Fierce September

by Fleur Beale

  ‘There’s Wellington,’ Leebar said. ‘It looks the same.’ She smiled at the other three grandparents. They all had tears in their eyes. Would I feel the same about going back to Taris? Oh yeah, I could never go back to Taris. Not now, not ever. I watched my new home instead.

  We could see buildings towering tall just like ones we’d seen in documentaries. Houses spread up hillsides more gentle than the ones we’d first seen. These looked greener too. There were a few other boats in the harbour, some heading, as we were, for the city, one passing us in the other direction, and several were tied up where the sea and land met.

  I willed our ship closer. I wanted to see people, cars, curtains in the windows. I wanted to be able to picture myself walking along the grey streets, vanishing into canyons between the towers.

  Mother was so twitchy – jumping every time I moved, as if I might throw myself into the sea, or leap to the wharf and run away. I tried to be patient with her, for I knew all too well that my previous escapade had frightened her badly. I wanted to ask why we’d arrived early, but Grif shook her head. ‘Early is good. Unless you want to star on prime-time television?’

  But her words were calming ones, not the truth of what she felt. I moved closer. ‘You think there’s trouble waiting? That they’re trying to keep our arrival time secret?’

  ‘I think,’ she said slowly, ‘that Willem is aware of dangers he’s decided not to speak of. I think he’s doing his best to protect us.’

  Oh well. Good. If we were in danger there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. I grinned at her. ‘But don’t you feel it too? Like life is pulsing in the air, like all we have to do is breathe it in and things are going to happen?’

  Excited babble filled the air, the wind throwing the odd word in our direction: hills … towers … boats … sunshine … Would we ever get used to this great rushing wind?

  Hera suddenly buried her face in Dad’s shoulder, her arms nearly strangling him. ‘It’s all right, poppet,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘Don’t be scared.’

  Grif said, ‘Hera, darling, tell us. What’s frightening you?’

  She muttered something, but the words were muffled. Dad prized her head away from his shoulder. ‘Say it again, honey.’

  She clutched at his clothing and gave one terrified glance in the direction of the wharf. ‘Bad peoples. Want to hurt us.’

  I was off and running before Mother could shriek at me. Mentally I apologised to her – I’d meant to be so good, so compliant … so unnoticed. Silvern caught sight of me, and after a quick word to her parents wove her way through the crowd.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Hera. Where’s Willem? Can you see him?’

  ‘Over there.’

  We hurried towards him. He was surrounded by a gaggle of Outsiders – some were sailors from the ship but others must have come on board when the ship docked. We pushed through them. ‘Excuse us. Please – excuse us.’

  Willem looked up at the disturbance. ‘Juno. Silvern.’ He nodded to the people around him and they fell back, leaving us and him in a circle of space. ‘A problem?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, feeling foolish and suddenly uncertain. ‘It’s Hera. She’s frightened.’ I told him what she’d said, how she’d suddenly cowered when a second earlier she’d been relaxed and happy.

  He frowned. ‘We’ll check it out.’ He turned to go, calling back over his shoulder, ‘Tell her all will be well.’

  We stared after him. ‘Wow,’ Silvern gasped. ‘Didn’t expect that! No questions. Just accepts the word of a two-year-old.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I was shaken too. ‘Come on. I’d better get back before Mother thinks I’ve jumped overboard.’

  She pulled a face. ‘Mine jumps every time I blink.’

  We wriggled our way back through the press of people, many of whom frowned at us and turned away, not exactly withdrawing but making it plain they thought we were stepping outside the bounds of compliance yet again. But each one of our stratum managed to intercept us and ask why we’d run to Willem.

  ‘I wonder what it’ll be like,’ Silvern mused, ‘if we ever get to live apart.’

  ‘It’ll be weird but so good,’ I said. ‘Think about it! You could walk down the street on your hands and there’d be nobody saying, Have you heard? Silvern’s gone crazy!’

  She smiled. ‘I wonder if we’ll miss it?’

  ‘Yeah, like you’d miss a broken leg!’

  I hurried back to my family and hugged Mother before she could scold me. ‘I’m sorry, I’m trying to be good.’

  She just shook her head.

