The Whisper (10 page)

He jumped so hard, he bounced back against the wardrobe. Then he clutched his duster to his chest while he tried to determine what he’d just seen.

Gorman’s bedspread was the antiquated sort: thick, gold, and quilted. Four small dents, each about the size of an old-fashioned coin, were running across the surface. For a moment they paused, then they changed direction and headed toward the pillows; then a larger dent appeared. Ralph heard a weird whooshing noise … saw a metallic flash … and a
monkey
materialized on the pillow. The butler was so startled, he bounced back again and almost broke the mirror. But the monkey didn’t notice. Puck was far more interested
in the silver ball he held in his hands. With a whoosh he vanished, then reappeared and disappeared several times.

Then Ellie appeared next to the bed.

Ellie Smith with no men or guns!

Ralph wouldn’t have been more astonished if a puffin and a unicorn had appeared in Gorman’s bedroom.

He watched, aghast, as she leaned across the bed and grabbed the monkey, who continued to flash on and off in her hands. “Puck, stop it,” she said. “Or I’ll take it away.”

“Where are the men?” Ralph stammered. “Why are you here?”

“I’m looking for Gorman,” Ellie replied. “He’s not in his office.”

The butler began to tremble.

“Don’t be scared, Ralph,” Ellie said. “I’m not going to hurt you. We’ve always got along OK, haven’t we?”

“Yes, miss,” Ralph replied. “But I’m not sure Mal Gorman would like you in his bedroom, with Puck … and no men.”

“Do you really care what Mal Gorman thinks?” Ellie asked. “He’s horrible to you, Ralph. He was horrible to both of us.”

She looked at him with penetrating directness and he remembered she could see what he was feeling. He would have felt uncomfortable if this were anyone else. He would have felt ashamed and vulnerable. After all, he was a grown man, Mal Gorman’s butler, and he wasn’t supposed to fear his master or question his judgment. But no one understood what it felt like to be bullied by Mal Gorman better than Ellie did. Ralph had watched Ellie suffer Gorman’s abuse and she’d watched him suffer it. Perhaps he didn’t mind that she knew how he felt. Their shared experience had bound them together a long time ago.

He closed the bedroom door.

The time for truth had begun.

“Why are you here?” he whispered.

“Because he’s mad,” Ellie said. “And he’s about to turn our planet into a heap of orbiting ash. You know this, don’t you? Better than anyone.”

The butler looked at his duster for a moment, then put it down. “Yes, miss,” he said. “I do.”

“Has he taken the Everlife-9?” Ellie asked.

“Yes.”

“So how old is he now?”

“The same age as you, miss. He took too much.”

Ellie raised her eyebrows. “Really?” She tried to imagine a twelve-year-old Mal Gorman. It wasn’t a pretty picture. But a boy would be a lot easier to remove than a corpse attached to a machine. “So where is he?” she asked.

Now the butler felt uneasy. He’d felt empathy for Ellie’s suffering since the day she was taken, but she was still a mutant, a very powerful mutant, and she was hunting for Gorman. Ralph knew his master was power-mad and about to start a terrible war, but he did not want to be responsible for his death.

“We’re not going to hurt him,” Ellie said. “We just want to stop him. Please help us.”

“You promise you’re not going to hurt him.”

“I promise. Gorman doesn’t understand us. Just because we can kill doesn’t mean we want to. It’s like a side effect of what we can do. Do you understand? We want to stop the killing. We want to make people happier, not sadder. And we’ve got a plan. First we’re going to remove Mal Gorman, then we’re going to take control of the North and The Wall, and
then we’re going to negotiate with the South and try to sort out this mess without fighting a war. We want our parents to see the forests, Ralph.
You
should see them. It makes you happy just looking at them. I want you to see them.”

“But who’s helping you?” Ralph asked, confused.

“Nobody,” Ellie replied. “It’s just us, the children.”

“You and the Chosen Ones?”

“And the implanted army,” Ellie said. “There are twenty-seven thousand of us.”

“But Gorman controls the implanted army.”

“No, he doesn’t. We’ve discovered a new trick, Ralph. We’ve been talking to it. Those children look as if they’re sleeping, but they’re not — they’re waiting for us to get rid of Mal Gorman and take control of the fortress. The implants don’t work. Those children came back to the fortress to help us.”

