by Zizou Corder
First things first: know your enemy. He knew the Corporacy had created their Gated Communities all over the world to keep rich scared people safe from normal people, and to prevent their employees from ever leaving or wanting to leave. He knew they’d kidnapped his parents. He knew they filled their Gated Communities with this scented chemical that sapped people’s initiative and individuality. He knew they had created the Allergenies, genetically modified cats that would make children ill with asthma, so that the Corporacy could keep making lots of money from selling lots of asthma medicine. He knew that Maccomo had brought him here for the same reasons Rafi had tried to – so that the Corporacy could use his skills, or possibly prevent him from using them.
But the Corporacy didn’t know Charlie. Oh, they’d done their homework – they knew he was a Catspeaker, knew who his parents were, had seen his exam results and knew what foods he liked. But they didn’t know him. So he was going to do his trick: he was going to let them think he was doing everything they wanted. Maccomo might be wise to that trick of his, but these people weren’t. (And if Maccomo had told them? Well, in his experience people often believed what they wanted to believe. Particularly if it matched what they saw with their own eyes.) And he was going to fight them every inch of the way, invisibly, for as long as he could.
Ninu, who had rather bravely taken up residence on the terrace, and blended in perfectly, looked up and smiled at him as he came outside.
‘Hey!’ he said to Charlie in Cat. ‘Look who’s here!’
Why’s he speaking Cat? Charlie thought, in the split second before turning to see, sitting under a swathe of dark pink bougainvillea flowers, with a dry expression on his face, none other than Sergei.
‘Mornin’,’ said the scraggy cat.
Charlie was about to fall to his knees and hug Sergei, but he remembered himself just in time. Give nothing away to whoever might be watching!
‘Mornin’,’ he replied, with a little smile tugging at his lips.
‘Feeling yourself today, are yer?’ enquired Sergei.
Charlie surveyed the twinkling sea below him, and took a full deep breath.
‘Feeling great today,’ he said, not looking at Sergei. ‘Bit annoyed at being kidnapped and locked up, glad this prison is more comfortable than the one on the boat …’
‘Not, erm, feeling at all, erm, fuzzy-headed? At all?’
‘Feeling myself,’ said Charlie firmly. ‘Full of beans, and about to start finding out what’s going on here. Delighted to be at the root of it all. Ready to go out exploring.’
‘Well, well, well,’ said Sergei, pleased. ‘Look at yer. It had yer mum and dad poleaxed. Yer a tough little candidate, aren’t yer?’
‘So are you, then,’ said Charlie. And in that moment he realized it. ‘Hey!’ he said.
‘What?’ enquired Sergei.
‘It doesn’t affect you, does it?’
‘Nope.’
‘ So – do you think my cat blood is protecting me from it?’
Sergei grinned a slow, crooked, cat grin. ‘I would be delighted,’ he said, ‘if that were the case.’
Magdalen shook Aneba awake.
‘Aneba!’ she said.
‘What?’ he replied, cross at being woken.
‘They may perfectly well recognize you. They may know that we’re coming. If Charlie is there, they’ll expect us to be following, and to try to rescue him. They’ll have their security on us, they may have tracked us from Essaouira. It’s too risky!’
Aneba rubbed his eyes. She was right.
‘So,’ he said.
‘So turn it to our advantage.’
‘Turn it to our advantage?’ he said.
‘Make a deal,’ she said.
He thought. As he thought, it started to make sense.
He smiled.
‘Now,’ said Sally-Ann after breakfast, ‘your Introduction-to-the-Corporacy Session!’
It started with a film, run on his screen, that told him all about how the Corporacy had, since the nineteenth century, been making food and medicine for the people of the world, making more and better things to make people happier, serving the public and employing people … Charlie listened politely and said, ‘How interesting,’ every now and again. Sally-Ann smiled at him. She’d heard about this boy’s parents, and she’d expected that he would be difficult too, and not understand that all the Corporacy wanted was for everyone to be happy. But he wasn’t difficult – he was friendly and calm and interested. It would make her job much easier. She gave him a thumbs-up and ruffled his hair. Charlie grinned back.
