by Ann Halam
The ticket collector gave me a chipped, greasy mug of hot tea with sugar in it. I sat on the floor, my knapsack between my knees, sipping the delicious sweetness. The two men ignored me. Occasionally they’d say a few words to each other but mostly they sat in sleepy silence, while the train lumbered on. I started to get warm. My feet began to unfreeze, steam rose from my boots. I took Storm’s cap off and held it on top of my knapsack, my hands inside so I could stroke Nosey. I knew where their next stop must be, and it was where I’d planned to get off, anyway.
Everyone helps me, I thought. I wondered if my mama’s magic worked on people who’d never known her.
Or were ordinary people just good by nature, if they had the chance?
The engine driver and his mate didn’t do me any harm, they didn’t try to rob me. They let me sit in their smoky haven, getting dry, and soon I knew we were coming to the fur farm. I could smell the foulness that had sometimes drifted as far as our Settlement, when there was a strong wind in the summertime . . . and I could hear the dogs. That was frightening. I dimly remembered pictures of dogs in my baby books, but I’d never seen a real one. In the scary stories the kids in the Settlement used to tell, the fur farm guard dogs were fed on human flesh, to make them savage. The flesh of runaway children, for preference, of course.
But the farm was the only place where I had a hope of finding supplies for my journey. I stood up, lifted my knapsack, and put my cap on, with Nosey safe inside. By now the smell in the cab was appalling. I couldn’t believe it was really from the farm, I thought the stoker must have tipped some rotten meat into his furnace.
“Thank you,” I said to my friends. “I’d pay you if I could.”
The ticket collector smiled crookedly, and took my knapsack. It happened before I could stop him. He helped me down, and got down himself. It was pitch-dark, and the foul smell was even thicker outside the train. It made me gag, and the ticket collector laughed at that. Farther down the platform there was shouting and banging, as heavy containers were loaded or unloaded.
My plan had been to leave the train unofficially here and hide, and see what I could steal . . . but all I could do was follow the man who had my knapsack. We walked along to a small door in a big dark wall, with a dirty yellow light burning above it. The yammering and howling of the dogs got louder, as he handed my knapsack to the man who opened it.
“What’s this?”
“Minor, child. Suspected runaway. No authority to travel.”
“Well, we don’t want her.”
The ticket collector pulled out a wadded handkerchief. He pressed it to his nose, and held it there while they argued. In the end he convinced the other man it was worth his while to take me in. I think some scrip changed hands: I wasn’t paying attention, I was keeping my eyes fixed on my knapsack. The ticket collector retreated, the fur farm man took hold of my arm. I was a captive.
Maybe ordinary people are good, as long as you stay away from the bad ones, but they’re not as good as all that.
The fur farm man was wearing a big rough coat of brown and gray fur. . . . I must get myself some furs, I thought (to keep my spirits up). We were in a long yard, lit by more yellow lamps, and gray with new snow. On one side there was a row of sheds, bigger than the Settlement supply stores. The other side was a pen of wire mesh, and that’s where the dogs were. They flung themselves at the wire as we passed, snarling and yelping. I didn’t get a clear impression, they were just a roiling mass of fur and teeth and lolling tongues. But I was very glad they were shut up.
The man pointed at them.
“That’s what we do with runaway children. We feed them to the fur stock. Nice, gentle animals. . . . You don’t want to meet the guard pack.”
The smell was terrible. It filled the air, seeming to coat my skin and clothes: rotting flesh, old blood, moldy fat, oh, but more than that. It was unspeakable. We walked to the end of the yard, where there was a little clapboard building tucked between more of the store sheds. A dirty, faded sign showed the number and sector of the farm. The man who held my knapsack knocked, and we went in.
I was taken through a bare outer room, and into an office, where the smell was even worse because of the warmth of an enamel stove. The man in the fur coat reported that I was a runaway, to a short, dark-skinned man in uniform who was sitting behind a very messy desk. Fur-coat man tossed my knapsack onto the littered floor, so carelessly I nearly yelled . . . and there was a sinister rush of scuttling, as if something alive moved among the dirty papers and cardboard boxes.
