by Ann Halam
“But if by any chance I can’t come back,” persisted Mama, “I will try to send someone to help you, so you won’t have to make the journey alone. Remember, you have to travel in winter. No one can travel in the summer.”
“North,” I said. “Across the wilderness, through the forest to the sea.”
We packed up our meager picnic and walked back, each of us pretending hard to believe the fairy tale, each of us saying only the things the other wanted to hear.
Late that night we went into the workshop for my last magic lesson.
It was past time to grow the Lindquists again. Mama had planned to grow them the winter before, but I’d been ill in the hospital and then getting better at home. And then it had been spring and summer: which were the wrong seasons for sowing these strange seeds. My hands were bigger than they had been. I could put on the clinging, glimmery gloves that were folded up in the white envelopes; though they were still overlarge. I could put one of the gauze masks over my nose and mouth.
Mama watched carefully, as I prepared the dishes of new-treat all on my own, and added the seed powder. I watched for the signs of life, then I fitted the six tiny dishes into their places in the bottom half of the nutshell, and stretched the barrier my mama called the incubator membrane over them. When the shell was closed and sealed, we put everything away and I repeated my roll call, glowing inside because I knew I’d done everything exactly right. I repeated the strange names of the orders; I described the different kinds of animals. . . .
“The nutshell will grow as the kits grow,” I said.
“Incubator,” murmured my mama.
“I should look at them often, and I should handle them when I have learned to handle them safely. If you’re friendly to them that helps them to grow, and it will remind them that I am the guardian, so they’ll trust me. They get enough food from the new-treat to grow into kits, but if you’re growing a kit into a full-grown animal, you have to feed it extra. When the nut—er, incubator is about as big as an apple, the Lindquists will get sleepy. One day I’ll look inside and find they’ve shrunk and curled up in their dishes again, and turned into cocoons. They can’t make a mistake. They know which dish is theirs, because it has traces of them in it. Then I powder up the cocoons, and put them in fresh tubes, with the right colored caps. But I don’t throw the old tubes away until I’ve tested the new seed, by letting a Lindquist kit of each kind go through its full expression.”
There was a store of extra tubes in the base of the white case, with the packs of extra gloves and new-treat, and the cleaning powders.
“You can’t tell how long . . . ,” prompted my mama.
“You can’t tell how long it will take for the kits to live and die, or to go into second stage, which is a real wild animal like Nivvy. It depends on many factors.”
“When you test them to the second stage you must be careful—”
“Not to distress them, because if you do they will express everything. They have instructions packed inside them, although they are so small, for making lots of different kinds of animals. You ought to check that they’re all there, to make sure the Lindquist is working properly. But we can’t do it because we are in hiding. It wouldn’t be safe. . . . That’s why we didn’t distress Nivvy. He was always happy. Why wouldn’t it be safe, Mama?”
“Ah,” said Mama. “Well, strange things, marvelously strange things, happen to the Lindquists at full expression. . . . Artiodactyla is big, but Nivvy is a special case. Be very careful about distressing the Carnivora kit, should you ever second-stage him.”
“I’m not going to second-stage them,” I said, uneasily. “I’m going to school. Next summer I’ll come home, and you will be here, and you’ll teach me lots more.”
“Yes,” said Mama. “That’s how it’s going to be. But suppose I wasn’t here, you do understand everything, don’t you, Rosita? You know what the Lindquists are, and what you have to do, and why they are so important?”
“Of course I do.”
I said it to please her. My mind wasn’t really on the kits at all . . . . I was thinking about the heartbreak of leaving Mama, and the excitement of my new school. But I put everything away while she watched me, and I did it all exactly right. The next night we opened the nutshell, and six tiny creatures stared up at me, already clad in brown fur, with shining pinhead eyes and quivering almost-invisible whiskers. The delight came back to me then. I felt all-powerful, and full of love.
“Well done,” said Mama. “I’ll harvest them for you this time. Next time we grow them you’ll be a great big teenager, and do it all yourself.”
