Praise for EXODUS
‘A miracle of a novel . . . a book you will remember for the rest of your life’
Guardian
‘Like all the best fantasies, this one confronts some very real issues, and it’s the most exciting book I’ve read all year’
Mail on Sunday
‘Intellectually rigorous and bursting with humanity, this is a book to read again and again’
Sunday Herald
‘An ambitious, futuristic, environmental wake-up call’
Scotsman
‘Haunted by the past, this is a novel that reminds us what matters: the power of storytelling and that age-old spirit of survival’
Irish Times
Also by Julie Bertagna
EXODUS
THE OPPOSITE OF CHOCOLATE
SOUNDTRACK
THE SPARK GAP
For younger readers
THE ICE-CREAM MACHINE
THE ICE-CREAM MACHINE: TOTALLY FIZZBOMBED
Julie Bertagna
YOUNG PICADOR
First published 2007 by Young Picador
First published in paperback 2008 by Young Picador
This electronic edition published 2008 by Young Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan Limited
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-330-46214-3 in Adobe Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-46213-6 in Adobe Digital Editions format
ISBN 978-0-330-46216-7 in Microsoft Reader format
ISBN 978-0-330-46215-0 in Mobipocket format
Copyright © Julie Bertagna, 2007
The right of Julie Bertagna to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.
In memory of two inspirational women: Miriam Hodgson and Jan Mark.
And for Natalie, my inspiration for the future.
AVANNA
Lodestar
Tuck
Mara
The Most Important Thing
A True Dubya
The Man in the Middle
Missing Midnight
Fox
The Floating City
The Sinking of The Grimby Gray
Pendicle Prender
City of a Thousand Sails
What Is and What Might Be
Corridor in the Sky
Fox Tails
Pinball and Ice-Soup Sea
The Dark Wave
A Fish-Hook Moon
The Stones Speak
Wreckers
Peekaboo Moon
Arkiel
Armada
Snake on a Stick
Earthlander Again
TARTOQ
Pirate Again
The Stairway and the Blue Wisp
Earthed
The Face in the Stones
Inside Earth
Tiredness Kills
All Stormed Up
A Shatter of Days
Hunting a Star
Gypsea Heartwind
World Wind
The Wreck of the World
Earth’s Great White Whale
Here, Now
Snake in the Book
Angel on the Rise
The Silence of the Falls
The Other Side of Winter
Water to a Wave
Broken Hearts
Broken Mirrors
A Moment Leaning Out of Time
Only Alive
Not Here
From This Abyss
Snake in the Stone
The Clay Child
The Technology of a Worm
The Rowan Tree
Kingdom Come
A Narwhal Horn in the Sky
A Hole in the Dark
Thrawn Glory
This Day Forever
A Hundred Bridges
The Land of Day
Moonscape
IMAQA
The Earth Speaks
Clay
Pandora and the Godgem
Candlewood Spire
What lasts, what changes, what survives?
The Play of Gilgamesh by Edwin Morgan, adapted from the world’s oldest surviving poem
Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees
Revelation 7:3
AVANNA
north
The sea is as near as we come to another world.
‘North Sea Off Carnoustie’ by Anne Stevenson
LODESTAR
Out on the world’s ocean, night is a black war-horse. The white ship bucks upon it like a ghost rider with no reins.
A lone figure at the bow keeps watch, her eyes as dark as the night. She has lost the star. All through the night she tracked it, even when it vanished behind cloud.
The North Star is an old friend. A steering star for the island fishermen, it was their lodestar to guide them home. For Mara, it was a stray jewel dropped from Queen Cassiopeia’s crown, falling towards the Long-Handled Ladle that scoops up the soup of the stars. On clear, calm nights Granny Mary would take her out on to the island hills of Wing and show her the stories of the stars. With a finger, Mara would pretend to join the dots of the Long-Handled Ladle, the studs on the belt of Orion the Hunter and the zigzag of Queen Cass’s crown.
If you stood at the North Pole, at the very top of the world, said Granny, the Star of the North would be right overhead. It never moves. All the other stars wheel around that anchor in the sky. You can’t stand at the North Pole any more though, Granny would sigh, now the ice has melted into the sea.
Back then, when she was little, Mara couldn’t fathom the crack of sadness in the old woman’s voice.
Now the North Star is her only anchor. A flickering point of hope in a drowned world. The ice cap has melted, but if she can track the North Star it just might lead her shipful of refugees, a floating village of desperate people, to land at the top of the world.
The world’s wind rises, boiling up a black brew of sea and sky. The refugees huddle closer as the wind wraps the ship in warrior arms and rides it across galloping waves. Mara clings to the ship’s rail as her lodestar vanishes in the wild ocean night.
