Who Runs the World?

by Virginia Bergin

  ‘Ask my great-granddaughter; she found him,’ says Kate.

  I am hanging around by the door, so ready to run away from this ghastly spectacle. Kate seldom, if ever, would refer to me as her ‘great-granddaughter’ – and I sense that she is being formal on purpose: the Granmummas’ views are often clouded by the once-was, but I’m of the now – and the daughter of a Representative.

  ‘I . . . I did,’ I stumble. It’s not just the stress of ‘all eyes on me’ that makes me stumble, it’s that Kate told me to keep my mouth shut – and now she wants me to speak?

  ‘She wrote it all down,’ Kate says. ‘Everything the boy told her. You can read it if you want.’

  ‘She spoke to him?!’

  ‘Five days,’ is Kate’s answer. ‘So now what, Doctor?’

  Akesa looks down at the boy. ‘I will treat him.’

  The Granmummas, who have never before had cause to doubt Akesa, heave a collective sigh of relief.

  ‘Did he tell you his name, River?’ Akesa asks.

  Such a simple question – but one no one else has thought to ask. In the Granmummas’ minds, I suppose, this boy is called a thousand names – a thousand ghost names of all the boys that were lost.

  ‘Mason.’

  CHAPTER 5

  UNICORN

  I feel lost and exhausted.

  I am useless; the Granmummas are so expertly busy there doesn’t seem to be a thing for me to do, so I drift in a daze between one offer of help and another; all my offers politely but firmly refused.

  It’s Kate who calls it, when she bumps into me yet again in the hall.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing!’

  ‘Precisely. For crying out loud, River, just go to bed!’

  ‘Can I call Mumma?’

  ‘No. Certainly not. No way.’

  ‘Can I go see Plat?’

  It’s Platinum I long for almost more than Mumma. Her arms and her sweet, sensible, calm-thinking self are just minutes away; she wouldn’t even mind that it was four in the morning – not once I told her what’s going on.

  ‘You can’t tell anyone else about this. For now, you just can’t tell.’ Out of nowhere, she hugs me – I am so shocked (Kate is not a big hugger), I hug back. I feel her skeleton; these days she is more bones than flesh. ‘Go to bed, eh?’

  I go upstairs and flop down – fully clothed – on top of my bed.

  And find I cannot sleep.

  Boy. Him. His. Son. He. Male.

  It is astonishing to me to think this boy is someone, somewhere’s son. His Mumma won’t know he’s here. She won’t know anything about him. He won’t know anything about her. A boy baby, taken straight into a Sanctuary after a caesarean. A male baby grown up. A son. A boy.

  Those words are so seldom used. I just think of everyone as people . . . and even everyday terms like ‘Mumma’ and ‘Granmumma’, or even ‘girl’ or ‘woman’, have never really seemed to mean that much. It’s just to do with maturity, isn’t it? I mean, ‘Mumma’ doesn’t even mean a person with a child . . . it just means an adult, doesn’t it? A person who is working rather than studying or training. People just are who they are. People are . . . however they want to be.

  Boy. Him. His. Son. He. Male.

  What do they mean?

  In my troubled mind, a small, unsure thought starts to form around those strange words . . . although I have always been aware of the existence of XYs . . . and I have always thought in terms of ‘people’ . . . perhaps, really, I have always thought of the world as essentially female.

  The heat in my room – the heat in the house – becomes unbearable. The Granmummas have piled the stove with wood – they are cooking, I can hear the clank and clatter of it. My brain, also cooking, refuses to sleep. My need to see Plat is almost unbearable – she’d help me cool my thoughts – but I can’t see Plat, can I? The Granmummas don’t want the village to know about this. But why? Doesn’t everyone always talk about everything? Doesn’t everyone, always, know what’s going on?

  An invisible gag has been tied across my mouth. A gag with ‘BOY’ written on it, under which I feel as though I am suffocating. I need AIR.

  Outside the house, the air is cool and the sky is clear and the stars shine down.

  And that sky – my beloved sky – I breathe it in.

  I can hear Granmumma Heloise, singing, chopping wood in the workshop.