My Lindquists were still alive, sleek and playful in their miniature kingdom, when it was time for me to leave. Mama had tried to get a voucher for the tractor ride so she could come with me to the train platform: but Nicolai had told her it wasn’t allowed, because she was a peepee. I sat in the metal cart by myself, with the bag that held my clean and mended clothes, and as much extra food as Mama had been able to put together. I waved until she was out of sight: then I crouched there and stared, as Nicolai’s tractor jolted me through the ruts and the mud of summer’s end, until all sign of our Settlement had vanished over the horizon.
The New Dawn Rehabilitation College stood on the edge of a town that was just another Prison Settlement, much bigger than ours, and not so remote. I had traveled there over four days, with the guards who had been waiting for me at the train platform: sleeping in station huts and on hard railway carriage benches. I never found out what the town was like, I only glimpsed it on the way from the station.
New Dawn had formerly been a hospital. The buildings were low and gray, and surrounded by a very tall fence. The corridors smelled of disinfectant and the wardens, who were in charge of us except for lessons, wore nurses’ uniforms. Mama needn’t have worried about my underwear. Everything I’d brought with me, including my extra food, was taken away as soon as I arrived. I was scrubbed, deloused, had my hair cropped, and was given my junior school uniform: a dull red dress and a round cap, scratchy gray drawers to below my knees, gray socks, indoor shoes, outdoor shoes; gray underwear. Then I was taken to my dormitory by a white-coated warden, with a clanking chain of keys, who kept unlocking doors ahead, and locking them behind. I was given a bed, and I was told some of the most important rules, which all started Don’t, or It is forbidden.
Before the end of the first day I wished with all my heart that I had failed the stupid test, so I could have stayed with Mama. We weren’t allowed to use the word prison, or say we were at prison school. We were being rehabilitated now. But New Dawn felt more like a prison than the Settlement ever had.
The idea of having a school for Settlement children was quite new, but this wasn’t the first year of New Dawn. It was just that remote areas, like the place where Mama and I lived, had taken a while to catch up. There were already seniors who looked down on the juniors, and traditions and special words that you had to learn quickly, if you knew what was good for you. Juniors were Bugs, in red and gray. If you were over fourteen, you were a Rat and your uniform was brown. The teachers were Gulls, the guards were Dogs, and the wardens were Cats. I’d been afraid people would pick on me, because of my crooked leg, but about the only good thing I found out in the first few days was that lots of juniors—and seniors—had something wrong with them, and I was far from being the worst off. I was assigned to a physiotherapy class. They screwed a brace onto my leg, to straighten it where the front shinbone had knit badly (there was nothing they could do about my knee); and put me on vitamin pills, because I was undersized and my teeth wobbled. I also had to join the line for malt extract, a disgusting brew that the dormitory Cat spooned into us weakling girls, night and morning.
At mealtime hundreds of new Bugs with stick-thin gray legs poured into the junior canteen and sat down in roaring confusion, to eat the food that had been dumped on our plates by the dinner Cats. When I saw the fibrous brown stuff on my plate, I rammed it into my mouth without a though
t: everyone else was doing it. Too late, I found my mouth was full of tough, slimy string. Or tree bark, mixed with glue. I chewed and I chewed, and nothing changed. I didn’t mind the taste (most food was nasty, in my experience; except for what you grew yourself). But I couldn’t swallow! The wardens were patrolling, and I knew you had to clear your plate or you were in serious trouble. My panic must have shown in my bulging face.
“It’s meat,” said the boy beside me, softly. “Stick it in your cheek, and bite off little lumps.That’s the way to do it.”
“It isn’t real,” I muttered, when I’d managed to reduce the wad. We weren’t supposed to talk at meals. “I’ve tasted meat, and it tastes nothing like this.”
“I’d never seen meat in my life,” said the boy. “Until I got here. What d’you mean, it isn’t real? It’s not imaginary.”
“I mean real meat, like from an animal.”
The boy laughed. “Eat up, joker girl. This is the best food you can have for getting strong, and you’ll need your muscle, with that crippled leg.”
