‘That’s horrible.’
‘Yes.’
‘Their parents must know what happens, though?’
‘You’d think so. But the fear of the island is very strong. Once a parent has been convinced that their child is really island-bred they are usually relieved to see them go.’
‘But that’s barbaric.’
‘Indeed.’
‘I really thought the Otherworld was supposed to be perfect.’
‘And in many ways it is. But perfection usually comes at a cost.’
Effie had thought that a chat with Festus might make her feel better, but now she actually felt a lot worse. They walked on for a few moments in silence. Water dripped from somewhere, and Effie could hear the wind make low, unimpressed whistling noises as it felt its way through the tunnel.
‘What’s your shade?’ she asked Festus.
‘Protector,’ he said.
‘Like me,’ said Effie. ‘Except . . .’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Festus. ‘That’s why you’re asking these questions. Has someone made you think you’re a galloglass, or going that way?’
Effie nodded sadly. ‘How am I supposed to go back to the Otherworld if all they’re going to do is expel me?’ she said.
Festus shook his head. ‘What are the worlds coming to?’ he said. ‘Why would they expel you of all people?’
‘I’m an islander and a galloglass,’ said Effie. ‘Basically the kind of person they most hate.’
‘For goodness’ sake,’ said Festus crossly.
Effie shrugged. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said.
‘It’s politics,’ said Festus. ‘Stupid ego-driven politics. And the bloody Diberi. Because of the threat they pose – especially now there are suddenly so many new prophecies and stories of impending doom – the Mainland Liberation Collective have gone into overdrive. Can you believe they’re even taking seriously this prophecy of Madame Valentin’s? All that guff about the worlds ending at Midwinter, and the Otherworld being destroyed by hundreds of rampaging cats. But the best way to solve this problem is to keep doing what we’re doing and defeat the Diberi. Then the MLC might quieten down. This latest threat has something to do with Midwinter, but we don’t yet know what. And – I’m not supposed to tell you this, but here goes. It has something to do with you.’
‘Me?’
‘That’s what all the soothsayers are predicting. Not silly Madame Valentin – I’m pretty sure you don’t feature in her prophecy – but in the reports of many of the more serious ones. We didn’t know whether to include you in this operation – which meant bringing you closer to danger, but also closer to people who could protect you – or not. But if your role is in helping us, as it was last time, then we need you close to the action.’
‘Even if I’m a galloglass?’
‘What a lot of people don’t accept is that the world might actually need galloglasses,’ said Festus. ‘Although don’t tell anyone I said that. Probably have my mark removed if they knew that’s what I thought.’
‘But I thought galloglasses were selfish and awful and—’
‘Why don’t you read the poem?’ said Festus. ‘“Galloglass”. It’s an underrated classic and very misunderstood. The introduction to the new edition I’m not so sure about – it was written by a leading Diberi, after all. But Hieronymus Moon wasn’t a bad man. Maybe there’s something in there that might help you understand.’
‘OK. We’ve got a copy at home. I’ll read it.’
‘Things are never black and white, you know,’ said Festus.
‘I know,’ said Effie.
When Lucy and Wolf got out of the lift there was another man waiting to meet them. He was dressed in the same way as the receptionist from downstairs, with a white shirt and silver trousers. He carried a clipboard and wore a pair of thick-rimmed glasses.
‘Follow me, please,’ he said.
‘Look,’ said Lucy, ‘I’m just here to pick up an address. Couldn’t I simply—’
‘Follow me, please,’ said the man again.
Lucy shrugged. She and Wolf followed the man around a very shiny gallery with many identical white doors. Wolf thought it was a good job he wasn’t afraid of heights. He could see the reception desk quite a long way below him. And above him were scores of identical levels. This whole building had been underground until very recently, but nothing was shabby or dirty. What on earth was going on? Why had he been asked to come here? It didn’t feel like an office block or a military facility. Wolf could smell chemicals, and everything was so clean. It was almost as if this was a laboratory.
They followed the man through a white door that opened onto a corridor with gleaming white tiles on the floor and the same on the ceiling. At the third door on the right the man stopped. He knocked, and then pushed the door open.
‘The last two,’ he said to someone.
‘Thank you, Aiden,’ said the someone. It was a deep man’s voice.
Wolf followed Lucy into the room. It was, like the rest of the building, stark and white. There was a large round table in the centre of the room, lit harshly with fluorescent lights. Wolf had never seen a real fluorescent light before. There was lots of neon left over from the olden days, but no one made bulbs for fluorescent lights now.
‘Good,’ said the deep voice. Its owner was wearing a suit made out of the same silver material as everyone else here. It was almost as if whoever had designed the uniforms didn’t know what would be appropriate for somebody to wear in real life.
‘I’m here because I want to save my grandmother,’ a boy a bit older than Wolf was saying. ‘She’s really ill. Someone phoned and said if I completed this programme there’d be a place on a trial for her. A new medicine. We’ll try anything.’
Wolf and Lucy took the last two seats at the table.
The man in the suit made a note, and then nodded at the next person along from the boy who had just spoken. It was a slight girl with bright blonde hair.