  ‘What news?’ Leebar asked.

  ‘Willem’s going to check it out.’ I put a hand on Hera’s shoulder. ‘Hera, he says to tell you that all will be well.’

  She lifted her face and Mother wiped away the tears. ‘There, there, Hera darling. It’s all going to be fine.’

  I caught Grif’s eye. Like me, she plainly thought things could well be far from fine.

  By now, people were beginning to ask what the holdup was and why we weren’t disembarking. It was cold on the deck and we didn’t have outdoor clothing to wear, but none of us left – we’d seen enough of the inside of the ship to want never to go back in there again.

  At last Willem’s voice boomed out over a loudspeaker. ‘My friends, there’s a slight delay. Some formalities we’d overlooked. I apologise for the oversight and ask for your patience while we get it all sorted.’

  He did bland reassurance extremely well.

  My grandparents whispered among themselves, then they began to sing. Gradually other voices joined in until we were all singing the Song of Taris, then the joyful song of welcome we’d sung when Willem, Malia and Fergus came to us through the mist on the mountain. Next was a lament for our lost home and after that a spirited song about heroes and action. We were in the middle of the eleventh song when our voices trailed to a halt.

  There in front of us on the wharf, leaping from a convoy of cars, came a line of uniformed men, some with weapons, others with dogs.

  ‘Police!’ Grif whispered.

  Only those of my grandparents’ generation knew who they were. They were the only ones who had seen real dogs too, but these animals were no family pets. We could feel their energy, their desire to be free of their leashes and spring at whatever they heard in the nearby building.

  I jumped as a magnified voice bellowed a command. ‘Drop your weapons. Come out with your hands raised above your heads.’

  The dogs howled and lunged on their leashes, their handlers hauling back on the leads to keep them in check.

  ‘On the count of ten,’ the voice continued, ‘we break the door down and let the dogs go. One, two …’

  We held our breath as the count continued. Eight, nine …

  A shout came from inside the building, then a line of seven men and women marched out, their hands in the air. Not even the police could make them stop yelling out a hateful chant: ‘Aliens go home! Strangers bring disease! Stranger danger! Out out out!’

  I flinched as the wave of black hate broke over us.

  Hera shook and cried in great gasps. But Willem was behind us. He touched Dad on the shoulder and held out his arms to Hera. ‘May I?’

  Dad nodded and Willem took her. He dried Hera’s face with a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘Brave girl. Deep breath. That’s the story.’ He smiled at her. ‘They’ll take them away. Let’s watch, shall we?’

  She clung to him but her sobs subsided as the shouting group was handcuffed and carried, screaming, into vehicles.

  Willem waited until we could no longer see them, and there were only the handlers and their dogs left behind. Then with quiet calm he asked Hera, ‘Has all the bad gone now?’

  She smiled at him and patted his face. ‘Bad people gone.’ Then she frowned and pointed to the building. ‘Boom!’

  Willem didn’t even hesitate. With Hera still in his arms, he leaned over the rails to shout to the police below. ‘Clear the
dock! There’s a bomb in the building.’ Almost in the same breath he turned to shout to us, ‘Back inside. As fast as you can.’

  There was no panic – we were well used to obeying rules – but we understood the imminent danger. My grandparents stood back, waiting for the younger families to go inside first. All the older generation did the same, but I wanted to drag Grif and Danyat, Leebar and Zanin inside, out of harm’s way – they were precious, my grandparents, and essential to our well-being. I waited inside the door for them, and Grif hugged me tight when she saw me – she didn’t say anything, and she didn’t need to.

  When we found my parents again, Hera was sitting on the floor, chatting to baby Wilfred who lay fast asleep on Vima’s lap.

  Leebar watched her. ‘Remarkable child.’

  ‘But it’s dangerous,’ Mother said, her eyes intense. ‘We have to protect her. We need to remind people – say nothing. Not to anybody.’

  Then Willem reappeared, dragging the door shut behind him. ‘Lie on the floor! Face down and cover your heads. The whole dock could go up any second.’