I looked at him properly then. He was dead white in the face, his hair was furry-short and dark, and his eyes were rain colored, with thick black lashes. He was skinny as a string bean, and he looked about my age (he was a year older).
“You sound sensible,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“They call me Rain. What’s yours?”
“Sloe.”
He choked on his mouthful, and spluttered, “You’re a real joker, you are.”
“It’s S-l-o-e, not S-l-o-w. It’s the fruit of a wild blossom tree, people put it in the vodka where I come from. But I did choose it for the double meaning. I reckoned, if I have to have a bad leg, I might as well get some fun out of it.”
“No blossom trees around, where I come from,” said Rain, grinning. “It’s desert. Never rains. You got any friends in this dump, Sloe?”
“I don’t want friends,” I said, determined to sound tough.
My only friend was Mama, and I missed her terribly, but I wasn’t going to tell a stranger that. “Friends are fake. I know what happens in school. If you have anything good, a bigger kid takes it. If you get good marks, everyone hates you, and copies your work and scribbles on it. Nobody stands up for anyone else, and only tell-tales have power.”
“You’re dead right.”
Then we didn’t dare talk anymore, because the hall had gone quiet, and the white-coated Cats were prowling. When dinner was over I dodged the girls’ warden and followed Rain’s line, hidden in the surging crowd. I didn’t want him to see that I was interested, but I wanted to know where he’d gone. . . . At last I saw his trail of boy Bugs disappear through a door. Their warden swept after them and locked it behind her. I was left stranded, far from the corridors I knew.
“What are you doing, Bug?” said a passing senior. “This is the boys’ side.”
“My friend went through there. What’s through there?”
The big teenager looked at the notice on the door, and looked at me.
“That says Permanent Boarders, kid. Can’t you read? That’s where they keep the lost souls who don’t have homes to go to. They live here all the year round, until they die and get rendered down for stew and fertilizer.”
“I can read,” I said. “I didn’t know what it meant.”
“Are you permanent?”
I shook my head.
“Then you can’t have a Permanent for a friend. We don’t do that.”
But I was already backing away, horrified. Never to go home! I didn’t want to know anyone in who was in such terrible trouble. Trouble rubs off. . . .
I made friends with Rain, later, when everything had changed.
The first week was very, very hard. The days were bad enough, but the nights were terrible. I had to lie in my cold narrow bed, surrounded by strangers. I wanted my mama desperately but I must not cry. Anyone could tell that if you showed your feelings in a place like this, you would be done for.
I didn’t know if I could survive. Then, after a week, Rose turned up, and was put into my class. She’d been staying in the town with her mother and her mother’s important friend: having a shopping spree. Her uniform was made to measure. Her underwear was out of this world compared to what the rest of us had to wear. She’d also got herself kitted out with mouthwatering pencils, and colored pens, and a geometry set. I was surprised she wanted to be friends with me, but I wasn’t too proud to go along with it. Better the devil you know, I thought. Rose can’t pull any surprises.
And it got better. In ways the fact that we had no contact with our families made the loneliness easier to bear. You concentrated on the present. I joined the running club for the disabled, because I was allowed to take my brace off when I went running. The physiotherapy teacher said it would do me good. I didn’t think so at first, but then I could feel myself getting stronger. At night I’d lie in my dormitory bed, that was so narrow you had to be careful about turning over, and tell myself, Mama is all right, she’s sleeping now, cozy and warm in our cupboard-bed. . . . If I was feeling strong, I would write imaginary letters to her in my head.
I’m all right, Mama. I’m going to be good and do well and make you proud. Until next summer. I love you. . . .
Winter closed in, more quickly than at home. Snow poured out of the sky, until the pillars that supported the buildings were buried. The dormitory was freezing at night, and the night warden would patrol, stripping back the blankets suddenly, to make sure we weren’t cuddling with each other, or sleeping in our nice thick uniforms (both of which were strictly forbidden). By the midwinter break—when none of us left school, we just had boring activities instead of lessons. . . . I could run twice round the snow-packed playing fields before I collapsed. I didn’t look good, but I could cover the ground. We were allowed to stop for a breather near the main gates, and I noticed, while jumping on the spot to keep warm, that I could see a tree: one skinny, crooked tree, away down the road toward the town. It was bare and iced up now, but it would have buds. It would have leaves, unfurling in the sun: and when those skinny branches were hidden by a green cloud, it would be time for me to go home.
