The Whisper (23 page)

The adults panicked and backed away, wondering if this would end in an attack. But when the enormous silver lions reached Grace, they lay down on the grass before her. She walked forward on goat legs, in her rabbit party dress, and stroked one down the side of its face.

Raphael Mose looked at her as if she were an alien.

“You made us,” Leo said. “We’re your children, in the North and the South. We are the future, so you
made
this future. You can’t fight it. Listen to us. Let us show you things you’ve never seen.”

H
elen stood in the mansion’s kitchen, making a pot of tea. When this was done, she opened a hermabag and removed three rabbit cakes. They were a bit squashed; the rabbits ears were bent, but she arranged them nicely on a plate, then put them on a tray with the tea things and hobbled up the stairs toward one of the bedrooms.

The door was ajar. Leaf green light filtered through the window. It was another beautiful, bright spring day. She looked around the room and thought how much nicer it was with a guest staying in it.

“How are you?” she asked, turning to the bed.

Ralph was propped up on pillows, wearing her son’s pajamas. Along the side of the bed was the healing chamber that had returned him from the brink of death.

Mika and Ellie had proved themselves experts at multitasking on the day of the war. They’d taken down Ruben,
unbound Helen, put Gorman back in his sty, then crouched beside Ralph on the dusty path and seen a glimmer of light within him, the faintest light, a mist of gold, but enough to bring him back.

“Get a healing chamber,” Mika told Helen quickly. “He’s still there.” Then, in a flash, he and Ellie were gone back to Amiens to deal with the berserker borgs.

If Helen had any doubts that these children could change the course of a river that had run for thousands of years, or stop the boulder of war rolling down the mountain, they vanished as she sat on the path beside the dusty butler, holding his hand, waiting for a healing chamber to be delivered. Far beyond her the war was having its three minutes and fourteen seconds of horror, but she sat on that path, feeling such hope and happiness, her heart was bursting with it.

That black-eyed boy. That tortured child who’d come to her fold-down in Barford North was a truly spectacular upgrade on the human design.

And evolved out of this!
she thought, looking at the forest around her.
And concrete and floodwater and mold! A child forged in darkness out of particles that had been stardust millions of years ago. Out of stardust had evolved children born to know what they were
.

Their universe, for its chaos, was very beautiful.

From her son’s bed, Ralph smiled at her.

She grinned back.

“I’m very well, thank you, madam,” he said.

“You don’t have to call me madam,” Helen replied. “Please call me Helen.”

“Yes, madam,” he said. “I mean, Helen.” He looked at
the tray in her hands. “I hope you haven’t gone to too much trouble.”

“No trouble is too much for you, Ralph,” she said. “Grace gave me some of her birthday cakes. And I know you like cake.”

She arranged the tray on his knee and he looked at the tea things and the rabbit cakes. No one had been so kind to him before.

“Things are going to be different now,” Helen said. “The rest of your life will be different.”

“How is Gorman?” he asked.

“Still frightened by the spiders,” Helen said. “But he’s more polite since Ruben’s visit. He asks me nicely to get rid of them. Mika and Ellie are about to take him out and show him something interesting. Something they hope will fix him.”

“What are they going to do with Ruben?”

“Well,” Helen said. “They’re not sure what to do about Ruben. They’re still thinking about him. At the moment, he’s in the fortress with a mutant guard and he might have to stay like that. It’s most unfortunate. That’s the thing about nature: Every now and then, it throws a wild card and there’s nothing we can do about it. You just have to accept and adapt.”

“So I ought to feel sorry for Ruben,” Ralph said. “Being the wild card. He could have been like Mika and Ellie, but he’s not.”

“Well, I suppose we ought to feel sorry for him,” Helen said. “But it’s not easy, is it, after what he did to you? Doing the right thing is so very complicated.”

She poured a cup of tea, and Ralph ate a rabbit cake, then they gazed out of the window and watched a bird build its nest in the ivy.

The Stealth Carrier rose from the meadow with Mal Gorman, Mika, Ellie, Puck, and Awen inside it. They flew south toward the Loire Valley, which in the days before The Wall had been called the Garden of France, with many pretty towns on the banks of the river. Now the towns were gone and it was overgrown with forest. It was the perfect place to show Mal Gorman the light.

