Vulture's Gate (20 page)

‘Thank you,' said Bo, reaching for her cup.

‘You don't have to thank him,' said Li-Li. ‘It's his job.'

Bo looked at the child and her heart leapt in her chest. ‘Flakie?' But he looked so different. His hair had been shorn within a centimetre of his scalp and his face was scrubbed clean. He wore a long-sleeved white uniform with small gold buttons. He didn't look at Bo when she spoke to him but kept staring straight ahead, a fixed smile upon his face.

Bo took the tray and shoved it onto the bedside table. She grabbed him by both arms and gripped him hard. ‘Flakie, it is you, isn't it? How did you get here? Where are Callum and Roc and the other boys? What have they done with them?'

Flakie kept smiling fixedly, his eyes vacant.

‘What's wrong with him?' asked Bo, turning to Li-Li. ‘Why is he like this?'

‘That's how he's supposed to be,' said Li-Li. ‘That's what I mean. Boys are dumb. I can't see what you like about them. They're all so dopey.'

‘This isn't normal,' said Bo. ‘Something's happened to him. He wasn't like this before.'

‘They've trained him. He's meant to be like that. We're not allowed to have the older boys or drones look after us, or even look at us, so they send us these stupid little boys.'

‘Flakie,' said Bo, shaking him by his shoulders. ‘Flakie, wake up,' she shouted.

At that moment, Meera came into the bedroom. She snapped her fingers at Flakie and he trotted over to her side.

‘That's enough, Bo. You're not allowed to touch the servants.'

‘He's not a servant!' shouted Bo. ‘He's one of the Festers. I want to see the other Festers. What have you done with them?'

Meera pushed Flakie out into the hallway and glared at Bo. ‘There are no such things as Festers. You mustn't talk about them. You'll frighten the other girls with your stories. If you keep talking like this, we'll have to send you back to Mater Misericordiae.'

Li-Li jumped up and put her arms around Bo. ‘Bo was having a bad dream and the boy gave her a fright, Meera. She must have been dreaming about those silly old Festery things, really, truly. She was making piggy noises in her sleep, so that means she was having bad dreams, doesn't it? That boy didn't knock when he came in. He scared us and Bo woke up frightened. That's all that happened.'

Li-Li turned to Bo and squeezed her cheeks, ‘It's all right now, Bosey-Wosey. It was all a bad dream and now you're back in the real world, safe and sound.'

As soon as Meera had pulled the door shut, Bo slapped Li-Li's hands away.

‘Why are you lying?'

Li-Li looked at her coldly. ‘To protect you, of course. Though I don't know why I bother.' She stood up and straightened her nightgown. ‘For someone so smart, you can be incredibly stupid. Can't you see you put everyone at risk, not least that poor, dumb drone of a boy?'

‘What are they going to do to Flakie? Will they punish him?'

‘You don't need to worry about what they do to the boys. Don't you understand? We're the ones that have to be careful. We're the ones that they want to hurt.'

29

HUNTING DOWN A DREAM

Callum lay for hours in the baking sun.
Somehow, he had managed to make it to shore but there was no strength left in his body by the time he crawled onto a rock beyond the point. As the sun began to set, he staggered into the bush. Scrambling up the trunk of a Moreton Bay fig tree, he found a comfortable resting place in its nexus of branches. Darkness settled over the North Shore and he discovered he wasn't the only one seeking shelter in the tree. A flapping legion of black creatures wheeled out into the night sky, shrieking to each other until he had to cover his ears. It was the stuff of nightmares. After hours in the cold harbour, and the long, hot afternoon trudging through the bush, his body ached for rest. Despite the traffic of bats, he fell into an exhausted sleep.

An hour before dawn, Callum woke, cramped and stiff, to find the air was sharp with the scent of fires. A pall of smoke hung over the south shore as the Nekhbet Tower continued to burn. Callum turned his back on it and headed north. Late in the afternoon, when he'd almost given up hope, he wandered into an abandoned garden full of gnarled fruit trees. Plump peaches hung from the branches. Callum reached up to pick one, but something sharp hit the back of his hand.

‘Ouch!' he yelled.