Ralph was quiet while he absorbed this information. That the children had returned because they wanted to, not because the implants had started working again, frightened him. He looked at the floor, imagining the army waiting to wake up and wreak vengeance on the government that had lied to it.

“We don’t feel vengeful,” Ellie said. “Honestly, we don’t. We’re not going to hurt anyone. We’re just going to take over and sort out this mess our own way.”

“Children …” he muttered. “Take over …”

“Yeah. You look pale, Ralph. Are you OK?”

“Yes,” he said. “I’m just getting used to the idea.”

“We’re not just children,” she told him.

“I know,” he said, looking at her. “I knew that the day I met you.”

“Then please help us. Tell me where Gorman is.”

Ellie watched him and waited. Fear, doubt, and guilt pulsed through his light. This was a difficult decision. But then something deep inside him rose, something that had been stifled for a long, long time: his own beliefs, his own sense of right and wrong, and a desperate craving to be on the good side, the truthful side, the kind side.

He wanted to help them.

He took a deep breath and spoke.

“Actually, I don’t know where Gorman is,” he said. “He was supposed to be in meetings this morning, but he went out without telling me where he was going.”

“Where could he be?” Ellie said. “What was he wearing when he left?”

“Some of your clothes,” the butler said. “Jeans, sneakers, and a Pod Fighter T-shirt.”

“A Pod Fighter T-shirt?” Ellie looked at him sharply.

“Yes, miss, a Pod Fighter T-shirt. A green one with
PLAY
on the back.”

She grinned.

“I know where he is,” she said. “He’s playing the game.”

She stood up quickly, holding Puck to her chest with one hand. “Thank you, Ralph. I always knew you were a good person.” She kissed him lightly on the cheek, startling him, and opened the bedroom door. Beyond it, Mika and Audrey were waiting by the dressing room fire. When they saw Ellie, they began to move.

Ralph watched them walk toward the door, feeling vulnerable now. He was about to be left behind, after betraying his master.

Ellie stopped and turned.

“Do you want to come with us?” she asked.

“Yes,” he replied immediately. “I do.”

“Oh, good!” she cried. “You’ll be really helpful, Ralph! Really helpful!”

“Thank you, miss.”

“Do you know where our companions are?” Mika asked. “Gorman took them away from us.”

“Yes, I do, sir,” Ralph said. “They’re in the bottom drawer of his desk.”

A
n hour after Gorman climbed into the Pod Fighter simulator, he was still trying to take off without crashing. He’d seen the words
Game Over
so many times, they seemed permanently glued to his visor.

But on his forty-seventh attempt, he succeeded. The Pod Fighter shot off the aircraft carrier, he pulled back with just the right amount of power, and the fighter shot up into the sky instead of diving into the sea. For a moment he could hardly believe he’d done it, and his hands were frozen to the controls because he was so scared of making it go wrong again. But the Pod Fighter continued to shoot up through clouds, which whooshed like smoke around him. Then he could enjoy the power in his hands. This game really was amazing. Like every child who’d played it before, he’d already forgotten it wasn’t real.

On the other side of the clouds, the sun and the sky
dissolved in inky space. Up, up, he flew until he hit the planet atmosphere.

“Yeah!” he yelled.

Then he remembered he was flying without a gunner and that the Red Star Fleet would attack him. He let the Pod Fighter drop until he skimmed the snowy landscape of the clouds. For a second he wished he’d made Ralph come with him as his gunner, then he laughed at the idea.

A green dot appeared on his visor.

He ignored it for a few seconds because he didn’t know what it meant. It was difficult enough keeping the Pod Fighter steady without trying to figure out all the other stuff. But soon the green dot grew larger and he began to realize it was something moving toward him. He pulled back, wanting more speed, but got too much and lost control. The Pod Fighter roared into a messy corkscrew and by the time he pulled out of it, he was gasping with fright and the pitted orb of the moon was looping around him like a ball on a length of elastic. He steadied the craft and managed to drop again until he was just above the clouds, but within seconds, the dot reappeared, closer this time and beginning to take the form of another Pod Fighter.

It roared toward him.