They found a spot on the top of a hill, where they could see the path of the river twisting gently south. The valley rose in soft, green peaks, and the spring sun shimmered through its leaves.

Mal Gorman was still shaken by his encounter with Ruben, and his jump from the Stealth Carrier was messy. He was now scared of everything around him: The children, the monkey, the forest and its creatures, even the river and the sun all seemed very dark to him, very threatening.

Mika and Ellie walked ahead, looking for a spot where they had a clear view of the valley through the trees. When they found one, they waited for Gorman, who tramped toward them in sneakers, looking as if he’d rather be eaten by a wolf borg than see this thing they wanted to show him. Helen had found him a shirt so he didn’t have to wear a Pod Fighter splattered across his chest, but she didn’t have a pair of shoes that fit.

“Show me this thing, then,” Gorman said. “Let’s get it over with.”

“Touch a tree,” Ellie said.

“Why?” Gorman asked suspiciously.

“Just do it,” Ellie replied. “We’re not going to hurt you. Trust us.”

Gorman tramped up to a tree and placed his hand on it. Mika and Ellie stood on either side of him and touched his back. He flinched.

“Keep that monkey away from me,” he snarled.

“I will,” Ellie replied. “Nothing bad is going to happen. Just relax and be quiet and watch your hand.”

The wind gusted warm. The canopy stirred above. A falcon flew over their heads and dove into the valley to hover over the bank of the river. The children focused and waited. It was a quarter of an hour before Gorman stopped fighting against them.

“I feel something in my fingers,” he said.

“That’s good,” Ellie replied. “Don’t be scared of it, just watch and see what happens.”

Gorman watched his hand. The tingling in his fingers felt warm and he was beginning to believe that the children wouldn’t hurt him.

Then he saw it.

A golden light kindled in the tips of his fingers!

And once it started, it spread until he felt it rush right through him. He could feel it in his veins, coursing into him through the earth, rushing right through his body and into the tree, then it spread beyond him, rushed beyond him, like gold blood flowing through one great being, from tree to flower to bush to bird and down the hill until the whole valley was alight with it. The fish in the river, he could see the fish, and the falcon hovering over the bank. The gold light rushed through it all, including him.

His jaw dropped.

“You can see it now?” Ellie asked. “Do you see the light?”

“Yes,” he replied. “I can see it.”

Mika stood on the south side of no-man’s-land, facing the hole in The Wall.

He was part of a large group of children and adults who had gathered there on a warm summer day.

While they talked, he observed.

Only a few months ago, he’d lain in Ellie’s bed, feeling grief-stricken, lonely, and confused. Now he was surrounded by people who understood him and he felt calm and connected to everything: the children, the adults, the dead leaves beneath his feet, the sun overhead, even the concrete wall that loomed in the distance, with its giant war-torn hole. He felt connected to it all. As if in the past few weeks, all matter on Earth had shifted and settled, connected.

He felt its gravity.

He felt its beauty.

The people gathered around him were a ceremonial party, waiting for the first people to pass from north to south through the hole in The Wall. The key players involved in the starting and stopping of that three-minute-and-fourteen-second war had gathered.

Mika stood with Ellie, Puck, Audrey, Leo, Iman, Santos, and Colette, and Kobi, Oliver, Helen, Ralph, and little Grace. A short distance away stood Mal Gorman and a few other members of the Northern Government. And next to them, Raphael Mose and the World Conservation Club. The forest shimmered behind them. In the distance, on The Wall, was the whole implanted army, lined up and facing south. Tom, Ana, and the red-haired boy, Luc, were standing up there looking down on them. On the other side of The Wall were their parents.

It was the most unlikely party Mika had ever attended and the same sun shone down on them all. He thought about that.

The event was scheduled for four o’clock, the same time the war had started.

He watched Kobi and Oliver for a moment. Kobi had just taken his T-shirt off and shown Oliver the buds where his wings had begun to regrow. The younger boy watched in awe as Kobi put his T-shirt back on. That ragged boy everyone avoided in school had now achieved a godlike status.

