Fierce September

by Fleur Beale

  ‘How long are those kids going to be?’ Brex demanded. ‘I’ll explode if I have to wait much longer.’

  ‘Explode,’ said Marba. ‘Not the best word to choose.’

  She gave him a shove. ‘Shut up, grandpa!’

  Marba looked startled – we’d always given him due deference. Then Brex hugged him. ‘Sorry. I’m just excited.’

  The hug startled him more.

  I laughed. ‘So, Marba, how did it make you feel when Brex behaved unexpectedly towards you?’ Perhaps, at last, he was beginning to experience emotions the way the rest of the world did.

  He looked thoughtful. ‘It was interesting. Different. Disconcerting.’

  ‘That’s our Marba,’ Paz said. ‘The honest scientist.’

  Shallym clapped her hands. ‘Look! The others are back. Let’s go to the clothes!’

  We clattered down the stairs and Fergus grinned at us from the middle of the storeroom. ‘We have to put a limit on what you can take, so choose carefully.’ We listened carefully too as he told us what sorts of things we’d need, then he handed each of us a linen bag and told us we had thirty minutes.

  The first thing I found on the list was the warm jacket. It was bright red with a fur-lined hood. I folded it and put it in the linen bag.

  ‘Jeans!’ Wenda squealed. ‘Oh wow, I so hoped these would still be around.’ We’d seen them often on young women in the documentaries and films we’d been shown on Taris.

  I found a greeny-brown patterned zip-up top to wear with my own blue jeans.

  ‘Ah,’ said Fergus, ‘I see you like the vintage style.’ He took pity on my puzzlement and told me that most clothes now fastened simply by pressing the edges of the fabric together. ‘It’s a sophisticated form of Velcro, if you know what that is.’

  That explained how you were meant to put on some of the skinny garments we’d discarded as useless. We rummaged through the piles for another look.

  The time zapped past, so that we jumped when Fergus gave us a five-minute warning. He made us show him what we’d chosen. ‘To make sure nobody takes more than they should, but also to make sure what you’ve got won’t make you stand out from the local people.’

  None of us had taken more than we should – we people of Taris were compliant, but we were also used to living with the good of all in mind. Fergus shook his head over a shirt of bright pink zebra stripes Biddo had chosen. ‘No self-respecting citizen would wear that.’ He dropped it on the floor and grinned at Biddo. ‘Go and find something … calmer.’

  The rest of us stared after him as he ambled back to the shelves. That was so unlike the Biddo we thought we knew! He was the boy all us girls hoped we wouldn’t end up having to marry – he was nice enough, but so staid, so boring, so only interested in machinery and technology.

  I took in at the rest of the stuff he’d chosen. A fluoro jacket, jeans with a splash of glitter across the pockets …

  Fergus went over, picked out a plain grey sweater and handed it to him. ‘For the occasions when you might find it useful to blend into the background.’

  Biddo shrugged. ‘Okay. Thanks.’

  We went back upstairs, well pleased with our haul.

  ‘Come to my place,’ Silvern said to the rest of us girls. ‘Let’s try it all on.’

  When our stomachs reminded us it was time to eat again, we changed into our jeans, packed up the rest of our gear and returned to the dining room where chatter and excitement greeted every new arrival. Mother was wearing jeans and a jumper made of fluffy pale green wool. ‘Wow! You look so stylish!’ She looked happy too. Dad had gone for a plain look in shades of brown, but he looked good as well. Hera was the only one of us not in trousers. She kept pirouetting to make her blue skirt flare out and sparkle.

  The clothes took our minds off the events of the early morning, but once we’d finished the meal and Willem was ready to speak to us, we could no longer ignore what had happened. Why had those people tried to harm us? We hoped Willem had some answers.

  ‘Good evening, everyone.’ He paused, waiting for our murmurs of greeting to fade. ‘This morning’s events … I can only apologise.’ He checked his watch. ‘The news will be on shortly, and that will make interesting viewing, but briefly this is the situation as we understand it so far.’