  I feel the sting of not having thought that this was a job that needed doing. That’s how this night has thrown the balance: I didn’t think.

  The fourth Global Agreement: We will all help each other.

  I am, I know, physically exhausted and cannot imagine anything worse than chopping wood right now, but if you know someone needs help . . . I open the door to Kate’s workshop.

  It is not a place that should exist, but it does. Kate can make all kinds of things because she learned when she was very young. At fifteen, she made her first coffin because there weren’t enough people left alive to make one.

  It was rubbish, Kate says, grim with the memory of it, but it did the job.

  She soon got plenty of practice. She had planned – in as much as she had planned anything – to be a ‘beautician’, and instead she became a worker of wood – not just coffins, but happier things: small and large items of bespoke furniture. All strictly unnecessary. All made in her own time. And the coffins? It was Agreed years and years ago that they should no longer be made. It is a waste of wood . . . but the Granmummas like them, so there is still a steady, quiet trade to which everyone turns a blind eye.

  Inside the workshop, I am at least relieved to see that the Granmummas haven’t yet started on the special, seasoned coffin planks. Careful to avoid the precious Triumph Bonneville, the vintage motorbike that belonged to Kate’s boyfriend, they are chopping away in earnest at the winter’s supply of logs. Plat and I only collected them last week. At this rate, they’ll be gone in a night – or so my sinking heart says. Our house is already as hot as the sauna we have at the Granmummas’ house, to luxuriously roast out winter aches and ills. We will be seriously down on wood.

  ‘Need some help?’ I ask Heloise.

  ‘Nope, got this,’ she says, as Granmumma Rosie tosses another log on to the massive pile and Granmumma Dora splits kindling.

  ‘Well, just give me a shout . . .’ I tell her – as Heloise smacks down the axe.

  Granmumma anger fuels them.

  I feel irrelevant.

  I feel useless.

  I feel agitated.

  I feel lost.

  I don’t want to go back inside; through the kitchen window I can see the clattering bustle of the Granmummas cooking.

  Who cooks on a night like this?!

  I wander out of the yard . . . and see the one job I can do.

  Moon and stars shine down on hundreds and hundreds of spilt apples lying in the lane.

  This is my job.

  Come dawn, I have filled every container I could lay my hands on. Even the tiniest plant-pot is packed with apples – some still slippery with what came out of the XY.

  It had felt soothing and purposeful, sensible, to gather up the apples. I did it, working undisturbed in the dark, with only the universe for company.

  In the grey light of the day that’s coming it looks a bit crazy: a lane full of pots of apples. One more crazy thing in a crazy world.

  Boy. Him. His. Son. He. Male.

  All night long these weird words have sounded in my head. I could not shut them off . . . but now they are drowned out by the sound of a car – Mumma! – coming from the east – and a helicopter – A HELICOPTER! – coming from the north.

  Even before I get a clear visual on it, I know from the sound alone it’s not a little Explorer like Akesa’s, it’s a . . . MERLIN!

  Wow! Wow! Wow! WOW!

  WOW!

  I’ve never seen one flying before!

  WOW. WOW. OH, WOW.

  I look back at the house to share my excitement
and I can see Kate, Yukiko and Willow peering out of Kate’s bedroom window: Willow’s face so frightened, Kate saying something over her shoulder. Yukiko nodding in Agreement. If Yukiko, PhD Yukiko, is Agreeing with something Kate is saying, there is big trouble ahead, my instincts tell me . . . because Kate is hands-down the fiercest Granmumma there is. (I can’t help it, she says, I’m a born troublemaker. A natural rebel. I’m what we used to call a total pain-in-the-ass.)

  This sight would really worry me – but my Mumma is the most calm, firm, fair and reasonable person you could ever meet. That can actually be a bit annoying, when you’re convinced you’re right about something and she gets you to see you’re wrong, but . . . today it’s going to be just what’s needed.

  Mumma’s car pulls up. Mumma gets out.

  ‘AH! Do they have to land THERE?!’ she exclaims.

  The pilot of the Merlin has made a choice – and is descending on to the ha-ha-harvest field – a jumble of a garden, where the last cabbages and cauliflowers are still waiting to be picked among dying nasturtiums and marigolds and next year’s broccoli.