Great, she’s falling for it, he thought. I wonder how much more of this rubbish I’m going to have to listen to. He knew perfectly well that the Corporacy was a business, and its main purpose was to make money. That wasn’t a crime, of course – but he knew what it would do to make money. He wasn’t falling for this Corporacy hooey.
Then it was on to the Junior Education Unit. Charlie checked out the surroundings as Sally-Ann walked him there – tropical forest to the north and east, with mountains beyond; sea to the south; flat land to the west. The biggest mountain looked like a volcano – a tall cone. This island was really beautiful. The paths were pale gravel, lined with low lighting; there were many of the pretty huts, and beyond them, inland, some larger, more sturdy buildings, pale, concrete. One of these was the Junior Education Unit, and going into it were Twenty-One and Seventeen.
Charlie hadn’t even seen them since they were all in the slave castle together, and he called out to them happily.
‘Hey, girls!’ he called.
They turned and smiled at him – and as they did, he knew that the Sweet Air was getting to them. Their smiles were large, but they were the smiles of dollies, of empty souls.
‘Hello, Charlie!’ said Twenty-One, and her voice had something of the tone of Sally-Ann’s, like a computer voice. Not the lustrous, intelligent African voice of that night in the dungeon.
‘Hello, Charlie!’ said Seventeen.
Charlie bit his lip. He wasn’t surprised – of course the Sweet Air would get to them. He was just – well, even more aware of what a massive task he had in front of him. It wasn’t just he who had to escape this place – it was Seventeen and Twenty-One too. And the Starlets. And maybe others, already here. Only Charlie, of all the people here, had a clear mind. So that gave him a responsibility.
Even if (if!) he could somehow escape, he had to take the others with him.
Where were the Lions when you needed them? Six loyal Lions would be really useful in a situation like this. He smiled at the thought of them. They weren’t the most practical of friends to travel around with, but he missed them a lot. Especially the Young Lion.
All he had now was his own brain.
OK, he said to himself. Find out all you can. One step at a time.
Sally-Ann ushered him inside the Junior Education Unit. The Starlets were already there, eighteen of them, sitting in rows. They were all to take some straight academic tests, like at school. Charlie sat down and, between sums (several of which he got wrong on purpose), he glanced about at the footballers. He didn’t know them, so it was hard to judge, but they seemed – well, calm and cheerful. Not how a bunch of kidnapped kids should look. Jake Yeboa was sitting behind him, so he couldn’t get a good look at him, but he could see Jake’s brother Pierre over in the corner. Who wasn’t there? Rafi. Well, fair enough – he wasn’t one of the special talents. But where was he then? Safely incarcerated by the Corporacy? Or fomenting trouble, a loose cannon that might go off at any time?
Thinking about him, Charlie felt a little prickle of doubt in his belly. What was that line from the Jungle Book? We are of one blood, you and I …
He didn’t want to think about it.
Back to maths: 6x – 2 + 2x = – 2 + 4x + 8 …
That afternoon they were all moved on to the Psychological Benevolence Unit, where smiling helpers tested their personalities with questions and tricks. Charlie found this
merely amusing, because he had done some of these with Brother Jerome back in London, with a view to learning how to confuse them. He knew no sensible person would ever use one of these tests, so he enjoyed sabotaging them.
Charlie looked at the paper in front of him.
When walking into a room of people, you:
Walk tall and proud, looking everyone in the eye
Stoop or hunch your shoulders and avoid looking at
anyone
Make a loud joke or comment to attract attention
Try to be as invisible as possible
The only correct answer (5. It depends on my mood, on who the people are, on whether I know them, on whether they are kids or adults, on whether I’m alone or with my friends or my parents, whether it’s a party, or an office, or a shop, or a hospital ward, or someone’s bedroom, on whether I’m hungry or tired, whether the people are looking at me or not, making jokes or not, talking or not, smiling or not …) wasn’t on the list. Charlie ticked 4. (How stupid! Whether you’re visible or not depends as much on who’s looking at you as on what you yourself are doing.)