‘Hey, Scab,' shouted Festie, jumping out from between the fruit trees, slingshot in hand. ‘These ones been baited. You'd be done like Blister if you ate any. How did you get here? Did the Festers escape? Did Roc get away too?'

‘Maybe a couple of others are free. But not Roc,' said Callum, shutting his eyes and remembering the chaos of the night of the breakout.

‘Not Roc,' echoed Festie, his voice heavy with disappointment. Callum couldn't look at him. He hung his head in silence.

Festie sighed. ‘Well, you better come and eat something, then. I got a fire and some crickets on the coals. C'mon, mate. You look done in.'

On a craggy rise overlooking an inlet, Festie had built a small camp. ‘I figured the houses weren't safe for a while. Too many squadrones and baiters around.'

Callum was amazed to see two figures in the camp, sitting in the shade of a peppercorn tree. Bug had a long piece of twine tied around his waist and secured to a branch. Crouched beside him, bobbing from foot to foot, stood Mr Pinkwhistle.

‘He's peculiar, that critter,' said Festie. ‘Seems to have some sort of programming that protects kids. Watch this.'

As soon as Festie untied Bug, the toddler jumped up and ran towards the fire with a squeal of excitement. Mr Pinkwhistle was between the child and the flames in a flash, herding the little boy away from the fire and back to the shade of the peppercorn tree, as if the boy was a sheep to be corralled.

‘See?' said Festie. ‘Weird, eh?'

‘Bo probably programmed him to do that,' said Callum.

‘Where is Bo?'

Callum put his face in his hands. ‘They took her away.'

‘Her?'

They sat by the fire roasting crickets and cicadas while Callum told Festie everything that had happened since the raid. When he got to the part where Bo was taken away from them, Festie shook his head in disbelief.

‘Everything goes to pieces when there are girls.'

‘How do you know? Have you ever met a girl?'

‘Roc said they were like poison, that they ruined everything. He said if boys could work together and not worry about girls, we could make a better world.'

Callum swallowed hard, trying not to think about that moment when Roc had slipped from the raft and disappeared beneath the waves. ‘Roc said to tell you to grow the Festers again.'

‘Me?' asked Festie, surprised.

‘Before he died, he said you have to make them strong.'

Festie looked into the fire and poked at the embers. For a long while, he was silent. Finally, he said, ‘And you, Scab?'

‘I need to get into South Head. My dads might be there. They worked for the Colony and now that the Nekhbet Tower is gone . . .'

‘Gone? The Gaias must have done that. It should have been the Festers that took it down.'

‘The Gaias? Roc said something about them too. He said you should find the Sons of Gaia.'

‘I'm not going near that lot. Not even for Roc's sake.'

‘Who are they?'

‘A pack of devils ready to slit your throat or sell your soul. Roc traded with them for explosives and weapons. We used to rule all the tunnels under the city until they came along. Roc didn't want to believe it, but I reckon the Gaias slunk around our territory, sniped our boys, sold us rubbish, tricked us at every turn.'

Callum recalled the eerie voices that had called out to him and Bo in the flooded subway.

‘But Roc trusted them.'

‘Roc was a great man. But he only saw one side of things.'

‘Do you think everything he said about the Colony was true?'

‘I know what I've seen,' said Festie. ‘You've seen it too.'

Callum shuddered at the memory of the ROT facility. ‘All I want is to find my fathers and then find Bo so we can be a family. We don't need the Colony, we just need each other.'

‘You know,' said Festie, ‘I've heard you can make kids with girls and you don't even need a lab to do it.'

Festie drew Bug onto his lap and fed the little boy a cicada.

‘That's not why I want to find her,' said Callum. ‘If we can find my dads too, we could all run away.'

‘You'll never get into the Colony,' said Festie. ‘They'll think you're a Fester and harmonise you before you can open your mouth.'

‘Then I'll sneak in. Once I'm over the Wall, at least I'll have a chance.'

‘The only ones that can help you break into South Head are the Gaias. If you're cunning, cunning as a cockroach, you might get them to take you into the tunnels that they've been making under the Wall. It's the only way. That or flying.'

Festie reached inside his shirt and pulled out a long, crumpled piece of white fabric. Unfurled, the material revealed itself as a banner. In the centre was a painting of a black flower exactly like the one Callum had seen on the notepaper in his fathers' apartment.

