“Really. It’s a slight work in progress, but… I’m all right.”
“Yeah. Whose idea was it, making you watch that?”
“Oh, the girls’ warden, she’s a real sick bitch, but never mind about her, Bane. Just concentrate on rescuing us.”
“All right. You concentrate on writing your masterpiece.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Damn, I want to give you a big hug.”
“I want a big hug. And I want to kiss you.”
“Not as much as I want to kiss you!”
“Oh blast, you’d better go, you know. We’ve been talking for ages.”
“Yeah.”
But we just went on sitting there, holding hands.
“Bane,” I whispered at last. It felt like cutting my heart out with my tongue. “You’ve got to go. It’s too dangerous.”
“All right, all right.”
He kissed his fingertips and pressed them to my lips and I did the same. Then, after only another ten or twenty clasps and kisses of hands, he slipped back into the ditch, and that little animal began to inch its way into the distance. I sat in silence for a long time, waiting until he’d definitely have reached the forestline. Just in case I was caught.
Finally I got up and arranged the heavy reams of paper inside my jumpsuit, picked up the ‘art case’ in one hand, held the door card in the other, and took a good look around the dim little room for anything left behind. Swiping the card, I inched the door open and eyed the parking area. I was pretty much going to have to walk across. Good thing the exercise sacks were gray.
Um… I know your primary concern is my spiritual welfare, Angel Margaret, but perhaps you could have a quick word with the guards’ angels so they don’t go looking this way?
With that, I walked straight over, not too fast, not too slow. I didn’t breathe again until the stairwell door was closed behind me. Then I waited, peeping through the window to see if any sort of chaos erupted behind me. But the search lights stayed off, and the night stillness continued unbroken. I hadn’t been seen. Thank you, Angel Margaret.
Cautiously, I made my way back up to the dormitory level, changing swiftly in the washroom and re-belting my jumpsuit under my nightie. With my dressing gown tightly tied, I stuffed the paper inside it and returned to the dorm, case in hand.
The next morning, with no attempt at concealment, I sat down at a table near a socket, opened my ‘art box’ and plugged in the word processing thingie. I’d lain on my bunk for a while, yawning and studying the old manual tucked in the lid, and was now able to peel a wad of paper from a ream and slide it into the correct part of the machine. What I thought was the correct part of the machine...
A cursor flashed invitingly on the dimly glowing screen. I stared at it, searching for a beginning. Bane had shown me what the content was to be… No. First part ten of the Fellest Ewe’s Diary. To demonstrate the device’s benefits and keep tongues from flapping near the guards.
My fingers had barely begun to tap on the old keys when the curious began to crowd around. Jane soon forced her way to the front.
“Is that a laptop, Margo?”
“No, course not, they’re not allowed. It’s just a wordProcessor, for printing stories on. See…” Since I had almost a page, I pressed the print button. The machine obediently sucked in a sheet of paper and began to spit it out again, text emerging line by line—quietly, good.
“Huh.” Jane stared curiously at the screen and the keys, and apparently concluded it was no more than I said it was. “Where’d you get it?”
“I can hardly talk about that, can I?” I said lightly.
Jane’s eyes narrowed, but her sharp tongue was oddly dulled after that, at least when she was talking to me. Not so odd really, if she thought I’d got as friendly as all that with a guard—I probably seemed her best chance of escape. From the way she was prowling and snapping these days, escape plans—or lack thereof—were on her mind. No wonder—only yesterday a special friend of Emily’s had been taken from the Old Year. Emily’d been crying as she told us.
Oh yes, I want to get out of here too. Suddenly I really, really do...
When it was almost time for exercise, I unplugged the machine and put the case back up on my clothes’ chest.
“D’you think it’s going to do the job?” Jon asked me, as I dropped back down and sat beside him.
“Oh yes. I really might get the book written in time, with that.” Not that I was going to need it, surely… Or was that please?
