Conclave

by Murray, Lee

  A tunnel!

  There’s no question that Tera will join them now. A tunnel could shield them from satellites, giving them a chance. Doze hurries his sisters, waiting impatiently for them to wash and dry their dishes, ready for their mother’s return. As he helps them with their jackets and bags, tying Chrissy’s shoes and finding Kym’s favourite book, Tera and Ana check outside.

  “Everyone’s gone,” says Ana as Doze approaches. The street is still abandoned. Front yards are littered with possessions too many to carry, cots and tricycles compete with lost shoes and wandering dogs. But there’s no sign of anyone, no police, no people at all.

  They set off. Like a cross between hide and seek and statues, the little party leapfrogs from one back yard to another. Over fences and through gates they hug the shadows, relying on their senses to keep them undetected.

  “So, not at your house?” Doze questions Ana between sprints and pauses.

  “No, I told you it’s close to the beach. He always comes home with sand on his shoes.” With Tera taking the lead, Ana has taken charge of Chrissy, still young enough to let a stranger hold her hand.

  “But at someone’s house?” Holding on to Kym’s pack, Doze makes her wait for Tera’s nod before letting her race to the next hiding spot.

  “No, it wouldn’t be a house. A shed. A place where it’s okay to keep tools, be seen dirty.” Lifting Chrissy, Ana makes the dash next, leaving Doze to follow.

  “A potting shed, then.” He takes Chrissy from her arms and checks to see how far ahead Tera and Kym have gotten.

  “What’s a potting shed, Doze?” Chrissy asks.

  “A place where you put seeds into pots to grow into seedlings before you plant them in your garden or in the fields.” Ana treats the little girl’s question seriously, squatting down to talk to her eye to eye.

  “Then it has to be Susan’s Seeds,” Chrissy answers, pleased she can help with the puzzle.

  “No, not there, sweetie. That’s too public and our parents work there, so he couldn’t have kept it a secret.” Ana gives Chrissy’s nose a playful pinch, then swings her back onto her hip for the next run.

  “Fine, a shed close to the beach where no one would be surprised things are grown in secret.” His voice trails off. When he looks up, he’s all smiles.

  “You know the place, don’t you?” Ana says.

  “Oh yeah, I know the place,” Doze says smugly. “I know the place well. That sneaky bastard, he never said.”

  “He didn’t trust you.” She sounds sad, as if somehow her brother’s lack of honesty diminishes him.

  “No. He was right not to.”

  Still in Ana’s arms, Chrissy’s puzzled face looks from Ana to Doze. “So, where is it?” she asks.

  Doze strokes her cheek reassuringly. “You know how you always worry about me smoking?”

  “Ana’s brother is your drug dealer?” Impatient at the others’ lag behind, Tera and Kym have doubled back to see if there’s a problem.

  “Harsh, Miss. Paulo knew how to help a brother out. Potting shed! What a crack up.” Without thinking, Doze steps into the light just as a woman bursts out of a side door and into the street. Clutching a silent baby to her chest, she dashes down the road towards the ocean. A moment later a man bangs through the front door, leaps the steps, and chases her. Their flight across the sand attracts the attention of a nearby roaming patrol who, instead of calling out to halt them, lift their weapons and fire. The first volley of bullets goes high, meeting the ocean like drops of water on burning oil. The man reaches the woman at the point where the sand dips below the waves. Grabbing hold of her hand, he kisses her cheek, and the forehead of the still sleeping child, then hand in hand they walk into the water. The second volley of bullets hits them in the back of their heads; the momentum pushing them forward, trapping the baby beneath its mother’s body as she sinks.

  Doze breaks from his daze, too late to stop his sisters seeing. He claps his hands over their mouths to prevent them crying out, their tears trailing down his arm as the lifeless bodies drift back to shore.

  “Snap out of it, Doze. We need to go now. The police will come to check for more.” Doze lets Tera pull him away as Ana grabs both girls in her arms and hurries after them. Ducking behind a boat yard, the vessels moored optimistically against the coming disaster, they crouch down in the darkness and wait. But no one comes.

