We ate in silence for a while, the stickiness of the honey making it difficult to speak. Then, after wiping my fingers on my trousers, I decided to broach something that had been bothering me for a while now.
“Professor,” I asked, “if my mother was given the map by Shy, why didn’t she use it? I mean, why didn’t Mama get out of Lahn Dan herself? Wouldn’t she have tried to escape?”
The Professor stared at a point somewhere on the opposite wall and thought, his forehead wrinkling. “I don’t know. Perhaps…” A flash of doubt crossed his face. “… perhaps she didn’t trust it. Perhaps she wasn’t sure it was true.”
* * *
Later on, I took a wander around the house. Everything looked untouched. Caught in a moment when the Gases came and trapped the house in a bubble of time. An unmade bed with the sheets pulled back; a sink full of dishes waiting to be cleaned; a pair of socks draped over a radiator. It told the story—the tiny story—of people whose lives had changed one awful day, never to return to the house in which they lived. (It could have been worse, of course. This could have been one of those houses where the skeletons were still sitting at the dinner table.)
There were photographs of a man and a woman—fairly young—spotted about the place. He had a helmet of blond hair and dimples on his cheeks when he smiled. She had long dark hair, a chin that pointed straight out of the photos and eyes that caught light like marble. There were pictures of them both on a boat, the man holding up a fish and smirking. Pictures of them dancing together at some party. Pictures of him wearing a funny hat and holding a rolled-up piece of paper. Pictures of her standing proudly next to a yellow modpod, arms crossed all cool and cocky. Lots and lots of pictures. Of dead people.
“A long, long time ago.” Professor Nimbus had followed me up the stairs and was standing in the doorway. “It’s all so old now. So dated. We’re probably the first people to have set foot in this house in well over a hundred years, I’d’ve thought. Imagine that. Look at all this.” He slid a book off one of the shelves and held it up. It had a picture of a baby on the front. “The New Mother’s Handbook.” Nimbus shook his head before pointing over to a small cot at the foot of the bed. “Glimpses into people’s lives. Like sparkles of sunlight on water. They flicker and then they’re gone.” He gave a long sigh. “We’ll sleep on the chairs in the sitting room tonight, my dear. We won’t use the beds up here. It seems somehow … disrespectful.”
I found myself nodding.
chapter 11
THE EMM TWENTY-FIVE WALL
THE NEXT MORNING we set off decent and early after the Bat Shriek announced the end of the night. Before we left, the Professor straightened up the chairs—slapping the cushions so they were back to being good and fluffy—and cleared away any of the messiness we’d made. Then we slipped out of the rear door and got on our way, packs on our backs.
It didn’t take us all that long to get to the center of Croy Don with its tip-tiled, weed-smattered streets and smashed-up shiny buildings. Something I’d noticed on our journey was that the number of people seemed to dwindle the farther south we went, and Croy Don was particularly deserted. A couple of street trudgers hawking their goods, a spittle of Pb men and women and children stuttering by, but not a great deal more. Even the Minister’s Police Force were hardly to be seen tapping their beat.
As we pushed on and the day grew warmer—Professor Nimbus had removed his coat and shoved it into the top of his bag—the people lessened and lessened until, by the time we were coming to the other end of Cools Dun, there wasn’t a single sole soul to be seen. There was nobody.
“Eerie,” the Professor whispered.
“Mmm,” I whispered back. The silence in the road was so strong that it made you feel as if anything more than a whisper was forbidden and that our footsteps were a nasty intrusion. Even the bump of my rucksack against my back sounded like a punch of thunder in the air.
But on we pushed, out of the city and into the countryside. The brown, dead countryside with fallen stumps of diseased trees and long-rotted hedges. Scars left behind by the Gases.
On we went. Towards the wall.
