Annalie shrugged helplessly. ‘I have no idea.’
‘What if we’re too late? What if Beckett already caught him?’ Will asked.
‘We should go down to the village where there’s some signal and check the links,’ Essie said. ‘Beckett loves splashing his arrests all over the media. If he caught your dad, there’s no way he’d be keeping it a secret.’
‘You’re right,’ Annalie said.
‘We should go right now,’ Will said.
Essie looked out the window. ‘It’s already getting dark. I wouldn’t want to get lost on the mountain.’
‘Tomorrow then,’ Will said. ‘First thing.’
That night, Sujana’s mother cooked dinner for them. The meal was rather strange, and the atmosphere occasionally strained, with Sujana a glowering and largely silent presence.
‘I thought you might like to try some Norlinden specialties,’ the old lady murmured. Norlind was a cold country, and their specialties seemed to include animals that no one in Dux would ever have thought of eating. There was pickled reindeer head, fermented fish served with strange herbs, a strong-smelling greenish cheese and a stew made with rubbery rings of meat of a disturbingly functional nature. (‘Do you think that was intestine?’ Essie asked later.) The salad was made of moss. Once you got past the unusualness of it, some of it was quite nice, although some of it was really not.
‘Norlinden food is an acquired taste,’ Sujana’s mother said, after she’d watched them tackle it with varying degrees of enthusiasm. ‘Do have some bread.’
‘I like the food,’ Will said. ‘I’m not fussy.’
‘Of course,’ the old lady murmured, ‘it’s difficult to get all the old things nowadays.’
‘Really?’ Annalie said politely.
‘Oh yes. They have to use different fish, for one thing.’
‘The old kind are extinct,’ Sujana explained.
‘And the reindeer heads really don’t have the depth of flavour any more. They used to hang them for a hundred and eighty days,’ Sujana’s mother mused. ‘Even the companies that used to make the things I liked don’t exist anymore. You can’t get Hiffirin’s sauces these days. You wouldn’t remember them, they were before the Flood. But they were very good. And fruit, too. Fruit is different.’
‘Mother thinks the fruit used to taste better before the Flood,’ Sujana said.
‘I don’t think it, dear. I know it. You don’t believe me, but it’s true.’
‘I do believe you,’ Sujana said. ‘Fruit responds to the environment it grows in. Change the environment, change the fruit.’
‘This was my grandmother’s house, you know,’ Sujana’s mother said. ‘I used to stay here in the summer time. It was lovely here then. In summer there were so many alpine flowers. Beautiful.’ She paused. ‘Of course, even then, when I was a little girl, long before the Flood, the weather was going wrong. There used to be a glacier up there.’ She pointed to the roof, indicating the glacier had once been higher up the mountain.
‘It vanished, between one summer and the next. One year it was here, the next year it came down, all at once, melted in the spring, just like that. They said it had been there for tens of thousands of years, and then it was gone.’ She paused. ‘When the Flood came, I was living by the sea. I had a nice house and I was building a beautiful garden. The first I knew of it was when I heard them talking about a storm in Brundisi. It was a very strange storm, it was on the news, and it started to rain and it didn’t stop. At first it seemed like the sort of thing that happened everywhere—strange weather—but then the storm came to Norlind too. It spread everywhere, right around the world. Clouds like you’d never seen before. And then it rained. It rained and rained and rained, so much rain, like being under a waterfall. The land is very steep here. The water ran down the mountains and made flash floods that went through the towns, all the way down to the fjords. Then the ocean rose and took the rest.
‘I tried to go to work that day. The authorities had warned us to stay in our homes, but I had an important report to finish. I didn’t know, you see, that the world was about to end. So I put on my rain boots and coat and went out into it. The water was everywhere but there were still people trying to go about their business. The streets were choked with cars. No buses were running, no trains. I was walking, getting soaked. I didn’t make it to the office, luckily—I probably would have drowned if I had. You couldn’t open the windows in my building and the water rose so fast the emergency exits would have been underwater. As I was walking I heard a roar, and then a great surge of water came towards me. I ran into a shopping mall. We were all running up the escalators as the water poured in behind us, fighting up the stairs to get high enough. So much water, so powerful, filled with debris. If it hit you, you went down and you never came back up. I waited in the mall for the rest of the day, and the day after that. We kept hoping someone would come and tell us that it was safe to go out, but no one came. Eventually the water went down a little and a few people started to leave. I decided to go too—I wanted to make sure my little house was all right.’
