Who Runs the World?

by Virginia Bergin

  My confidence is heading home on the train. My stomach Agrees with Mason. My heart is already at home, happy in my own once-was (and eating toast).

  ‘River . . . this place is amazing, ain’t it? River . . . River, you OK?’ he says, hopping from one cold foot to another, grinning.

  ‘Yeah. Sure. Come on.’

  He grabs my hand as I take off down the street. I hardly even notice it; I need to do what I need to do – and what I need to do is ditch him. I will not mess this up.

  It’s barely light. My anxiety is so strong it propels me at speed through the crowds, slipping and sliding, dragging gawping Mason, slipping and sliding behind me. I just need to do this thing. Get it done. Do it. Deal with it.

  We slip and slide, searching, until I realise I am actually going to have to ask someone where the address I’ve memorised actually is. This is me; a person who is too scared to ask a stranger where the place I’m looking for is . . . until I spot a Mumma who looks to be in a terrible hurry. It’s her I ask, because I know she won’t have time to ask a single question back.

  I clutch Mason’s hand, willing him to stay silent, as I ask her: Please, where is the Bullring? I do not ask her about the rest of the address: Babyland. Her answer depresses me deeply; I should have asked someone sooner. We need to go back to the indoor market next to the station.

  In the countryside, I have a great – easy – sense of direction. In this city, I struggle. It takes longer than it should do – and another, excruciating, question asked to another hurrying Mumma – before we get back there.

  Stalls in once-was shops surround us. Stalls selling food. Food is not at the top of my plan. But the smell of it? I try to resist, I have to resist! And . . . I’ve got nothing left to trade except a bottle of horseradish vodka, which would be too much payment for some food, plus better to hold on to it in case of emergency. My stomach is telling me this is an emergency – but not one that should require the trade of my last asset. I know, if I asked, any one of the stallholders would feed us. Courtesy would demand it. I just find that . . . I don’t want to ask. It’s not just that I’m too shy and I’ve never had to do that before, to ask strangers. I’m scared that to ask would be to invite questions I don’t want to answer, but Courtesy would insist I reply to. I don’t want to lie, and I definitely don’t want anyone to realise Mason is a boy . . . so we walk on – until I see a Littler One about to scrape leftover porridge into a pig-swill bin. Our stomachs are growling so loud I can’t even tell whether it’s his or mine.

  ‘Could we please have that?’ I ask.

  ‘But it’s not nice now!’

  ‘We don’t mind, really.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to trade? Or chip coin?’ she asks, a little surprised.

  ‘No . . .’ I didn’t have a chance – and wouldn’t have dared – to take chip coin from the Community allowance for this trip that is in opposition to my Community.

  ‘Granmumma!’ she calls. ‘These people are hungry!’

  She calls so loudly everyone left inside the food place hears. And every Granmumma in the food place – we’re in the one called McDonald’s – brings food . . . a serious amount of food. Kate says that in the once-was many people actually could not afford to eat; now no one would ever go hungry, but the Granmummas remember the Time of Crisis, the time that came in the years after the sickness, when there was not enough food to go around. The time when the Granmummas learned to hunt, as well as to grow and to farm – all of which, for reasons I don’t understand, had been mainly XY things. You only have to say to a Granmumma, ‘I’m hungry’, and you will be fed until your stomach is fit to burst.

  Within minutes, we are having plates and bowls of food offered. There’s all the usual stuff you’d expect – insect stews and baked potatoes and baked apples stuffed with sugared damsons – plus foods I’ve never even seen or tasted before. There’s something that looks like a meatloaf, which surprises me because it’s unusual to see much meat for sale or trade. It’s very tasty though.

  ‘You like it?’ the Granmumma stallholder who must have made it asks us.

  Mason nods enthusiastically, reaches for a second slice.

  ‘See?!’ she calls out to everyone. ‘They like it!’

  ‘That’s because they don’t know what it is!’ the porridge girl’s Granmumma says – and everyone laughs. Someone starts with an old, old song Kate likes – something about swinging from a chandelier – and everyone joins in – not in some grand, organised way like it’s the choir, but just people singing – how it happens when you don’t mean it to: a patchwork of a song. Everyone adding bits: pretty bits and not-so-pretty bits, but somehow they all get to the chorus.