TUCK
The ocean has eaten the stars.
All that’s left are their crumbs. They litter a sea as dark as squid ink or the depths of a whale’s eye.
Tuck thanks his lucky stars for the dark and prays for the curfew bell. Meantime, he’s running so fast the tail of his faded blue windwrap streams out behind him like a tiny gas flare from the oil rig that anchors the gypsea city of Pomperoy.
The oil lanterns on the boat masts above him glow like a host of shivering souls. If he keeps running till curfew he’ll be safe. As soon as the bell clangs the rig flame and the boat lanterns snuff out and there won’t be a wink of light left in the ocean night. The gang of Salters on his heels will need cat’s eyes to catch him then.
There’s a shout close
behind. Tuck rakes air into his lungs and makes a leap on to the nearest bridge. The bridge wire twangs and sways. His long, gangly legs are shaking so hard they almost topple him into the water. He steadies his nerve, and his legs, runs along the bridge on to one of the ferries and – aah! – he’s knee-deep in squelchy sea tangle outside the reeking, rickety Weeder shacks that cram the broad deck. Tuck turns around and – whack! – gets a face full of stringy ocean wrack that’s drying on a line of rope. He fights his way out of the thick, knotty strands only to skid on a litter of sea cabbage – and ends up on his knees.
A Salter’s skittering on the cabbage too, right behind, close enough to grab a fistful of Tuck’s windwrap, when a great clang sends a shudder through Tuck’s bones. He shakes off the Salter as the curfew bell tolls across Pomperoy. Now the rig’s great oil flare dwindles and snuffs out, along with every last lamp and lantern in the boats and masts.
A whole floating city vanishes into the night.
All that’s left is a vast percussion beat. The clink-chank and knockety-knock of chained boats, cradling a huge human cargo, rocking them to sleep on the world’s sea.
Tuck makes it through the ferries and heads into the heart of a noisy throng spilling out of the casino ship, hoping to lose the Salters in the crowd. From here, he’s into the maze of boats and bridgeways of Doycha. He keeps running and leaping till he reaches the slum barges then clambers on to the flat roof of one of the boat shacks that crowd the deck of the nearest barge.
He lies on his stomach and covers himself with his windwrap. The sack of stolen salt cakes are digging him in the ribs but he dare not move. A clatter-clang of feet are chasing along the bridgeways. Soon, the shouts of the Salter gang are hot in his ears and the barge is swarming with men. Tuck crosses all his fingers and begs The Man in the Middle to send him a wink of looter’s luck.
And Great Skua, he gets it. The clang of feet on the bridge to the next-door barge tells him the Salters are moving on.
The stolen salt cakes are making a hard pain in his side. Tuck shifts on his stomach and swallows a groan as the cakes begin to crumble under his weight. He feels the sack burst and deflate. Salt pours out over the shack roof.
Still he dare not move. A stray Salter might have lagged behind. Tuck listens so hard his ears tingle and once he’s as sure as he can be that the gang are all gone, he sits up.
What a waste of a night. Chased all across Pomperoy by a gang of Salters and all for a burst sack of salt. Tuck scoops up as much of the spill as he can stuff into the pockets of his windwrap.
‘Gotcha, scummy barge rat!’
There’s a hard scrape of a laugh and a burning grip on his foot. A Salter’s got him by the ankle and he’s not letting go.
The worst crime in a city whose roots are pirate is not killing (there’s often a reason for that). It’s looting. Tuck has seen people rope-lashed and hung from the Middle Bridges, all for a loot gone wrong. Ransack and plunder were once the lifeblood of Pomperoy, but there was a time when boats of prey grew scarce and the city’s taste for piracy turned in on itself. Pomperoy almost ate itself up.
So every night that Tuck goes out on the loot, he’s risking his blood, if he’s caught.
Tuck kicks hard against the Salter’s grip. He doesn’t want to be rope-lashed or hung. It doesn’t matter that he’s only taken a single sack tonight – looted night after night and resold on the barges, Tuck’s stolen sackfuls have been undercutting the Salters’ market price for weeks now.
They’ve been keeping Tuck and his Ma in style, those little salt cakes. Great Skua, so what? Tuck kicks harder. After Da died the Salters took their boat and he and Ma ended up in a barge shack so he’s only taking back a snitch of what’s his. He and Ma have gorged on every delicacy he could spy on the market gondolas: sugar-kelp snaps, tangles of ocean noodles, rainbow baskets of briny cucumbers, the finest seaweed bread, crisp-baked anemones. For the first time in a while, Tuck’s started to see some flesh on his skinny bones.