“Bugs,” growled the man behind the desk. “I hate ’em.”
Fur-coat man laughed, and departed.
There were heaps of papers everywhere: cliffs of them jutted from the drawers of a filing cabinet, layers of notices hung from the dirty yellow walls. The dark man pointed to a chair. I read the nameplate that stood among grubby mountains of more paperwork. Farm Manager: Osman Ismail. There were charts on the wall behind him, with red jaggy lines on them, and a calendar with a picture of a lady in a silky, shining black fur coat, with boots and a jaunty fur cap to match. But everything looked old.
I looked at the heaps of papers, and tried to think of a plan.
“Are you Mr. Ismail?” I asked. “Is this your office?”
“Speak when you’re spoken to, little girl. Take off your coat.”
I took off Storm’s jacket and handed it over. He sniffed the fleece, and rubbed it the wrong way to feel the thickness of the pile. “Synthetic trash. Worthless. Here we have real skins. Every worker has his own furs. What do you have in that bag?”
“N-nothing much. My rations.”
Then Mr. Ismail noticed my school uniform, and his expression changed. “Well, young lady,” he said, sitting up straighter. “Don’t you know it’s a serious crime, traveling without a voucher? You have to answer some questions, I have to write out a form, and do you think I have time for this?”
“Nobody asked me for a travel voucher.”
“Huh. Do you have one? Why were you on the freight train?”
It was just bad luck. The freight train crew had dumped me because I was a child, maybe a runaway, and they didn’t want trouble. Now the farm manager had to do something, even if he didn’t want to. My uniform would have been an advantage if I was grown up, people in the Settlements are very careful how they deal with anyone in uniform: but now it was going to make things worse. He wouldn’t dare to just rob me and let me go. I was going to end up back at New Dawn, if I wasn’t careful.
I didn’t dare look at my knapsack. Nosey was still inside my cap, and she’d started to scrabble around. I took it off, before Mr. Ismail could notice anything strange, and put it on my knee, my hand inside so I could stroke her.
“I’m a college graduate, traveling to a new job,” I said. “I lost my voucher, that’s why I was on the train. But I’m not in a hurry. It looks as if you could do with some office help.”
“Huh. Now, where did I put that unauthorized travel form?”
A roach scuttled out from under a pile of papers and dropped from the edge of the desk onto my lap. It made me jump in disgust. It made Nosey jump too. Next moment she dived back into the cap, the bug struggling in her jaws. The farm manager pulled open a drawer, made another disgusted noise, and shook three roaches from the document he took out. I moved my elbow, to hide the battle that was jerking my cap around. “How can I live like this?” he muttered. “It’s making me ill.”
I saw two more bugs, horrible shiny brown things, crawling over an ink stamp, and I realized the papers were infested. All was quiet in the cap. Then Nosey peeped out, and before I could guess what she was going to do, she had jumped up onto the desk, and grabbed another bug.
It vanished in seconds, and she grabbed another.
Mr. Ismail couldn’t see the carnage, it was hidden from him by piles of paper. I was lucky he hadn’t heard the crunching of Nosey’s jaws. He gave me a sarcastic scowl, spread the form, and took up a pen.
; “A college graduate, eh? How old are you?”
“I look younger than my age.”
“Name? Sector? Settlement number? Date of birth? What were you doing on that train? Where were you running from? You should be ashamed of—”
Mr. Ismail fell silent, staring at the desktop. Nosey had been working her way back to his side of the desk, and had just emerged in full view, a kicking roach in her jaws. Was she already bigger than when we arrived here? Yes, I thought she was. The bug disappeared incredibly fast. I held my breath.
The farm manager seemed frozen with astonishment. Both of us watched in silence as Nosey zoomed to and fro, committing bugicide after bugicide. She ran to the edge of the desk and crouched there, her long nose quivering; and I saw that the bugs on the floor had grown bold. They were ignoring the light and noise, and crawling around in the open, bold as rats. It was horrible.
Nosey wasted no time. She swarmed down a leg of the desk and went after them, moving fast. She was invincible, a killing machine beyond compare.
“Are the bugs a problem here?” I asked, innocently.
