked me up and down.

“What are you doing on this train?”

“I’m traveling north.”

“Do you have money?”

“No.” I wrapped my arms around my knapsack and glared, silently daring him to take it from me. Behind me, the ticket collector laughed.

“You can’t travel on this train,” said the driver.

“What about all those other people?” I demanded. “Why can they ride?”

“You’re a child,” said the driver. “We have to turn you off, next stop. It’s the law. . . . Give her a cup of tea.”

The ticket collector gave me a chipped, greasy mug of hot tea with sugar in it. I sat on the floor, my knapsack between my knees, sipping the delicious sweetness. The two men ignored me. Occasionally they’d say a few words to each other but mostly they sat in sleepy silence, while the train lumbered on. I started to get warm. My feet began to unfreeze, steam rose from my boots. I took Storm’s cap off and held it on top of my knapsack, my hands inside so I could stroke Nosey. I knew where their next stop must be, and it was where I’d planned to get off, anyway.

Everyone helps me, I thought. I wondered if my mama’s magic worked on people who’d never known her.

Or were ordinary people just good by nature, if they had the chance?

The engine driver and his mate didn’t do me any harm, they didn’t try to rob me. They let me sit in their smoky haven, getting dry, and soon I knew we were coming to the fur farm. I could smell the foulness that had sometimes drifted as far as our Settlement, when there was a strong wind in the summertime . . . and I could hear the dogs. That was frightening. I dimly remembered pictures of dogs in my baby books, but I’d never seen a real one. In the scary stories the kids in the Settlement used to tell, the fur farm guard dogs were fed on human flesh, to make them savage. The flesh of runaway children, for preference, of course.

But the farm was the only place where I had a hope of finding supplies for my journey. I stood up, lifted my knapsack, and put my cap on, with Nosey safe inside. By now the smell in the cab was appalling. I couldn’t believe it was really from the farm, I thought the stoker must have tipped some rotten meat into his furnace.

“Thank you,” I said to my friends. “I’d pay you if I could.”

The ticket collector smiled crookedly, and took my knapsack. It happened before I could stop him. He helped me down, and got down himself. It was pitch-dark, and the foul smell was even thicker outside the train. It made me gag, and the ticket collector laughed at that. Farther down the platform there was shouting and banging, as heavy containers were loaded or unloaded.

My plan had been to leave the train unofficially here and hide, and see what I could steal . . . but all I could do was follow the man who had my knapsack. We walked along to a small door in a big dark wall, with a dirty yellow light burning above it. The yammering and howling of the dogs got louder, as he handed my knapsack to the man who opened it.

“What’s this?”

“Minor, child. Suspected runaway. No authority to travel.”

“Well, we don’t want her.”

The ticket collector pulled out a wadded handkerchief. He pressed it to his nose, and held it there while they argued. In the end he convinced the other man it was worth his while to take me in. I think some scrip changed hands: I wasn’t paying attention, I was keeping my eyes fixed on my knapsack. The ticket collector retreated, the fur farm man took hold of my arm. I was a captive.

Maybe ordinary people are good, as long as you stay away from the bad ones, but they’re not as good as all that.

The fur farm man was wearing a big rough coat of brown and gray fur. . . . I must get myself some furs, I thought (to keep my spirits up). We were in a long yard, lit by more yellow lamps, and gray with new snow. On one side there was a row of sheds, bigger than the Settlement supply stores. The other side was a pen of wire mesh, and that’s where the dogs were. They flung themselves at the wire as we passed, snarling and yelping. I didn’t get a clear impression, they were just a roiling mass of fur and teeth and lolling tongues. But I was very glad they were shut up.

The man pointed at them.

“That’s what we do with runaway children. We feed them to the fur stock. Nice, gentle animals. . . . You don’t want to meet the guard pack.”

The smell was terrible. It filled the air, seeming to coat my skin and clothes: rotting flesh, old blood, moldy fat, oh, but more than that. It was unspeakable. We walked to the end of the yard, where there was a little clapboard building tucked between more of the store sheds. A dirty, faded sign showed the number and sector of the farm. The man who held my knapsack knocked, and we went in.

I was taken through a bare outer room, and into an office, where the smell was even worse because of the warmth of an enamel stove. The man in the fur coat reported that I was a runaway, to a short, dark-skinned man in uniform who was sitting behind a very messy desk. Fur-coat man tossed my knapsack onto the littered floor, so carelessly I nearly yelled . . . and there was a sinister rush of scuttling, as if something alive moved among the dirty papers and cardboard boxes.

“Bugs,” growled the man behind the desk. “I hate ’em.”