  ‘So, what is it?’ I ask the Granmumma stallholder.

  ‘Vole!’

  I stop eating. We eat a lot of things Kate considers should not be eaten. The insects are so delicious even she’s OK with them, but there are plenty of foods she refuses to eat – such as rodents. She says she ate them once, because she had to, but now there’s no need she won’t touch them. I’m a bit queasy about rodents myself, particularly ones that look as dear as water voles.

  ‘We had an infestation of them on the crops! Fiddly to prepare, but waste not, want not, eh?’

  Mason reaches for a third slice of vole meatloaf. I’m thinking he does not know what a vole is.

  ‘Thank you so much,’ I tell her, kissing her cheeks.

  ‘This is really, really good,’ he mumbles through his stuffed mouth as I drag him away, my stomach churning.

  Signs above once-was shops blast my searching eyes as though they were still lit – and none are what I’m looking for. There used to be so many shops! Clothes and shoes, more clothes and shoes, chemists, mobile-phone shops and a place that sold only perfume . . . then, up on the floor above us, I see the one I am looking for.

  I drag Mason up the stopped escalator.

  Babyland.

  It looks closed. It’s dark inside.

  I press my desperate hand against one of the glass doors – a gap between and underneath them so huge heat must have just poured out in the once-was . . . and the door, it opens.

  It looks as though it has been empty for years. Sixty years. It’s full of shelves and rails and hangers – thick with dust and empty of clothes. High on the walls are tiny speakers from which music softly crackles down. Another tune Kate would probably know. But it’s the walls that draw my attention. The weirdness of the walls.

  On one side: PINK. Pictures of babies and Littler Ones wearing PINK. PINK. PINK. Bows in hair, flowers on dresses. One even holds a pony-dolly; a PINK, impractically long-maned, blue-eyed pony that could not look less like the only little pony I know if it tried.

  Massive pictures. Massive PINK pictures. And one word: GIRLS.

  Other side: BLUE . . . and one word: BOYS. Are these . . . supposed to be XY babies?! XY Littler Ones?! The blue-picture Littler Ones hold toy boats and trains and rockets. One or two look grubby; they have been messing about in mud.

  PINK.

  AND.

  BLUE.

  AND.

  WEIRD.

  ‘What in the hell is this place, River?’ murmurs Mason.

  ‘I don’t know . . . but it must be the wrong place.’

  I look at him and he’s just staring into the gloom . . . and I have a jolt of almost feeling what this moment might mean to him: no Mumma.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper.

  Still, he stares. The music in the shop stops.

  ‘We have to go now. This can’t be the right place.’

  We’ll walk around, just check there isn’t another Babyland – could there be?! – and if there isn’t, which my sinking heart tells me there probably won’t be . . . then what?

  ‘There’s no one here!’ I tell him – so loud in this dead place.

  ‘There is,’ he says, still staring.

  A shiver runs down my spine; it’s almost as though I can hear those PINKS and BLUES chuckling
. He points through the gloom, where there’s a small, black, glassy dome on the ceiling . . . and as I look, a red light on it blips.

  ‘That’s just something someone left on,’ I tell him. ‘That happens; I’ve seen it.’

  I have; Plat, Tamara and I once found an abandoned house way out in the countryside, a house that was still connected to the grid and was filled with machines that were still gobbling up power after all those years. In Kate’s day, when the grief had melted enough to allow thought to begin, they realised this was going to be a problem. Brigades of people – mainly Teens like Kate, there being hardly any Littler Ones then – were organised to go into empty homes and SWITCH OFF. The Mummas praise this event; the Granmummas do not like to speak of it. I think they found a lot of dead XYs.

  ‘That’s a security camera,’ says Mason.

  I don’t know what a ‘security camera’ is, but I do know, ‘We need to go.’

  ‘They’re watching.’

  ‘No one is watching.’

  ‘They are. I seen it move. You watch. You can see it inside that glass. It’s moving. They’ve seen us.’