The door opened and Watkins called us out. In the passage Finchley lurked, giving me his usual look of pure loathing. Doubt it was chance that the Menace kept putting those two together at the moment. But when Finchley turned to lead the way to the passage door, a gasp rose to my lips.
His dressing had finally disappeared, revealing a pattern of healing cuts. In the shape of a… No joke, someone had carved the full works into his cheek! Finchley’s face grew brick red as a tide of whispering swept the passage.
“Look,” said Sarah curiously, pointing. “Boy bits…”
Finchley’s fist clenched and he took a step towards her. I’d sprung between them before I’d even realized what I was doing. His looming presence drove a chill splinter of fear into me.
“Don’t you dare touch her,” I hissed.
Finchley stepped back and hurried to unlock the stairwell door, almost as though afraid to speak to me! Or afraid to be seen speaking to me. Resolving afresh to avoid any conceivable possibility of being alone with him, I caught Jon’s arm, telling him about Finchley as we traipsed down the stairs.
I paused at the gym door, lowering my voice.
“Watkins, what happened to Finchley’s face?”
Watkins tapped the side of his nose, and smiled far less pleasantly than usual.
“Looks like a little bird told the Major after all, doesn’t it? In you go…”
I went to my assigned exercise machine, but I couldn’t get the Major’s twisted justice out of my mind, though it was very hard to feel sorry for Finchley. Jon was on a cycling machine, alternating between grinning like a loon and an expression suitable for a funeral. The more primeval part of me certainly wanted to roll around on the floor pointing and laughing with an evil glee worthy of the Major himself.
But I’m not the Major. He shouldn’t have done that to Finchley. He should’ve just sacked him. Bwahaha, but it serves him right… No. I am not the Major.
So I prayed for Finchley as I ran on the treadmill, prayed and prayed until that devilish laughter was driven from my mind. I am not the Major…
“When’re you going to start reading it to me?” asked Jon one night, after I’d spent two weeks typing almost nonstop.
“Soon,” I said absently, planning tomorrow’s pages in my head. That incident would follow on to that…
“So you keep saying.” For these soft, safe ear-to-ear murmurs in the dark, we spoke Latin, and he sounded aggrieved. I dragged my mind away from the growing pile of printed sheets that nestled in Jon’s clothes’ chest for greater security and gave him my attention.
“They’ll be announcing the winning story in just over a week.”
“You’re going to read me what you’ve done before then, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“You don’t sound very happy about the idea. Are you afraid it’s no good? If things go right, the whole world’s going to be reading it.”
A little ball of ice formed in my belly. The whole world. Help me, Lord…
I managed not to swallow—he’d hear it—and said, as though changing the subject, “You know, not being able to witness used to frustrate me so much. The silence and secrecy. My parents’ fake friends—whiter than white, EuroGov-can’t-do-anything-wrong types—y’know, like the Marsdens. Well, Mum and Dad try their best to make the friendships genuine, but… I suppose it was the same for you?”
“Oh, yes. Witnessing—now that’s a seriously dangerous game. But people do it. But not pe
ople whose parents run safe houses and Mass centers. I could never admit to my faith in even the tiniest word or gesture.”
“Tell me about it—I used to think nothing could be worse…”
Jon gave a very faint snort.
“Yeah,” but his tone was one of self-mockery, “but it’s not true, is it? Because if they actually catch you speaking about it…” He shuddered. “Well, they don’t just do you for Personal Practice, that’s for sure. Have to admit turning fifteen cooled my enthusiasm a bit.”
“Ugh,” I shuddered as well. “Fifteen. I remember fifteen.” Nowadays the Rite of Confirmation took place just before you turned sixteen—sixteen being the legal age for execution. Decision time, in no small way.
“Fifteen was a horrible year,” Jon agreed. “I was really glad to have Bane as a friend that year, because he was a nonBeliever. That probably sounds a bit nuts.”
“Hardly. As soon as I became fifteen—knew I had to decide—I could hardly think about anything else.”
