by Meg Buchanan
And suddenly I’m irritated. Jacob didn’t even bother to tell me straight up about it until he had to. He kept me in the dark. Everyone else knew what was going on but not me. Just used me as a messenger boy, and now he’s even got me babysitting.
I decide to have him on about it. I hand the keys to Ela. “Wait for me in the Land Rover. There’s something I want to ask that granddad of yours.”
“Okay.” She’s all innocent grey eyes and trusting. She wanders off in the direction of the carpark.
*
I go back to the courtyard.
“You forget something?” he asks when he sees me.
“Yeah. Are the Willises going to be telling me about something catching fire in the next few days?” I ask.
Jacob considers that for a moment like he’s deciding if I deserve to know.
“No, they aren’t part of the cell,” he says finally. “And they won’t be. You know we think they’re informers for DoE. Why?”
I consider a few replies. “Thanks, Jacob,” I say after a while. “You’ve known me and Dad for years, and you didn’t trust me enough to make me part of this.”
“You knew as much as you needed to know,” says Jacob like this is nothing.
Now I’m angry. They didn’t tell the Willises because they don’t trust them, and they’ve been treating me the same way as they’ve been treating those arseholes.
“And it’s good to know you rate me about the same as you rate the Willises,” I say.
“Get over it,” he says.
Get over it? “That right?”
“Yes.” Jacob studies the wall. After a while, he looks back at me. “While you were getting into trouble all the time, you were no good to us.”
“So, you decide to shut me out?”
“We decided to keep you close and wait for you to grow up.”
Grow up? The arsehole.
Jacob moves his good leg and knocks the seat of the picnic table with his foot like he does when he wants to have a chat. “Sit,” he says. “You look like you’re going to explode.”
It takes a while for me to sit. What Jacob says had better be good. He’s got a bit of ground to make up.
Jacob eases the foot back onto the foot rest. Maybe moving his leg hurt him. I’m not too sorry about that. He gives the side of his mouth a bit of a scratch like he’s playing for time deciding what to say. Then he leans forward in the wheelchair. When he does start talking, his voice is quiet and conciliatory.
“If we’d let you go to the City when you finished school, you’d have ended up in a Vector interrogation cell. They don’t like Locals who make trouble.” He leans back again, giving me time to consider that, then raises an eyebrow, expecting me to say something.
But what he’s just said is infuriating too. All right, I wasn’t exactly a model citizen a few months ago. But he’s got to know all that has changed. Especially after the Stevens’ thing. I don’t say anything. Let him squirm.
He considers the rock wall for a while again. Then looks back at me. “You just had to learn to take orders and follow instructions. Be a bit more responsible.”
“You and Fitzgerald think Nick is more responsible than I am?” I ask. And Curley and Scott, for that matter.
“Ah, that’s where you heard it.” Jacob lifts his bad leg with his hands, still trying to get comfortable. “I’ll have a word with Fitzgerald about some sort of identification code. CatchingFire’s not meant to be used that way. It’s supposed to be kept for emergencies. And it isn’t that we think Nick is more responsible. He needed a code word to get help if he was in trouble. Every time he passes on information he hears at work, he’s putting himself in danger. If he gets caught and interrogated we’re all in trouble.”
“But it didn’t matter if I got caught?” That comes out snappy.
“Not a lot,” says Jacob, less conciliatory than before. It’s like we’re discussing something trivial again. “Until now, all you knew is that you work for an eccentric old coot who likes to grow his own seeds and then hands them out to a few other people. You couldn’t do much damage.”
I’ve heard enough. “Thanks, Jacob.” I stand up ready to go. “That’s real caring. Your way, I die under interrogation without even knowing why.”
“Yeah, probably should have told you a bit earlier.” Jacob pushes on a wheel, turns the chair a bit so he can look out at the hospital grounds.
He thinks for a while. Then turns back to me. “Look,” he says. “If I didn’t trust you, you wouldn’t be looking after Ela. Ela is important, and not just because she’s my grandkid. She’s the answer to all this.”