Sujana’s mother paused. ‘The flash flood had burst the back door open and gone right through. Someone had already stolen my valuables and everything was sodden and stinking. I started cleaning up—there was mud stuck to the walls, it was impossible to get it off—but then the police came and told me that the ocean was rising, they didn’t know how far it would come, I needed to get to higher ground. So I packed up everything I had left, and I brought it here, to my grandmother’s house, and I never went back.’ She paused. ‘It all drowned. My lovely house, my garden. The office, the company I worked for, all of it was gone. We sold office supplies. Paperclips. Not much call for paperclips after the sea rose and swallowed everything.’
‘Not everything,’ Essie said, trying to offer reassurance, ‘not forever. The world’s been rebuilt.’ The old lady gave her a kind smile. ‘I know, dear,’ she said. ‘But not my world.’
Paperwork
Pod spent a wretched, lonely night in his cell.
The next morning, he was taken out and put in another interview room. A woman came in, looking like she’d stepped out of a whirlwind; her hair was wild, her stockings laddered, and she looked terribly tired.
‘So,’ she said, ‘they tell me you’re undocumented.’
‘I’ve got no papers,’ Pod agreed cautiously.
‘I’m Sera, I’m a refugee caseworker,’ she said. ‘I’m here to help. You’re lucky I had a little gap in my schedule, sometimes it can be weeks before I can get to see people.’ She opened a handmade felt bag and rummaged inside for some papers. ‘Now, you don’t have a last name or country of origin, is that right?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Are you making a claim for asylum here in Norlind?’
‘Asylum?’
‘Do you want to be allowed to stay here?’
‘No,’ Pod said. ‘I want them to let me go.’
‘Right. We won’t be needing that form then. So. You haven’t been charged with anything yet. Something about tracking down the owner of a boat—’
‘It’s not what they think! I swear I didn’t steal the boat—’
‘Of course not,’ Sera said, with an automatic, not-reassuring smile. ‘If they place charges, you’ll probably be kept in custody until the court date comes up. If you’re found guilty, depending on the judge, they might put you into juvenile justice or they might just deport you. Oh wait, you don’t have a country of origin, do you?’
‘No,’ Pod said.
‘Right. Well in that case they’ll probably send you to Camp Lov or to Tappa.’
‘Where?’
‘Camp Lov is on an island north of Dormund. It’s not bad as camps go, although it is pretty cold in the winter. Tappa is in the Bay of Kinute.’
Pod had heard of the Bay of Kinute. ‘You mean Hulk Harbour?’ he said, alarmed. ‘I’m not going there!’
‘I’m afraid you don’t get to choose
,’ Sera said. ‘It’s more a question of who will take you.’
‘Once you’re stuck in those places, you never get out,’ Pod said. ‘If they don’t press charges, what happens to me then?’
‘Well, they’ll still deport you,’ Sera said.
‘But what if my friends come to claim me?’ Pod asked. ‘We don’t want to stay in Norlind. If you just let me get in touch with them, they can vouch for me, we can all get out of your hair, and I won’t be Norlind’s problem any more.’
‘But we’ve already started the paperwork,’ Sera said, as if that settled everything. ‘You’re in the system now. Even if they don’t press charges, something will have to be done. We can’t just let you go.’
‘But I have somewhere to go!’ Pod said. ‘I have friends who’ll take care of me!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Sera said. ‘We have rules.’
Pod spent the rest of the day in his cell. Then, precisely twenty-four hours after he was signed in to police custody, Tomasson appeared and unlocked the cell door.
‘Have you decided not to press charges?’ Pod asked hopefully.