A year in a mental maelstrom with thoughts of life and death, truth and lies, salvation and damnation, agony and wellbeing pelting you from every side...
What do I really believe?
What my parents have always taught me?
Just ‘cause they believe it doesn’t make it true.
Just ‘cause they believe it doesn’t make it false.
What’s the evidence… for and against?
Do I believe this enough to die for it?
Horrible, Jon called it. That was about right.
“My parents were really good about it,” I went on, “stepped right back and let me work it out for myself. I’m only surprised Bane didn’t find someone more fun to be around after a few months! Though he got worse than me in the end. ‘Cause I never did manage to convince him, but I was convinced, and oh my, was he desperate to change my mind.”
“‘Well, he practiced all the arguments on me first.” Jon sounded like he was grinning. “His priorities were pretty clear.”
I had to smile too.
“He did have them rather smooth. He was still whispering them in my ear when I was about to walk up to the altar for Confirmation. Had to fix my hair band three times ‘cause he kept pulling my veil askew to give himself more time! In the end I kind of grabbed it and ran.”
But afterwards he’d said, ‘Well, I tried my best. And look at you glowing…’ Picked me up in a big bear hug and spun me around with my feet off the floor… ‘Seeing you this happy… it’s almost worth the risk…’ Dear, dear Bane.
The risk.
The happy memory slid from my mind and this time I did have to swallow before I could get out, “Do you know…” I hesitated. “Do you know if they actually break many people? At the last minute? Do many people…”
“Apostatize? Make the Divine denial?”
“Umm.”
“Some. I can’t give you figures, but… people are only human. You must’ve heard of Father Hart?”
“Father Faintheart, they used to call him. Six times, wasn’t it, that he Apostatized?”
“Yes,” murmured Jon. “Poor Father Hart, they say, had a rather low pain threshold. Every time they got him strapped down on that gurney he’d panic and make the Divine denial. The EuroGov would gloat like mad and let him go. He’d be barely clear of the Facility’s shadow when he’d be seized with the most overwhelming remorse for his cowardice. His penitence was always so genuine he’d be absolved at once and would go on with his work. Until the next time he was caught, when it would happen all over again.”
“Until the seventh time. When he held firm at last.”
“That’s what they say. Father Better-Late-Than-Never, some people call him now.”
“Yes. Poor man. Uncle Peter knew him, you know,” I told Jon. “Said one glimpse of a scalpel and Father Hart’s spine would turn to custard, but that he was the most lovely man.”
“Knowing Father Peter, he probably thought Doctor Richard was a lovely man really.”
My stomach churned, ice splinters spreading into the surrounding tissues. I don’t want to think about this now!
“I think…” my voice came out barely audible. “I think that’s an exaggeration.”
Jon’s shoulders lifted in a shrug.
“All right. But you know what I mean.”
I kept quiet. All the slow, sick terror that’d been building this last fortnight had been unleashed inside me. My chest was so tight with it, it choked my breathing.
“Margo? Are you all right?”
I couldn’t reply. I was too busy breathing nice and slowly and deeply and holding myself together. I was being silly. Or so I told myself, as firmly as possible. I probably won’t even win…
“You know, there’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you. Um, sort of about Father Peter. Something Father Mark told me. He… seemed to know what he was talking about.”
I didn’t want to hear about Uncle Peter any more right now, even something Jon thought might make me feel better about it. It was too close, far, far too close to the root of my fear. But I couldn’t get out the words to frame my objection and Jon took my lack of response for interest.
“Father Mark said whatever the EuroGov like to tell everyone, no one could stay conscious for a whole dismantling. He said even with minions clamping blood vessels, by halfway through you’d pass out from blood loss and if you took the pain into account as well, then most people would be unconscious well before that. So… Father Peter… well, there’s an awful lot he wouldn’t actually have felt.”
The sequence of dismantling forced itself bloodily into my mind: skin, eyes, tongue…
“He felt enough!” I choked. Was I going to be sick, right now? I swallowed hard and lay very still, my eyes pressed closed. I felt and heard Jon draw breath… “Please be quiet, please, please be quiet…”
There was a long silence.
