by Angie Sage
Madam Guardian? I don’t understand.
One of the bodyguards knocks softly on the polished, blank door. I hear the lock disengage and he reverently presses down the brass handle. The door swings open and he indicates for me to go in. My escort nudges me forward and follows me inside. The door closes behind us and I feel weak with relief. This is no Astro room.
It is sparse but opulent all at once. A shining slate floor, polished wood-paneled walls and a long line of sparkling windows that look out onto the misty rooftops of the city and, dimly, to the fields beyond. And sitting in front of those windows, behind a long mahogany desk in a high-backed black leather chair is a small, almost-gaunt woman who is regarding me with a steady gaze. She looks so perfect that she seems unreal. Her hair is a rigid pewter-gray bob like a helmet; she wears a black velvet high-necked jacket with three gold flashes upon its rigid, upright, collar. Her manicured hands slowly tap the top of an old-fashioned pen on the leather insert of the desk and where her delicate wrists emerge from her cuffs I see the triple gold banding that signifies an actual Guardian.
I really should stop staring but I can’t.
She returns my stare with her cold, hooded eyes. “Well, well,” she says in a lazy drawl of a voice, “Marne. Not a name I’ve heard for some time, I am pleased to say. But today, Kaitlin Marne, I have the misfortune to hear it twice.” Still tapping her pen top, she looks at me as though expecting a reply, but I have no idea what to say. “Well, Kaitlin Marne, no doubt you think you have been very clever to abscond from our wonderful project that brings so much hope to this beleaguered city?”
My terror of the Astro room is fading, as is my shock at seeing the Guardian. I begin to think again and I understand that I have a choice. I can either act dumb or I can play along with it. I decided to play along. “Madam Guardian,” I say, “I apologize. I have been misguided.”
The Guardian gives an infinitesimal twist to her long, thin mouth. “Oh, I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” she says, leaning forward, almost confidentially. “You have been a traitor. Indeed, you are a traitor.”
I feel like she’s punched me. Traitors are put in Astros. It’s what we learn at school: Traitor = Astro. One inevitably leads to the other. Cause and effect.
“You seem surprised,” the Guardian observes coolly. “As though you did not know you are a traitor.”
“I . . . I didn’t know,” I say.
“Well, Kaitlin Marne. Let me elucidate. We have reason to believe that you ran away from the SilverShip crew quarters with a security device essential for the well-being of our city. We know that your mother stole this device. Which is why your mother”—she leans forward and eyeballs me—“is dead.”
I refuse to react. Instead, I focus on her perfect fingers tapping the pen top as she continues. “Despite searches of all your family’s many places of residence, this security device has not been found. How it escaped detection I have no idea. However, we now have reason to believe you somehow smuggled this object into the crew quarters.”
I stay silent. There is no way I am going to tell her anything whatsoever.
“However, as you do not have it upon your person—you were scanned as you came in—you clearly have hidden it somewhere while you were at large. I had you brought up here so that you can redeem yourself by telling me where it is. Right now.”
Her oddly blank eyes stare into mine but I don’t blink. If this is a stare-off then she’s not going to win. But she does. Because she says, “You do look remarkably like your father. Your dead father.” And I close my eyes. She gives a bitter little laugh. “Unfortunately for you.”
Since I’ve been in this stuffy, overblown room I feel like I’ve gone through a lifetime of emotions: shock, fear, grief and now I feel so angry that I want to punch her. Maybe she senses that because she leans back in her soft leather chair so that she is well out of arm’s length. And then she says, almost languidly, “So, Kaitlin Marne, tell me where you have hidden the device and nothing more will be said about it. You will keep your three stars and go back to your crew as, apparently, you wish so very much to do.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Madam Guardian,” I say, “but I really don’t know what device you mean.”
She stands up but stays safely behind her desk. “Foolish girl. I’ll give you one last chance. I must make clear to you that another refusal will have irreversible consequences. And not necessarily for you.”
I’m so angry I don’t listen. (Later, I will wish I had listened. But I didn’t and that’s how it is. You can’t change the past however much you’d like to.) “I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about,” I tell her.
