Tanglewreck (21 page)

They were heading for the Waiting Room when Silver noticed a line of children walking two by two towards the red huts. She stopped and stared. They were all twins.

Suddenly a guard came over to the kids, singled out Sally and Kelly, and pointed to the line moving towards the red hut. Meekly, and holding hands, the twins went across. The guards ushered them into the hut, then bolted the doors from the outside, checking briefly through the spy-hole before they walked away.

‘Toby!’ said Silver. ‘Come on!’

They broke away from the group, dawdled by some containers until the guards were looking the other way, then ran over to the red hut and looked inside.

The twins inside were all dressed identically, like Sally and Kelly. They had been given a packed lunch, which they were eating quietly.

Silver and Toby went round the side of the long red hut, and saw two more huts, marked ARRIVALS and DEPARTURES.

Through the spy-hole, she could see that ARRIVALS had a lone African man sitting gloomily inside.

DEPARTURES was very different. The hut was full of men, women and children of all ages and nationalities. As Silver was standing on tiptoe, peeping through the spy-hole, she heard one of the guards shouting at her, ‘Hey, you, what do you think you’re doing?’

The guard was tall and angry. Toby stepped forward, looking cocky and sorry all at the same time. He was used to dealing with the guards.

‘We all bein’ Deported today, man. We just lookin’ around, y’know?’

‘Name?’

Toby gave his name and gave Silver’s name as one of the other kids from the bus. The guard scanned down his palm organiser.

‘This place is chaos. Come on, back to the neuro-unit. You haven’t been Wiped yet.’

‘Wiped?’

‘We don’t want you telling everyone where you’ve been, do we?’

The guard prodded Silver and Toby across the camp towards a group of white hospital vans with BETHLEHEM HOSPITAL written on them. Orderlies in white gowns and gloves were passing in and out.

‘Here’s another two for you. The bus kids. Toby Summers and Esther Waters,’ said the guard.

The orderly nodded and checked his own hand-held organiser. ‘May as well just send them now. Take them straight down to the AF.’

‘What’s the AF?’ asked Silver.

‘Atomic Fence, nosy,’ said the guard, then he turned back to the orderly. ‘But they haven’t been Wiped.’

The orderly looked embarrassed. ‘We’ve got an extra unit down at the AF. There’s a lot of work on today. Red Alert day. We’ll Wipe them at the AF.’

The guard nodded and flipped shut his computer. He marched Silver and Toby down the camp, towards the Atomic Fence. Sure enough, there was another Bethlehem Hospital van parked there. People were milling around,
joking about getting home and telling their friends.

‘Not that they’ll ever believe us,’ said one woman. ‘Men eight feet tall with double-headed dogs, would
you
believe it?’

There was laughter. Then somebody said, ‘We won’t remember a thing – they Wipe us before we leave.’

‘Not me,’ said the woman. ‘I remember everything.’

Silver was feeling uneasy. ‘Toby, watch out for the kids coming down here. I’m going to look in the van.’

Silver saw the back door was open, and two men in green operating theatre suits and masks were helping a woman and a little boy up the steps. But there was another door on the side of the van. She went straight to it, opened it quietly, and folded herself inside.

She stopped still. It wasn’t a van at all; it was a portal.

One side, the side she had entered, looked like a mobile medical unit. But the other side didn’t have a side. It opened on to the vast starry sky of the Universe.

Silver heard footsteps. She hid behind an oxygen cylinder. Good thing she was small. An orderly appeared from the back of the unit, with the nice-faced young woman holding her little boy by the hand.

‘Will we land on Earth where we got lost?’ she asked the orderly. ‘I mean, I haven’t any money or anything, or a phone.’

‘You won’t need anything,’ said the orderly. ‘Tags, please.’ The woman knelt down and held out her little boy’s wrist, with its tiny tag. The orderly held his ring against it, and the tag came off. Then he did the same for the woman.

‘We were just on the beach,’ she said. ‘When the wave came, we were knocked unconscious, and when we opened our eyes, we were here, weren’t we, Michael?’

Michael nodded happily. ‘I’ve been to Space,’ he said. ‘I wish we could take home one of the double-headed dogs.’

The orderly smiled faintly.

‘Will this hurt?’ asked the woman.

‘You won’t feel a thing,’ said the orderly. ‘Step forward, please.’