  I complied along with everyone else, but my mind skittered in all directions. How was Sina meant to lie on her stomach? What about Wilfred? Why wasn’t Hera crying now? I turned my head to look at her, but she was hidden between Mother and Dad. What if there was no bomb? What if …

  There was a bomb. The boom of it thudded in our ears. The shock crashed the ship sideways so that it jerked against its moorings. We could hear the sound of objects falling into the water and of glass shattering from the high windows. Cold air blasted over us. Somebody gave a short sharp cry. The ship rocked and bobbed, shaking us loose from our handholds. Sina was sobbing, ‘My baby, my baby!’ Somewhere a child shrieked, then burst into hysterical crying.

  Gradually, the ship stilled, but even before it had settled completely Willem was on his feet and striding through the room towards the corridor. At the door, he paused. ‘It’s all right. The danger is over.’ He gave a small laugh. ‘It looks like we’ve survived. We should soon be able to disembark safely.’

  ‘Into the water?’ Bazin murmured. ‘The wharf must be matchsticks by now.’

  It was half an hour before Willem reappeared, half an hour of shocked speculation on our part. Who would want to harm us, and why? How could those people, whoever they were, believe we brought disease? How could they think we were aliens come to harm them?

  Willem, when he returned, was cheerful. A tug was coming to tow us to another wharf and we’d be off the ship within the hour. ‘In view of what’s happened, the television and media people will want to speak to you. How do you want to handle it? We can let them loose, or else give them restricted access to, say, your leaders and maybe to a few other people they’d find interesting.’ He smiled at Sina. I shot a glance at Vima but she kept her head bowed.

  Rofan stood up. ‘My people, what is your wish?’

  The discussion didn’t take long. Our five leaders – Rofan, Nixie, Trebe, Aspa and Oban – would speak for us. Sina agreed to be interviewed, but she clung to Jov’s hand and looked frightened.

  Willem thanked her, but he hadn’t finished. ‘I’m afraid the country knows the news of Wilfred’s birth. It’s going to be just about impossible to keep the media away from him. They’ll want to interview Vima and I’m afraid they’ll want photographs of her and the baby.’

  We fell silent and my heart ached for Vima’s pain, but she raised her head. ‘Very well. I will show them my son.’

  Silvern whispered something to Paz, then raised her hand. ‘Paz and I will talk too. We can do the whole story about getting Vima up the mountain in time.’ She grinned. ‘Well, maybe not the entire story.’

  Willem rubbed a hand over his face. ‘Thank you, everyone. I can only repeat how sorry I am about what has happened.’

  Nobody asked how he’d suddenly discovered that people had been intending to do us harm. Perhaps news of the waiting media pushed it from their minds, although some sent glances in our direction, their faces thoughtful. Still, no one asked why he had come to speak to my family.

  ‘I hope it remains unspoken,’ Mother whispered.

  Grif said, ‘Don’t worry, my daughter. We’ve all had such a shock. Everyone will just be thankful we’ve survived.’

  She was right about the shock. None of us was keen to go out on deck until we had to. But the actual disembarkation was straightforward. We walked down the gangway and followed Malia to where a line of buses waited. People with cameras trained on us called questions from behind a barrier. Some people waved back and smiled. I ducked my head and huddled close to my parents. Hera kept her face turned into Dad’s shoulder. Then we were in the bus. We chose the long back seat and sat in the middle, away from the windows and the cameras.

  I saw nothing of the city as we were driven to our destination. Nobody else seemed to be worried about showing their faces to our new world, but I listened to the clamour of voices, trying to draw mind pictures from what I heard.

  Look at that building! It’s round. How weird.

  How high do you reckon that tower is?

  Hey! Those windows are like mirrors!

  Look over there. That guy’s got dreads down to his butt.

  There’s a car! A train sort of thing. Bikes.

  We reached the refugee centre sooner than I was expecting. Fergus was already there and he ushered us quickly inside. A woman greeted each group in turn. ‘How many in your family?’

  ‘Two children, two parents and four grandparents,’ Dad said.

  We had to look into a machine that photographed our eyes. The woman programmed the photos into a computer, smiled at us and directed us to take the lift to our apartment on the seventh floor. ‘Stand in front of the sensor and the door will open.’ She pointed to a door to her left. ‘The dining room’s through there. Come down once you’re settled. You must be hungry by now.’

