The Fall (4 page)

‘We don’t have electronics in the Project. All that stuff is locked up. I can only get my interface back when I officially leave.’

‘So we could just go out, listen to it and come back.’

‘We need permission. People don’t just wander in and out whenever they like. It’s not how it works here.’

‘Permission . . .’ she echoed.

‘We have rules,’ Seton interjected, ‘designed to keep everyone safe. There are only two hundred and thirty-three residents in the Project. At any one time we need at least forty guarding the wall. Our schedules here are twelve hours a day with one day off every second week. Otherwise we’d be unable to produce what we need to survive. As you can imagine, if anyone who wanted to went out and came back on a free day, it would attract attention, weaken the group, and make it harder to ensure the safety of our members.’

Ana leaned into Cole so that only he could hear her. ‘Have you listened to the disc?’ she asked. ‘Is it what we think it is?’

‘I’m still on the Wardens’ list,’ he answered quietly. ‘I can’t go wandering around the City. Besides,’ he shrugged, ‘I haven’t wanted to leave.’

The way he flicked his shoulders, she knew there was something he wasn’t telling her. She studied him for a moment longer, then opened her palm and gave the wooden star to the boy. After locking it away in a storage room beside the passage leading out to the City, the boy asked Ana to sign a pledge, vowing she would never use her knowledge of the Project to harm any of its residents, and that in the future she would not leave or enter without official authorisation. He gave her a small, printed map of the heathland, which she was told to memorise and bring back the following day. As she studied the faded paths, fields and woods around the central village, Cole filled out a request to leave with her.

Seton started back with them towards the settlement, but overtook, soon becoming a matchstick figure on the path ahead. Ana waited, bracing herself for whatever it was Cole wanted to say to her.

‘You should take the necklace off.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

‘It would just be better like that. Hide it away with anything else you’ve brought.’ He cleared his throat. She watched him for a moment, and then stopped walking.

‘Could you undo it?’ she asked, spinning around so her back faced his chest. He reached for the clasp. The pads of his fingers grazed her skin. Tiny hairs on her neck stood up. ‘Will they persuade me to donate it to the cause?’

‘It’s complicated.’

The sides of the necklace dropped and Ana caught the moon. She unzipped the little pocket at the back of Clemence’s trousers and slipped it in next to her joining ring. She turned slowly so that she and Cole were almost touching. At six foot, he was five inches taller than her. She could sense the weight of his body: square shoulders, broad chest, athletic and strong. She tilted her head to look at him.

‘What Rachel said in front of the representatives bothered you, didn’t it?’

‘I’m fine.’

She shook her head. ‘No. Something’s wrong.’

His eyes narrowed.

‘When you told everyone about the minister’s disc,’ she continued, ‘you made it sound like I brought it here.’

‘If the representatives knew I’d had it all this time, they would have thrown me out of the Project. Holding onto anything electronic is against the rules.’

‘So why didn’t you hand it in?’

‘I didn’t want to take any chances. Once the public hears this recording, your father will know it’s the disc you stole from him. If it had come out while you were still in the Community, he’d have realised that you’d already given it to me. I was worried about what he might do to you. I was worried once he knew, he wouldn’t take his eyes off you for a second and that you would never get away.’

The hardness in her chest began to soften. He had a point. ‘Weren’t you curious, though? Didn’t you want to go out to listen to it, and then come back?’

‘Of course. But I couldn’t just leave for a day.’

‘Because you needed permission?’

‘No. Because of you. I had to be here in case you came.’

‘Oh.’ He hadn’t wanted to leave the Project in case she’d arrived while he was gone.

He tentatively took her hand and threaded his fingers through hers. ‘Ana,’ he said. ‘You’ve been living as Jasper’s wife for the last three weeks. You’re another man’s wife.’

So that was why he kept drawing away.

‘Nothing happened between me and Jasper. All the time I was at the Taurells’, I was figuring out how I was going to leave and find you.’

His eyes grew transparent, like water filled with light. ‘I know you felt trapped in the Community. I don’t want you to feel the same way here.’

‘What do you mean? I thought we were leaving. Are we like prisoners?’