  The children on the walls grin and chuckle. I do NOT believe in ghosts. As a door at the back of the shop cracks open I jump, sending a rail of hangers clattering to the floor – light floods in as fast as adrenaline floods my body.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  I’d be guessing that the person asking the question is having a bit of a wild, dress-up day. Maybe it’s her ha-ha-harvest festival? She is wearing red, shiny shorts and a matching corset, a black leather carrying belt and black ‘fishnet’ tights (I’ve worn tights like that which belonged to Kate), and boots . . . boots that are also bright red and are stacked so high you’d think she could fall at any moment.

  I’m speechless – from the fright, from the shock of this amazing dress-up, from the whirl in my head that is managing to spit out the thought that We’ve got the wrong place.

  ‘I wanna find my Mumma,’ Mason says.

  I told him not to speak. I told him. The way he speaks is SO wrong.

  Her huge black eyelashes (false! We mess around with those too, making them out of feathers) flicker for just one second, taking Mason in.

  ‘What’s the trade?’ she asks him.

  Mason looks at me. I pull myself together and step forward.

  ‘This,’ I tell her, pulling Kate’s ring from the little finger of my left hand, the only one of my fingers on which it would fit.

  I drop the ring into the palm of an outstretched hand with what Kate would call ‘killer’ nails; they are red and long and – the hand weighs the ring, then closes on it, and slides it into the most minute pocket on those shiny red shorts.

  ‘So, I guess you can call me Diamond,’ she says, breaking into a grin. ‘And, no, I do not want to know your names.

  ‘Right then,’ she says. Out of her carrying belt she produces the kind of disposable gloves I’ve seen Akesa use. I think her nails must surely puncture them, but she pulls them on with practised ease, then produces a sample tube. ‘Open wide,’ she says to Mason as she unscrews it.

  Mason, unsure, looks at me.

  ‘Open your mouth,’ I tell him.

  He does and she swabs the inside of his cheek, puts the swab back into the tube and screws the lid on, tucks it into her belt.

  ‘Come back Sunday evening,’ she says, pulling off the gloves.

  I feel the breath go out of me. ‘We haven’t got that long.’

  She eyes us both; lashes steady.

  ‘Maternal identity only?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s usually Daddy’s we get asked for.’

  ‘You can find out who someone’s father was?! You can find out his name?!’ I can’t help myself . . . I feel the weirdest shiver of astonishment. I’ve never heard of that . . . I’ve never really thought about my father. I’ve never thought . . . does my Daddy have a name?!

  ‘They don’t have names,’ she says. ‘They have numbers.’

  I cannot look at Mason.

  ‘But, hey,’ she says, eyes twinkling, ‘what’s in a name?’

  ‘It’s just maternal identity we want,’ I tell her, pulling myself together.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she says, still eyeing us, lashes steady. ‘The test takes twenty-four hours.’

  ‘I’ve got vodka too,’ I tell her . . . I am so far, so very far out of my depth now, it . . . scares me so much it hurts – a bit like the terror I first felt with Plat when we deliberately rowed out too far on the estuary, knowing – but not really knowing – that the tide would catch us. ‘It’s horse-radish . . .’

  ‘Twenty-four hours. You can’t hurry science. Come back in the morning.’

  I can barely nod; I hadn’t anticipated this, that we would have to wait around all day and all night. I offer my freezing hand, shake hers and kiss her warm, perfumed cheek.

  I elbow Mason to do the same – and he does.

  ‘Come on,’ I tell gawping Mason, grabbing him by the arm.

  Ghost babies laugh down at us as we walk out of the shop.

  ‘Wait!’ she calls after us. ‘Are you the pre-arrangement?!’

  I turn round.

  ‘My Granmumma said –’

  ‘You?!’ she says, looking at Mason.

  He nods, uncertainly.

  ‘Well, I’ll be,’ she says. ‘Well, I will be.’

  CHAPTER 28

  ASCENT

  ‘Come with me,’ Diamond says.

