The Petitioners (13 page)

‘The hospital is a specialist centre for face transplants.’

‘That’s horrible… How does it work?’

He laughed. ‘I haven’t a clue. How do you think?’

‘Do they – swap people’s faces over? Or do they grow a new one from people’s own cells or something?’

‘I guess that’s on the cards one day. But I haven’t seen it done yet.’

‘Mr Goodfellow! And the man in the side room…. Do you think that’s what Mum’s so afraid of? Did they threaten…? Oh, my God. I don’t think she’s looked in a mirror since… Oh, my God.’

‘I thought you knew,’ he said. ‘I thought it all made sense to you. It wasn’t until we talked last night that I realised you didn’t. That was another reason for my being there, you see. To keep an eye on someone else.’

‘Who was that?’

‘It was Brad McWhittle, wasn’t it?’ said my mother’s voice from the doorway. I wondered how long she had been listening there for. She was very pale, but on her feet and fairly steady as she walked towards us. ‘He must have been there for a face transplant. To avoid being identified – later – and brought to justice.’

Jeff nodded.

Mum sat down on one of the wobbly chairs, pulling it towards the fire.

‘You were right, Jen,’ she said to me. ‘They said they were going to do it. But I suppose they didn’t after all, since you recognised me. I don’t know what stopped them in the end.’

‘Dr Watson,’ I said. ‘I wonder if he suddenly developed a conscience, or something. But why would they even think about doing it? You don’t need to hide your identity… Oh.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They wanted to plant somebody else in my place. To undermine me if I decided to help with recovery, or democracy, or rationality.’

Her voice descended almost to a growl on the last word.

Jeff pulled another chair round and sat facing her.

‘I’ve got something else to run past you,’ he said. ‘It’s to do with rationality. And democracy.’

GAVIN

I didn’t know where Mark was planning to take us. I just trailed along behind. It was a rather familiar scenario. What surprised me was that he and Mrs Swan seemed to be able to keep pace with each other. I wondered how old she was. She had evidently reached the age of being indestructible. Even this last fiasco hadn’t seriously dented her positive attitude either, whereas I was miserable about being forced to pack up and move on, unable to carry on with my master plan to cultivate my own garden regardless of outside events.

We seemed to be heading over to the west for a while, then we dropped down towards the Harlaw and Threipmuir reservoirs above Balerno, which had flooded the village at some time during the storm. As if the inhabitants hadn’t had enough to contend with as they tried to get away from the massive torrent that had once been called the Water of Leith. That seemed too harmless a name for it now, I reflected as we looked down on the river. Was there a way across?

Mark, of course, had the answer.

‘What we need to do is get back above the reservoir and come down at the far side,’ he advised. ‘We’ll be on the ridge in between the two river valleys then, and we should be able to reach Ratho if we’re lucky.’

‘What’s the point of that?’

‘Boats,’ he said. ‘In the old days you could hire a canal boat there. They still rent out boats to anybody mad enough to want to go down the Almond.’

I remembered the mighty River Almond thundering past our back garden – and sweeping most of it away – and shuddered. This was getting altogether too close to home.

‘Are we mad enough?’ I said, a bit wildly. ‘They don’t still rent out boats, do they?’

‘We’ll find out when we get there,’ said Mark, turning his back on me and beginning to trudge back up the hill a bit. Mrs Swan and I exchanged doubtful glances but in the end we followed him. There was a leadership vacuum in our group, and he had filled it – for the moment.

We didn’t get anywhere near Ratho until the following day, and that was only after several near misses with rivers that had suddenly formed and weren’t shown on any maps. Yes, we had discovered Mark had a small collection of old style paper maps in his backpack. Apparently they had belonged to his grandfather. It was surprising they hadn’t been jettisoned long ago when electronic maps came along, but he said his family had always been sentimental about old-fashioned things.

Mark’s grandfather’s maps weren’t exactly useless in present circumstances – although at least they might be helpful in showing us where there were likely to be church steeples sticking up under the water – and they helped us to make educated guesses about which direction to aim for in our wanderings, if there was any doubt about it. Mark, however, also had an excellent sense of direction, maybe as a result of having to find his way around as a cyclist. It must be annoying for him being stuck on foot for this expedition. Not that a bike would have been much use for getting across a river.

