Fierce September (19 page)

The discussion lasted for over an hour. At the end, Trebe asked me to summarise the main points. She and the others corrected and coached me till they were satisfied.

James got up to leave and brushed a finger over Wilfred’s head. ‘Cute,’ he said.

Vima tucked her son up in his cot, then went back to work.

I called Marba. No reply. I tried Silvern. No reply. Where were they? Then I remembered they’d be talking to Willem, asking questions he probably wouldn’t give them the answers to, even if he knew what they were. I wished we had phones. There was no alternative, I’d have to do the mind call again, whether I wanted to or not – and I didn’t want to. Practice wasn’t making me any more comfortable with it.

I sent out the message to Marba: CALL ME. This time, I put all the energy I could into my first effort. Not even a minute later, the talk icon flashed.

‘We’re with Willem,’ Marba said. ‘Is it important?’

‘Trebe and Vima say to tell you it’s not a bacterium, it’s a virus. An artificial virus.’ Willem must have grabbed the mini-comp. His face flicked up on the television screen. ‘They’re certain, Juno?’

I ran through the morning’s discussion, glad of the coaching as Willem snapped out questions.

When I’d told him all I could, he said, ‘This will change things. There’s hope now. Good work – all of you.’

Silvern asked the question burning in my own mind but, being Silvern, she took the direct approach. ‘Willem, what Hera said about the bad people wanting to hurt you. Do you think the pandemic is meant to destroy you?’

He shook his head. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know. But I can’t worry about it right now. The important thing is to stop it.’

Marba said, ‘With respect, Willem, it is just as important to know the reasons behind it. Who would want to destroy you? What would be achieved by destroying you?’

Willem headed for the door. ‘Leave it to the police.’

‘Like we left the stuff about the virus to the police?’ said Pel – gentle Pel who never created waves. Wow!

It stopped Willem dead. ‘Very well, you may have a point. There are people who object to the school I started. We teach children to train their minds, to work with more than the five senses. We’ve had threats, some minor vandalism.’ He shrugged. ‘They could see the present crisis as an opportunity to get rid of me. Nobody would question the reasons for an old man dying of the virus.’

Yin asked, ‘Are they paranoid enough to want to harm you?’

Willem laughed. ‘They call me a spawn of the devil, so who knows.’ He opened the door to leave, but stopped and looked back. ‘I’m not important,’ he said. ‘If you must ask questions, ask why somebody would try to destroy the world with another pandemic.’ He walked away.

‘We should have asked him for names,’ Dreeda said into the silence.

Silvern stood up. ‘I’m off. Another day of boredom awaits. Don’t want to miss a second of it.’

‘Hang on.’ Dreeda pulled her back. ‘There must still be stuff we can do. We need to keep thinking about it, keep asking questions, keep trying to work out if there’s information we can find on the net.’

But we all felt flat, dispirited after the excitement of the virus discovery. ‘Even if we do find something, how do we tell anybody?’ Jidda asked. ‘We haven’t got a phone. We can’t leave the building.’

‘There must be phones in this place.’ Wenda looked around the room. ‘It’s an office. Don’t offices have communication equipment?’ She pulled open a cupboard, then a drawer. ‘What’s this?’

I couldn’t see it, but the others were crowding around her. ‘Could be a phone,’ Biddo decided. ‘Let’s try it.’

But we lacked the knowledge to make it work, even if it did turn out to be a phone. ‘We need an Outsider,’ Rynd said. ‘The stupid thing’s got to be basic. We just need to know how to use it.’

‘James!’ I shouted. ‘I’ll ask James. I’ll tell him to come to lunch, so be online. I’ve had enough of the mind stuff.’

‘We’ll be here,’ Marba said. ‘See you then.’

Dreeda jumped up. ‘Wait! All this rubbish about phones!’ She stamped her foot. ‘Go away and
think
. Finding the virus is good, but what about the other stuff? Who made it? How did they spread it?’ She was yelling now. ‘What sort of lives will we have if nobody finds out what’s behind all this?’