One day in February my class had a science lesson, in the laboratories. This was a privilege that we’d been waiting for, but the laboratory was a disappointment. It already looked run-down; there was no electricity, and there were broken hospital notices that no one had removed. I was still excited, because I knew my mama and dadda had been scientists, when we lived in the city. She’d taught me interesting scientific things (I didn’t count the Lindquists, which I thought were purely magic); and I was looking forward to showing off my knowledge.
I felt important. No other Bug had a right to be in here, but I did!
We were divided into groups, one group to each bench. I was with Rose, and our friends: Tottie—a girl so small she only came up to my elbow, but she had a fierce temper; a boy called Ifrahim (not everybody had plain names, it was about half and half); a boy called Lavrenty; a girl called Bird, who had homemade tattoos all over her face; Bird’s friend Miriam; and a girl who wasn’t one of us, who’d been dumped on us by the teacher. We had a tray of different materials. We were supposed to write whether we predicted they would burn, and then wait for our turn to use the Bunsen burner and try and burn them. We set ourselves up, with our goggles, and our beaker, and our spatula and our notebook, and I wrote down what we thought would happen.
Wood would burn, and a stone wouldn’t burn.
Water wouldn’t burn, and metal wouldn’t burn.
I felt all this was beneath me. I said that anything would burn if you made it hot enough, even rock or steel, but nobody agreed. Bird said I was daft. I suppose she was right: a Bunsen burner isn’t a volcano. . . . It wasn’t like one of Mr. Snory’s lessons. Nobody messed around in class, at New Dawn. The punishments they gave you were too horrible. But the science teacher didn’t mind us talking, if it was about our work.
Tottie said that earth wou
ld cook, like meat.
“But cooking is the opposite of burning,” protested Lavrenty. “Cooking is so you can eat things. If something’s burned, you can’t eat it.”
“Burning is when you cook something too much,” said the girl we didn’t know. “How can it be too much, and the opposite?”
“Smarty pants,” said Tottie, “Sloe, you write down what I said.”
Ifrahim sniffed the earth sample. “You know what? I bet this is the meat. This is school dinner meat before they cook it.”
The meat was supposed to be a luxury. It wasn’t too bad once you knew to bite and swallow, never try to chew: but it worried us. Some people said it was dead bodies. You died here, you got minced and served in slices. Others believed it was our poo, collected from the toilets and processed in a big vat.
“Nah,” said Laventry. “All meat comes from factories.”
“Meat products didn’t always come from factories,” I announced. “They were once made from raw animal flesh.”
“Eeeughgh!”
“You mean, vermin like rats and cats?”
“Only bigger. They were called cows, pigs, sheep. I used to have toy ones.”
“You’re lying,” said the girl who wasn’t one of us, looking sick. “That’s disgusting, imagine eating a rat.”
She must have come from a very easy Settlement. . . . Bird jeered at her. “Ho, softie. You’d eat a rat if you were hungry. And you’d like it.”
“People ate wild animals too,” I said, getting carried away. “That’s the reason why they’re extinct, besides habitat loss. My mama told me, and she’s a scientist.”
“Oh, you big liar. You don’t even know what those fancy words mean.”
“Nyah,” said Bird, “your mam’s not a scientist. You’re the same as us, and your mam’s a convict and your dad was hung.”
It was an ordinary New Dawn insult, but I wasn’t as tough as I pretended. I was stabbed by the thought of Dadda, whose face I could not remember, and the noose going round his neck. I dared not show my pain, so I looked as proud as I knew how. “She’s a convict now. She got sent down because Dadda did something against the government. But she’s still a scientist, it doesn’t go away. She taught me about the earth going round the sun, and dinosaurs, and—”