The woman looked out at the endless stars. ‘What, just go?’

The orderly nodded.

‘But what happens? I thought we’d go in a rocket or something.’

‘No need for that these days. We can teleport you.’

‘That’s exciting, yes, it is.’ The woman was frightened but she didn’t want to scare her little boy. She held his hand more tightly. ‘Big breath, Michael,’ she said. ‘One, two, three …’

They jumped. They jumped into the silent floating world on worlds, and, for a moment, they hung there together, like two surprised angels, and then there was an intense burst of sparks, pale and strange, and they vanished for ever.

Suddenly Silver realised what was happening. These people weren’t being Deported. They were being Atomised.

She looked around her hiding place, desperate for anything she could use to cause confusion, and then she saw an Emergency button behind a glass window, like on trains. There was a coded keypad to open it, but Silver took out her
axe, smashed through the glass in one clean strike, and plunged the blade right into the button.

Immediately a wailing siren sounded so loudly that she covered her ears as she dropped back behind the cylinder. The orderly leapt up and out of the van.

Silver jumped out the way she had come in and ran to Toby among the milling panicking crowd. Guards were arriving.

‘Hide in the crowd,’ said Silver. ‘Wait for our chance. You have to get to the kids.’

A guard came past them. He leaned down to Silver and whispered, ‘I work for the Resistance. Follow me.’

Without a word they fell in line behind him.

‘Ora knew you would come here,’ said the guard. ‘I’m going to get Toby and the other kids away. Come on.’

‘I’ve got to find Gabriel,’ said Silver stubbornly.

‘You’ll never find him,’ said the guard. ‘Now come on, there isn’t much time. Usually they Deport. Today they’re Atomising. Security. Red Alert. No prisoners.
Atomising
. Understand?’

Silver nodded. Regalia Mason must be nervous. She wondered why.

‘Look out, man!’ said Toby. ‘The kids is comin’ down this way right now!’

The guard set off quickly, Toby following him at a run. Silver took her chance to dart off the other way, back into the milling confusion.

Her mind was racing. She was at the Atomic Fence. The
entrance to the Black Hole was here somewhere.

‘Micah,’ she said out loud, ‘show me where to go.’

She closed her eyes and concentrated on the medallion in her hand. She saw Micah’s face. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking directly at a big rough shed. The shed was unmarked; no guard, no barrier, but she knew this was it. Slowly, as though she were the last person alive, she walked towards the silent door.

Gabriel was almost done now. The ledge that held him was giving way as Micah’s own strength faded. He lay flat, quiet, his face in the dirt, aware of long loops of flesh lassoing him down.

There were three pictures in his mind. Three pictures that told him he still had a mind; that he was Gabriel.

The first was Micah, eyes closed, hands outstretched, every sinew trembling as he struggled to hold the boy he loved. The second was Goliath, his strong body bent under the boy, trying to push back gravity, as he had once bent his huge head and pushed out of his ice prison.

The third was Silver, so serious in her face, never laughing at him even for a second, but smiling at him for what felt like his whole life. He had known her for ever. Somewhere. Not here.

He smiled in return.

‘GABRIEL!’

What? Could he hear her? His name again, and her face very close to his, but she couldn’t be here. With pain and
struggle, because one of his shoulders had dislocated, he raised himself up, risking the ledge, which sank a little more under the movement.

‘JUMP UP!’

What? He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t jump up; he could only spin down.

‘COME ON, GABRIEL. I’M JUST HERE. NEAR.’

Silver had opened the door, and she felt the wind roaring through the End of Time. She didn’t step forward. She knew there was no floor, nothing at all, she knew this was where he was. She lay down on her tummy and she put her hand down into the Black Hole.

As she lay there, imagining light spinning at such speed through the Universe, she saw in her mind, very clearly, the first time she had met Gabriel, on the banks of the Thames, and he had saved her. Something had passed between them, and from then on, something always did, some understanding, some recognition. Love, it was – yes, love. Instantly love. And she saw a light-beam racing away through Time, and then she saw love like a rope thrown out – as bright as a light-beam, as fast as light – a rope across Time.

In the Black Hole, Gabriel’s mind began to clear. It was Silver calling him. He sat up. He stood up. He was on his feet, though his feet seemed miles away.

‘JUMP, GABRIEL – I CAN REACH YOU.’