“I wish I was born with wings,” Oliver said.

“Stop wishing for things you haven’t got,” Kobi replied. “You’re perfect just as you are.”

“Am I?”

“Yes.”

Oliver grinned.

Mika smiled.

“Gosh, it’s hot,” Helen said, adjusting her strawberry sunglasses. “Who wants a drink?” She had a picnic basket at her feet, full of bottles of lemonade. Immediately, Ralph stooped to open it and she slapped his hand away. “Stop it,” she said. “I’ll do it.” Mika looked at the ninth richest person in the world and grinned. “Well, someone has to think of these things,” Helen said. “It’s very hot today.”

“You shouldn’t have worn your rain boots,” he told her.

“That is a point,” she replied.

“Look at them all,” Audrey whispered. She slipped her arm through Mika’s. She was watching the implanted army on the top of The Wall. Their implants flashed in the sunlight as they milled around and talked. They twinkled like stars.

“I want to know how the universe was made,” Audrey whispered.

“Noodle brain,” Mika said. “Ask Helen if you can read her books. But how can you think about that now? It’s nearly time. Look — it’s three minutes to four.”

Awen leaned against his legs. Mika fussed his ears. The dog felt soft, relaxed and content.

A short distance in front of them stood Ellie, with Puck on her shoulder. Her eyes hadn’t left the hole in The Wall for twenty minutes. Her light was all impatience softened by love. She was about to see her mother and father for the first time in a year and a half.

Mika glanced at Mal Gorman. He did not look so bright. This half-fixed man would need many nudges to remind him what he’d seen at the top of the Loire Valley. He had been broken for a long, long time. But he was starting to get it, and so was Raphael Mose. They were there, at least, with their people standing beside them, looking at the hole in The Wall. This was a start, not an ending.

At four o’clock they heard a noise.

A huge roar on the other side of The Wall.

But it was not the sound of anger, it was the sound of billions of people cheering.

Then Grace cried, “I can see them!”

And through the ragged hole between two worlds, a small group of people appeared, walking sedately, observing the ceremony of this historical event. But when they were halfway across no-man’s-land, two adults broke free and began to run toward them with outstretched arms. A sari whipped in the wind, a bald man wiped tears from his eyes. Then Ellie handed Puck to Grace and she began to run too, with the light
of her love reaching out to them. As she touched her mother and father, a gold flash of joy hit the connection like a bolt of lightning and made the children on The Wall glow brighter than the sun; made Mika laugh and cry.

The Beginning
, said The Whisper,
not The End. We are the future
.

“We did it,” Audrey said.

“Yes, we did,” Mika replied.

Then he took her by the hand and ran after the others, toward the first adults they’d freed from a giant concrete cage.

Ellie sat on the nose of a Pod Fighter.

Puck sat on her shoulder, chewing a nut.

It was early evening.

She was on the north side of The Wall, by the hole, waiting for the others to arrive. They were about to fly their Pod Fighters back to Cape Wrath.

She was covered in dust. Puck was covered in dust. Everything around them was covered in dust.

She watched Oliver walk toward her, across the lunar landscape. A heat haze shimmered around his legs. He swung his arms. He was dusty too.

When he reached the Pod Fighter, he stood at her side and drew figures in the dust on its wing. Ellie waited. He had a question to ask her. Puck climbed on his shoulder and poked a finger in his ear.

Oliver glanced at Ellie furtively.

“Yes,” she said.

He stopped drawing.

“Really?” he replied.

“Yes,” she repeated. “Come on, jump in.”

She helped him climb into the gunner seat of the Pod Fighter and did up his harness. Then she dropped into the pilot seat and did up her own.

The windshield slid over them and icons blinked on and he sat saucer eyed behind her. Puck’s head pressed warm under her chin.

Ellie wanted the child to feel this, really feel it.

“Ready?”

“Yes!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I am!”

She fired up the engines.

Oliver grinned with delight.

She took off with the roar of a thousand tigers and shot through the hole in The Wall. Then she looped low over the forest and rushed toward the sea and the sun.