* * *
The afternoon nudged itself towards the evening and we rested up for a while in an abandoned cottage a few hundred yards off the main road. The Professor said that we should try to get across the wall during the nighttime—we’d be less likely to be spotted by any guards on duty. So we slept a little and swallowed down the last of the bread and honey. If the Bat Shriek sounded then we didn’t hear it. It was as though the Minister’s reach didn’t quite extend that far, even though we both knew that it did.
When darkness spread itself all over the sky, we trotted out as quietly as two human beings could. Two cardboard silhouettes against the misty blueness. Two cardboard silhouettes on a magnificent quest.
“After we are through the wall”—the Professor spoke with a deliberate lightness that I knew was for my benefit—“we will go a few miles before turning west.” He wrestled with something in his pocket. “We will use this.” A circular lump of brownish metal was clasped in his hand.
“Er … What is it?”
“It’s a compass, my dear. It tells you what direction to go in. Look.” He stopped to show me. “If I turn this way…” The little dial inside it wobbled a bit but stayed where it was. “And if I turn that way…” The Professor spun and the little dial still remained pointing in the same direction. “You see?”
“Delirious.” I grinned. “Is it magic?”
The Professor shrugged his bony shoulders. “I don’t know. But it seems to work.”
Our tired feet slapped on the cracked tarmac and it was all I could do to struggle down a yawn. We forced ourselves up over a ridge when—
“Look!”
There, in the distance, we could make it out. Not more than a mile or so away. Running from left to right for as far as I could see. The wall. Glistening stone at least ten times the height of me. Suddenly the Professor crouched, pulling me down with him. He put his finger in front of his lips.
“From now on, we must be incredibly careful. If we are caught it’s Two Swords for the both of us, you understand?” I nodded. My mouth felt dry. “We must be as quiet as possible. We’ll keep ever so slightly off the road and when we get to the wall we’ll edge along it until we find this hole that you believe is there.” He looked up, his eyes scanning the area. “I can’t see any lights. But that doesn’t mean there’s no one there. The Police could be sitting in huts with no windows for all we know. We must be careful. We must try to be invisible. Come on.”
We ran over to the field on our left before making our way up and across it towards the wall. It was harder going and once or twice my feet trippled over the difficult, uneven earth and old ropy roots. The night was cold and seemed to be getting colder so I tugged my jacket with the rip in the sleeve tighter round me to keep the cold outside and my fear well and truly inside. I think I was more scared than I had ever been before.
Eventually the hill leveled out and walking became easier. I forgot how tired I was feeling—the blood that was rushing around my body seemed to be keeping my limbs awake. As I got nearer I could see that the wall had been built right across the road, cutting it dead. It looked a bit like the wall had simply sprung out of the ground one day without a care for whatever it was disturbing. Road, field, tree. Whatever.
It was silent, the night like black cotton wool drowning out all noise. When we arrived at the wall, Professor Nimbus turned nervously to see if anyone was watching us before running his hand across the stone. I did the same. It felt warm. It had sucked up the heat of the day and was still clinging to it.
“We must act as quickly as we can. Do you have any idea exactly where this gap is? Where did the market trader tell you it was?”
I shrugged guiltily—I still hadn’t told him about Miss Caritas. “I don’t know. All I know is that it’s somewhere near this road.”
“Let’s go left.”
We worked our way along, the wall on our right. Nimbus’s hand dragged over the stone, feeling for a gap that his weak eyes couldn’t see in the dark. We went quite a distance over the field but found nothing so we retraced our steps back to where the road met the wall and headed off in the opposite direction. A small copse of barely breathing trees sat a few hundred yards away, and we forced our way over the dried mud towards them. Every now and then a little piece of the cement between the stones would flake off under my hand and for a second or two I would get excited, thinking I had found the start of the gap. But it was never anything more than just a tiny crumble of dust, and the Professor would give a little hmmph.
“If there is a way through it must be farther along than we imagine. We might have to go quite a way before we find it. It could be a mile or two in either direction. I don’t think this gap—”
yyyyyyYYYYYYAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWwwwwwww.