Fur-coat man laughed, and departed.

There were heaps of papers everywhere: cliffs of them jutted from the drawers of a filing cabinet, layers of notices hung from the dirty yellow walls. The dark man pointed to a chair. I read the nameplate that stood among grubby mountains of more paperwork.
Farm Manager: Osman Ismail.
There were charts on the wall behind him, with red jaggy lines on them, and a calendar with a picture of a lady in a silky, shining black fur coat, with boots and a jaunty fur cap to match. But everything looked old.

I looked at the heaps of papers, and tried to think of a plan.

“Are you Mr. Ismail?” I asked. “Is this your office?”

“Speak when you’re spoken to, little girl. Take off your coat.”

I took off Storm’s jacket and handed it over. He sniffed the fleece, and rubbed it the wrong way to feel the thickness of the pile. “Synthetic trash. Worthless. Here we have real skins. Every worker has his own furs. What do you have in that bag?”

“N-nothing much. My rations.”

Then Mr. Ismail noticed my school uniform, and his expression changed. “Well, young lady,” he said, sitting up straighter. “Don’t you know it’s a serious crime, traveling without a voucher? You have to answer some questions, I have to write out a form, and do you think I have time for this?”

“Nobody asked me for a travel voucher.”

“Huh. Do you have one? Why were you on the freight train?”

It was just bad luck. The freight train crew had dumped me because I was a child, maybe a runaway, and they didn’t want trouble. Now the farm manager had to do something, even if he didn’t want to. My uniform would have been an advantage if I was grown up, people in the Settlements are very careful how they deal with anyone in uniform: but now it was going to make things worse. He wouldn’t dare to just rob me and let me go. I was going to end up back at New Dawn, if I wasn’t careful.

I didn’t dare
look
at my knapsack. Nosey was still inside my cap, and she’d started to scrabble around. I took it off, before Mr. Ismail could notice anything strange, and put it on my knee, my hand inside so I could stroke her.

“I’m a college graduate, traveling to a new job,” I said. “I lost my voucher, that’s why I was on the train. But I’m not in a hurry. It looks as if you could do with some office help.”

“Huh. Now, where did I put that unauthorized travel form?”

A roach scuttled out from under a pile of papers and dropped from the edge of the desk onto my lap. It made me jump in disgust. It made Nosey jump too. Next moment she dived back into the cap, the bug struggling in her jaws. The farm manager pulled open a drawer, made another disgusted noise, and shook three roaches from the document he took out. I moved my elbow, to hide the battle that was jerking my cap around. “How can I live like this?” he muttered. “It’s making me ill.”

I saw two more bugs, horrible shiny brown things, crawling over an ink stamp, and I realized the papers were
infested.
All was quiet in the cap. Then Nosey peeped out, and before I could guess what she was going to do, she had jumped up onto the desk, and grabbed another bug.

It vanished in seconds, and she grabbed another.

Mr. Ismail couldn’t see the carnage, it was hidden from him by piles of paper. I was lucky he hadn’t heard the crunching of Nosey’s jaws. He gave me a sarcastic scowl, spread the form, and took up a pen.

“A college graduate, eh? How old are you?”

“I look younger than my age.”

“Name? Sector? Settlement number? Date of birth? What were you doing on that train? Where were you running from? You should be ashamed of—”

Mr. Ismail fell silent, staring at the desktop. Nosey had been working her way back to his side of the desk, and had just emerged in full view, a kicking roach in her jaws. Was she already
bigger
than when we arrived here? Yes, I thought she was. The bug disappeared incredibly fast. I held my breath.

The farm manager seemed frozen with astonishment. Both of us watched in silence as Nosey zoomed to and fro, committing bugicide after bugicide. She ran to the edge of the desk and crouched there, her long nose quivering; and I saw that the bugs on the floor had grown bold. They were ignoring the light and noise, and crawling around in the open, bold as rats. It was horrible.

Nosey wasted no time. She swarmed down a leg of the desk and went after them, moving fast. She was invincible, a killing machine beyond compare.

“Are the bugs a problem here?” I asked, innocently.

The manager couldn’t take his eyes off Nosey. “Poison doesn’t touch them,” he growled. “The cold doesn’t kill them. They have evolved, faster than we can. Did you know, there are no poisons
left in the world
that will kill wilderness roaches? And every winter they move indoors. We freeze or we have them everywhere. In our food, in our clothes. I wake up in my bed, they are on my face. I stir my soup, there’s a roach in the spoon. Imagine, eh? All so we can produce the beautiful furs that the freight trains take away. Hmm . . . What kind of animal is that? A mutie?”