‘Why would we want to do that?’ I asked. ‘Surely chance always has a role to play. It can show us things we may never have contemplated.’
Helen, who was sitting on Miss Margaret’s right, joined in. ‘I suppose you are always weighing up whether the chaos, and potential harm, of chance is worth the few occasions when it is of genuine benefit.’
‘But you don’t know,’ I argued. ‘You just don’t know how huge that benefit could be.’
Helen considered my point for a moment. ‘You could come very close to an accurate prediction.’
I didn’t like to think she was right. ‘Isn’t that the very nature of chance? Its unpredictability? And if we are looking at ourselves, well, I’m here as I am because of chance.’
I could see they were all waiting for me to continue.
‘You are and you aren’t,’ Helen said. ‘The fact that you exist is a result of chance, but who you are is a different matter – a very carefully designed matter.’
‘I’d rather not get bogged down in the personal,’ Miss Margaret said gently. ‘Let’s try to broaden the conversation a little. When we talk about chance, what are we talking about? The old-fashioned faiths?’
There were eight of us in that room, all listening, all nodding, all completely unquestioning about who we were and the role we were meant to play. We never thought of ourselves as anything other than special and yet what proof did we really have? We never left this place. Everyone who worked at Halston would have had a design of some sort and would have grown up believing he or she was special. We were never seen by eyes dissimilar to our own, other than our own families, who wanted us to be extraordinary. This particularly applied to the families of Lotto Girls. We were the chance to shift grinding poverty into comfort.
Later, I’d sat by my window and stared at the evening sky. I was restless, I realised, and it surprised me. I’d always been so content here. I’d never wanted to return home and I’d had very little curiosity about the world beyond Halston, but Marcus’s departure had stirred something within me. I’d seen the girls in the years above me leave, but I knew they were just trading Halston for a similar institution, as I would in a couple of years. Marcus, however, had gone out into the unknown world and, in doing so, he’d opened me up to its existence, leaving me with a strange anxiety.
Two days later, Miss Margaret called Lark, Wren and me into her room. She had permission to take Lark to a concert, she said. Wren and I would accompany them.
‘I thought we might visit Marcus on the way,’ she told me.
I hugged her in delight. ‘Really?’
Miss Margaret nodded.
I so rarely left Halston, and until now I had never really had any desire to, but the promise of this trip was like sweet spring sunshine. I grinned like a child.
I had no idea what I had wished for.
Sitting in the back of the autocarrier, I craned my neck in the hope I might catch a glimpse of the world outside Halston. Lark and Wren flicked through datastreams. Miss Margaret sat in front of us, her eyes staring blankly, seemingly fixed on the rapid distance we were putting between ourselves and the school.
We were all excited about going out for the day. Miss Margaret had told us we would stop at Marcus’s for lunch before heading on to the concert in the afternoon.
Lark was more interested in the concert. A male singer from the boys’ school was performing, supposedly one of the best ever created by BioPerfect. I wondered whether she had a crush on him and I teased her about her enthusiasm.
The night before, the two of us had talked about our lives away from school – not the childish chat of perfect homes and husbands and children, but the strangeness of knowing we would soon be entering the world.
Lark had been lying in bed facing me, her large eyes shining. ‘I just want to be able to sing,’ she’d told me. ‘And sometimes I’m so afraid that I won’t be good enough.’ She’d looked away, not uttering her fear of having to return to her compound. This would amount to a betrayal of her family and the place she had come from.
‘They’ve invested too much in us.’ I tried to reassure her but I knew my voice lacked conviction. I remembered what Rani had said so long ago and wondered about what became of those who failed. Would there be a place for us in the BioPerfect world or would we simply have to return to the place from which we came? No one ever talked to us about this and we were too scared to ask.
‘I tried to contact Ivy.’ Lark was looking at me again, her voice quiet in the stillness of the night.
‘Why?’ I’d asked and then quickly burned with shame. I was happy to let Ivy slip from my life. In fact, I would rather she didn’t reappear. Her ineptitude had tainted the rest of us and I was relieved she was gone. Not that I would admit this.