  “Why did they shoot those people, Doze?” Struggling out of Ana’s grip, Chrissy worms her way onto her brother’s lap, pressing her face into his neck.

  “I don’t know, Chrissy. Today makes no sense.” He gives her a tight squeeze with one arm, pulling Kym closer with the other. “Looks like no one is coming. Let’s go.”

  The potting shed is an abandoned cargo shed from before the time of the Fence. Before Doze’s time. A place for supply-laden ships to ferry goods in and out. After the Fence was erected, and the ships stop coming, the shed had many reincarnations: Scout Hall, craft shop and a small nursery. But its out-of-the-way location behind the boat yard, while perfect for the transportation of cargo, was too remote for opportunistic shoppers and so each venture had failed in turn. With no one to claim ownership of the deteriorating shed, it had been left to serve a tolerated, if undesirable, service to the community’s mental health. Currently run, surprisingly so, by Ana’s brother Paulo.

  “Wait, Ana. The door’s open.” Dropping his sister’s hands, Doze pulls Ana back behind a twenty-foot yacht tethered tightly to its stock.

  “So what?” She twists out of his embrace.

  “The front door is always locked. Paulo uses a rusty padlock as a ‘go away’ sign. Customers use the back window. Someone’s broken in.” They all look back towards the door and see that the latch has been crowbarred off, exposing fresh timber beneath the splintered surface.

  “No. They can’t have taken him. He’s too clever.” Catching Ana’s quietly spoken words, Doze can see Tera having to re-evaluate her assumptions about her students.

  “We won’t know unless we look,” Doze counters. Clever can get you caught as easy as dumb. He checks for signs of a patrol, gives the okay, and they all slip around the back of the potting shed. A jumbled collection of indescribable metal sculptures, abandoned parts of boats and farming equipment provide cover from anyone looking from the beach. A quick glance shows the window is closed for business. Doze pulls out a pocketknife and unfolds the blade, sticking it between his teeth like a pirate. After an awkward leap, he scrambles to the top of the wall like an excited Alsatian and, half hanging from the roof, he levers open the small window, squeezing through head first. A moment later, a knotted rope drops from inside.

  “Hurry up.” Peeking out, Doze grins encouragingly as he half drags his sisters into the shed.

  “You’re going to have to start putting your own safety first,” Tera warns Ana as she grabs hold of the rope next and begins to climb. Ana tucks her skirt into her knickers and kicks off her sandals in preparation for her turn. When Tera finally disappears over the ledge, Ana threads her sandals over her wrists and, showing more strength and elegance than either Doze or Tera, slips in through the window to the floor below.

  “You’re here. You’re safe!” She rushes to her brother, kissing him on both cheeks, then smacking him on the arms with her sandals. “You little shit. You had me so worried.”

  “I’m glad you’re safe.” Forced to grab her wrists to prevent further attack, Paulo steps aside to reveal other company.

  “Oh.” Hurriedly, Ana untucks her skirt, smoothing out the wrinkles as she replaces her sandals.

  “Is that you, Brett?” The boy’s face is badly bruised and his t-shirt ripped at the neck as if someone had grabbed him from behind.

  “Hi, Miss. Didn’t know you were a user.” Brett gives his teacher a cheeky grin, wincing at the remembered pain.

  “I’m not, but I wish I were hallucinating about today.” The dim light from the window and open door gives the room a forgotten feel, as if the owners
had simply stepped out for a moment, leaving their tools and supplies neatly arranged on bench tops and shelves ready to be used on their return. It didn’t look like a drug den or hide-out for rebels with a plan. “You know you’ve left your door open.”

  “Yeah, a little diversion. Figured they won’t come back to search again if I leave it that way.”

  Paulo seems like another person. At school, he played the part of a respectful Polynesian, laughing at people’s jokes and being pummelled as a front row prop without complaint. Here, he’s clearly in charge.

  “Quick thinking for a couple of drug addicts,” Tera comments.

  “We’re not drug addicts, Miss Tera.” Brett laughs. “It’s purely for medicinal purposes.”