‘You take this. Tie it to a long stick and make sure you carry it with you. Then the Gaias will know that you're there for trade. But watch your back – they're mad as snakes.'

‘What about you, Festie? Don't you want to use it? Aren't you going to do what Roc wanted?'

‘No, I was never cut out to be a Disease. That was Roc's dream. Not mine.'

He tickled Bug under the chin. ‘I'll take care of this one until he's growed bigger. Then we'll be a team and we'll go find other little 'uns to take care of. Make ourselves our own little tribe. I want to make things grow, not kill them. That's my dream. You, Scab, sounds like you've got a bigger dream to hunt.'

Festie got to his feet and crossed to the humpy of bark and sticks. From inside he drew out Bo's string bag and then he scooped up Mr Pinkwhistle and offered both the bag and the roboraptor to Callum.

‘Reckon you'll be needing these,' he said.

30

RIPENESS

Bo threw the book she'd been reading over the side of
her chair.
Was this what ‘boredom' felt like? At Tjukurpa Piti there had always been something to fix or something to hunt. The Zenana was full of entertainments, but after a few days they had lost their attraction and Bo couldn't contain her restlessness.

Across the harbour, somewhere on the North Shore, the ruins of an old building were on fire. Bo wondered if a Fester had started it. She wished she was there, sitting by a bonfire with the Festers. Her gaze drifted across the water to Mater Misericordiae and she felt a tiny shiver course through her. She touched her hips gently, checking to see if the tenderness in her groin had subsided.

There was a flurry of excited calls from the hallway. ‘Bo, Bo, the husbands are coming tonight,' called Serene. ‘Meera and Verity are going to do our nails. Come and make pretty.'

Bo could see the girls gathering on the tiered steps of the adjoining lounge room, while Verity knelt before them, carefully decorating each of their tiny toenails with flowers and hearts.

Li-Li came to the door of the viewing room and beckoned Bo.

‘Why don't you come and join us? Why do you always have to make yourself separate?'

‘I'm not making myself separate. I'm thinking.'

‘Well, stop it. It will only get us into trouble.'

Bo sighed. ‘It won't get you into trouble, Li-Li.'

‘Wake up, Bo. This could be our last season here. We should make the most of it. They're going to take both of us away soon, back to Mater Misericordiae. As soon as we're ripe enough.'

‘You said you never wanted to go there again. And what do you mean, ripe enough? You never explain anything. '

Li-Li looked at the floor. ‘That's because I never mean anything,' she said. She turned away and started to climb up the stairs, back to the circular mezzanine.

Bo ran after her and grabbed her arm. ‘Li-Li, what is going to happen to us? And if you don't know, how can you live like this? Not knowing and having them in control of everything you do.'

Li-Li grew limp. She stretched her arms around Bo's neck and clung to her, resting her head on Bo's shoulder. ‘I can't tell you,' she whispered into Bo's ear. ‘Not here, not now.'

Late in the day, as dusk settled over the gardens, the girls assembled in the main lounge. Bo ran her hand down her thigh, feeling the smooth, silky fabric against her skin. In honour of the visit of the husbands, all the girls were dressed in new outfits. Each girl wore a different colour. Bo's outfit was turquoise with a fine silver thread running through the weave. Li-Li's was magenta. Serene wore blue and Lolly was in baby pink. Gathered together, they looked like a flock of strangely beautiful birds.

When the husbands arrived, Bo was a little disappointed. They were seven ordinary men, older than most of the drones she had seen but younger than Mollie Green. Bo wondered whose husbands they were meant to be, as they brought no women with them. Nor did any of them seem very interested in the girls. They talked among themselves as Verity and Meera offered them trays of food and drink. Every now and then they would ask a girl to join them. The girl would stand patiently beside the man who had asked for her company until Verity told her to go back to her seat.

Li-Li took Bo by the hand. ‘I'd better introduce you,' she said, gloomily. ‘Verity said I had to.'

She led Bo over to a small group of men who stood near the entrance to the terrace.

‘This is Bo,' said Li-Li. ‘She's new. A foundling. She was in the wilderness but now she's with us. She's very clever. Cleverer than me but not too clever.'