‘My village has no food,’ she said. ‘It hasn’t rained for three years. Nobody cares. Everyone thinks it’s natural for areas like mine to have these droughts, but they were unknown fifty years ago. If I complete the programme, I’ve been promised an irrigation system.’
The boy who went next spoke of an accident involving his little brother, who now desperately needed an expensive operation. The boy after him had come from another starving village, but in a different area than the girl from before. The girl next to him had a horse that had gone lame and her father was insisting that it be shot. The girl next to her had an older sister with an eating disorder.
When it was Wolf’s turn he wondered whether to lie, although he wasn’t sure why he would. It was just some sort of instinct. He ended up telling a very short version of the truth, like he had in the lift, that he had come here because someone said they knew where his sister was. After Lucy had told everyone about her mother, the man in the silver suit cleared his throat and nodded.
‘You are here to complete a programme,’ he said. ‘If you complete the programme then you will get what we’ve promised.’
Everyone sighed and looked sort of relieved.
‘But there is a small catch,’ said the man.
‘What catch?’ asked Wolf.
‘Only one of you will complete the programme. The rest of you will be eliminated.’
‘But that’s cruel,’ said Lucy. ‘You’ve just heard everyone’s stories. Are you saying that most of us are just going to return to our misery with nothing to show for it, having come all the way out here?’
‘I said you would be eliminated, not that you would return. We begin at dawn.’
Wolf was given a key with a number on it and a blue towel.
‘Boys, follow me,’ said the man. ‘Girls, wait here. Someone will show you to your dormitory soon.’
Like so much here, this seemed very old-fashioned. Back home some people still liked splitting up boys and girls, but it didn’t always work so well, now
that so many people rejected these categories.
The boys’ dormitory was just like everything else in this building: stark and sterile. Each bed had been made up with a white sheet and a new-looking navy blue blanket, both of which had been very severely tucked in.
There was still most of the afternoon left, and an evening. The boys filled it playing cards and telling stupid jokes. Everyone really wanted to go outside and play football to let off steam, but it wasn’t clear how to get outside. Wolf kept waiting for someone to say something about the cruel competition, and what being eliminated actually meant. No one did. As the day went on, Wolf became more and more angry and confused. He’d come here because he thought he was going to find out where Natasha was – not to be part of some retro reality show. Were they going to film it all? Was that the idea? But why would they bother? No one watched reality shows any more.
Once the boys were all in bed and the lights were off, everyone went quiet. But Wolf knew everyone was still awake. He could sense it. Perhaps it was the sound of their breathing, or something else.
‘We could refuse to take part, you know,’ he said into the silence.
No one responded.
At dawn an alarm went off. A man in silver trousers ushered the boys into a large bathroom, where they had to shower and clean their teeth. Then they joined the girls in a large but almost empty canteen. The only options for breakfast were wholemeal toast or a brown cereal that looked like wholemeal toast but in a bowl. The milk tasted of chemicals.
Wolf sat next to Lucy.
‘Last night no one in my dorm said anything about this place or what’s happening here,’ he said. ‘Did you discuss it?’
‘What?’ she said. ‘The fact that we were all stupid enough to come here just because someone offered us hope?’ She shook her head. ‘Nope. We talked about fashion and celebrities. Obviously.’
Wolf suddenly wondered which celebrities they’d discussed. He still felt he was somehow out of his own time. But before he could ask Lucy a woman in a silver skirt came walking through the main door carrying a clipboard.
‘Please assemble in Laboratory 065073 in ten minutes,’ she said.
No one knew exactly where that was, but a man with silver trousers soon came and herded everyone towards the room. Wolf was trying to notice everything he could in case it was useful later. At the moment he had several important questions in his mind. One was: why was everyone here a child or teenager? An obvious answer was that this was a reality TV show for that age group. But if that were the case, then where were the microphones and the cameras? Maybe they were just very well hidden.
The door opened on Laboratory 065073. Was it the same room as the day before or an identical one? It was hard to tell. There was a similar round white table, but this time there was a large screen by the wall. There were twelve places at the table, one for each participant. Each place had a glass of water, pen and notebook. There was also something that looked suspiciously like an exam paper. Each participant also had a half-hidden plastic box with two buttons inside it. One of the buttons was red and one was black.
Everyone sat down. A man in silver trousers entered and fired up a projector. An unfamiliar logo appeared on the screen. It looked a little like a spaceship, or something belonging to a really old-fashioned computer company.
‘Right,’ said the man, ‘please turn over the paper in front of you. You will see that there is a box for each of the questions you are about to encounter. Each question will give you the choice of pressing either the red or the black button. Please choose very carefully. Once you have chosen, write your reason in the box. Any questions? No? Good. Then we will begin.’
Wolf turned over the paper. It was thin and blue.
A picture came up on the screen. It was a shallow pond in what seemed to be a park. The pond had a small child in it. A voiceover explained that this child was in danger of drowning. You are walking past the pond, it said. Do you help the child? There is no danger to your own life in doing so, but you may get slightly muddy. The red button is yes and the black button is no.