‘We’re still pursuing our inquiries,’ Tomasson said. ‘But you are a juvenile. We can’t keep you here longer than twenty-four hours. You’re being transferred to a youth shelter.’
There was more paperwork, then Tomasson gave Pod a sealed bag and handed him over to Sera, the refugee caseworker. There were no handcuffs for the transfer; Pod wondered whether that was an oversight or another Norlinden regulation.
Tomasson escorted them back through all the security doors, then put Pod into the back of an electric car. The officer and the caseworker spoke briefly in Norlinden, then Sera got into the driver’s seat. ‘I’m taking you to a youth shelter,’ she explained. ‘It’s a secure facility but it’s nicer than being in a police cell. You’ll stay there until we know what’s happening with your case.’
What was there to say? Pod nodded.
Sera started the engine and began to drive. Pod opened the envelope he’d been given; it contained Annalie’s shell. He checked its display for the symbols that meant someone had called, but saw nothing.
‘Can I make a call?’ he asked.
‘Oh!’ Sera said. ‘Did they give that back to you? Yes, I suppose you can.’
He called Essie’s phone, already rehearsing in his mind what he was going to say. The phone rang and rang, then he heard a click, and he jumped in and began to speak: ‘Essie, tell Annalie—’ But then he heard Essie’s voice speaking over him, carefree and bright: ‘Hi, this is Essie, you know what to do!’ Then there was a beep. He hesitated, then said, ‘Guys, I’m in trouble. Call me back!’
He saw the caseworker glance at him in the rear-view mirror and he sank a little lower in his seat.
They were driving through late afternoon traffic. He wondered how far they had to go. ‘This youth shelter,’ he said, ‘how far away is it?’
‘Oh, not too far,’ Sera said vaguely.
Pod looked around him, wondering what to do. She’d said the shelter was a secure facility; this might be his best—indeed, only—chance to escape. The lights turned red and the car came to a stop. He reached out a stealthy hand and tried the door handle. It moved but the door stayed shut—it was locked. He peeped over at the front passenger door, but had no way of telling whether it was locked too.
The lights went green. The car began to move again.
The wait at the traffic lights is quite long, he thought. If I jump out while she’s stuck in traffic, there’s nothing she can do about it.
He waited anxiously for another red light, but the traffic flowed smoothly past green light after green light. He began to be afraid they’d reach their destination without stopping again.
A sound startled him—it was a shell ringing. He checked his own, but it was silent. Sera activated a headpiece (it was a very sober one, not sparkly like Essie’s), and began speaking in Norlinden. Pod couldn’t understand what she said, but he recognised the tone—anxious, put-upon. She seemed desperate to get off the phone, but the caller would not let her go. A light turned amber ahead of them, then red. She came to a stop, still remonstrating with whoever was on the shell.
Pod grabbed his chance. He launched himself between the two front seats, reaching for the front passenger door. Sera shrieked as he pushed past her. The door didn’t move. Locked! Quick as a flash, he turned and lunged for the driver’s door. To his relief it fell open, slamming into the car next to it. Pod fought his way across Sera’s lap, spilled out onto the road, gathered himself up and started to run.
The owner of the car he’d hit with the door started shouting, Sera started shouting, but Pod kept running, weaving through the stream of pedestrians crossing the road, and then putting as much distance between himself and his caseworker as he possibly could. He ran and he ran, without any thought of where he was going. He was in an unknown town in an unfamiliar country and his friends were far away. It didn’t matter where he went, as long as he got away.
But he didn’t run for long. As soon as it seemed safe, he dropped to a walk. Nothing looked more suspicious than a kid running down a street at top speed. He didn’t want to get himself re-arrested. He needed to find somewhere he could hide while he worked out what to do next.
Pieces of the machine
The next morning, Annalie was up before Will and Essie. She crept downstairs without waking them and found Sujana, a large, brooding presence, hunched over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table.
‘Good morning,’ Sujana said, eyeing her uneasily. ‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ She paused. ‘Oh yes, Duxish children don’t drink coffee do they?’