‘No.’ He smiled, scuffing his feet. For the first time ever he looked almost awkward around her. ‘No, I just don’t want you to think that to be here, you have to . . .’

‘Have to what?’

He swallowed hard. ‘Have to be with me.’

Her bottom lip began to wobble. ‘You’re the reason I came.’ She stepped closer and fiddled with the top of his black T-shirt. ‘I’m here because of you.’

‘I just need you to know that my help is unconditional.’

‘Unconditional,’ she nodded. Suddenly his lips were on hers, warm and electrifying. The confused mess in her head slipped into the background, her senses took over and the sensation of his hands on her back, the softness of his mouth, were all that mattered.

*

Jasper entered the music room, a small annex off the library, and stood there for a moment. The house was silent; the piano stool empty. He crossed to the latticed window and opened it. Leaning out he could see the pool and the tennis courts. It was almost six o’clock. Where was everyone? Where was Ana?

He found his mother in the kitchen, pouring wine into the beef stroganoff. Her eyes were glazed and she was walking on a tilt. Hard grey surfaces, glass cupboards and dark flagstones made up the large kitchen. Two wicker chairs and a table full of old magazines – his mother’s prized collection – sat by the back door.

‘Jasper, honey!’ she shrieked. He grimaced at the volume. He didn’t remember his mother like this – loud, fake, sloshed half the time. In the jumbled memories of his childhood she was always painting, helping him with art projects, standing back and admiring her children in a way that made him straighten with pride. He wondered if she’d been like this since Tom’s death.

It’s got worse
, a part of him whispered. The part that seemed to know more than the rest of him; the scrap that had survived his brain-washing abduction by a religious sect, or as Ana would have him believe, a political kidnapping linked to his brother’s accident three years ago. His own memories concerning the abduction were too vague to be useful: a giant hangar; being strapped down; a stream of voices running on and on in the darkness. It was as though his whole past, up until he’d been found wandering the City amnesic and half-starved, had been shaken up and the years before he joined with Ana, coming to him in strange, incomprehensible flashes.

‘Where’s Ana?’ he asked.

‘She went for a swim.’ His mother counted out half a dozen potatoes from a large brown sack.

‘But the pool’s broken.’

‘At the neighbours’.’

Wasn’t that hours ago, before her father left? ‘Odd,’ he said.

‘People in the Community aren’t as intolerant as you think. They know what the two of you have been through. Everything’s going to work out. Ana is such a wonderful pianist.’

‘Well that’s a recipe for success.’

‘You were smitten by her, Jasper.’ A note of sincerity entered his mother’s voice, making him pay attention. ‘Your father wasn’t happy about you two becoming joined after we found out there’d been an error with her test. You persuaded him. I—’ she broke off.

‘Are you crying, Mum?’

She lifted the sack of potatoes with a big sigh.

‘Let me.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, struggling towards the pantry. After disappearing for a minute, she swung back into the kitchen more buoyant than ever. ‘Why don’t you go round to the Vanderberges and tell Ana dinner will be ready soon?’

‘All right.’ He crossed the kitchen to the back door.

‘Put something on,’ his mother said, exasperated.

‘I have something on.’

‘Not slippers and a dressing gown. They’ll think you’ve only just got up!’

‘I have.’

‘No, you were napping. That’s not the same at all.’

Jasper twisted down the silver handle on the back door. In the garden, he passed the sun lounger where he’d seen Ana sunbathing earlier that afternoon. Her book still lay open, face up on the grass. A glass of half-drunk water beside it.

A two-week old memory skipped through his mind: Ana getting out of the pool and drying herself. He’d been sitting with his feet dangling in the water, watching her. Back and forth, back and forth, like she was training for something.

‘How did I react when I found out about your Pure test?’ he’d asked her.

‘Your brother died ten days later. I didn’t see you until his funeral.’

‘What did I say to you?’

‘You were angry.’

‘About the test or my brother?’ Her eyes shot up, guarded. It almost hurt to look at her. She felt so beyond him. ‘I must have been crazy about you if I still wanted to go through with the binding. Even though you’re a Big3.’ Silence. ‘Were you crazy about me?’ he asked.