“What answer?”
“She’s a Natural.” Like that answers my question.
“Yeah, right,” I say. Apart from everything else, no one looks as good as she does when the genes are left to select themselves. Jacob just shrugs at me in a take it or leave it sort of way. “She can’t be a Natural,” I point out. “She’s Elite and there hasn’t been a Natural born to the Elite in twenty years. That’s why we have the Quarantine.”
Jacob eases his back again. Leans forward in the chair. “She is, and, because she is, she’s the proof the effects of Genus 6 can be reversed. She’s what Eugenics Corp doesn’t want anyone to find out. That the rest of the world could have kids if they got rid of Genus 6 and the Trojan Gene.”
Jacob waits to see how I take that. If it’s true, it’s huge. I don’t believe a word of it. “Prove it,” I say.
“Don’t keep Ela’s DNA records in my pocket.” Another smartarse. I’m surrounded by them.
I see Bill and Ben come out of the doors. They start heading towards us. Jacob sees them too. We have about thirty seconds to finish this.
“Who would want to hide something so important?” I watch Bill and Ben coming closer.
“Eugenics Corp, Humicrib, Trans-seed, Transgene.” Jacob’s talking fast and low. “If it comes out Genus 6 is suppressing the fertility of the world’s population, and the effects can be reversed, they’ll be out of business.”
“Does Ela know?” Bill and Ben have got to the path.
Jacob nods, still watching as his jailers get closer. “I think she’s just found out. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her about it. But her dad left her a message. The message explains it all better than I can now. Ask her.”
I’ll be checking with her. “And no one can know Ela’s a Natural?”
Jacob nods. “No one knows. And the Administration will kill her if they find out. It’s your job to keep her safe. It always was.”
I consider that. If any of this is true, it’s a responsibility. “Okay,” I say in the end. I’m playing along until I have time to check the facts. I think that’s it, but Jacob keeps talking. Not much more than a whisper now. Bill and Ben are close to the courtyard.
“We don’t recruit a lot of young kids like you and your mates. We don’t have to. Everyone comes back from the City a bit older and wiser. But we’ve got plans for you and Nick and Curley. If things go the way we think they will, we’re going to need you. Just wait a while and keep things going for me, just until I get out of here.”
“Okay.” I still don’t like what Jacob and Fitzgerald did, keeping me in the dark.
“Jack,” says Jacob seriously. “Look after Ela for me.”
“Yeah.” I have my doubts about the Ela story. It doesn’t sound likely.
Then Bill and Ben arrive in the courtyard.
I go back to the carpark. “You’re a Natural?” I ask Ela as I swing into the Land Rover and shut the door.
“Dad says I am. Is that what you wanted to talk to Jacob about?”
“No, it came up.”
“I just found out too.” Ela lifts the silver chain from around her neck and shows me the paua charm, and it’s actually a ThumbDrive. “Dad left me a message. It’s on the MemoryStick. It was in the box with the documents.”
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know. But I look a lot like
Dad did and Jacob too.”
I study her a moment. “A bit, maybe.” I grin at her. “But Jacob’s no beauty, so it’s hard to see.”
Ela giggles. “In the message, Dad talks about your dad too.”
“Can I watch it?”
“Don’t know. I’ll think about it.” She wraps her fingers around the paua shell cover. “Where are we going now?”
“Back to Jacob’s, do that work he wants done. Tomorrow we’ll check the drill sites.” I turn the key and the motor starts. I look behind then pull out of the parking space.
Chapter 7
I CAN SEE Ela’s not too keen on going inside Jacob’s house. She just sits there in the passenger seat. I guess the last time she went in she walked in on a nightmare. I get out of the car, go around to her side, and open the door.
“Come on. Let’s see if we can find something to eat. You’ll feel better after food.”
She slides out. “You sound like my mother.”