  We looked at each other and started to laugh. We had forgotten we hadn’t eaten since our early breakfast. ‘There’s been a bit happening,’ Leebar said.

  ‘So I understand.’ The woman smiled, and turned to deal with Trebe and her family standing behind us.

  It didn’t take long to explore our rooms. Hera and I would share a bedroom, my parents were in the second one, and my grandparents had accommodation across the hallway from ours.

  We gathered together in the family room. For a second, we stood still, taking it all in. A television screen was fixed to one wall, a low table stood in front of a sofa. The floor was covered in a light grey carpet. ‘How are we meant to wash it?’ I asked. My grandparents just raised their eyebrows. I ran to the long seat under the window. ‘Do you think it’ll be safe to look out?’

  Danyat patted my shoulder. ‘We can’t hide, dear girl. Go and look your fill.’

  I ran to the window, lifting Hera to kneel beside me on the window seat. We were high up, with a view of roof tops and, in the distance, the bare peaks of hills. When we looked down we could see part of the street below, but the doorway to our building was obscured by a veranda.

  ‘I wonder how the press conference is going,’ Leebar said. ‘I don’t envy Vima – they’ll be asking her some tricky questions.’

  Yes. Where is your husband? What? No husband? Well, where is the baby’s father? I tried to send her loving thoughts.

  It was a long time before we saw the media leaving the building, carrying their cameras.

  Have you heard? Prin says it’s thanks to Hera that we’re all still alive.

  Have you heard? Sheen’s frantic. She’s frightened somebodywill tell about Hera.

  Have you heard? Roop doesn’t like Merith playing withHera. She says she’s spooky.

  www.warningtheworld.blogspot.com Golly Gosh How Sad

  www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com Knees still shakin’

  07

  CLOTHES AND NEWSCASTS

  SILVERN WAS THE CENTRE OF a crowd of people and enjoying every moment of it. Paz stood off to one side. He
caught sight of me and rolled his eyes. ‘It went well, then?’ I asked.

  ‘I reckon she’s going to be a reporter.’ He shook his head. ‘She comes alive – loves the whole buzz of it.’ It would be on the evening news. ‘Silvern of Taris – media star!’

  We laughed, but I wished I could have been there to watch. ‘How did Vima get on?’

  ‘She did okay.’ But before he could elaborate, Fergus came into the communal dining room with Malia beside him and asked for our attention. His announcement drove everything else out of our heads. When we’d finished our meal, he told us, our task was to choose clothing from the storeroom in the basement. We were to go in relays, beginning with the stratum below ours who were deemed old enough to choose their own gear.

  ‘Never wear the suits you’ve got on now other than in this centre,’ he warned us. ‘Those images have been broadcast, so those outfits will make it obvious you’re from Taris.’

  ‘Are we in danger, then?’ Aspa asked.

  Fergus turned his mouth down. ‘We didn’t think so, but this morning rather suggests otherwise. Willem is trying to find out more.’

  Then Malia spoke. ‘People of Taris, I hope you won’t be offended, but we have arranged for you all to have your hair cut. At present it makes you very identifiable.’

  Silvern grinned at me and muttered, ‘You reckon?’

  Malia read out a timetable. My stratum would get our turn the next morning.

  ‘Good,’ said Wenda. ‘I’ve been feeling like the hairiest goat in the flock from the moment I saw Leng.’

  But I couldn’t see that any cut would tame Wenda’s crazy curls, and I wasn’t happy about letting anybody chop off my hair. I hoped I wouldn’t feel sick to my stomach the way I had on Taris when we still had to suffer the weekly head-shaving. I ran my fingers through my hair – maybe a light trim of the ends, but no more.

  The events of the morning suddenly seemed long ago. Clothes! Something different from our Taris tunics and the Outside tops and trousers that made us look like some sort of weird sports team. I couldn’t keep still, and I wasn’t the only one. Brex was practically doing cartwheels, Silvern had a huge grin on her face, Pel and Shallym were arguing about style and colour, while Dreeda’s and Wenda’s faces were dreamy. Even the boys looked slightly interested, although Rynd yawned and said, ‘It’ll just be a load of old stuff that other people chucked out.’