Lark had always been kinder. She ignored my question, seeming to know I wished I hadn’t uttered it. I’d once asked her whether a highly developed capacity for empathy had been included in her make-up, and she’d laughed. ‘I think our empathy is fairly similar,’ she’d replied. ‘You’re just a little more scared of letting others know how you feel.’
She told me that her messages had failed to reach Ivy and the public viewing of Ivy’s datastream was no longer accessible. ‘It’s like she’s been datawiped. But they wouldn’t do that, right?’
I’d suggested we ask Miss Margaret. ‘She’ll know how to reach her.’ Again, I felt ashamed. The truth was, Lark’s words had given me a slight thrill. Datawiping was as bad as it got. It had no place in Halston. It was what happened ‘out there’ to the very worst.
‘I did ask her,’ Lark had said. ‘She told me Ivy was still being tested and that I wasn’t to worry.’ She shook her head. ‘But why would her datastream be down?’
I looked at Miss Margaret sitting in front of us. I loved and trusted her. We all did. She wouldn’t lie to us. It was probably something Ivy did, something stupid that had caused a disruption to the stream.
‘Will Ivy come back to us?’ I asked, my question startling Miss Margaret out of her daydream.
She told me she didn’t know. ‘I hope so, but it’s unfortunately not up to me.’
‘Have you seen her?’
She said she had, a few times. ‘Ivy’s fine,’ Miss Margaret added. ‘I don’t think she was ever that happy at Halston.’
Wren looked up from her mobie. ‘Has there been further talk about testing the rest of us?’
Miss Margaret shook her head. ‘Not that I’m aware of.’ She smiled. ‘What’s brought all this on?’
There was a flicker of panic in Wren’s eyes. ‘We’re not being taken there now, are we?’
I was surprised by her question. The possibility of this outing being anything other than what Miss Margaret had told us had never occurred to me. Perhaps I’d been stupid. Maybe we were being taken away from Halston to be tested.
Miss Margaret leant forward, but just as she was about to speak there was a sudden jolt, a shudder in the airflow.
It was small but enough for my cheek to hit the window next to me. The autocarrier jolted again, and I was thrown into the seat in front, my face hitting Miss Margaret’s.
I think it was Wren who screamed.
The doors opened, the roll of metal harsh, everything happening so fast. It was Miss Margaret who stepped out first. At the time it seemed as though she was being hauled, taken against her will, but it was probably just my mind seeing what it felt it should see. Lark and I were next, pulled out by someone suited up and faceless.
All I could hear were Wren’s screams, shrill and terrifying. I must have turned back to look at her moments after I heard a loud thud. Her body was crumpled on the ground, blood pouring down the side of her face. I realised then that it was me who was screaming.
It’s dark in my room now.
Chimo and I stare at each other. The sense that everything is slipping away from me, that I’m free-falling, is overwhelming. I try to breathe in the way Miss Margaret taught us, from deep within the
diaphragm.
And then I speak.
‘You have the wrong person. I am Delia Greene.’ My voice is less certain, almost a whisper, my words a tired repetition of something false.
I stand. My room is so small there’s almost no space between us. His hand on my calf is calloused, his grip hard, and he pulls me down towards him.
‘I’ll scream,’ I warn him.
‘Who do you think is listening?’ His face is close to mine, a scent of cinnamon on his breath. ‘It’s just you and me. No one will come.’
And even though his words are threatening, his tone is kind, his eyes soft, deep brown like the soil Marcus tilled at Halston.
‘This is the time when you have to take the leap,’ he says. ‘You have to trust me. I’m not here to hurt you. I promise. I want to help.’ He strokes my hair, his hand warm on the side of my face. ‘I know you’re afraid and alone, but I also know you want to trust. Listen to me. Don’t be scared.’