  We follow her back through the door she came in, then up some stairs into a tiny, windowless room with a table – perhaps where the people who sold the pink and blue clothes once sat? Then we go out past two doors, each labelled ‘TOILET’, abstract stick figures on them: one figure tiny-waisted, sprouting a triangle from its middle – and both with dislocated dots for heads. There’s a blast of freezing air as we go out through a door that says ‘FIRE EXIT’ on to a wide pavement, swept of snow.

  Ugh! You’re such a hick from the sticks! Kate says to me sometimes. It really annoys me. I know what she means when she says it because I asked her. It means I’m IGNORANT about the world – which I am NOT. I’m in lessons globally and I know things. When Kate was fourteen – she said so herself! – they were doing things like home economics (i.e. cooking – who doesn’t cook?!) and sports (who’s got time for that on a curriculum?!) and post-war modern history (a subject that is now entirely redundant, in my view. Sorry, Plat). Mainly, though, Kate says she was ‘doing’: Boys, Make-Up, Clothes and ‘Bitching’, online and offline.

  Who is the ‘hick’?

  I am.

  Our guide turns suddenly, taking us through a glass door. A big glass door, with a second set of thick wooden doors behind, insulation in a street with buildings so high it can have zero solar gain. And behind that . . .

  For a moment, I do not even know what this place is. The huge hall is filled with all kinds of ordinary- and extraordinary-looking people. Some of the extraordinary ones make the person who has led us here look ordinary. I realise I recognise faces from the National Council – and I definitely recognise the Norfolk Rep; she came to our house once on a tour of wind-power projects. This is a hotel. Mumma stays in a hotel when she’s in Birmingham. Mumma could be in this building . . . my chilled body manages to break into a sweat. I’m so anxious all I can feel is my hand. And I can only just feel that. My hand, holding Mason’s. I turn and I look at him and I see . . . if I’m not in the village any more, he’s got to be light years – light years – away from the world he knows. Or not. He catches me looking at him and raises his eyebrows at me, eyes crackling with excitement.

  ‘I’ll show you to your room,’ Diamond is saying, nodding at another Mumma (?) behind the reception desk; a Mumma who is wearing a once-was XY-type suit, very fancy: black trousers, black jacket, black waistcoat (Plat wore one once and looked amazing in it!) with a green bow-tie and a very frilly orange shirt.

  I didn’t think we’d actually have to be stay
ing here, and in any case we most certainly can’t afford a room.

  ‘We’ve got nothing else to trade except the vodka,’ I tell Diamond.

  ‘Do keep quiet,’ she says, ushering us towards a door.

  I follow, dragging Mason by the hand. I just want to get out of this public space. I’m so freaked out right now I’ve even forgotten how cold I am – and one look at Mason – gawping – tells me he has also forgotten. It is against Courtesy to stare, and he’s staring. In my mind, this is just like the train and I have to remember: no one would think in a million years that Mason could be a boy. The same way I would not have thought in a million years that a quiet-ish person called River could end up killing a man.

  Diamond presses a button at the side of a shiny silver door, and the door slides open, and inside . . .

  It’s not a bedroom, as my hick self had thought it somehow perhaps could be. This is a lift. I’ve never been in one.

  ‘After you,’ she says.

  We go in. She follows.

  ‘I shouldn’t be doing this. Waste of resources etcetera etcetera – but honestly, my feet are killing me!’ she says, pressing another button inside the lift.

  The doors slide shut and the lift moves – UP – leaving my stomach down. I’ve flown in planes and Mariam’s Explorer, but I am not accustomed to this pure sensation of vertical acceleration with no view to help my brain understand the movement. My stomach surges up faster than the lift. I shut my eyes.

  ‘You’re from the country, aren’t you?’ I can hear Diamond saying.

  DING!

  I open my eyes at the sound, see the door slide open – and I’m the first out, bursting out of that lift. Mason, shrugging his shoulders at me, follows. Diamond strolls out after us, leads us up a flight of stairs.

  Stairs are good. Stairs are solid. The lift, apparently, only goes up so far, as does the heating . . . which is a thing Diamond mutters about as we climb and climb and climb, the chill in the air coming back with a vengeance – so fierce not even the work of muscles can truly warm against it.