  He gave us the bare outline – the group who had targeted us were determined to keep refugees out of Aotearoa. ‘We had a big influx after the fourth pandemic. We took in as many as we could. Some said it was too many. Others asked how we could turn away the desperate. There were problems, of course. Many of the refugees came from very different cultures.’

  Oban asked, ‘Did this group – the ones who tried to kill us – come into being after that?’

  Willem nodded. ‘After that pandemic, people who thought like that began to get themselves organised.’

  ‘And have been a thorn in the flesh of all the rest of the country ever since,’ Malia added.

  Willem managed a brief smile. ‘Indeed they have, which is why we took such care to keep the details of your arrival secret. We were not careful enough, as it turned out.’ He signalled to Leng. ‘News time.’

  She pressed a control which unfurled a big screen on the back wall. ‘Just a word of warning – some of the images you’re about to see are holograms. They might be frightening for the younger ones, but at this time of day only benign images are shown.’

  That made us sit up. I glanced at Biddo, sitting pretty in his fluoro jacket and glittery jeans. As I thought, he was much more focused on the possibilities of holograms than he had been on the clothes.

  The newscast began with shots of the explosion. We saw the blast punch into our ship and debris hurtling through the air to splash into the sea beyond the ship. Then we saw the wharf itself disintegrate and piece by piece fall into the water.

  I kept an eye on my sister, but she was unconcerned. Somebody had given her a 3D puzzle made of bright plastic and her attention was entirely on that.

  An announcer’s face filled the screen.

  ‘Man! Take a look at her,’ Yin whispered to Paz.

  Silvern thumped the pair of them. I couldn’t blame them – the woman was stunning – but she didn’t add anything to what Willem had already told us.

  Next were shots of us leaving the ship. I held my breath, though none of the footage showed any of my family.

  The announcer came on again, telling of the investigation that was under way. Then, between one word and the next, the space in front of the screen was filled with the black-clad figures we’d seen that morning – the people who had been handcuffed and taken away by the police. They yelled hate at us, jabbed clenched fists in the air, filled the room with their presence and their hate.

  Leng hit a switch and the figures vanished. Two seconds, maybe. They were only in the room briefly but they were so close, so real, so poisonous. Children cried, parents’ faces paled. Hera, though, merely glanced up when the commotion started and went right back to playing with her toy when the figures vanished.

  From the other end of the room Willem called for our attention. He too looked shaken. ‘Friends – as you will have understood, what you just saw was a holographic broadcast, but how those responsible managed to hack into the network I have no idea.’ He stopped, but it was plain he had more to say. At last he looked out at us again. ‘I’m very much afraid this means you will have to be extremely vigilant. By far the majority of the population will welcome you, but this group is dangerous. Until the perpetrators of these outrages are all found and dealt with, do nothing to alert anyone to the fact that you are from Taris.’

  Rofan raised her hand. ‘What happens to such people in Aotearoa, Willem? How do you deal with those who go against the law?’

  ‘We have two options,’ he told us. ‘One is jail and the other is to give the miscreant the choice between incarceration or joining a resettlement programme in one of our neighbouring Asian countries.’

  Grif said, ‘If you’ll forgive th
e comparison, Willem, that sounds very much like the transportation of prisoners to the Australian penal colonies in the nineteenth century.’

  ‘It does indeed – and it’s still very controversial. The big difference is that our Asian neighbours themselves came up with the programme. The catch for the offender is that they must agree to undergo personality-altering brain surgery. As you can imagine, few choose it, though some prefer it to the prospect of prison if the sentence is a long one. Which will be the case for the leaders of this outrage.’

  He waited for more questions, but we had none, or we had too many. He bade us good night, and said he would see us in the morning. It had been a momentous day. Parents with young children began leaving the room. Mother gathered up Hera and her toy. ‘Will you come too?’ she asked Dad and me.