  I fling myself at Mumma – and she hugs me tight, as H&R people in jumpsuits (pilot’s orange, doctor’s green, camouflage browns) come clambering and crashing straight over/through the hedge with a ton of kit.

  ‘I’d really rather they used the gate,’ Mumma says quietly as Yukiko bursts out of our house, rushing past us all, crying, ‘False alarm! False alarm! Apologies! Everyone’s fine! Kate’s fine!’ to the handful of neighbours who have already come running to the top of the lane to investigate this unprecedented spectacle . . . among them I spot Lenny – Eleanor – who takes care of Milpy. Even in the mayhem, I flinch when I see her; she’ll have cross questions to ask me about the even crosser horse.

  The H&R people approach, offering hands of greeting – but the two in camouflage browns carry guns strapped across their backs – GUNS! – and some other kind of thing that looks like a weapon at their waists. There’s a round of hand-shakes and kisses, and Mumma asks, ‘What on Earth are you carrying guns for?’

  She asks it calmly enough, but I know she must be as astonished as I am.

  ‘It’s only tranquilliser darts. Precautionary, as are the tasers,’ says a camo-person.

  I’m desperate to ask what a taser is, but now doesn’t seem like the right time.

  ‘A precaution against what?’ Mumma asks.

  ‘Sometimes they run,’ says a camo-person. ‘If they’ve still got enough life left in them.’

  ‘Sometimes? How many XYs have you found?’

  ‘Not so many,’ the green doctor says, pecking Mumma on the cheek. ‘Are you the Representative?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Mumma. ‘It was my grandmother who –’

  ‘Is this where the XY is located?’ another camo-person asks, pointing at the house.

  ‘Yes, it’s –’

  And that’s as far as Mumma gets, because the camopeople rush at the house.

  The next few minutes go as fast – faster – than any I have ever known. I run into the house with the green doctor and Mumma and find the camo-people confronting a steel wall of Granmummas in the kitchen. A steel wall and the sweetest of scents: a table packed with freshbaked cakes, dozens of them, made in the night by hands too anxious to keep still.

  ‘Unless we have clear assurance that the boy will be treated, we do not Agree to hand him over,’ Yaz is saying.

  So it’s still alive?! I’m thinking, even as I realise Mumma is telling me to go and ring the bell. It’s the alarm signal for the village – used just twice in my lifetime. The signal for everyone to gather at the school. ‘I don’t want people to have to see this,’ Mumma is saying.

  See what?! Are the Granmummas . . . going to fight H&R?! As though sensing this could be a serious possibility, one of the camo-people releases her taser from her belt.

  ‘There really won’t be any need for that,’ says the green doctor.

  ‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ mutters Kate.

  ‘River! Go!’ says Mumma.

  And I go – almost straight away. I should have looked last night. I cannot miss my final chance to see the first and the last of an XY. The magnet of the extraordinary weirdness of that makes me shove open the door to Kate’s room for one last peek . . .

  Boy. Him. His. Son. He. Male.

  Unicorn. That’s what it might as well be. A unicorn.

  A mythical creature.

  Boy. Him. His. Son. He. Male.

  Window: wide open.

  Bed: empty.

  Unicorn: gone.

  CHAPTER 6

  ALARM

  The Granmummas wanted the bell. Everyone else just Agreed because there was no reason not to, and because the Granmummas wanted it so much. They were born when there was 999: a number you could call when something bad happened – and in the once-was, as far as I can tell, a lot of bad things happened a lot. It wasn’t just a number for the ‘fire brigade’ – if there’s a fire here, we’d all deal with it, and we have equipment, and key neighbours who are specially trained. A health emergency? Every single one of us is first- (and last-) aid trained to treat and triage. I cannot imagine the once-was world in which people would have to just stand by while someone could die in front of them because they didn’t know what to do. We do what we can – and then we call Akesa, if we need to – or H&R if she is out of range and we need to get a person to hospital asap.

  The bell, the Granmummas said, should not be electronic. What if the electricity failed? (Which it used to, apparently.) The bell should be a proper bell. ‘For emergencies.’