The rest of the questions were just as small-minded. Charlie thought carefully before ticking the answers that would make him seem dull and dim and without any personality at all.
At various stages during the day individual kids were ushered out of their tests, one at a time, with a big smile and a friendly hand under the elbow. They didn’t come back.
None of the others looked up or around to see who was going, or where. None of them seemed to notice that their friends weren’t reappearing. Charlie noticed, though, and wondered.
When he’d finished his personality tests, it was his turn. Sally-Ann with her smile escorted him across the sweeping lawn, further in towards the lush forest. Charlie clocked everything: the thick creepers swirling up to the heights of the canopy, the tall trees with their high snake-tangly roots, the way that Sally-Ann held her palm up to gain entrance to – wow! – a concealed door in the wall of rock.
‘That’s clever,’ he said, making his voice sound younger than it naturally would. ‘How do you do that?’
Sally-Ann pointed to a small lump in her palm – the size and shape of a baked bean. ‘My identity,’ she smiled. ‘It’s all in there!’
How interesting, thought Charlie. Computerized recognition system of some kind.
The rock slid open for her.
‘Come along!’ she sang, and Charlie followed her.
Inside was different. The other buildings had been like a holiday place, a luxurious beach hotel, with the high ceilings, gauzy curtains and big beds. This was more – scientific. As the door slid shut behind them, another opened in front, leading into a lift. They entered, Sally-Ann showed her palm, and the lift went down. Another door opened in front of them, and they stepped out on to a walkway – sleek, metal like an escalator.
They were moving along a corridor, basically.
There were ventilation shafts, he noticed, in the ceiling above his head.
A memory came to him – holes in the ceiling, in the roof, air and light coming in …
Paris! The underground canal!
We’re not in a corridor, he thought – we’re in a tunnel. We’re going underground.
It was, he estimated, about fifteen minutes before the walkway led them into a second lift. Fifteen minutes at faster than walking pace, going in he didn’t know what direction – but he did! They had come straight through the door in the rock, and the travelator had led straight off the lift, and it hadn’t curved or turned … They were heading the way the door had faced, i.e. if he had his back aslant to the beach … kind of north-east. Good.
They went up a lot further in this lift. There were only three stops, but the time between them was much longer than usual.
A tall building? With a few, very tall floors?
North-east. Hmm.
The lift stopped at its top stop. Doors slid open. Charlie and Sally-Ann slid out.
There was no travelator here. Just a smooth stone floor and smooth stone walls.
Bingo, thought Charlie. We’re inside a mountain. Just as I thought. He was rather pleased with himself for having worked it out – but he remembered not to look as clever as he was.
‘What a great place!’ he said. ‘Where are we?’
‘We’re going to the lab!’ said Sally-Ann cheerfully. ‘Just going to check a couple of things. It won’t hurt!’
‘My mummy works in a lab,’ said Charlie, not because he wanted Sally-Ann to know, but because he wanted her to think of him as a sweet little boy who called his mum Mummy and wanted to tell irrelevant things to nice ladies.
It seemed to work. ‘Does she, sweetie-pops?’ she said.
When a woman you don’t know calls you sweetie-pops, you can be pretty sure she’s not thinking of you as an intelligent person. Good.
The lab, when they got to it, dispelled any remaining sense Charlie might have had of a beach hotel. It was bleak and sleek, stainless steel and glass, lined with VDUs and plasma screens, machines and technological units that Charlie, despite his experience of his parents’ labs, didn’t recognize at all.
‘Pop this on,’ said the smiling Sally-Ann, handing him a pale green surgical gown. Charlie squinted at it. He didn’t at all feel like popping it on. ‘And look! Here’s Dr Gascoigne!’
‘Hello, Charlie,’ said Dr Gascoigne, a large, calm-looking person with a greyish-purple face.
‘What … Um …’ said Charlie.
Dr Gascoigne gave a short smile.