At last we stood on a small rise in the ground and saw the canal, full to overflowing, a hundred metres or so ahead. I had wondered if there might be breaches in the banks that would have theoretically allowed all the water to drain out, but when I thought about it, with the amount of water around at the moment there was nowhere much for it to drain out to.

‘You were right,’ I told him. Might as well admit it now. ‘Look – boats.’

‘They’re just narrow-boats!’ exclaimed Mrs Swan. ‘Will it be safe going down river in one of those?’

He didn’t give this comment the courtesy of a reply. Presumably he knew, as we all did at heart, that nothing was safe at the moment. But his assessment, as he told us later, was that the risks of taking a narrow-boat down the River Almond were completely swamped – to use an appropriate term – by the risks of not doing so.

Mark took his life in his hands wading out to grab at one of the boats, which had a rope trailing in the water, and then dragged it back to us. Watching him, I formed a new respect for the physical prowess of cyclists. I didn’t even want to get my feet wet. But I had a feeling that would be the least of my worries once we launched ourselves into the rushing torrents of the Almond, armed only with my reluctance, Mrs Swan’s fatalism and Mark’s insouciance.

4. The Collection Phase

JENNIFER

Mum responded well to Jeff’s brand of rationality. I felt almost jealous as I saw them talking to each other about politics and constitutional things like old friends – friends who had a mutual interest in matters of state, that is. I don’t think any of my old school friends would have been all that grabbed by it.

I put the kettle on for tea and thought about what we could have as an evening meal. As well as feeling a bit jealous I had an unreasonable wish that Mum would behave like my idea of a normal mother, that she would be the one to decide what to have for the next meal, and to fuss about getting hot drinks into people, and to go out to the wood pile to fetch more fuel for the fire. But the two of them just talked on and on into the twilight.

‘Here we are!’ I said brightly, bringing a tray of dishes to the table at last.

They both glanced round in the same moment with almost identical expressions of guilt mingled with mild surprise.

‘How lovely!’ said my mother, making a speedy recovery. I remembered her using the same tone to praise my early drawings of cats and rabbits, and the even earlier ones of dark brown blobs and splashes of vermilion. ‘Vegetables and…’

‘It’s vegetable stew,’ I said. ‘Sorry there isn’t any meat today. Maybe we can go and scrounge venison burgers for tomorrow – if everybody isn’t too busy.’

‘Sorry,’ said Jeff, who was meant to be the cook, after all. He didn’t seem all that sorry. ‘Mmm, this looks nice.’

I had found the vegetables, some of them in dried or otherwise condensed form, among the stuff Will had given us. They wouldn’t last long, shared out among the three of us. I couldn’t imagine where our next meal would come from.

We sat round the table and ate. There was Will’s home-made bread to go with the vegetable mixture. I didn’t think it tasted too bad, considering. Only a little bit watery.

Afterwards they let me in on their discussions. Or at least, they made me sit and listen while they explained what they were going to do. I could easily have listened in earlier if I had been in the mood.

‘Here’s the plan,’ Jeff started. They were one each side of me, trapping me at the table so that I couldn’t make the excuse of having to clear the dishes or anything. ‘We’re going to start by going to Balmoral.’

‘Balmoral?’ I was startled. ‘Do you know who’s in charge there now?’

‘People with aspirations to form a government, is my guess,’ said Jeff.

Mum nodded. It wasn’t like her to let somebody else do the talking, but maybe she was still a bit tired.

‘They’re the people we need to get to,’ Jeff went on. ‘At this stage, anyway. Then we can try approaching the ones on the fringes of formal politics.’

‘Is that really a good idea?’ I said timidly. ‘Do you think the people who’ve spent their lives rebelling will be up for reunion?’

‘Any day now they’ll be starting to wonder what the government’s doing, and then who the government is, and then where we’re going next,’ said Jeff confidently. ‘Where’s the next meal coming from, that sort of thing. That leads to big questions about the economy and recovery. That’s when we need to catch them.’

My mother nodded again.

‘So are you in favour of reunification?’ I asked her.

‘It’s the least worst of the evils at the moment, I suppose,’ she said. She didn’t sound entirely convinced. She was going to have to do better than that if she wanted to convince other people.