  What emergencies could there be?

  Emergencies that would require the police?! This has always been the most baffling thing to me, whenever I have – rarely – had cause to think about it.

  What were the police for?

  Why would anyone need such a thing?

  It’s not that people don’t do bad things any more. It’s not that people don’t ever steal, for example – they do! It’s just that . . . the Community deals with it. The neighbourhood 150 Court sorts out wrongs with restorative justice – and if they can’t, it’d have to go to the regional court – and if they can’t . . . I suppose it’d end up at the National Council . . . but I’ve never personally heard of any issue that went that way. I’ve never, personally, heard of any problem a 150 couldn’t deal with.

  But when it came to the bell, everyone Agreed – even though no one except the Granmummas could imagine what it could be useful for. It wouldn’t do any harm. It could only do good – couldn’t it? A signal the whole village could hear. A signal for unspecified and unimaginable emergencies . . . that would help the Granmummas sleep more soundly at night.

  Unspecified and unimaginable emergencies. Two of those in my whole lifetime! Once, years ago, when Hope’s Mumma thought she’d seen an adder in the Memory Garden (it was a slow-worm), and once again, when there wasn’t an emergency at all: there was just Granmumma excitement and joy.

  The bell, salvaged from the crumbling church by Lenny, is housed in its very own Kate-built wooden shelter in the middle of our school ‘playground’ – not that all that much playing happens; even the Littler Ones have their share of chores and duties. The playground is a once-was car park for the once-was home for ‘old people’ that is now our school. It could never have looked or felt like any kind of ‘home’, but is just perfect as a school because the once-was bedrooms are now small, quiet study rooms. The wooden shelter the bell hangs in is Kate’s most brilliant creation. We students love it. We love that we can hang out in it, breathing the weather, whatever the weather is doing. She didn’t just make a shelter, she made . . . a pagoda; that’s what we call it. Kate the coffin-maker didn’t just learn to cut wood, she learned to carve, and to consider architecture – and to imagine . . . And, with Lenny’s help, she made this.

  Our pagoda.

  Such a crazy extravagance of labour – and loved by all. The bell from the church hangs in the mi
ddle of it, sheltered by a wide, low-hanging roof on all sides. Enough to protect it from all directions of weather, and provide a great spot for students to lounge or play. Even the naughtiest of the Littler Ones do not mess with this bell. They have all been shown how to ring it – and there are steps, built by Kate, to enable even the tiniest of the tiny to reach it.

  I don’t need to climb up the steps to ring the bell, but I do.

  I somehow need to feel I have full control of the ringing of our alarm.

  I take the rope.

  It has such a pretty sound, that bell. It is sweet and loud – and frightening.

  Everyone comes running. Of course they do.

  My fright eases as the Community comes to the pagoda – Plat’s face in the crowd I register, and feel comforted by – but still I keep ringing that bell. I keep ringing it until my Mumma shouts, ‘River! You can stop now!’

  And in what is probably just a moment, but feels like an age, my fright wells up again in a different form. I rang the bell: what for? At this most inappropriate time, I feel my anxiety about public speaking clutch and clang me, fear whooshing in my ears, more deafening than the bell.

  Mumma is conferring with Yukiko and Yaz.

  ‘Students! In school NOW!’ Yaz shouts.

  That’s me. That’s me. That’s me.

  ‘River, you go inside,’ my Mumma is telling me – and I feel my hands leave the bell rope. I’ve clutched it so hard with my sweating palms, its imprint is upon them in vivid red.

  That’s what I’m looking at, staring at my own palms . . . and then I look up and realise: all eyes are on me.

  I am being bombarded by questions I can hardly even hear from the students who have gathered in the Community Studies room. It seems it’s not just the boy that’s roaming, there’s a pack of rumours running loose too – none more crazy than the truth.

  My brain judders into life. I’m not sure whether some kind of emergency decision has been taken not to tell the students – though that seems unlikely with the whole village frantic around us – or whether everyone is in such a state they forgot.

  Either way, this is the weirdest and most exciting thing that’s ever, ever happened, and the truth of it isn’t even out yet.