“I was quoting Mum.” Ela smiles a bit. I shut the car door behind her, and we walk up the steps onto the veranda. She finds the key and unlocks the door.
I go inside first.
She follows.
Everything in the house looks the way we left it except for the fingerprinting dust. I don’t think anyone has been inside since the police. She wipes the dining table down with the dish cloth. I fish in the cupboards and fridge looking for something to eat for lunch.
“Sandwiches and fruit will have to do.” I pull things out of the fridge and put them on the bench. “Jacob makes a mean loaf of bread.”
Ela sort of half smiles again.
“Do you want tea or hot chocolate?” I’m filling the kettle with water.
“Chocolate would be good. I’ll get the washing in while the kettle is boiling.” There is something strange about the way she says this. She quickly walks through the kitchen, out into the laundry, and grabs the washing basket off the machine. I watch her as she goes out the back door.
She makes it to the clothesline. I can’t figure out what’s happening. She keeps her back towards the kitchen window, carefully unpegs the washing, folds it and puts it in the washing basket. One pile of clothes and one pile of towels. Then she picks up one of Jacob’s handkerchiefs and stands there looking at the paddocks.
I go out the back door and down the porch steps to tell her the food is ready.
She turns around, and she’s crying.
I’m not too sure what to do. I think about pretending I haven’t seen and escaping back inside.
Instead I walk over to her. Even for me, it was a shock seeing Jacob like that, and he’s not my grandfather. I slip an arm over her shoulders like I used to when we were kids.
“Come on. The hot chocolate will get cold.” I turn her around and start walking her back to the porch. “It’s nice out here. Sit on the steps. I’ll get the food.”
She sits on her own looking at the washing basket on the lawn under the clothesline.
I come back with the sandwiches on a plate in one hand and two cups of chocolate in the other. I put the plate on the porch, hand her a cup and settle beside her.
She sips the chocolate. I watch the clothesline. The pegs sit on it like small birds evenly spaced. There’s a flush of green on the paddocks from all the rain we’ve had.
“Sorry,” she says. “Jacob should be sitting at the table giving instructions.”
I try to think of the right thing to say. “I didn’t think he was doing too badly in the giving out instructions department,” I say in the end. “Jacob’s worried. It makes him grumpy.”
“I guess so.” Ela tries a smile. “And it’s everything else too. In the City people don’t get hurt, and houses don’t get destroyed. Girls don’t get arrested for being pregnant. It’s like I have walked in on someone else’s life.”
I nod, put my cup down, pick up a tomato sandwich and offer it to her. “Have something to eat.”
*
We sit in the sun. Work our way through the tomato sandwiches. We’re quiet for a while, then Ela brushes the crumbs off her skirt.
“What did Jacob want you to tell me?” she asks.
And that’s unfair of Jacob. He’s spent all his time warning me to keep my mouth shut about anything I see around here, and he tells her that.
Ela sees the hesitation. “Jacob is right you know. I won’t blurt anything out. Some things you don’t tell anyone.”
So, I go with it. I start to tell her what I know. Jacob must know what he’s doing. “Jacob is part of something that has nothing to do with farming,” I say.
“I guessed that,” she says. “You don’t need a code word to get help if you’re farming.”
“I only know some of it.” I break off a bit of mint from beside the step and start pulling the leaves off. “I’ve only been here a month, but it’s some sort of resistance movement.” I pull the rest of the leaves off the mint except the three at the end. Start tidying it. “I think they’re fighting against the Administration. Sometimes things happen at night or when I’m not here. Stuff gets moved or appears or disappears.”
Ela watches what I’m doing with the mint stalk.
I aim it at a daisy on the grass and throw. It misses. Then Ela examines the patch of mint beside her. Chooses a bit, picks it, starts shredding too. The mint smell drifts around.
“Anyway, all the time people like Fitzgerald and a heap of other guys come onto the farm, talk to Jacob, and have some pretty serious looking meetings. He sometimes explains about them, and sometimes he doesn’t.” I pick another stalk of mint and start shredding again.
