The Pack (13 page)

And, after all, those stray children were being so well taken care of. There were children's homes around the city—Wonderland, The Priory, Graceland—and each of them had won special commendation for the care shown to its “clients.”

Still, there was no cause for complacency in the Invisible City. The particular knot of political and economic circumstances that had created the trauma of the Dead Time could not have been predicted, it was true, but steps could have been taken, which frankly had not, to protect the citizens—at least those of the Invisible City. Then, perhaps, let these lessons spread out to the other territories. But first make the Invisible City secure.

The answer the authorities came up with—an old-fashioned one certainly, but none the worse for that—was work.
Work. Work. Work.
Work, for, although the Dead Time is behind you, don't you still feel its stale, desperate breath on the back of your neck? And if you didn't, well, perhaps you were a shirker, a vagrant, a waste of resources. Then you might find yourself part of the cargo on a lorry heading back to the Compounds. It would slow down passing through the Zones and you would be thrown off like a sack of flour. “Sure, you'll be welcome back, buddy. Just got to pass through the Forbidden Territories, that's all.”

Holidays were soon shortened as the working day lengthened. Someday the Invisible City would be able to afford to let mothers stay longer with their young children, to allow people to care for old relatives, but not yet. Now, everyone had their part to play: the builders to build, higher, faster; the teachers to teach, more and for longer; the cafés and quick-food outlets to provide more food and faster for working people who had no time to cook at home. Home, a place they visited only to sleep, to fall in front of a screen, which would be interrupted with visions of a wonderful world of leisure that lay somewhere far in the future. There were no evening walks now to choose an ice cream, to stroll round the park.

To begin with, Martha's parents were better off than most. Her father worked at the City University, a lecturer in Modern History, who had taken on the Dead Time as an area of research.

“We must learn from our past, Martha, if we are not to repeat our mistakes.”

Martha knew the serious face required of her at such times and she had nodded her agreement.

Many of his colleagues preferred to adopt a philosophical approach to Martha's father's enquiries:
The Dead Time—Beginning or End? The Dead Time, as a State of Being.
Both had been the titles of papers delivered at conferences her father had organized. But Martha's father was most concerned with the
causes
of the Dead Time. Its effects he had seen with his own eyes: the suicides from the tall buildings, the individual personal tragedies that soon became shared, as the markets collapsed and the riots began. Fear and need had been everyone's daily companions then, till power gradually accrued within the artificial walls of the Invisible City, and fear and need were banished to the Forbidden Territories and the Zones.

But the world had fragmented with the Dead Time. When one talked about it now, it was to one's own shrunken world that one referred. “Putting one's own house in order” became the popular expression of these new divisions. Naturally, interests had had to shift—a point the principal had made to Martha's father at their last meeting.

“You have been a good
servant
of this institution,” he began. Martha's father had winced at the word, as the sharp-nosed principal peered at him through his round glasses. “But you above all should be a student of how times have changed. We are living through a very unusual period, in which universities must prove themselves to be powerhouses for economic change. History, well, it's a luxury, isn't it?” Here he fingered the piece of Dead Time rubble on his desk. These popular mementoes were found in many offices and private houses, though not of course with such a fine brass mounting. “A fascinating luxury, I grant you, but one that can best be pursued at leisure.”

For a while, the dismissal intensified Martha's father's obsession. There had been huge difficulties tracing relevant documents—so many had disappeared with the collapse of electronic communication—but he had begun to piece together a story concerning the causes of the Dead Time. When Martha took his explanations blankly, he said to her, “The Emperor had no clothes. That is the root of the problem: all of us were spun a story—we invested, in a story, our wages and our dreams—but the Emperor had no clothes.”

Martha had felt it best to agree. “I see, Dad,” she had said. “Yes, I see it now.”

Martha's parents were now no different from many others in finding the demands of a working life and the raising of a family—Martha—incompatible. Each evening they returned to their flat long after dark, exhausted by work in their new clerical jobs and by the compulsory professional advancement. They had heard of the fine reputation enjoyed by some of the Homes—the caring teachers, the matron, the hearty meals and the after-school activities. Many, in fact, were open as day-care facilities. But becoming more popular was the working week facility. Parents were able to leave their child from a Monday morning till a Friday evening; thus they could concentrate with a trouble-free mind on work and on the evening classes which accompanied it, while their child could work at school and at homework and such, so that the weekend would be restored as a family-centred occasion. “What are you going to do with
your
Family Weekend?” the slogan asked.

Martha and her parents spent the weekend avoiding each other's unhappiness. Her parents seemed so worn; all they wanted to do was sleep late, stare at the various screens, shop in the covered malls. Her father's research sat in boxes and gathered dust. Martha sensed their reluctance, their weariness, to face the questions she longed to ask: “For how long?” “Is there no other way?” “Do you care for me at all?”

Certainly, her parents did not want to know about the bullying, short-tempered teachers, the vindictive games, the poor food, or the boredom. The Priory, after all, had been one of the best of all the homes; they had had it on good authority.

The first weekend they hadn't come to collect her, Martha had cried for the whole two days and they'd let her, lying there in the empty dormitory without a word of comfort. The next weekend there were apologies from her mother, tears. “Oh, you don't know how hard it is, you've no idea.” Then, when Martha had pressed her for some kind of assurance that it wouldn't happen again, her mother's face with its red-rimmed eyes had twisted into an agony Martha could not bear to meet.

“What do you expect me to do?” Her mother whispered the words, as if in desperate prayer. “What do you expect me to do?”

At the edge of the words, Martha smelled the spirit on her breath.

*   *   *

Whatever assurances Martha was given, they were not kept. Without reason or pattern, weekends were missed until one missed weekend was followed by another and another and another, till Martha lost count and realized she had joined the list of abandoned children. She felt attitudes to her had hardened long before matron told her one morning, “Pack your bag. You're on the move today.”