A vicious light from the copse smashed the night apart and a siren screamed out, rattling my bones to a standstill. Then another light shone out from behind us and another from the road at the top of the hill.
“STAY WHERE YOU ARE. DO NOT MOVE. I REPEAT, DO NOT MOVE.”
The rumble of a modpod, and the light in the copse started to judder as it made its way towards us. They had been hiding in the trees. My heart slipped into sick. The Professor grabbed hold of my sleeve and pulled me towards him, his mouth fallen wide-open at the sheer horror of it all.
“No,” he mumbled, his face getting paler by the second. “No. No. It can’t be.”
The modpods stopped just feet away from us. After a few seconds their rumble subsided and the door on the modpod that had been hiding in the trees hissed itself open. Out ran three, four, five police men pointing guns. They stood either side of us, rifles at the ready. It was like some sort of weird dream that I desperately wanted to wake up from. The men all dressed in their almost-black uniforms looked cold and stern and unjolly. Like they would easily shoot you and wander away without winking
Then out walked Mordecai.
I recognized him straightaway despite never having seen him in the real flesh before. Commander Mordecai, Chief of the Minister’s Police Force. The man in front of us was smaller than on the scary posters dotted all over Lahn Dan, but his eyes stared with a solid intensity that made me want to look away. The Professor held me tight. Then Mordecai turned and called back to somebody still sitting in the modpod.
“Is this her?” His voice fitted his face.
Slowly, out of the modpod, a woman stepped. She moved more gingerly than the men and she had to ease herself down the ramp to the ground, a thick stick helping her to keep her balance. Behind the bright glare of the modpod’s light, I could only just make out her shape. It looked rather out of place here in this field filled with modpods and uniformed men.
“Yes. That’s her.”
I recognized the voice.
It was Miss Caritas.
“You.” Mordecai’s finger pointed straight at me. “What’s your name?”
I swallowed before I could say anything. “Serendipity, sir.”
“Serendipity?”
Miss Caritas’s voice went up a tone or two. “She’s just a nasty little Pb, Commander. Better keep a close eye on her. A weasly little thing, she is. Probably do or say anything to worm her way out of trouble.”
I didn’t understand. What was going on? None of this made sense.
Mordecai marched towards me, his eyes bitter and hard. “You’d better not lie to me, girl. If I find out you’re lying I’ll—”
“She’s not lying. She does not lie.” The Professor released my arm and took a step forward. “Her name is Serendipity.” He turned to face Miss Caritas, who was looking cruelly amused by the whole scene. “And what, pray, madam, is your name? Are we to be told—”
Suddenly Mordecai slapped the back of his hand across the Professor’s face. The Professor stumbled to one side but managed to stop himself from falling over completely. Stunned, he leveled his spectacles back on his nose.
“Quiet!” Mordecai growled. “How dare you talk to an Au like that?” He walked around us, his moonless eyes scanning us up and down. “Nobody has the right to talk to an Au like that. You should show more respect. You’re a disgrace to your class, Professor.” He said “Professor” like it was poison rolling around his mouth. “You’re both a disgrace. Guards.” He addressed the police men with the guns. “Put them in the locker. Let the Minister decide what to do with them.” He turned and went back to the modpod.
The man standing behind me poked me in the back with his rifle and shoved me onwards. Without thinking, I tucked the locket with the map deeper into my shirt, hoping they wouldn’t see it.
One of the modpods was a transporter, designed for carrying people across Lahn Dan. Its rear end lowered, revealing a dark, unwelcoming interior with benches running along the inside walls. Both the Professor and I were marched towards it. As we passed her I could see the thin, unkind smile on the lips of Miss Caritas.
