The Territory (4 page)

But most freakoids just nodded happily. That’s the most annoying thing. Most of them know there’s no way they’re going to fail in June so there’s nothing for them to worry about. For them I guess the Territory and TAA are good. Loads of other kids that they don’t mix with and won’t miss will get moved off the nice dry land so there’s more space for them.

Hugo put up his hand and Ms Jones smiled her encouragement. It was as if he’d just read my mind.

‘I’m grateful because the Territory ships off all the scummers so they can’t leach off us anymore.’

Nearly all the freakoids tittered away, Amanda’s attention-seeking giggle drowning out everyone else’s. She makes it high and bubbly as she thinks it’s sexy, but it’s not. It’s just massively annoying. But the most annoying thing was that Ms Jones sniggered too before she thought to stop herself.

That’s another problem with this place. All the teachers seem to think they’re above us Norms. But they’re not. They predate the Procedure. They don’t have Nodes. They’re Norms through and through. They just think that they’d be freakoids if they were born now. That they’re super-beings because they know things (wow – they’ve been around longer and have the answers in front of them). I bet they’d all have late upgrades if you could do it that late. But you can’t. They tried doing ones on adults at the start. All the adults died. Something about the brain still having to be growing in order to accept the wires.

Next thing I knew it was all quiet and I realised that everyone was looking at me. Waiting to hear what I was grateful for.

I tried to think of something nice. ‘Think fluffy,’ is always Jack’s advice. Good advice. I ignored it.

‘I’m grateful that the TAA shows that some Norms can do as well as Childes even with a massively unfair disadvantage.’

Ms Jones looked unimpressed but there was little for her to attack. I’d been grateful. And I hadn’t said freakoid.

But she couldn’t resist being evil.

She turned to Jack and said, ‘Jack Munro, we haven’t heard from you yet, have we? What are you grateful for?’

I could see Jack struggling. She was smiling. Red lipstick stained her front teeth.

‘Are you grateful for our brave police force, chasing down and eliminating Subversives?’

Silence crackled.

Luckily the bell rang at that exact moment so Jack got to leave the room. He punched the wall as we walked to the next lesson. His knuckles bled pretty badly and he left a reddish stain on the paint. I told him to put ice on it as soon as he got home.

Another thing – I didn’t point it out to Jack ’cos I didn’t want to alarm him, but as we walked down the Art corridor to get to final period, I saw that the frame next to the window had been changed. Jack’s charcoal sketch had been removed and a scale drawing of a ruler now sat in its place.

We’re going to have a party! Well, when I say ‘we’ I mean Daisy, but Jack and I are going to help organise it. Daisy’s parents are going away in a fortnight and Logan’s doing his clinical exam in the Third City as it has THE BEST medical programme, so her house will be completely empty. Logan’s going to be a doctor. Great. He’ll have one incredible bedside manner.

Daisy’s told her parents that she’s going to stay at mine and they won’t think to check with my parents that it’s OK. They’re really self-centred like that. Just assume that if they want something to happen because it’s convenient for them, then it will.

Daisy, Jack and I met by the benches at the east corner of People’s Park to start planning. It was a hot day so we wanted to be outside. I think we were all relieved to have something to focus on after Territory Day. It might seem a bit weird throwing a party with the TAA just weeks away (ten weeks one day – not that I’m counting!) but I think people kind of need it. Freakoids, not that we’ll probably be inviting many, can go out all they want as they’re pretty certain they’ll pass so the TAA isn’t such a big deal for them. Us Norms know that we might well only have very limited time left here so, as well as revising our guts out, we need to cherish life as we know it now, before … well, you know before what.

‘Who shall we invite?’ Daisy asked, pen poised over a notebook she’d covered in malc doodles of flowers.

‘Please tell me you haven’t started a new book for the party?’ I said, rolling my eyes. Daisy likes ‘pretty things’ (think pretty tacky) and has to start some new flowery/generally grim notebook every time she begins a new project. If she put as much time into making flashcards she could sell them for massive amounts to younger students, and probably actually remember some stuff.

As we started going through who we wanted to invite/would rather be thrown off a bridge than spend time with, a strange figure stumbled out of the bushes towards us. A boy, probably twelve or thirteen, with a shock of curly brown hair. His arms hung limply by his side and he walked with a weird, lurching gait. His eyes looked at us, but seemed blank, as if he wasn’t registering what he was seeing, and a thin spittle of saliva hung off his bottom lip like the beginnings of a spider’s web.

I had a sudden, sick realisation.

Daisy must have seen my face because she turned to me and whispered, ‘Who’s that?’