  We shook our heads. ‘I’ll come up when the news is finished,’ Dad said. ‘Best we know all we can.’

  I wanted to see Silvern on the screen. And Vima. I hoped we hadn’t missed them. But when Leng turned the television on again, the footage continued from exactly where it had been before the holograms burst into the room.

  ‘Some sort of recording system,’ Biddo muttered.

  We cheered as Silvern’s face filled the screen. She was good – better than good. She spoke of our despair, of how we had believed we would die within a month. She paused, then said quietly, ‘But we would have been dead within a week if the generous people of Aotearoa hadn’t rescued us.’ She looked directly at the camera. ‘We thank you all from the depths of our hearts.’

  Then Aspa described how our systems had failed. The interviewers asked Nixie to tell of the early days of Taris, then they spoke to Sina. They were friendly, concerned. ‘It must have been dreadful for you in that storm. When is your baby due?’

  She smiled. ‘Five weeks now. I don’t want to go to sea again. Ever.’

  And the camera cut to Vima, with a close-up of her and Wilfred. ‘So this is the little man whose arrival delayed the ship.’

  ‘Yes,’ Vima said. ‘It’s hard to believe he would be dead if the ship hadn’t waited. And so would I and my family.’

  ‘What about your husband?’ the man asked, and by the tone of his voice he knew perfectly well that Vima had no husband.

  ‘I’m not married,’ she said, staring straight at him as if daring him to ask more.

  He dared. ‘Oh, I beg your pardon. Let me rephrase that – where is the baby’s father?’

  Vima smiled at him. ‘Did you not know? On Taris we often used genetic material from Outside. It had been collected and stored when Taris was set up. Which means that many of the children of Taris have one or two parents who are now in their sixties or seventies.’

  The reporter kept probing. ‘So Wilfred’s father is an Outsider? What is his name?’

  ‘That,’ said Vima with her most charming smile, ‘is a matter between him and me.’

  Leng paused the footage as we burst into spontaneous applause. Sina smiled as she clapped. She looked as though a cloud had been lifted. Jov applauded, but his shoulders drooped. It was unspoken, but he knew that none of us would tell the story of Wilfred’s parentage Outside. Wilfred was slipping further and further out of his reach.

  We turned our minds to the rest of the news stories rolling out, reporting happenings in the country and beyond its shores. The main item other than our arrival was a conference on the future – if the trend of the slowing of climate change could be maintained or accelerated, then wider areas of many countries could be resettled within the next ten years. An American scientist speaking from Portland, Oregon, said, ‘Think of it! New York could be a city again. Maybe not in ten years, but certainly in twenty. The signs are good. Let’s not lose sight of our goals. We can’t relax our efforts, not for a nanosecond.’

  A woman speaking from Lille in France endorsed his views. Her lips didn’t match the words we were hearing, and it took me a minute to realise her words were being translated as she spoke.

  The newscast finished with an interview with the prime minister, a man called Logan Maru. Yes, he said in answer to the announcer’s question, the government was delighted to welcome the people of Taris and he hoped to personally meet us in the next few days. He couldn’t apologise enough, he said, for the terrible welcome we’d received. He smiled at the interviewer. ‘You do realise, Lucy, that these people are highly skilled, extremely innovative technologically and have developed sophisticated medical care regimes.’

  ‘If I remember correctly, Prime Minister,’ Lucy said, ‘you weren’t always so keen on welcoming them.’

  He nodded. ‘Indeed, that is so, and I’m sure you – and they – will appreciate that the government must weigh all expenditure most carefully. We had to divert precious resources and money which we could ill afford. But I’m satisfied now that the gamble has paid off.’

  ‘You’ve not yet met these people, Prime Minister,’ Lucy pointed out. ‘How sure are you they’ll be the asset you’re claiming they will be?’