‘Nothing will hurt!’ he said. Even he sounded like Sally-Ann.
And in the end, nothing did hurt. Charlie listened to the chat of the lab hands and the doctor and picked up that they were scanning his brain, reading his magnetism, resonating his radioactivity, X-raying him from head to foot and – which he especially didn’t like – taking some of his blood for analysis.
They’ll be checking my DNA, he thought. My genes. He wondered how long it would take them to work out that he had cat blood.
He wondered what he could do about it.
He thought, I don’t have long. I must … I must … steal Sally-Ann’s identity and go places I’m not allowed and … and … knock over my blood sample …
He felt tired after all the day’s tests: all he had done, and all they had done to him.
He was glad when Sally-Ann gave him back his clothes and led him out into the corridor.
Walking back to the lift, she said, ‘There, that wasn’t too bad, was it?’
She’s kind, he thought. She’s kind but she’s not herself. It’s as if her real kindness has been wrapped up in some fake kindness. She’s breathing the Sweet Air, obviously – maybe it’s like an enchantment in a fairy tale, and she’s really a nice woman underneath.
In which case she was a kind of prisoner too.
On the way to the lift they stopped for a moment at another room. It was, as Charlie had thought, carved out of the rock. Sally-Ann stepped in and exchanged a few words with a handsome, smartly dressed black woman sitting at a desk. She reminded Charlie of his Ghanaian aunties and their friends – busy, clever women, nice clothes, waste no time.
‘Bring him in!’ the woman said. ‘Of course!’
Charlie stood in front of her. Her office was window-less – the only light came from a lamp hanging from the ceiling. Her desk was old-fashioned, made of wood. Her shelves were heavy with files.
‘Charlie,’ she said, and her voice sent a shiver up his back because it was a West African woman’s voice, with the same timbre and accent as his grandma’s, but overlaid with the Sally-Ann fake cheerfulness thing. The combination made him feel peculiar.
‘Charlie, my name is Auntie Auntie. I am in charge of all the talented children here. I will be supervising your education and your health needs. If you have any problem, you must come to me. Every day will not be like today, with tests and exams and going to the lab. You will have fun here as well, and a chance to be
friends with the other young people! The Corporacy wants you to make the most of yourself! You will see me again soon. Embrace your aspirations, Charlie! You are going to be happy here!’
‘Right,’ said Charlie. ‘OK.’ He looked at her. He wasn’t sure what was expected of him.
So he smiled. The big fake smile.
She smiled it back.
Sally-Ann smiled it too.
All three stood there grinning like deluded idiots.
And then Charlie heard a dog bark, and he said, ‘Oh! A dog!’ and Auntie Auntie shot Sally-Ann a look, and Sally-Ann said quickly, ‘Oh, yes, there are some animals,’ and Charlie’s train of thought shifted completely. Animals?
Sally-Ann ushered him towards the lift.
‘Goodbye!’ called Auntie Auntie.
Animals, thought Charlie. Sleep on it, he told himself.
Talk to Sergei and Ninu.
It was still raining in the Gulf of Gonaïve. The heat and wet were unbearable. Suleiman had that morning announced that God wanted him to return to Morocco, so Aneba and Magdalen had transferred on to Younus’s ship, El Baraka. Younus wasn’t happy, though – he was afraid she would start to rot. In fact, everybody felt as if everything was about to start to rot.
Edward had emailed King Boris charts and details of the neighbouring islands, and all the information about San Antonio he could muster. They had studied it, peering in turn at the tiny screen of the King’s email phone, and formed their plan. It involved night rescue, swimming, inaccessible coastlines, risk … It was the best they could come up with.
The remaining question was, what would the others do while Aneba was away?
‘Well,’ said King Boris, ‘let’s remove ourselves from this dreadful place, and await the call. We don’t have to sit around here while Aneba does his bit. Those animals need a run around and some nice meat to eat. As it happens, I have a friend living nearby who, I’m sure, would be delighted to offer us hospitality. We used to play cricket together. Shall I give him a ring?’