The hospital experience seemed to have knocked something out of her. Self-confidence, maybe. Being dangerously ill could do that to somebody. Being drugged and possibly operated on against your will by people who were meant to be helping you wouldn’t do much good either. I hoped she would be back to her usual self by the time we marched on Balmoral, if that’s what we were planning.

I wished all over again that my father could be here to help her regain her spark. It might not have seemed to most people that he contributed anything much to the family, but I knew she relied on his support, even if it was invisible to outside eyes.

‘I’ve saved some chocolate capsules for afters,’ I said, suddenly remembering the best of the finds in Will’s provisions. How did he guess we would all need a chocolate boost before too long?

After I had wriggled out from between them and found and brought back the chocolate capsules, I continued, ‘I thought the idea of the petition was to get ordinary people to sign it – to make it seems as though there’s a groundswell of public opinion. I didn’t think we were going to even try to get the same old politicians on our side.’

‘It’ll be easier with them than without them,’ Jeff said wearily. ‘Anyway, we need to suss out the situation. Who’s in charge, who wants to be. What we’re up against.’

He sounded almost as if he were ready to give up. I hated that. Contrarily, it made me more optimistic and determined.

‘It’s a really good idea,’ I said. ‘I’m sure there are lots of people who’ll support it. Once they know about it.’

‘Yes – telling the right people is the key,’ my mother agreed. She suppressed a yawn. ‘I wish I wasn’t so tired. How can I do anything useful in this state? Once we’ve done all this other stuff, I’m going to come back and sort out these doctors.’

Now she was sounding a bit more like herself. I breathed a small sigh of relief. When she had been at her lowest point, I had even begun to wonder if she really was herself. Now that she seemed to have returned from limbo, I could admit to myself that I had even considered at one point whether the face transplant might indeed have happened and if the woman who had been left at Will’s house was in fact another person with my mother’s appearance. It was ridiculous, of course, but it would have been a good way for the people working against us – whoever they were – to plant a spy in our midst. I hadn’t said anything to Jeff about this. It was up to him to work it all out for himself.

He began to clear things from the table, taking dishes to the bowl that served as a sink, and finding hot water left in the kettle to wash them.

‘Have you heard anything from your father?’ said Mum suddenly.

‘Not recently,’ I said. ‘But you know him – he’s probably quite happy pretending to be an archaeologist again and sketching his finds. I suppose we’d better go back for him one of these days.’

She smiled sleepily. ‘Oh, well, at least he can keep an eye on Dan. I wouldn’t want him to be wandering around on his own at the moment.’

‘Dan can look after himself if anybody can,’ I reminded her.

‘Once we’ve been to Balmoral,’ she said, ‘I think one of us should head south again, just to make sure they’re all right.’

‘Declan and Fiona will look after them.’

‘Hmm. Maybe. I wouldn’t put it past those two to head off somewhere – they’ve got their own agenda, and don’t you forget it.’

‘Should we go up to Spittal of Glenshee and see if there’s anybody there?’ I suggested.

‘What’s at Spittal of Glenshee?’ said Jeff, coming back to the table.

‘You really don’t want to know,’ I said, just as my mother groaned and muttered something.

‘What was that?’ said Jeff with a grin.

‘A bunch of trouble-makers, if there’s anybody there at all,’ said Mum. ‘I’m not sure that we should encourage them to sign the petition.’

I noticed she had seamlessly taken ownership of the petition project. It must have caught her imagination. But I knew Jeff wouldn’t let her have it all her own way. He seemed strong enough to resist, anyway. I felt as if I was already an outsider. They didn’t need me for any of this. If I wanted to, I could go my own way. If only I could work out which way that was.

We moved house again the day after next. Jeff said it was as well to keep moving, and now it served the dual purpose of foiling any possible pursuers and getting us that little bit closer to Balmoral. It was just as well he seemed to know his way about, because we might as well have been in the Amazonian rainforest for all I knew.

I found out his secret while we were on the move, walking slowly so that my mother, only just back on her feet, could keep up. We had to rest a lot, but it was great to see her getting about and not having too many of the scary flashbacks. She still interrupted our sleep once or twice a night with odd noises and occasional panicky screams, but I was almost getting used to that now.