He cursed and tried to throw his Pod Fighter out of its path, but it anticipated this move and looped around him in a fluid weave.

Then it turned and came back.

Now he was very scared. He tried to outwit it by dropping, but it passed overhead, looped, and shot toward him like an arrow. His hands failed. The Pod Fighter stuttered like a shot bird, plunged into free fall through the clouds, and hurtled
toward Earth. And the other Pod Fighter was still chasing him.

Land rushed up to greet him, a poisoned wasteland of dust and skeletal trees. Somehow he managed to control his spin and pull up a few seconds before impact. But the other Pod Fighter was still there, harrying him like a hyena, and he couldn’t get up enough speed to outrun it.

Over deserts and dead cities it chased him, until he crashed into the dust.

He saw a flash of light as the Pod Fighter exploded, then the words
Game Over
.

He removed his headset.

He panted in the darkness.

Wiped the sweat from his face.

He’d had enough for one day.

This game was really difficult and scary.

He decided to go back to the fortress and have Ralph serve him a nice lunch. He opened the door, dropped out on shaky legs, and saw Ellie Smith standing in the darkness. Ellie Smith with no men with guns, and that monkey sitting on her shoulder.

K
obi leaned against the wall outside the boys’ room, waiting for the adults to leave. Every hour or so, the doctor came and made him wait outside.

The passage had a distinctive smell of old office, cooking, and people. Sometimes they walked past him, going about their business. Some greeted him and others didn’t. He felt better if they ignored him.

After a while he sensed someone watching him and glanced down the passage, to feel a pair of eyes vanish as his head turned. When this game had continued for a few minutes, the blond boy, Oliver, stepped out and stood where he could be seen.

“Hi,” Kobi said.

“Hello,” Oliver replied.

The child walked toward him, swaying his arms. He was
wearing a Pod Fighter T-shirt borrowed from an older child. It came down to his knees. Kobi grinned through his hair.

“What are you doing?” Oliver asked, kicking the wall.

“Waiting for the doctor to leave,” Kobi said. “So I can go back in and sit with the boy.”

“Can I see him?”

“You could ask,” Kobi replied.

“OK,” Oliver said.

He leaned against the wall next to Kobi, with his hands behind his back. They were quiet for a while, listening to the drone of adult voices talking inside the room. It took ages for them to leave.

“What was the game like?” Oliver asked.

“It wasn’t a game,” Kobi replied.

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, what was it like when you thought it was a game?”

“Amazing,” Kobi said. “I used to love flying.”

“So you were a pilot?”

“Yeah.”

“I wanted to be a pilot,” the child said enviously. “But I wasn’t old enough.”

“You’re lucky, then,” Kobi said.

“I know,” Oliver said. “But I wish it had been a game. I don’t have anything to look forward to now.”

“What else do you like doing?”

“Drawing,” Oliver said.

“Then do that instead,” Kobi replied. “Much safer. You won’t end up with a lump of metal in your head, drawing pictures.”

“I suppose so,” replied Oliver wistfully. “I could draw a Pod Fighter.”

He stretched out his T-shirt and looked at the picture on the front.

“Yes,” Kobi said. “Do that. Draw a Pod Fighter and show it to me.”

“OK,” Oliver replied happily.

The voices inside the room grew louder as the adults prepared to leave. Kobi and Oliver moved away as the door opened. The doctor left first.

“Still here?” she said to Kobi, with raised eyebrows.

“Yes,” Kobi said, feeling offended. Of course he was.

“It’s OK,” she told him. “I just thought you might get bored sitting with him while he sleeps.”

“No,” Kobi said.

“Can I go in too?” Oliver asked.

“No, not you,” the doctor said. “The boy’s sick. He’s got a lung infection and we need to be really careful that he doesn’t get The Shadows sickness. He doesn’t need small children messing about in his room.”

Oliver’s face clouded with humiliation.

“He won’t mess about,” Kobi said.

“No, I won’t,” Oliver agreed moodily.

The doctor looked at him, weighing him up. “OK,” she said at last. “But only you, Oliver. Not all your friends. And do what Kobi says. That boy needs peace and quiet.”

“I will,” Oliver replied earnestly. “I’ll be really quiet.”