The ledge was crumbling. Underground, light years away, Micah fainted and Goliath roared. A great wind swept
through the Chamber. Swept across Gabriel. It was now, now, or …

He jumped. He jumped with all his remaining strength, and what happened, happened. He did not fall back. He rose up, spinning through the black air, the warm lassos around his body loosening, the sound of Voices, babble of Voices.
THE BODY CAN’T ESCAPE
.

But he was escaping. He was travelling faster than light, because he was travelling at the speed of love.

Mrs Rokabye was enjoying life at Tempus Fugit since Abel Darkwater had fastened his cloak and left. Every morning Sniveller made her breakfast in bed, and every evening they plotted their plan.

Mrs Rokabye thought of her plan with a capital P. It was a Plan. It was a Masterplan. Soon she would be living in a brand new Executive Home on a gated estate near Manchester. It was all she wanted; it wasn’t much, but if she had to destabilise the Universe to get it, then she would.

Sniveller was less sure of Mrs Rokabye’s Plan, but he was prepared to help her because he longed to escape from Abel Darkwater’s service. He had worked for him for over three hundred years, without a day off.

It was night, and the two of them were sitting in Abel Darkwater’s drawing room by a roaring fire. Sniveller had what looked like a set of Scrabble letters on the table in front of him, and he was rapidly spelling out words with them.

EINSTEIN LINE. BOTH NO. YES.

This meant nothing to Mrs Rokabye.

‘The Control tells me that Silver and her friend the Throwback are at the Einstein Line, that they are not together, and that Silver is moving towards the Timekeeper.’

‘Who exactly are you talking to?’ asked Mrs Rokabye, who had assumed they were alone in the room.

‘My Control. His name is Saul and he tells me all.’

‘Does it always rhyme?’

‘No it doesn’t, but I do.’

‘Well, ask Saul how we get to the Einstein Line.’

‘I don’t have to ask him, I knows the way myself. A map is better than a slap.’

‘Then we must go to the Washing Line, wherever that is, and rescue Silver as soon as she has rescued the Timekeeper. When will that be? Ask him.’

Sniveller muttered something under his breath, and his fingers flew over the letters, forming the word SOON.

Soon! Mrs Rokabye was excited. At long last the wretched child was going to do something useful and make Mrs Rokabye rich.

‘Put on your shoes, Sniveller – we must set off at once.’

‘It’s gone eight o’clock,’ objected Sniveller.

‘Everyone in this house is obsessed with Time,’ said Mrs Rokabye, unreasonably, as that was why she was here.

‘If I puts on my shoes after eight o’clock I will run away. Never run away in the day. Flight at night.’

‘You didn’t run away when we went to see
The Lion King
.’

‘I was on a lead,’ explained Sniveller. ‘Invisible to your eyes, but a lead nonetheless.’

‘But you don’t want to run away from ME, do you?’ asked Mrs Rokabye, batting her few eyelashes.

In truth Sniveller didn’t want to run away from Mrs
Rokabye because he had quite fallen for her. Yes, in his own way he loved her, even though she was a foot taller than him, with a face sharp as a saw.

But he knew that if he put on his shoes he would run and run and never come back. That’s what happened if you had been in Bedlam for too long.

Mrs Rokabye was already putting on her hat and coat. She went downstairs to the little kitchen and filled her coat pockets with tins of sardines, packets of salted peanuts, and teabags. Then she borrowed a very long scarf from the coat rack, and whistled up the stairs for Sniveller.

He appeared in his greatcoat, feet bare.

‘Ready steady, don’t think twice, but treat me nice.’

‘Are we going by taxi?’ asked Mrs Rokabye hopefully.

‘A short stroll then straight down the Hole.’

Mrs Rokabye’s suspicions were aroused.

‘What hole?’

‘The Walworth Hole. It’s the quickest way to the Einstein Line.’

‘Just where is the Einstein Line?’ asked Mrs Rokabye, who had been vaguely thinking about Morecambe Bay.

‘It’s on the other side of the Milky Way, in our solar system, and three hundred years off. I swear the Walworth Hole is the knack of there and back.’

Disquieted but resigned, Mrs Rokabye walked the necessary miles to Walworth. In a dark and gloomy side street, Sniveller glanced round, then pulled a jemmy wrench from
his greatcoat, and levered up a paving stone.