“How do you fit in?” Ela asks. She wipes the rest of the leaves off, aims at the daisy, and gets it.
“Jacob and Fitzgerald organised that I work here. I’m the messenger boy for them. I get sent places to deliver stuff or pick up stuff, like at Curley’s. Sometimes I know why. Sometimes I don’t. It’s like until now they didn’t trust me enough to make me part of it completely. I was on the edge until I proved myself. I’m pretty sure Scott and Curley and a few of my other mates are too. I think we’re all part of a network that’s fighting the Quarantine and Vector and everything that goes with it, and Jacob’s the leader.”
Ela thinks about that for a while, examining the mint beside her, choosing her next missile. “Why do you think Jacob’s the leader?” She grabs another stalk of mint, pulls off a leaf and crushes it. The smell bites the air.
“The way the others act around him.”
“Do you think my father was part of it too when he was alive?” she asks.
“Don’t know. I wondered about my dad too –if that’s why he left. Remember how they used to take us places and then disappear for hours?”
“You taught me to shoot to fill in time.”
“Yeah, you were getting pretty good.” I examine my stalk: it’s near perfect. There’s still a fair bit I’m not telling her. Jacob didn’t say how far I should go.
Ela moves to the next thing. “Is the Quarantine something to do with the problems with Genus 6?”
“Jacob thinks so.” I aim at the daisy and miss again. I wouldn’t even have thought she’d know there were problems. All that propaganda they feed the Elite on the SkyVids to keep them from asking any questions about Genus 6 and Humicrib.
“What are the problems?” asks Ela. Here it gets tricky, but Jacob is where all my theories come from. He says to tell her, so I do.
“You know why the seed companies genetically modify seeds?”
“Yes,” says Ela. “They give the seeds new traits that will make the plants more disease resistant, or stress resistant. Sometimes it might be resistance to herbicides or pests.”
“Pretty much. Well, Jacob says around the year 2020 the world was about to run out of oil, so they started looking at a way to produce biofuel cheaply.”
“We learned about that at school,” says Ela. “Transgene studied lots of things – algae, maize, corn, sugar cane and sugar beet – to see if
they could be used. In the end they decided to use oil seed rape and modified it and came up with Genus 6.”
I wipe my hands on the grass; they stink of mint. “That’s right. According to Jacob, in the first year when they grew it, there was a problem with a tiger worm. It was usually only found on the equator, and it had never been known to attack oil seed rape before. Anyway, it really liked Genus 6, and they got a low yield, well below the tonnage per hectare they thought they’d get.”
“What did they do?” she asks.
“They engineered a yeast. The yeast caused the plant to produce progesterone, and the progesterone stopped the worm from breeding.”
“That seems sensible,” says Ela. “Why is that a problem?”
“The gene they put in Genus 6 to create the yeast moved onto the Poaceae family.”
‘Wheat, corn and maize?”
“Yeah, all the grains people use as food. Everyone got these huge doses of progesterone.”
“And?” asks Ela.
“Progesterone is a contraceptive. It makes you sterile.”
“We don’t get taught that.” She fires her second bit of mint at the daisy. Gets it again and looks at me in a ‘beat that’ sort of way. I’d say she’s still pretty competitive for a girl.
*
I start work. Ela helps me cut up the garlic and make up the spray ready to use tomorrow, and I show her how to prick out the tomato seedlings. She catches on pretty quick. We work together. I prepare the trays, and she sticks the tiny plants into the holes I’ve made.
“It’s like tucking them in bed.” She gently presses the mulch around the last seedling for that tray.
“Yeah.” Though actually I hadn’t thought of it like that before. I press the drill into the next tray, then slide the tray over to her.
She digs into the seedling tray and carefully lifts the seedlings out on the hand trowel.
“Why didn’t the gene affect New Zealand?” She loosens a seedling from the bunch and drops it into the hole the drill made.