The manager couldn’t take his eyes off Nosey. “Poison doesn’t touch them,” he growled. “The cold doesn’t kill them. They have evolved, faster than we can. Did you know, there are no poisons left in the world that will kill wilderness roaches? And every winter they move indoors. We freeze or we have them everywhere. In our food, in our clothes. I wake up in my bed, they are on my face. I stir my soup, there’s a roach in the spoon. Imagine, eh? All so we can produce the beautiful furs that the freight trains take away. Hmm . . . What kind of animal is that? A mutie?”
“No, no!” I was thinking fast. “Of course not! It’s a new kind of factory animal. Bugs are very smart these days, they avoid traps and poisons, so this little factory animal has been developed. I’m an apprentice exterminator. I’m traveling north to join my officer, but I lost my travel voucher, as I told you.”
The ruthless slaughter on the office floor continued. Mr. Ismail had a strange expression, of wonder and longing.
“Look,” I said. “I’m in trouble, you have a problem. Maybe we could come to some agreement?”
He looked at me hard. “Are you offering to sell government property, little girl?”
“Not at all,” I said. “I meant you could hire us.”
The man’s eyes narrowed, and he rubbed his dirty, bristly chin. He reminded me of Kolya the Nail Collector. He could kill me and feed me to the dogs: keep everything, and he’d probably never get caught. But most people aren’t really wicked. I thought there was a good chance he’d rather do business.
“You could hire us,” I repeated. “Listen, you see, what’s happened to me is . . . I was robbed, and lost my rail voucher. That’s how I ended up jumping the goods train. I don’t want money, I just want to join up with my officer again. If you’ll trade me supplies for my journey, or, or a voucher if you can issue one, I could stay here, say a week. By that time you’d be free from bugs and roaches. She— I mean, the factory-animal bug killer, eats the nests and eggs too. We guarantee a year’s protection if we have full access to the infested area.”
“Hm.”
“Then I could come back this way with my officer, and he could give you a regular contract.”
“I’ve never heard of traveling exterminators,” said Mr. Ismail. “I would have to see your papers.”
“They were stolen too. If you’re not interested, you’d better just call someone to come and take me back to the. . . . the exterminators’ college. With my bug killer.”
“Not so hasty, not so hasty.”
For a few moments we watched Nosey, at her heroic hunting.
“You’d stay a week? You don’t . . . you don’t notice the, er, smell?”
I looked surprised. “What smell?”
It was a cunning stroke. Mr. Ismail must have lived with the appalling stink for years, people don’t get to change their jobs in the Settlements. He must hate seeing people wad their handkerchiefs and back away from him. He smiled warmly.
“It’s natural when we’re preparing the skins, it’s quite wholesome really. But some people find the smell a little bit offensive.”
Then I had another piece of bad luck. Just when he was wavering, something on the desk started to buzz. Mr. Ismail unearthed a black intercom box, put on the headphones, and listened with a frown.
“You wait here. Something has come up. I won’t be long.”
“Give us half an hour,” I boasted. “And your office will be bug free for a year.”
I heard him turn a key in the lock, jumped down from my chair, grabbed my knapsack, and knelt there hugging it. There was a small window in the wall behind the desk. Was it big enough for me to squeeze through? I’d have to get it open without making much noise. . . . Nosey came scampering up, and hopped onto my knees. She was bigger again, but her eyes were still tiny and dim. I realized she didn’t need eyes very much. She was all nose: and bug-munching teeth. I thought she had very good hearing too, from the way she darted straight for the slightest rustle of bug activity.
She must be able to filter out the smells she didn’t need and concentrate on the tasty ones, because the fur farm stink didn’t seem to bother her. She was lucky: I was trying not to think about it, but that guff was pulverizing.
She scrambled up the front of my dress, and pressed her round, bullet head against my throat. When I caught her and held her, she took my nose between her little naked paws. I thought she was going to bite me: but she only wanted to touch noses. I wished I’d never thought her eyes looked weird, or that she was a kind of rat. She was the second of my magic Lindquist companions, a warrior and a conqueror, as brave as my darling Nivvy.
“You saved us, Nosey. You were terrific. But now we have to get out of here, and you have to get back into the nutshell.”