Rynd went to her and put his arms around her. ‘Hush up, woman! You’ve hit the nail fair on its head. We go forth and comply.’

She gave him a shove, but she was smiling. They walked out, arms around each other.

Well, well!

We watched till they disappeared, then Silvern grinned. ‘Okay, we’ve got our orders. Let’s do it.’

But first Jidda reminded me about James and the phone.

I made tea for Vima and asked her to invite James to lunch. She gave me a searching look. ‘What are you lot up to now?’

I sighed. ‘Nothing to do with the phone. That’s just a distraction. We’re supposed to be trying to work out who wants to harm Willem, who made the virus, who spread it and how.’

‘That should keep even you guys busy enough.’

But it didn’t keep me busy. My thoughts tangled themselves in circles and went nowhere. It was a relief when Mother called. Sina and Hera were standing next to her. I told them to sit down, get comfortable, for I had news to tell them.

When I’d finished outlining what we’d discovered, Mother whispered, ‘But how could anyone be so evil? Juno – are you sure about this?’

Hera put her arms around Mother’s neck. ‘Don’t cry, my mother, don’t cry.’

Sina looked ill. ‘Someone has done this to us? Who could hate us enough to do such a thing?’

I spoke quickly, wanting to turn their thoughts away from death and treachery. ‘Trebe says that they’ll soon have a treatment ready. She says this will mean the end of the pandemic.’

But they weren’t distracted. Sina leaned forward. ‘Tell us everything you know. Who are the people who want to harm Willem? Do we have any names? Can we search for information on the net about them?’

We didn’t know. I told her we were trying to think of ways to search for information. Mother still looked shaken to her bones.

‘We’ll try too, Sheen,’ Sina said. ‘It’ll be good to have something to do that might help.’

To lighten the mood before we finished, I asked Sina if I could see Jovan. Her face lit up and she carried the mini-comp through to where he slept in Mother’s bedroom. He was adorable, of course, and I was happy to say all the right things. Sina said it was uncanny how like Jov he was. I couldn’t see that he looked any more like his father than Wilfred did but I kept such thoughts to myself.

We ended the call and there was nothing to do but think and do housework that didn’t really need doing until it was time to prepare another dehydrated lunch. I chose a self-saucing quiche, garlic bread and chocolate brownies.

My stratum called from Marba’s apartment earlier than midday. They were energised, buzzing in fact.

‘What?’ I demanded.

Marba summarised for me: Biddo had worked out how to track passenger bookings. They now had a list of the names of all the people who’d travelled to all the centres where the disease had broken out in the days before we arrived.

I was grumpy. ‘How does that help if the virus was sent in the mail? Or by carrier pigeon?’

Dreeda shoved her face near the mini-comp. ‘If you’ve got a better idea, say it. Otherwise shut up.’

‘We want you to read the names to us,’ Silvern said. ‘We can work out some of them, but it’s such slow going.’

It would pass the time, but that would be all. Unless they had another idea. ‘But why? How will lists of random names help?’

Biddo looked triumphant. ‘We’re going to ring Willem and ask him for the names of people who don’t like his school.’

When James and Vima arrived for lunch, James roared with laughter when my stratum asked him how to use a phone, and laughed harder when they showed him the phone they’d found. ‘That’s a heater. You put it in your pocket on a cold day. It sends a current through your clothing and, hey presto, you’re nice and warm.’

The phone was on a shelf and looked like a piece of cardboard. It was easy to use and James told them how to find Willem’s number.

I served up lunch, while Silvern filled Vima and James in on what they’d discovered so far. James was impressed. ‘You lot could have a career in detecting.’

Marba said, ‘Leave the mini-comp on. We’ll call you once we’ve got hold of Willem.’

‘I’m the one who’s easy to get hold of,’ I snapped, and switched the mini-comp off. And didn’t turn it on again until they’d had time to leave.

The apartment felt empty after Vima and James had gone back to work. Biddo sent me the lists of names. There were hundreds of them, all people who had enough money to travel long distances by train. I put the lists aside and had a conversation with Wilfred who smiled at everything I said. Then he went to sleep.