For a long time she didn’t answer. He thought she wasn’t going to. Then she said, ‘You knew Tom had found out that there was something wrong with the Pure test. That’s why.’ Hanging the towel around her neck, she walked away from him, back to the house.

There was more to it though, he was sure. Even if she was right that his brother’s death wasn’t a simple accident. Even if he had known Tom had discovered a significant anomaly that undermined the Pure test and her diagnosis.

I was in love with her, wasn’t I?

The whispering part of him that seemed to know so much, didn’t answer.

The disc

Carrying mugs of soup and ceramic bowls of rice, Ana and Cole left the packed tables and benches of the square in search of somewhere quieter. They walked along a passage between longhouses, moving up hill. Ana looked at her map, attempting to orientate herself.

Cole laughed as she struggled with her food and reading the map at the same time. ‘The hill slopes in a north westerly direction,’ he said. ‘If you’re going downhill, you’re headed roughly south, or south east towards the ponds and the registration building.’

They joined a path at the edge of the settlement, leaving behind the moss-covered longhouses and a couple of huts dotted on the outskirts.

‘You probably came in from here.’ He pointed up ahead where the path split, one side branching left. An animal pen and the corner of a wooden barn appeared through the overgrowth. She nodded. On the map, the path with the barn led all the way to the northern wall where Blaize had found her.

They took the other path.

In a clearing with spindly, dispersed trees an elderly couple played backgammon at a picnic table. A stone trough filled with water stood nearby. Cole and Ana took a table set further back in the woods. They sat opposite each other. He held one of her hands, smiling as he forked up a mouthful of shredded chicken and rice.

‘Why are electronics forbidden?’ she asked, taking a sip of her soup.

‘When the camp was first set up there was no electricity. People get accustomed to a simpler life style. Living without it, you realise how dependent you can become on it all – television, video games, the net, the news. A constant bombardment of information.’

‘But it makes the Project so isolated.’

‘We hear what’s going on.’ She picked up on the
we
. A part of him belonged here.

‘But it means you’re totally dependent on whoever’s providing that information.’

He shrugged, dismissing the subject. ‘You look tired,’ he said, stroking his thumb across her jaw, concern in his eyes. ‘Tired, but still beautiful.’

She blushed. ‘How many days do you think until we leave here?’ she asked.

‘Three or four max. I expect Seton will be off tomorrow to get the disc analysed and sort us out with a contact and a safehouse.’

‘Do you mind leaving?’

‘It’s not forever.’ So he planned to come back? If she got safely away, she never wanted to return.

‘My dad will guess I’m with you. He may try to find me here.’

‘No one from the Communities has ever come into the Project unless they’re trying to disappear, and vice versa. It’s an unspoken agreement that protects both sides. If your dad violates that, he endangers the safety of the Pure Community he’s supposed to be protecting.’

Ana wasn’t so sure. Her father didn’t like losing control of a situation. And his team had killed a government minister for the disc. He wouldn’t let the disc – or her – go easily.

Cole saw her discomfort. ‘The Project’s been involved in a lot of stuff,’ he said. ‘Helping Novastra employees disappear. Helping people like Tom and Jasper Taurell. And in all these years, no one has ever come over the wall. There’s too much at stake for both sides.’

‘No one except me,’ she said quietly.

‘Yeah. Except you. And the Shaman Tengeri,’ he added. ‘Unless you believe – like Lila does – that he was able to astral project himself here from Siberia.’

‘Me and the shaman?’

Cole finished chewing. ‘Yeah, that’s why you might have noticed a few odd reactions to the fact that you climbed over the wall.’ He frowned. ‘Or maybe that was the swimsuit.’ She caught his eye and a lopsided grin broke across his face. He was teasing her. ‘Actually,’ he said, shifting in his seat. ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you something. A lot of people here follow the shaman’s Writings. And there’s this poem that they think is prophetic.’ He stopped, rubbed his chin with the back of his hand and continued to pick his words cautiously. ‘It involves an angel appearing in the Project during a full moon.’

‘An angel?’

‘These things can be pretty loosely interpreted.’

Ana reached into her pocket and felt her moon necklace. ‘Tell me, Clemence doesn’t think
I
could be the angel?’