I was not convinced that Mr. Ismail had bought my story. I didn’t know what I was going to do for supplies, but the first priority was to get away, fast. If Mr. Ismail decided Nosey was a mutie, she was dead. If he decided to lock me up and send for the police, it was all over. I let Nosey run onto my shoulder, and quickly got out the nutshell. It had filled out some more, the wrinkles fading as the skin swelled up. It would turn from brown, through red, to yellow: and their cycle would be over. The kits were all right, they hadn’t been hurt when Mr. Ismail threw the bag down. But they were huddled into a tight knot of little bodies, looking scared.
“You must be wondering what’s going on,” I whispered, trying to sound soothing and calm. “We’re at a fur farm. This is where they keep factory animals, not real animals like you: and grow them into material for luxury clothes. You probably won’t believe this, but they make it cold, in the winter fashion season, in the cities, so that they can wear furs.”
It was magical the way the kits relaxed at the sound of my voice. It made me feel so powerful, as if everything was going to be all right. Nosey scrambled down my arm. I thought she wanted to get back into the shell, so I didn’t grab her. I opened the shield, keeping up a soft murmur so the kits didn’t panic. “We’ll find somewhere to hide. It’ll be dangerous but it will be worth it. I’ll need a few days to find my way around, but I’m a good thief. I’m going to look for a sled, and some furs, and—”
I was used to smells. But if that fancy lady on the calendar knew how this place stank, I wondered, would she still want to wear her sables?
The door opened quietly, and Nosey dropped to the floor. I wailed, and grabbed for her. But she was gone, and the nutshell was on the floor, wide open.
“We’re not ready yet.” I gasped, desperately scrabbling it out of sight. “A few more minutes. I have to run a check.”
I’d got the nutshell closed, with five kits safe inside: but too late. Mr. Ismail had seen them. He took me by the elbows, and put me aside. I didn’t struggle, I knew it was all over if I started to struggle: I had to talk my way out of this.
“Ah!” he cried. “What do you have there?
I thought so! Stolen fur-bearer kits!”
“No!” I shouted, desperately. Theft of factory animals was a very serious crime. “Not fur-bearers! Exterminators! Bureau . . . Bureau of Extermination property!”
The door of the office was standing open. Nosey had disappeared, and I was done for. Mr. Ismail’s grip on my arms turned me into a child again. He kept hold of me with one hand, shoved the nutshell back into my knapsack, and gathered it up. Then he hustled me out of the office, locking both doors behind us, and shouting for assistance. A young man, in another of those shaggy brown and gray fur coats, came hurrying over.
“What is it, boss? Trouble?”
“Fur-bearers!” hissed Mr. Ismail, excitedly. “Bright brown ones, very fine, alive! I have five of them. The biggest escaped, it’s in my office.”
“They’re not fur-bearers!” I wailed. “They’re bug-eating exterminators, I have a license for them and you’ll be in trouble if you take them!”
“What d’you want me to do?” said the guard, ignoring me.
“You be still,” said Mr. Ismail, giving me a shake. “Find the missing kit,” he told the guard. “We can’t have it roaming around loose. Get the staff checking every building. But search quietly. We have a visitor on the premises, remember. . . . But first, fetch Sultan for me!”
The younger man nodded, and opened a gate in the wire mesh dog pen. He beat his way through the mass of yammering animals, and got a chain around the throat of a big one. Mr. Ismail took the chain from him, and hauled me and the dog to one of the big sheds. He shoved me inside, got down on one knee: grabbed the dog’s ruff and pointed to me.
“On guard, Sultan. Don’t move, girl, or he’ll have your throat. I’m not joking!”
He slammed the door and left me there.
I was in despair. I was going to end up somewhere worse than New Dawn now, but I didn’t care about that. The Lindquists! If I had lost them, oh, if I had lost them . . . ! I forced myself to stand still. The dog sat on its haunches on the earth floor and stared at me. It was not as big as I had imagined dogs to be, but it was big enough. Its mouth was hanging open: a long pink mouth, with the tongue lolling out between teeth like jagged white knives. I tried half a step forward.