“It could have been so different,” she whispered. “Silly girl. Too late now, of course. Far too late. Silly, silly girl. I suppose I should have known. You can’t turn lead into gold.”
chapter 12
THE MINISTER
NEITHER OF US said very much as the pod prattled its way along the very same roads we’d just been walking over, back towards the center of Lahn Dan. We simply sat next to each other on the hard wooden bench, trying not to fall every time the pod hit a bump. My heart had dropped about a hundred or so feet in my chest and all I wanted to do was to roll over and give myself up to the tiredyness in my legs and sleep for a thousand years.
As we came over the Tems and twirled east, the Professor finally turned to me and asked, “Serendipity. Who was that Au? Did you know her?”
So I told him. The truth, I mean. About how I came to meet Miss Caritas and how she helped me find the map. After I spilled my beans out, he just looked at me with sadder-than-sad eyes.
“Aus are a strange bunch, Serendipity. They have lives that are a million miles away from our own. So many of them are too afraid to die, and without death everything lacks purpose. To those Aus there is nothing more than the moment. The now. A ridiculous lack of history and future. We know, you and I, that death is just another part of life, and that after we are gone there will be others to carry the world onwards. That is why the Aus will always be weaker than us. Because they believe they are everything.”
* * *
We were kept in the modpod overnight. It stopped moving at some point and I slipped into a sleep, waking in the very early hours with a horrible, unmovable neck and my hair all matted up.
“Where are we?” I croaked.
“I can’t quite tell,” the Professor replied. The modpod only had a thin strip of window near the roof and it was impossible to see out of it. “But I do know that we’re not at Two Swords. I think we’re somewhere on the east of Lahn Dan. Yes. East Lahn Dan.”
Suddenly, there was a swarm of voices outside the pod and a scuffle of feet, before the door started to hum and let in the bright morning light. Armed police stood in front of us and the one who looked as though he might be in charge proved that he was by ordering us out.
“Up the steps and inside, now.”
We were forced into a building that I’d never seen before, along some wide, open, clip-cloppity marbled corridors into a room with massive tapestries and paintings dangled on the walls. At the far end stood Mordecai, his hands clasped behind his back, his face as solid as steel.
“Leave the traitors with me.” He nodded towards the guards, who promptly saluted him and turned on their heels. “I hope you slept well,” he sneered. “The Minister has put his breakfast on hold in order to deal with your case, so be appreciative.” He strode to an enormous door and pushed it open. “Come on. Move.”
* * *
I remember a time when I was a lot younger—when Mama had just started allowing me to wan
der around on my own—walking into Falgar’s Square. Just past Nelson’s Column, by the dried-up fountains, a pigeon fluttered and landed, cleaning itself under its wings, picking off lice. Everybody froze and stared at the bird, it was such a rare thing to happen. A pigeon? In Falgar’s Square? Impossible. But it really was there, as solid and real as the day itself. Not a toy or a ghost, but a real-life pigeon. After preening and fluffing itself up, it strutted around, wondering what everyone was looking at, before coming to its senses and flapping off to safety.
As I tottered my way into that room with the Minister sitting before me, I felt a little bit like that pigeon. All eyes upon me—and the Professor, of course. Everybody shocked at what they saw. I wished that I could just flap my wings and fly off too.
“Horatio Nimbus. Good grief.” The Minister was sat behind a magnificent wooden desk, his elbows resting on it, fingers interlocked. His face was fatter than the pictures and government flyers depicted, and his hair grayer and thinner. “It’s been a long time.”
“Easterbrook. I mean Minister.”
“How long has it been now?” The Minister’s eyes rolled up into his head as he tried to think it over. “I don’t know. Can’t work it out.” Suddenly any sign of warmth seemed to drain from his face. “A pity we meet again on such terrible business. Such a shame.” He got up from behind the desk and walked slowly around it. “Commander Mordecai tells me you were both caught trying to escape last night. That you were looking for some imaginary crack in the Emm Twenty-five Wall.” The corners of his mouth seemed to lift up in slight amusement. As he got to the front of his desk, he perched his bottom on it. “Is that correct?”
A Whisper of Horses Page 6