Finally, I could ignore the names no longer. Might as well look at them. So many of them. All sorts of names – plain ones, fancy ones, names I had no idea how to pronounce.

I finished reading the lists and lay flat on the floor with my feet on the sofa, letting thoughts drift through my head. We could find out everything there was to know about where people went and when, but unless we knew why then we’d still be in danger. There had to be some connection between the activists, Willem and us. Perhaps the police were already searching for such a link, but I doubted it because Willem didn’t seem to take Hera’s words about his own danger seriously enough to pass them on. Would the police act on the word of a two-year-old? I doubted that too.

So if Willem was a good person, like the good fairies in
Sleeping Beauty
, who was the bad fairy? If there was a bad fairy, were they born bad like the Ugly Sisters or were they fighting against Willem because they thought he was bad?

I checked out the website for Willem’s school. It didn’t say anything about helping children who experienced life beyond the five senses, but it did say it taught mind enhancement.
A child with a mind like hers
. A chill ran through me. If somebody didn’t like what Willem taught in his school, they mightn’t like children with minds like Hera’s – or mine.

If only I knew more about this world we’d come to. It felt like walking in the dark.

I got up and went into the office to tell Vima to ask James to come to dinner.

‘W
HAT D’YOU WANT TO KNOW?’ James asked as he and Vima came through the door. His brown eyes shone more brightly than they had before we discovered the virus. He looked younger too.

‘How old are you?’ The words blurted from my mouth before I could stop them. I waved a hand at him. ‘Sorry! Ignore me.’

But he folded himself down onto the sofa. ‘Thirty-two going on a hundred and twelve.’ He shot a challenging sort of look in my direction. ‘Why?’

I grinned at him. ‘It’s just that you look younger every time you come in here. Probably best you don’t come too often unless you want to tuck up with Wilfred.’

He laughed. ‘I wish. So what do you want, young Juno? I’m betting you haven’t invited me for two meals in one day purely for the pleasure of my company?’

‘That would be right,’ Vima said. ‘What are you and your stratum up to now?’

‘Just me this time.’ I went to the stove and stirred things, wondering how much to tell James. ‘I’m thinking we need to know who would do something as wicked as letting loose a virus that would kill people.’ Grif’s face hovered in my mind. She was smiling. I turned around to lean on the bench that divided the kitchen from the living area. ‘Why would we be a threat? What if we were just …’ I searched for the word Grif had used ‘… a scapegoat. Somebody to blame to take attention away from the real purpose of creating a pandemic?’

James yawned. ‘That’s a bit far-fetched, if you want my candid opinion.’

‘I don’t,’ I snapped. ‘I want your knowledge of what the world used to be like.’

He half-opened his eyes. ‘Feed me and I’m yours.’

I fed him: lasagne and a mess of green that had apparently once been broccoli and beans. I feared he wasn’t in the mood for talking, but once he got started the words kept coming.

‘I can just remember what it was like before things turned to crap,’ he said as he started on the lemon delicious pudding. ‘It was exciting – you could jump on a plane and be on the other side of the world in less than a day. I loved the fast cars – went to the race track whenever I could drag Dad along. Speed boats, bikes, motorised skateboards, low-flyers. All that and more, with every country pumping out the gear as fast as it could.’

He paused, a faraway look on his face.

‘We saw some of that in the old documentaries we had,’ Vima said.

But our most up-to-date documentaries had been more than thirty years old. James was thirty-two.

‘The first of the pandemics struck when I was nine. It was a ghastly year. Hurricanes, floods, droughts and fires. No country escaped. Then disease broke out. Millions died and we had to change things.’ He stared at nothing for a few seconds, one finger tapping the table.

Vima looked at me, a question in her eyes – who had he lost? He was old enough to have a family. We didn’t ask. Instead, she said, ‘What else changed?’

‘Oh, everything you can think of. The main thing, I suppose, was that countries could no longer produce luxury goods. The banking system had been in trouble for some years, but when so many people died it really went into meltdown. Factories closed down. Nobody had money to buy or invest.’