She smiles and I get the feeling that she is about to do something she’s been looking forward to. She tells my guard to cuff my wrist to a ring that I now notice in the wall. I begin to feel very scared. While the guard is doing this, the Guardian leans forward and speaks into a small grille in the wall. “Proceed,” she says.
This feels very, very bad, but I try to stay calm by telling myself that nothing has happened to me yet. I must be brave enough to wait and see what it is that she means to proceed with. Madam Guardian tells me to face an ornate gold frame bristling with cherubs and a fine harvest of grapes set around a pane of dark glass. I look into it and see my reflection, wide-eyed and scared, and I hear Madam Guardian say into the grille: “Turn the prisoner this way. I want to see his face.” And then she barks, “Lights!”
Tomas! There on the other side of the glass is Tomas in an orange Astro suit without the helmet. He is staring right at me, but I don’t think he can see me. He looks as though he has seen a ghost. No, that is not true—he looks as though he is a ghost. I feel sick.
“Please, Madam Guardian . . . ,” I say, hating how I sound so pathetic. “Please don’t do this to him. Please don’t.”
And then, at that very moment, something extraordinary happens—a Sunstrike. This is when a small ray of pure sunlight breaks through the haze of the Orb. It’s something to do with the angle of the sun hitting a particular wavelength in the force field. It rarely happens but when it does it is a wonderful thing. People always smile. Older ones call it a Benison and techies talk about an Orb fissure. But mostly we call it a Sunstrike.
The Sunstrike flashes through Madam Guardian’s window. It bathes the room in brilliance and I see a shock of recognition in Tomas’s eyes. He has seen me. And soon he is saying my name, telling me goodbye and that it is okay. Angrily, the Guardian switches off the intercom. “I warned you, Kaitlin Marne. I told you your refusal would have irreversible consequences. And so it does. This is what happens to traitors. Watch and learn.”
So I watch Tomas being Astroed.
And I learn that I am powerless.
Chapter 16
The Sneak
J
Me and Tedward are prisoners again. We are locked in a room at the top of the house with the Roach in it, and even though I keep shouting no one comes. I really miss my tribe on the SilverShip. We are the Bears because we are the youngest. Then there are the Wolves and then the Lions. Katie is a Lion even though she doesn’t want to be. Today we are doing fishing practice for when we get to the Island. I really wish I was there too with my friends. Katie did a bad thing running away. Tedward is really angry with her. She tried to take him away on his own, but he wouldn’t go. He wanted to stay with the Bears too, because he is a bear. Tedward is much lighter today. I hope he is feeling all right.
Me and Tedward are looking out of the window. In the street below there is a lady staring up at me. She is square-shaped and looks a bit weird. Tedward doesn’t like her so we go and sit in Katie’s corner in her blankets. I hope she will come back soon.
I can hear footsteps coming up the stairs. But they are not Katie’s. They are heavy and slow. Tedward is scared. And now they are outside the door and I hear the key in the lock turning and the door is opening. The square lady from the street comes in. I have seen her before. It was
when Katie and me first arrived at the SilverShip.
“Have you come to take me back?” I ask.
“I am here on behalf of the Bartizan to arrest a fugitive,” she says.
I don’t know what she means. I point to the badge on my shirt and I say, “I’m a SilverSeed and I want to go back. You remember me. You gave me my uniform.”
She looks annoyed. “I don’t do that anymore,” she says. “I have a much more important job now. I am undercover.”
I suppose she means under the blanket thing she is wearing, which is a big cover. I am afraid she will go away and leave me behind, so I ask again and this time I use what Mom calls the “magic word.” “Please,” I say, “please will you take me back to the SilverShip?” And just for luck I do the magic word a third time. “Please?”
She looks surprised. “You want to go back?” she asks.
“Oh, yes!” I tell her. “My sister made me come here. I didn’t want to. Will you take me back? Please, please?” I get up and, even though my foot still hurts, me and Tedward go over to her and I grab her hand so she can’t get away.