  “Then what are you doing here? Digging a tunnel?”

  “You’ve got it all wrong, Miss. We’ve got something better than a tunnel.”

  “What’s better than a tunnel?” Tera whispers.

  “They’ve found a way to remove the chips,” Doze answers from behind her.

  4

  “Is the storm coming soon?” Chrissy’s question bounces off the walls.

  “Don’t be stupid. There’s no storm. There aren’t even any clouds.” Kym takes off her pack and climbs onto a bench littered with baggies and buds, her feet swinging in the empty space.

  “Oh, good, then can I have some chips?” Lifting her onto the bench next to her sister, Doze passes them each a pack of salt ‘n’ vinegar.

  He snags a packet for himself and tosses another to Ana, then hoists himself between his sisters. With intermission over, they wait for the show to go on. Tera paces the room like an institutionalised tiger.

  “What makes you think you’ve got the skills to do this?” Tera asks.

  “What makes you think we don’t?” Paulo knows he’s baiting her but she’d started it.

  “I’ve known you your whole life, taught all of you over the last five years,” she answers as if it’s all the explanation she needs. “I guess I’m surprised you’re a dealer. That doesn’t fit with your willingness to try, or your obsession with rugby.”

  “I showed you what you expected to see, Miss. We both did. And not just teachers. Everyone; our parents, doctors, other kids.” Paulo exchanges exasperated smiles of ‘what do you expect’ with Brett, then continues. “Miss, do you remember when we started at college? It was the first day, the first period, and we had you for English. You got us into pairs and told us to tell each other something about ourselves that the others might not know about us.” He can see Tera casting back to that day, trying to remember. “You put us together. Like you said, we knew each other but we’d never been friends. My parents had returned from volunteering. They had seemed fine when they left but so strange, so empty when they returned. Not better not worse, just different. So I shared. And so did Brett.”

  Picking up the story, Brett steps forward. “The next time we had English you put us back in the same pairs and told us to share a goal, a dream. My dad works a lot, you know. Always has. Someone dies and he needs to be there in less than fifteen minutes. No matter what time of day, or what else he might be doing. So I shared. I wanted to know what he did that was so important. You know? I mean, he’s a mortician, right?”

  “So we decided that our goal would be to find out what is was that they couldn’t talk about.” Paulo glances at Ana for understanding. She’s drawn Chrissy’s legs around her waist like a reverse hug and is looking at him as if he’s a stranger. “And when we did find out what they were hiding, our dream became freedom.”

  “Man. Sounds like I shouldn’t have wagged so much,” Doze says. Finished with his packet of chips, he’s busy filling the empty bag with buds.

  “Our idea was—” says Paulo.

  “Be honest, Paulo. It was your idea,” Brett urges.

  “Doze helped a bit,” Paulo concedes.

  “We needed money for supplies, and a place to meet. Doze had recently returned from his little trip to ConClave and I saw him heading to the gully—” Doze’s eyes dart from person to person. This isn’t what he expected. The urge to light up is overwhelming but he needs to be clear-headed for what’s coming. “—and it came to me. Drugs. The rest was a lot easier than I thought.”

  “Poor Mum and Dad. How could you do this to them?” Ana accuses. “They were so pleased when you started helping out at Susan’s nursery. You were using them.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Ana. I was doing it to save them. To save us.” He moves closer but she puts her hand out to warn him to back away.

  “He’s right, Ana.” Brett’s blank face is gone, and his voice has lost its hesitant slur. “I convinced my dad to let me help him after school and on weekends. He resisted at first but then I guess he got permission, and over the years I’ve been allowed to do more and more on my own. What he never knew, and I hope no one else realised, was that I’ve learned more than he’s taught me.”

  “I did the same with my parents at the nursery. I learned a lot from the conversations people weren’t having,” Paulo adds. “We acted all young and innocent, eager to help.”

  “Yeah, but never too bright, making simple mistakes, not totally reliable. Happy, but stupid.” Brett’s face changes to match the roles they’d been playing.

  “It worked on me,” Doze says. “I’ve always thought you guys were a waste of space.”