Annalie shook her head, and got herself a drink of water.
‘Did you know about all this?’ Sujana asked. ‘What Spinner used to do?’
Annalie shook her head.
‘He never talked about it? The work, or us?’
‘None of it.’
Sujana nodded, her fingers tapping agitatedly against her coffee mug. She clearly had something on her mind. ‘It was Spinner who convinced us all to leave, you know,’ she said. ‘Some of us would have stayed, I think. But he talked us all round.’ She paused. ‘Back then we all agreed to keep the research safe. In perpetuity, until the world was ready for it. Do you think Spinner still means to keep that promise?’
Sujana was looking at Annalie with an urgent intensity. She wasn’t making idle conversation—she really wanted to know the answer.
‘He never talked about it,’ Annalie said, ‘so I don’t know exactly what he thinks. But I know he believes this research is important. That’s why he’s trying so hard to keep it safe.’
‘But is he trying to keep it safe?’ Sujana asked. ‘Or is he trying to keep it safe from the Admiralty?’
‘Isn’t that the same thing?’
Sujana was silent for a long moment, frowning. Then she said, ‘The work I’ve been doing—it’s more than just a job to me. It’s been all I think about, night and day, for the last fifteen years.’ She paused. ‘When we first stole the research, we decided to encrypt the data to keep it safe and then divide it all up between us. We each had a piece of it. None of it makes any sense without all the other pieces.’
‘Like a jigsaw puzzle?’
‘More like an engine. If you don’t have all the pieces, the thing won’t go. Of course, it isn’t an engine: it’s a huge and incredibly complex collection of interconnected research. You have to have all of it, or it’s worthless.’
Sujana gave her a stern look to make sure she was following. Annalie nodded attentively.
‘Since the team split up, I’ve done my best to carry on with my part of the work, and I’ve made a great deal of progress. Remarkable progress, under the circumstances. But for it to mean anything, I need to be able to plug it all back in to the original data. Do you see?’
‘Yes,’ Annalie said cautiously. The point seemed clear enough—she just couldn’t quite see what it had to do with h
er.
‘I can’t let that data be destroyed,’ Sujana said. ‘It’s too important. I don’t just mean important to me. It’s important for the world.’
‘Is anyone talking about destroying the data?’ Annalie asked.
‘Spinner is,’ Sujana said, guilt contorting her face. ‘He was here.’
Annalie was jolted. ‘So why did you tell us he wasn’t?’
‘He wanted to talk about what we do with the research now that the Admiralty are after him,’ Sujana explained agitatedly. ‘He was talking about moving it, putting it in a safe place where no one can get at it. He said he had a plan, although he wouldn’t tell me what it was. But he said that if Beckett ever caught up with him, he couldn’t risk letting it fall into the Admiralty’s hands. I think he’d be willing to destroy it, or at least destroy his share—’
‘And that would mean destroying all of it, because it’s worthless unless it’s all there,’ Annalie said.
‘Exactly!’ Sujana said, in an anguished tone. ‘Spinner thought he could stay ahead of the Admiralty, but you know that’s impossible. What can one man do with the whole Admiralty on his tail? There’s nowhere they can’t reach. Look what happened to Dan Gari!’
She paused, fretting, then went on. ‘After Spinner left here I was so worried. I’d tried to get him to promise he wouldn’t do anything that couldn’t be undone, but he wouldn’t promise, he just wouldn’t. So—’ Sujana broke off, looking wretched.
‘So?’ Annalie prompted, an awful feeling creeping through her.
‘I called Avery.’ Seeing Annalie’s look of horror, Sujana protested, ‘I didn’t know what else to do. I thought if Avery arrested him quickly and unexpectedly he could still save the research.’
‘But—but—isn’t that exactly what would force him to destroy the research? If he saw Beckett coming for him?’
‘Well—not if they surprised him.’
Annalie was so horrified she could barely think. ‘So—what are you saying? Are we too late? Has Spinner been arrested?’
The Castle in the Sea: Quest of the Sunfish 2 Page 12