“Margo, I’m sorry. I thought you’d like to know.”
I took several more long breaths and wiped cold sweat from my forehead.
“I am glad to know that,” I said very collectedly. I’m fine. I’m just being silly. “This just wasn’t a good time to tell me.”
“Why not? What’s wrong?” he demanded at once.
“It’s late. I’m tired. I’m stressed about this competition and everything.” All true. If rather unspecific.
Another silence from Jon.
“Well, if you do want to talk about it, I’m here.”
Oh, I’m sure we would talk about it, just as soon as I read him my masterpiece, but I could put it off a bit longer. But after a few more moments of churning internal turmoil and external quiet, four words escaped me, blurted into his listening ear.
“I want to live.”
I felt his head jerk slightly, startled.
“Who doesn’t?”
“No, I really, really want to live. I hadn’t… hadn’t realized how much, until… until I came here. And now more and more, every day, I realize how much I want it. The rest of my life. However long or short, even if it’s just some quick martyrdom not far down the line, just… my life. Away from here. I want it so much. Is that wrong?”
“Wrong? No! It’s the people who are stealing our lives who are wrong!”
“If someone takes your cloak, give him your shirt also,”
I muttered. “Jon… why’ve you been making an Act of Acceptance every night for way longer than I have?”
He sighed.
“All right. All right. You’re right. I know you’re right. I just… when I think of all the people they murder, the lives they take… when I think of them doing that to you… it makes me so angry.”
“And you? Where’s your life in all that anger?”
Jon gave a tiny dismissive snort.
“Oh, my life. My life’s been spoken for since before I was born. Most people live expecting a hundred and twenty years; I’ve only ever expected twenty. I suppose in my mental clock I ought to be at the equivalent o
f a hundred plus by now.”
“And that really works? You’re as happy to die now as a centenarian?”
“Oh yes, I’d say so,” said Jon, his voice chokingly bitter, “seeing they’re so happy to die they’re having us chopped up so they don’t have to! It doesn’t work at all. I want to live just as much as you do and yes, it bothers me too. I just don’t like to hear you say it.” His voice went very soft. “I want you to live, y’see.”
“Well…” I said quickly, then stopped, a shaft of mental lightning illuminating my brain. “Look, we’re both being silly! Think of Our Lord’s example! What did He do when faced with death?”
“He tried to avoid it,” said Jon, brightening. “It was only when he realized it was meant to be that he accepted it.”
“So perhaps Bane will come up with something, and we’ll escape. Because if we don’t try to escape, that’s like sitting back and allowing evil to trundle on its way unimpeded!”
My heart pounded with sheer relief. The knot of uncertainty at which I’d been teasing for weeks was all of a sudden completely untangled. “I’m going to do my utmost to get us all out of here and if I get shot halfway up the bank that’s where the acceptance has to come in! Difficult as it might be at such a frustrating moment!”
“I still can’t believe Bane agreed to rescue everyone.”
“He agreed to try,” I said, more soberly. “It’s a tall order. I wouldn’t pin too many hopes on it, if I were you.”
“Me? I’m not pinning any hopes, Margo. You’ll have to leave me behind, you know that, right?”
A hot bubble of anger surged up in my chest and I thumped him so hard there was an audible smack. He flinched, in shock or pain, I couldn’t tell.
“We’re not leaving you behind! You’ll be going with us, if we go anywhere!”
“Ouch. If you say so. Seeing I’m not sure I’d dare argue with you. I daresay Bane will take a more sensible view,” he added under his breath.
My fist clenched again, then I let out a long breath, my fingers uncurling.
“I’m sorry. I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at them. Did I hurt you?”
“I’ll live. Shame Bane’s not here. We could all be plain furious together.” But his arm tightened around me slightly and he rested his chin on the top of my head.
I Am Margaret Page 19