Wolf reached for the red button. This was easy so far.
Please fill in your reasons in the box, said the voice.
Wolf didn’t much like tests, although he was strangely good at them in school. He also didn’t like writing a lot, so he tried to make his ideas as succinct as possible. Although this was hardly a difficult test. Who wouldn’t rescue a child from drowning? He wrote: It is my duty to save someone’s life if I can. Then he waited for the next part of the test. Around him, others were still writing. Wolf wondered what they were saying. Surely the answer was obvious? Maybe the participants were supposed to go into more detail about their reasons, but Wolf couldn’t think of anything to add that didn’t make him sound like a psycho. You rescue a child if you can, right? End of.
The screen went blank for a moment. All was quiet.
Then there was a scraping sound, as if someone was pushing back their chair in a hurry. But no one was pushing a chair back: one of the chairs was disappearing, down into the ground, so fast that the boy sitting on it didn’t have a chance to do anything about it. The last thing to go was his arm, as he reached for someone to help him.
So that was what it meant to be eliminated.
Wolf gulped.
The screen flickered as the projector brought up a new image. This time it was something that looked like a massive cigar in space. There is a 50 percent chance that this object is a spaceship carrying alien life forms, said the voiceover. There is a 60 percent chance that the aliens will be hostile. The object is heading for Earth. You have one chance to destroy it with a massive bomb. Press the red button now if you want to use your bomb. You only have ten seconds to decide. Ten, nine, eight, seven . . .
For the first three seconds, Wolf felt panicked, and in that state he wanted to reach for the red button to kill, kill, before . . . Before what? His trained warrior’s mind took over and more calmly assessed the situation. The statistics were bull, for a start. Whenever anyone wanted to do anything dodgy, they fired a load of meaningless numbers at you. There wasn’t even any point trying to do maths with statistics like that (what’s 60 percent of 50 percent?) because there was no authority behind them. Who on earth had worked them out?
Other information was missing. If the object was not an alien spaceship, then what was it? The statistics didn’t say. What if it was something that would be dangerous to bomb, like radioactive waste or a meteorite full of molten lava? And aliens might be hostile, but what if they were tiny or weak? Hostility isn’t a reason to kill something. And if they weren’t hostile? Maybe they’d have brought a cure for the common cold or a solution to world poverty. These thoughts went through Wolf’s mind so fast he didn’t quite register them all. But the main feeling he had was that killing is always wrong if there is another option. And violence is best avoided except in self-defence. Or in the direct defence of others. Would this be self-defence, or the defence of others? Wolf didn’t know. It wasn’t clear enough. He pressed the black button just as the voiceover got to two, one . . . He realised he was the last person to press his button. On his sheet he simply wrote: Not enough evidence.
There was another pause. This time three people were eliminated. Wolf wondered what they’d chosen. Presumably different from him, although maybe the reasoning had something to do with it. His warrior’s mind kicked in again. Don’t think about what others are doing, it said. Stay focused and calm. Trust yourself.
The next thing that came on the screen was a picture of a man with brown hair and a moustache. Then pictures of concentration camps and hundreds of starving, desperate people. These were familiar pictures from history classes at every school Wolf had ever been to.
This man personally ordered the deaths of millions of people, said the voiceover. The picture now changed to one of a young boy. This is him as a child. You have the chance to kill him, and prevent all those deaths, and a world war. Do you do it? Please no
te that this question has several parts and no one will be eliminated until all parts are complete.
This time Wolf was one of the first to press his button.
He chose the black one. No. He wouldn’t kill the child. Why? Because you don’t just kill a child because someone tells you they are evil. Wolf instinctively knew that was wrong. Who really knows what a child is going to turn into? And again, Wolf wasn’t sure whether he trusted the information he’d been given. It just wasn’t plausible enough. Again, Wolf’s warrior’s mind looked at the actual facts of the situation, rather than the feelings the situation aroused. Would you time-travel back to kill so-and-so isn’t a good question, because there is no such thing as time-travel. And because no one in the present can accurately predict the future, it is also wrong to kill a child because someone makes a prediction about them. It’s flawed science. He wrote this reasoning, as best he could, in the box on his sheet of blue paper.
The next question was the same, almost, but the voiceover said that there was now a 90 percent chance that the child was going to grow up to commit these crimes against humanity. Would you kill him now? As Wolf hadn’t wanted to kill him in the first place, he pressed the black button again. In his box he simply wrote See above.
The next image showed three boys that looked almost identical.
You know for sure that one of these boys is going to grow up to be the man who will kill millions of people. You have to kill all three of them to be sure to get the one you want. This is your only chance to eliminate this evil man. Do you take it?
Wolf didn’t have to think about this.
Black button. See above.
The next image was of a town. There were yellow-brick buildings and a park with a sparkling silver slide and bright red swings.
The boy lives here. You have one nuclear bomb. Do you obliterate his town? You would kill fifty thousand people, but spare the lives of millions. Again, Wolf didn’t have to think. Although he had to admit he found it sort of interesting where this was going. If you had killed the child originally, then at what point would you reject one of these further options?
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