  He spread his hands. ‘I’m very confident. And I believe time will prove me and my government right in making the decision to rescue them.’ He smiled at her again. ‘There are many young people among the group – ask yourself if we could afford to turn down the chance to increase our present and future population by refusing to take in such an educated and intelligent group?’

  ‘You’re requiring them to breed, then?’ she asked.

  We gasped – we would never have been so blunt, so rudely challenging of our leaders. Yeah, a voice in my head muttered, and look where that got us. I listened with interest. But the prime minister wasn’t rattled.

  ‘Requiring, Lucy? That sounds a little draconian, don’t you think? Let us rather say that if couples wish to have children then we will happily provide the normal support structures available to any citizen of Aotearoa.’

  She thanked him and returned to the studio announcer. ‘As we promised yesterday, we’ve got a real spring treat for you next,’ she said, beaming. And there in front of us was a holographic broadcast of new-born lambs leaping about a paddock. Even those of us who had seen real lambs dancing in the spring sunshine were enchanted. Next came a weather forecast, then Leng turned the images off. ‘You all have sets in your own rooms if you want to watch anything else,’ she reminded us.

  I wanted to stay and talk with my stratum, but tiredness hit me. What a day. This new world was busier than anything we’d experienced before. It was colourful too, with shades we’d only seen in our flower gardens. It had carpets and cars and crazy winds. And it had danger.

  Have you heard? Creen and Kalta say they want at least four children.

  Have you heard? Grif says that Lucy from the television is the daughter of a woman she was friends with before she went to Taris.

  Have you heard? Does anyone know yet who wants to harm us? And why?

  www.bobbingontheocean.blogspot.com Landlubber again

  08

  CITY EXPEDITIONS

  THE NEXT DAY WE BEGAN to understand how the circumstances of our arrival would affect us. Helpers took the adults out into the city, but in small groups. ‘We think it’s better not to draw attention to you,’ they said. They took the small children with them, and we discovered that in this country people didn’t carry the little ones but put them into pushchairs. I waited to see if Hera would love the novelty of the ride or object to being strapped in. She climbed in by herself, a look of excitement on her face, but it lasted only until Dad did up the straps, which she immediately tried to escape from.

  Willem just said, ‘Hera, behave yourself.’

  She complied.

  With their new haircuts and Outside clothes, Mother, Dad and my grandparents had lost the Taris look. I kept staring at Mother and Grif and grinning. Danyat laughed. ‘Yes, the short curls do rather highlight their similarities.’

  I waved them goodbye, shutting my mouth against wanting to call out to Mother, Don’t be so scared! It’s exciting and you’re lucky to
be going out first. Those of us of school age had to stay in the centre until 3.30, when the children of Wellington were released from their schools. ‘You’ll be too visible if you wander around during school hours,’ Malia told us. ‘We’ll be getting you into schools in a couple of weeks, so make the most of your free time now.’ She handed out maps, and showed us a holographic display we could use to practise finding our way round. ‘Use the time to memorise the city. You’ll be less visible if you don’t have to study a map as you go.’

  We also had to be ready for the arrival mid-morning of the hair stylists. Our hair was to be washed and left wet, Malia told us. Silvern and the rest of the girls were ecstatic, but I was jittery, memories of the shavings sharp in my mind. I hung back, waiting to see how much they would cut off the others’ hair before taking my turn. But I needn’t have worried – the two men and the woman listened to each of us, made suggestions and didn’t do anything we didn’t want. Wenda’s hair would never look like Leng’s, but she came out smiling with a head of feathery curls. All the guy did to mine was admire its straightness, snip the ends and give me a few wispy bits around my face.

  The morning passed quickly, but even so it was frustrating having to stay behind while the adults explored the city – especially when our parents returned at lunchtime looking dazed.

  ‘It’s so busy, so colourful, so noisy,’ Dad said.

  ‘And how are we going to decide what to buy in the shops?’ Mother almost wailed. ‘There’s so much to choose from.’ She put her hands to her head as if to stop it splitting open.