He sits back and rolls up his T-shirt, tucking it under his arm so that I can see his ribs, the flat of his stomach, the deep gold of his skin. Then he rolls down the top of his pants and I am about to run, to scream rape, when he points them out to me. The blood-red drop, the tree of life, the sword and a fist. These are the symbols of the subversives – water, biosphere, data and, last but not least, the waste that continues to slowly choke this planet.
I lean over and touch them, my finger running across his hip. The marks used to mean so much more than they do now, and subversives used to make sure they were well hidden: a piercing that could be taken out, a tattoo, tiny marks hidden in a larger pattern. They were powerful symbols of protest until the Parents tried to diffuse their power by using them as corporate logos, fashion statements for the rich and bored, appearing on bags, T-shirts and caps. Now they guarantee nothing. Yet, as I run my hand across his raised skin, I want to believe him.
‘I know you’re hiding,’ Chimo says. ‘I can help.’
His voice is kind and his eyes are locked on mine. He kisses me then, his mouth tentative, his hand running up my shirt, long lean legs wrapped tight around my hips as he draws me in close.
I’ve never even kissed anyone before.
At Halston we only saw boys when we had dances with the neighbouring school. They were rich boys destined to marry the rich Halston girls, like Alice and Matthew – handsome pairings that would be refined to an even greater level of perfection with a little help from BioPerfect.
There would have been Lotto Boys too. We had an idea as to who they were, just as they would have had an idea as to who we were. One of them once asked Lark to dance. He wanted to stay in touch with her but she was shy and uncertain, embarrassed by it all. Another tried to get my contact details but I rebuffed him, not because I was shy like Lark but because, I’m ashamed to say, my eyes were always on the main prize – the boys who had no taint of Lotto about them.
Now, as Chimo kisses me, I move closer. I’m tired of being alone. His mouth is like honey on mine, his hair like silk, his hands sure as he begins to slide down my pants, and I have to stop him, to pull away, to say that I haven’t done this before.
He smiles at me in the darkness. ‘I forgot you were a laydee.’
I shake my head and draw him to me, my hands on his hips, my mouth on his, both of us wanting this, while outside the children play, people argue and the mediastream rains down on the night sky.
Chimo sleeps, stretched out on my mat. I look at him, the tattoo on his skin, a long scar running down his thigh, the fine hair on his arms. I can hear his breathing, even and gentle, and I wait without moving, wanting to be certain.
I had laughed when I was with him, when his hands ran up and down my body. It was the first time I’d laughed in months, the sound too loud for my small room, and I covered my mouth without thinking. He kissed my wrist then and held me.
‘She smiles,’ he said. ‘Does she know any jokes?’
I punched him gently on the arm. ‘Have you always lived here?’ I asked.
He looked at me. ‘You can ask questions but I can’t?’
‘Oh no,’ I told him. ‘You can ask them too.’
‘But you won’t tell me anything.’
I shrugged.
‘Not always,’ he answered me. ‘I once lived in a mansion. My parents worked for DataCorp, tracking people who travelled on the sieves. They would find them and wipe them. They were very good at their work and we were rich beyond belief, but, unbeknownst to me, they were actually subversives. They hid people away and transferred data illegally. My father discovered he had been caught before they came to wipe him. He sent us all here, hoping we would remain hidden.’
Was he speaking the truth? I had no idea.
‘And you?’ He kissed my shoulder.
‘You’ve asked me so often,’ I said. ‘Surely you can think of something a little more interesting?’
He grinned then, a beautiful smile across his face. ‘If you could have one gift, what would it be?’
With that word, my blood turned to ice. I smiled back at him and pretended to consider his question.
‘Music,’ I said, thinking of Lark’s voice. ‘I would like to be able to sing of all the joy and sorrow in this world.’
At Halston they taught us how to sift through the sieves, to find the right vein for the right information. Sitting out on the balcony, I make sure I am quick, diving through the networks. Some rush ahead, glittering; some trail, uncertain, eventually petering out; others confidently wind their way, ready to slip out of your grasp as soon as you try to follow.