“Where am I going?” Martha asked. “Home?”

“Huh,” the matron replied. “You'll see.”

One of the white vans took her the short journey from The Priory to The Mount—a short journey, but The Mount was a world away from the comforts of The Priory. For here were children, abandoned, stray, orphaned, who had no one who might care for them or even track their existence, which is more or less all Martha's parents had been doing till they had stopped caring and Martha had died to them. These were her gloomiest thoughts. Her best, though not exactly warming, were that her parents had decided she was better off without them. Whatever, Martha found it easier not to think about them—or at least to try not to. It was then she began to create the shell around her that had protected her until Hunger had reminded her of a time when she had felt love.

No one was interested in the children's education in The Mount—or only so far as it was useful. The Mount was one of a network of homes throughout the Invisible City where the electronics industry, upon which the city's economy depended, could be brought back to life. It was, at first, children's small, dextrous hands that were so valuable here—they could piece together the tiny components of all the electronic gizmos and screens that were needed once more. An ever-healthier market, and one that showed in all the graphs no sign of slowing, was personalized security. It was said that once you had installed your security system—no matter how expensive—it was already out of date.

The children sat at tables passing the machines through; each had a small repetitive job to do. Each machine was inspected on completion and if it were found to be faulty, there was some punishment imposed on the table responsible—a missed meal, a break taken away.

Two older children were assigned to supervise each table. Martha recognized a few of the boys from the gangs which had roamed the park. If a table was penalized, so were they and that was the worst of the punishment.

At night, they would come into the dormitory; the two alone or with other older children. Humiliation was always part of the punishment: name-calling—“Pig-face,” “Thickhead,” “Sap.” And then the physical stuff—the head-slapping, the forcing you onto your knees and riding you round the room; the challenge for one inmate to fight the other. “And do it proper or you'll be fighting me as well.” The supervisor children would look at each other then and laugh.

But that was for small offenses. If you made any objection to the way you were treated, the quality of the slops you were served—worst of all, if you suggested, laughably, that you would appeal to a higher authority—you would be taken, stripped to your underwear and thrown into a freezing cold room for two or three days. It had not happened to Martha, but she had seen children come out of there pale and shivering, tracks of tears frozen to their cheeks.

“Floris.” Victor's voice filled out the darkness. Bradley too was remembering Floris: she was already pale and had a deep-seated cough. She would not survive such brutal treatment.

“It's OK,” said Martha. “Floris will be too scared to challenge anyone yet. If she's kept her mouth shut and her fingers nimble, she should be all right.”

“How did you get away?” asked Bradley.

“I was lucky,” said Martha. “They have pick-ups for the machines and for the rubbish. I knew if I was going to get out, it had to be with one of these. I was on a rubbish detail from the kitchen. I tipped the muck into one of the huge bins. Then I heard the truck coming to collect it. I dived in and wormed my way under—not pleasant, but I wasn't caring about that. Then I felt myself ratcheted up and I was away. Someone had slipped up in his guard duty. When they tipped the bin out, they got a shock to see me rise from the muck. I slipped out their hands easily—I don't suppose they were too keen to grapple with me—and headed off as quickly as I could to the Forbidden Territories.”

“What if you'd been caught?” Bradley asked.

“Same as would happen now,” Martha said. “I'd be damaged goods as far as The Mount was concerned. They'd have to make an example of me. It would be the cold room or worse … I'm not going back. Not ever.”

“Red Dog…”

“… is a brute. You saw that, but as long as I could make myself into a particular kind of person—”

“A boy soldier.”

“Yeah, whatever, then I could survive.”

Survival, thought Bradley, that was what their lives were about. It was survival that was stopping him reaching out to Martha, just as it was a threat to her own survival that she had broken a corner from her shell and was kneeling, stroking Hunger, sharing her story for the first time. It was Victor who sidled close to her, sensing that it was Martha rather than Bradley who could save Floris.

“What will we do?” said Bradley.

“In the early morning, when all these cracks are still filled with darkness,” said Martha, “we'll go. Victor and Hunger must stay here.” Victor sat up, alert and quizzical. “No. You both need to rest and to heal. It's too risky. Now lie low. Bradley and I need to sleep.”

12

THE MOUNT

In the darkness, Martha tapped Bradley on the shoulder and they pushed the door of the hut open and stepped into the park again. It was a clear, cold night, a few clouds scudding over a full moon.

“This way,” said Martha and set off with her easy stride along the paths, out into the street. They moved through the Invisible City, always accompanied by their reflections in the glass building fronts, till they had cleared the main thoroughfares of the centre.

Martha pointed and there it was ahead, sitting on a slight hill: The Mount, its dark brooding shape squat against the inky sky. A few lights shone from its windows—for the rest, it was blind to the night.

They moved closer to the buildings and when they were in sight of the floodlit gatepost and entrance, Martha veered off along the road which circled The Mount and soon both of them were pressed against the stone wall which surrounded it.

“This one's easy,” said Martha. “Your top,” she commanded. Bradley handed over his hooded top and she took off her own and threw both over the glass-chipped wall top.

“You first,” she said and put her hands in a stirrup. “Once you're over the wall, pull me up. And quickly.”

Bradley stepped into Martha's hands. She buckled the first time, but then shakily straightened, and Bradley heaved himself up. Astride the wall, they locked hands round each other's wrists, and Bradley pulled her steadily up. Both of them fell off the wall onto the other side together. They lay close against the ground. Bradley felt her hard breathing against his ear and turned when she did to see the whites of her eyes, that wild glare of aliveness he had seen in Victor's eyes. They inched apart on their elbows.