She sniffs. “You’re a smelly little boy, aren’t you?”
She is a rude lady but Mom told me that I must not be rude back. “It’s not me, it’s Tedward,” I explain. “He’s got sick on him.” And then she does something horrible. She grabs Tedward and throws him into Katie’s corner. “No!” I shout, and I try to pull away but she squeezes my hand so hard it hurts.
“Not so chirpy now, are we?” she mutters. And she pulls me out of the room and all the way down the stairs and out into the street and Tedward is left all alone in the Roach house. I look up at the window to see if Tedward is watching me go, but he isn’t there.
She pulls me along the road really fast and I have to run to keep up and I’ve got no shoes and my foot hurts. And we don’t go to the Gateway to the Future. We go down a lot of dark alleys and I get more and more scared because I think she is taking me somewhere horrible. And then I think about Tedward all scared on his own in the Roach house and I start crying, even though I don’t want to.
“It’s no good crying at me,” she says. “You can blame your sister. Sisters are nothing but trouble. I had one once. Until she fell, ha-ha. Off a roof. Oh yes. Oh yes.” She looks down at me and her eyes look a bit crazy. She is very scary. “You got a brother too?” she asks.
I nod.
“Roach?” she asks.
I shake my head and she pulls my arm so it hurts. “Well, aren’t you the lucky one?” she says. “I’ve got a Roach one but I won’t have it for much longer. You want to know why?”
I shake my head. I don’t want to know anything about her at all. She is a horrible person. But she takes out a thing like a giant ladybug with six suckers for feet. “Know what this is?” she asks.
I shake my head again.
She laughs. “This, little boy, is called a ‘bug’! It listens to everything you say.”
“Is it listening to us?” I ask.
“Don’t be silly, why would it do that? But it listened to my Roach brother. I stuck it under the table when he was having lunch with his nasty Roach friend and it has recorded everything they said. You would not believe what those filthy Roaches have been up to—oh, there are so many treasons to choose from. It was a joy to hear. I had such a lovely time in the kitchen listening to it after they ate themselves silly with my spiked biscuits and snored their stupid heads off. How did you think I knew where to find you, eh?”
I don’t understand what she is saying, but I know it is nasty. Suddenly we stop outside a dirty old door. Above it is a sign, which I can read. It says Dancing until 2 a.m. No Roaches. She pushes open the door and we go inside. She pulls me along dark and smelly corridors and then through some big metal doors into a huge circular room with lots more doors leading off it. In the middle is a little hut made of metal with a guard in it. She pulls me over to the hut and the floor is wet because someone is washing it and I skid along. It would be fun if I wasn’t with her.
She is talking to the guard in the booth now and my hand hurts because she is squeezing it so tight. I bite my lip to stop crying and I listen to what she is saying: “I am returning an absconded SilverSeed and I claim my reward.”
The guard peers down at me from his little window and I think he has kind eyes—much kinder than the square lady’s. “We don’t pay out on under-tens,” he says. “I’ll have someone fetch him.”
“Oh no, you won’t,” she says. “Not until I’ve been paid.”
Now I am afraid she will take me away. So I say to the guard, “Please let me stay. Please. I never wanted to go. She made me.” I mean that Katie made me, but it comes out wrong.
The guard smiles down at me. “Of course you can stay, sonny.” He gives the square lady a bad stare and says, “Looks like you’ve taken him away against his will. We’ll be investigating that. He’s injured too. What have you done to him?”
“Nothing!” she says in a high, squeaky voice. “It’s not like that. Not at all. I found him in an attic.” She scrabbles in her pocket and takes out the big red bug with suckers. “Look!” she says. “I’ve brought this back. I have recorded evidence of Roach Treason: Conspiracy, Murder and the Imprisoning of an Officer of the State.”
The guard takes the bug and zips it into a bag. He gets out a pen to write on the bag. “Name?” he asks.
“Minna Simms,” the square lady says.
“Good name for a traitor,” the guard says, writing the name on the bag.
“No!” The square lady’s voice goes even higher. “Cross it out, cross it out! I misunderstood. I thought you meant my name.”