‘That’s Jimmy White.’ I whispered back and we both shrank into the bench a little. Everyone in our area knew the name. He had been a year below us at Hollets and had been a slightly below-average student. He was born a Norm as his parents hadn’t been rich enough to afford the procedure to make a Childe. Anyway, when Jimmy turned eleven, his dad unexpectedly made partner at the big accountancy firm he’d worked at forever. With the promotion came a fat bonus. His dad spent it all on a late upgrade for his son.

Everyone knows the procedure has its risks. The surgeons have to cut between your second and third vertebrae to imbed the Node and wire and then drill through your skull to insert a chip into the important memory bit of your brain. It has a Latin name. I don’t know Latin. A miniscule error – a shake of the hand, the wrong-sized scalpel – can mean any number of massively important neurones are cut and hey presto, you’re a vegetable.

You can see why some parents still do it though. Mistakes are really rare and successful late upgrades are just as likely as full-on Childes to pass the TAA. There’s a bit of a stigma attached to it and they’ll always be slight outsiders, but if you’re a Mum or Dad weighing that up against losing your child to near certain death as a Fish, you probably don’t care too much about the odd snobby look or withheld birthday invite.

Unfortunately for Jimmy, the surgeon’s hand shook. He’ll now spend the next year and a bit wandering round aimlessly until he fails the TAA and is shipped off. I don’t know if they’ll even make him sit it. Or, if he’s judged enough of a vegetable, his parents will have the right to sell him for organ transplants. Want a new conservatory? Just sell Jimmy’s kidneys. Nice.

Luckily, a late upgrade isn’t much of a risk for Jack, Daisy or me. My parents could have had a Childe pretty cheaply if they’d wanted to – it’s another Ministry perk for top scientists. But they were both against it on principle. They just didn’t like the idea of someone else being able to put information in my head.

‘If they can upload information, it’s only a matter of time before they can upload thoughts or emotions,’ Dad says. He can be slightly paranoid. Maybe they’d have thought differently if I hadn’t found school easy. I don’t know.

Jack’s step-dad is only paying the massively high Hollets fees to please Jack’s mum. He’s not exactly going to shell out even more for someone else’s kid. I mean, I’m sure he cares about Jack and everything, but his life would actually be easier if Jack was shipped off in June and he had Jack’s mum and her inappropriate low-cut tops and droopy cleavage all to himself.

As for Daisy, her parents probably would pay for it if they could afford it. But they can’t. So Daisy’s safe from that at least. She just needs to work harder. A lot harder.

We abandoned party planning after Jimmy. Decided we’d invite the people already on our list and take it from there. I mean I’ll probably just talk to Daisy and Jack the whole night anyway.

Genes are strange things. Amanda is about as horrific a person as you can get, but her mum’s actually really nice.

I bumped into her this evening, forehead smack literally, on the way to the refuse centre. Mum and Dad believe in sharing responsibility (or getting out of boring chores by dumping loads on me). I had all our different bags and was already pushing it to get there before the centre shut for the night. I was in a foul mood. One of our bags had burst when I bumped it down the steps at the front of our apartment building. Luckily Mr Patel was just getting home at that exact moment and he dashed in to his apartment and gave me a spare bag. Mr Patel’s really nice. I guess Sunaina is just a bit younger than me and a Norm too, so he probably feels a bit protective of me.

Just when I thought my hassles were over, I was stopped by a policewoman at the corner. Officer Brown (‘call-me-Marcus’), who’s actually alright, must have been off-duty. The policewoman made me go through the different bags to check I wasn’t ‘concealing anything subversive’. My right hand now stinks of rotting potato peel and boiled mucor and the worst thing is I don’t think she even thought I looked remotely suspicious. I think she’s just a power hungry witch who likes to make people stick their hands into their own garbage. I’m sure she wouldn’t have stopped me if
I’d been in my Hollets’ uniform.

Anyway, I was stomping along, fed up and bursting with cutting comments I’d like to use to take that police witch down but knew I’d never be allowed to, when I heard the droning in the sky. I looked up. Two plumes of white smoke trailed behind a silver plane, cutting lines into the blue. I think everyone in the street stopped to stare. It was almost beautiful, but also seemed massively unnatural. I know, let’s get in a big steel contraption and chuck it up into the sky and hope it stays up. No thanks! Guess it can’t be that dangerous if the First Minister uses it. I think the last Bulletin said he was off to the States. No doubt to have his photo taken as they shoot the next batch of mirrors into space. They’ll definitely work this time! Yeah right.

Amanda’s mum must have been walking the other way and staring up too; it was when the noise faded, we collided. She gave me a hug then wrinkled her nose at the smell, and then tried to pretend she hadn’t. She offered to give me some of Amanda’s old clothes, even though I’m about 10cm taller than her so there’s no way they’d fit. I think she thinks I must be really poor as I’m a Norm. Now she’s going to think I have terrible personal hygiene too. I can just imagine her at her next dinner party. ‘Do you know poor people smell like rotting potatoes?’