I had just quickened my pace a little so that I could catch up with Jeff and see if I could persuade him to stop again, when I noticed he was carrying something in one hand and staring down at it as he walked. When I spoke, he hastily concealed it, curling his fingers round it.

‘Can we have a rest now? Sorry, but Mum will get along better if she sits down for ten minutes… What was that in your hand?’

He ignored the last part and focused on my request for a stop. ‘We could eat now. It must be about lunchtime.’

‘I didn’t think fugitives could afford to have lunch,’ I teased him, still wondering about the device in his hand. But by the time he took off his backpack and got out our lunch capsules, cheese sandwich substitute again – thank goodness they hadn’t found a way to incorporate mayonnaise in them – he must have put it away somewhere.

‘How much further do you think?’ said Mum, sitting on a fallen tree trunk and closing her eyes.

‘Where to? Balmoral? Or to our bed for the night?’ he asked.

‘Either – both – neither,’ she said, stretching her arms.

‘Two more days to Balmoral at this speed,’ he said. ‘An hour or so to the next safe house. If we don’t come to any rivers, that is. They’re all in spate – I don’t know how many bridges will have been swept away.’

Half an hour later we stood on the banks of what had probably once been a rather picturesque mountain stream bubbling over the pebbles and rocks, stained brown with peat, on its way to join one of the main rivers of the area, maybe the Tummel. Now it was a full scale river, still frothy and brown with peat but now about ten feet wide and probably as much as that in depth.

There was no sign of a bridge. Nobody would have needed one before.

‘Hmm,’ said Jeff. ‘Interesting.’

‘If we had a boat…’ My voice trailed away as I realised we wouldn’t last long in a boat in these conditions. For one thing, we could hear the sound of a waterfall not far off, which probably meant the river was about to cascade over a precipice. I had seen movies where people survived that kind of boat ride, but we weren’t in a movie now, as I was only too well aware.

GAVIN

I hadn’t realised before that it was possible to feel frightened out of your wits while travelling in a narrow-boat.

I suppose it wasn’t usual to feel like this if you were navigating a shallow inland waterway that wasn’t all that deep, with locks to break the monotony and pretty little canal-side inns where you could spend a pleasant evening before going back and sleeping in your cosy bunk bed, rocked to sleep by the gentle movements of your boat.

On the other hand, shooting the rapids on a mighty torrent like the Almond wasn’t something a narrow-boat had originally been built for, and finding your way out on to the now much wider and more frightening River Forth while hoping not to collide with any concealed underwater artefacts, was quite a different matter too.

All that was before we found ourselves being pursued by people in official uniforms in a much faster, better equipped vessel than ours.

All in all I was relieved to be hauled off our own little boat somewhere just about where the Third Forth Bridge used to be before it crumbled into oblivion, and on to theirs before we got into much deeper waters. Metaphorically and physically.

At least I was relieved until the interrogation began.

They had a special room for that. Or maybe it was the captain’s cabin. I didn’t take in much information about my surroundings. I was too busy trying to keep my story straight in the face of a good deal of aggressive scepticism on the part of my interrogator, a man with an annoyingly smug face who wore his uniform in an unbending kind of way that suggested what kind of a person he might be.

‘So, you’ve set out to sail in restricted waters without a permit, in a vessel that in no way is suitable for the purpose, in contravention of so many laws that I can’t even begin to enumerate them,’ he said. For some reason the officials had identified me, and not Mark, as the leader of our tiny group, so they had brought me in here for questioning before the others.

‘I suppose so,’ I said. ‘Was that a question?’

‘Not really,’ he sighed. ‘When I start asking questions, you’ll know… I’m summing up the situation for both our benefits and for the recording device I am obliged to inform you is in operation.’

I glanced around to see if I could spot the device, but of course it might have been smaller than the smallest microdot, for all I knew.

He put his hands on the table between us and leaned towards me. ‘Where did your journey originate?’

I understood at last that he was a customs official. I recognised him from his turn of phrase.

‘We were up in the Pentlands,’ I said. ‘In a group.’

‘What were you doing up there? Weren’t you aware that survivors have been told to head for the census at Balmoral?’