  “So, can you really remove the chips?” Tera asks.

  “We don’t know,” Paulo tells her. “It was my turn to take a day off school, and I was getting things ready—the spotlight and the surgical gear—when the riot started.”

  “Why the phone call, Brett?” Doze asks. Paulo tosses Brett a startled look. Clearly, that was never part of their plan.

  “Dunno. Habit, I guess. There was a crowd of us hanging out at the front of the school, talking about your Friday ‘I don’t give a shit’ cool under fire when someone picked a chair and threw it through the main office window. The alarms starting blaring and everyone went nuts.” Brett waves his hands like signalling a retreat. “When the police arrived, I thought I should give you a heads up. Out of respect, mainly. But when you told me to split, it clicked. Figured that this was our chance to get lost in the confusion.”

  “And your plan was to take out the chips and walk through the Gate?” Doze jumps off the bench, stuffing the chippie packet into his pocket for later.

  “Something like that.” Paulo’s eyes narrow dangerously as Doze leans in closer to Ana, barely missing her cheek to land a kiss on Chrissy’s forehead.

  Brett looks apprehensive. “But there’s a problem. I’ve only taken them out of cadavers.”

  “What’s a cadaver?” Chrissy pipes up.

  “A dead person,” Kym says, ignoring Doze’s threatening look. She’s not going to hide anything when she has the chance to creep her sister out.

  “Euw. Why are you taking chips out of dead people? Don’t they turn into poo in your tummy?” With a full stomach and the comfort of Ana’s back, Doze can see that Chrissy’s enjoying her moment of attention.

  “Not those kinds of chips, dummy,” Kym snaps.

  “These types of chips are like the ones in phones or computers. I have to take them out of people when they die to send them back to the CCC. I’ve taken a few chances to take a closer look at them over the years, and I think there’s some information they can only get when you die.” Doze keeps his face blank, though he can tell the girls are making Brett uncomfortable with their questions.

  “Oh. Do they put them into the new babies when they’re born?” Chrissy’s voice wobbles.

  “No. Not ‘til you’re old like us.” Ana tilts her head back and kisses her cheek to comfort her.

  “I don’t see the problem,” says Doze. He could live with the old slow Brett, but this upgraded version is tougher to take.

  “They’re not just for storing data, they’re also a battery,” Brett explains.

  “A battery for what?” Tera questions. She’s mo
ved from her cross-legged position into a complete layback with her legs resting on an upturned flower pot.

  “For whatever else they put in you,” Doze whispers. He’s been watching his teacher breathe, counting the beats between breaths as she fights off an anxiety attack, so he sees her ears twitch as she catches his quiet addition to the conversation.

  “So, if you’ve had a replacement...” Tera’s voice trails off as she realises the implications. “... lung, kidney, heart?” Her fingers tap the places where the vital organs lay protected beneath cloth, skin, bone and muscle.

  “It’ll stop working and you’ll die,” Brett answers clinically.

  “I have one.” Tera scrunches her eyes shut tight against the others’ reaction.

  “One what?” Brett asks.

  “A replacement. They took my heart.” With her eyes still closed, Tera stretches the neck of her top and runs a finger across a faded incision mark above left breast. No one needs to look to believe her, they’ve all seen scars before. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. This is a good plan.”

  “Are you sure? I mean about the battery? Are you sure that once you take the chip out whatever they’ve put in you will stop working?” Doze wants to tell them about the voices in his head. But he’s too afraid.

  “I’ve never done it on a live person, and I haven’t operated on anyone with mechanical parts. My dad never let me. I think it was because he didn’t want me to see that he had to remove the parts and send them back.” Brett glances nervously around the room as if the memory is a secret he’s not sure he should share. “But I’m sure. When bodies came that had replacements, there’s a squeal. I know being older my Dad couldn’t hear it: too high pitched. It sounded like the neck of a balloon being stretched and the air let out. When a chip has been taken out the sound stops, but in bodies with no mechanical parts they are soundless.”

  “Who’s first?” Kym’s question lets them avoid discussing Tera’s metal heart.