The guard sighs. “No. I meant the traitor’s name. We know very well who you are.”
“Andronicus Thrip and Maximillian Fly,” she gabbles. “Write them down. On the bag. Now. The proof is in that bug, I tell you. They are at present at number twelve, Cat Trap Cartwheel. I have drugged them. They are insensible.”
The guard nods. “I see. A case for fumigation.”
“Yes! Oh, yes. A perfect case!” she says.
And now I am in the guard’s hut waiting to be collected. Soon I will be back with the Bears. I hope I am not too late for the fishing. The guard is nice. I am sitting on his stool because my foot is hurting and he has given me some candy and let me look out of his window. The square lady is sitting on the long bench that runs around the walls of the big room. The man with the mop and bucket is cleaning the floor. She has to lift her feet up so he can clean under the bench. She doesn’t look happy. Oh. Two guards are coming over to her. She is standing up and they have grabbed her arms. She is trying to pull away, but they don’t let her. And now they are marching her through a door with a big silver O on it. She is screaming.
“Why is she screaming?” I ask the nice guard.
He chuckles. “Sneaks are trouble,” he says. “We use them once only. Can’t trust ’em a second time. She’s off to Oblivion.”
“What’s Oblivion?” I ask.
“I forget,” he says and then laughs like he has made a really funny joke. “Aha, here’s the nursie coming to fetch you. She’ll look after your foot. Time for you to go, young man.” He pats my shoulder. “Good luck, kid. Good luck.”
I walk away with one of the nurses who look after us Bears when we are sick. I look back and wave goodbye to the man in the booth and I think he looks sad. He waves to me and then turns away.
Chapter 17
Kill Gas
M
I, Maximillian Fly, am sick. Oh, I am so sick. Something is inside my head banging it with a hammer, trying to get out. No . . . wait . . . it is outside my head, trying to get in. Get off my head. Get off! I hear deep echoing groans and now I understand that I am in a cavern with a sheep . . . a flock of sheep. Inside a dark, dark cavern . . . it is good . . . I like sheep . . . all is well . . . sheep . . . sleep.
“Maximillian!” Noise screams into my ear tubes. “Wake up! For pity’s sake, wak
e up!” Two hammers hit me on either side of my face and they keep hitting, hitting, hitting, until I open my eyes. “Thank goodness,” says a voice, which I believe belongs to the hitting thing that swims in front of me. The thing is not a sheep, which I confess I find confusing.
“Maximillian!” The voice is high and squeaky with a sharp edge of panic. It makes me uneasy. I prefer sheep. “Wake up, you great nurdle,” it yells at me. “Wake up! It’s me. It’s Parminter!”
Parminter. This is a familiar thing. A Parminter. I know one of those. I blink to focus and see, through hazy darkness, the broad face of my dear friend Parminter. Her lovely golden eyes are brimming with tears and her antennae are drooping with concern. She is, bizarrely, wearing a headlamp, and in its beam of light I see her bending over the body—oh no, not the body, oh please, no—of Andronicus. “Andronicus.” My voice comes out as a faint whistling thing. “Oh, Andronicus, my dearest one . . .”
“Shut up, Maximillian, and help me,” Parminter snaps. I am shocked. Parminter is such a gentle, softly spoken person.
I do as commanded. With the help of Parminter, I heave the deadweight of my friend to a sitting position and then with great difficulty we stand him up. Andronicus opens his eyes and looks bewildered. “Gerr,” he says. “Perr? Werr yerr err?”
I believe he is asking Parminter why she is here. I add my foolish questions to his. “And why are you wearing a headlamp? What’s going on?”
Her reply is short and yet much to the point. “You’re being fumigated, you twits. You’ve just sat here and let them seal the house and you’ve not even bothered to move. I really don’t know what’s got into you.”
But I know exactly what’s got into us: sun biscuits—spiked sun biscuits, baked by Minna Simms. I now see that the darkness outside is not nighttime but tarred hemp stuck to the windows. Yes, the house of Andronicus has been sealed and we knew nothing of it.