They also taught us about lurking, about hovering at the edge of talk spaces to pick up clues. I don’t have time for that now. I’ll find the vein that Lewis last used and then I’ll use a side route to contact him. I’ve taken an image of the small box I made, the replica of our home at PureAqua, a model made from memory: him, me, our father, and our mother with her plants. This is what I will send him. I upload it and include a time, a date and a picture of a fern – nothing else. I am still so unsure, so nervous that this is a trick, that I have been made foolish by my loneliness.
As I’m closing down the mobie, I hear footsteps on the stairwell. I look up, too late to hide Chimo’s screen. I shrink back into the wall, hoping it won’t be visible in the darkness.
There is a tap at my door, followed by Sala whispering his name. I get up slowly, carefully.
‘Are you leaving?’ I ask as I stand at my own doorway, slipping his mobie onto the chair as I speak.
He is putting his T-shirt on hastily. Sala explains she’d come to check if I knew where he was. No one had seen him. They were worried.
‘You found me,’ Chimo tells her. ‘I’ll be down soon.’
‘Jiminy can’t sleep unless you’re there.’ Sala turns. ‘Don’t be long.’
He apologises when she leaves. ‘Will you come down and sleep with us?’ he asks. ‘It’s cooler down there.’
I tell him I’m used to my room, stepping back as he leans in to kiss me. It’s not because I don’t want him to. I’m afraid I’ll snap and tell him everything, hand myself over completely and say that, yes, I am Fern Marlow and she promised they would come for me but they haven’t. Instead, they have left me here, completely alone.
I remember the smell of blood as Wren lay slumped across my lap. Miss Margaret sat at her head and was holding her tight. Lark was opposite me, white and shaking. She was sobbing, telling us that Wren was dying, she knew she was, she could tell, look at her. She leant over to roll Wren’s eyelids back, the milky white of Wren’s eyes as terrifying as the bleeding wound.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked again and again, my voice like a taut wire over the rapid beat of my heart.
There were no windows to see out of, no view to the front of this new autocarrier we were now in, just the four of us in the back, the air stifling, the ferrous smell of blood mingled with the sourness of fear. I tried to scan the carrier but there was no data to retrieve.
<
br /> ‘It’s wiped. There’s nothing. Look.’ I pointed to the locks, hysteria mounting. ‘They’re manual. And the air – there’s no climate control. How can we breathe? We can’t breathe in this.’
I began to stand, my head hitting the roof, but Miss Margaret pulled me down. ‘Stop,’ she commanded.
It was the only time I’d heard her raise her voice and the effect was like a slap on the face.
We had all heard of kidnappings, ransom extortions, the threat of a complete datawipe unless a specified amount was paid. It was the subversives, we were told, getting money to fund their revolutions. It didn’t matter how many data backups you might have, the subversives could get to them too. You would be wiped blank, with no identity and no data access, and your body would be totally ill-prepared for the environment into which you would be thrown. There was no chance of survival.
This must be what’s happening, I thought. They used autocarriers like this, vehicles that couldn’t be traced or found. They were taking us to a datavoid where they’d issue their demands through the sieves, and when they found there was no one who could pay, we would be wiped and dumped.
I began to hammer on the shield that separated us from the front compartment. ‘You’ve made a mistake! We’re Lotto Girls. We have nothing. Let us go!’ My panic was overwhelming, my voice like glass, all of me ready to shatter in fear.
Miss Margaret put her hand on my arm and told me to sit. Her touch was firm and sure, her eyes focused directly on mine. Lark let out a sob, a slow, anguished sound that began to build.
Turning to soothe her as well, Miss Margaret said it was going to be all right. ‘Breathe in,’ she instructed, ‘slow, steady.’
She looked down to where Wren lay bleeding and tried to talk to her, to tell her we would be stopping soon, we would get help. She checked her pulse and then she put an ear to her chest.
‘Is she dead?’ Lark’s question fluttered, helpless, like a moth.
Miss Margaret’s hand, speckled with the first age spots, trembled slightly as she stroked the side of Wren’s cheek.
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