The Salter yanks on Tuck’s ankle so hard he’s brought crashing on to the deck. Tuck chokes as his neck is locked by an iron grip. Blood rushes to his head. The sting of a knife grazes the skin of his throat.
Tuck feels his looter’s luck running out, faster than a trickle of salt.
MARA
Dawn reveals a brutal ocean, a roaring grey desert of sea.
‘Mara.’
The ocean is so loud it almost drowns out Rowan’s voice.
Mara turns from the ship’s bow where she has been all night, though there’s been nothing to see but the dark. And now, as day breaks, there is nothing but grey. She tries to smile at Rowan, but the blasting wind has made her face feel as rigid as stone.
Rowan throws a dirty blanket around her shoulders and hands her a plastic packet full of powdery yellow stuff.
NOOSOUP, she reads on the garish label.
‘Gulp it down fast with some water.’ Rowan makes a face and hands her a water bottle. ‘Horrible. But it’s food. There’s crates full of it below in the hold.’
Mara wipes her wind-streamed eyes with the blanket, smearing her cheeks with its dirt. She scrapes a dark tangle of hair from her face and grimaces as she puts the packet to her lips, recoiling from the synthetic smell. But she’s weak with hunger so she forces it down.
‘Now,’ says Rowan, as she wipes her mouth, ‘tell me what happened. You vanished from the boat camp. I thought you must be dead. But here you are with a fleet of ships in a mass break-out from the city.’ His haggard face breaks into a grin. ‘I’m impressed.’
Mara returns a wry smile, but it disappears as she begins her extraordinary tale.
After the loss of her family on the journey to the New World, then more deaths in the boat camp around the city walls, Mara wished she were dead too. She was the one who convinced her people to flee their sinking island and make an exodus to the sky-scraping city of New Mungo. But inside the city wall she found a drowned netherworld at the foot of New Mungo’s great towers. There Gorbals, Broomielaw, Candleriggs, Molendinar and the others survived as Treenesters in the ruins of a lost city. Mara saw the rooftops glimmering with ghostly phosphorescence under the sea. When Gorbals and the urchins were snatched by the sea police, Mara stole into the sky city to find them. And there she met Fox, the grandson of Caledon, the architect of the New World.
‘Fox didn’t know about the boat camp,’ Mara insists. ‘He knew nothing about the outside world. The City Fathers make sure of that. Up in New Mungo,’ she remembers, ‘it’s like living on an island in the sky. You forget about the outside world, just like we did on Wing.’
‘If refugees arrived on Wing, we wouldn’t have built a great big wall to keep them out,’ Rowan retorts.
‘What if thousands landed on our shores? What would we have done?’
After a long moment, filled by the roar of the sea, Rowan returns to the here and now.
‘How on Earth did you steal a fleet of ships?’
‘Fox wiped out the city’s communications. It was a big risk but he – he—’
Mara bites her lip, hoping the noise of the wind and the ocean drowned out the tremor in her voice.
‘The grandson of the man who created the New World helped you break out of the city?’ Rowan looks puzzled.
‘Fox wants to change his world. That’s why he had to stay.’ She feels Rowan’s eyes studying her face, trying to read the meaning behind the catch in her voice. Mara rushes on; there’s plenty more to tell. Rowan looks increasingly bewildered as Mara tells him about the statue in the netherworld that is her image and the story the Treenesters say is carved into the drowned city’s stone. It’s a promise left by their ancestors, they believe, that one day they would be rescued from the deathly netherworld. When Mara arrived and they saw her face, the face in the stone, they were convinced that she must be the one to do that.
And strangely enough, she has. Though whether they will all find a home in the world, luck and fate will decide.
&nb
sp; Mara has still to tell the tragic story of Candleriggs, the ancient Treenester, but Rowan looks exhausted and so is she. It’s far too much to tell all at once.
And there are some things too painful to tell.
‘It’s crazy,’ says Rowan. ‘Our life on Wing was so hard and there were people dying in the boat camp and living in trees. Yet all the while the people of the New World were . . . are . . .’ He breaks off, swallows hard, beyond words.
‘Living in castles in the sky,’ Mara finishes. ‘In luxury you wouldn’t believe, built by slaves the people know nothing about.’
‘So who do they think built their walls and towers? Who builds bridges all across the sea?’ Rowan demands. There’s a spark of anger in his weary eyes.
‘They never think about that.’ Mara grabs his arm. ‘If you’d ever been inside a sky city you’d see why. Rowan, it’s amazing . . .’
In her mind’s eye she sees the vast cybercathedral which seemed to be created out of light and air, the silver sky tunnels sparking with speed-skaters, the wild and savage beauty of the Noos.
Zenith Page 1
