I Am Margaret (20 page)

His hand found my shoulder and pressed it gently.

“Margo? Are you all right?”

“Fine,” I gulped. Unconvincingly, I’m sure.

“Is it your… uncle?”

“Sort of,” I whispered.

“I… was upset enough when you told me. And you had to watch. That must’ve been awful. Is that it?”

“Not… not entirely. I… it’s making me… I’m having trouble with… with one of my prayers.”

I’d have liked to talk to Uncle Peter about this problem, but that was definitely out, this side of the grave. Bane would’ve been second choice, for despite having no faith or theological knowledge to speak of, he tended to cut to the heart of things. But I couldn’t speak to him either.

“One I say every night,” I whispered, “only now I can’t.”

Jonathan was silent for a long moment.

“Are you trying to make an Act of Acceptance?”

“How’d you… guess that?”

“‘Well, I’ve said it myself for… a very long time now. And I always… have trouble… saying it after hearing about someone being… you know… executed. Like that.”

“
Having
trouble
,” I whispered miserably. “It’s been a week now and I haven’t managed to say it
at all!”

“
Perhaps you’re trying too hard. It’s
only
been a week.”

“
No, I’m just a spineless chicken! I mean, what do I
think
, that if I say it the Lord’s going to say, ‘Oh, Margo, so glad you offered, I’ve got this worst possible martyrdom lined up for you?’ That’s
nonsense!
He won’t make it happen to me! The judges and dismantlers won’t even make it happen to me unless they find me guilty of
Inciting and Promoting
and like
that’s
going to happen with me in here and a whole bunch of people’s safety resting on my silence and I
still
can’t say it!”

I trailed off, drawing in a deep breath perilously close to a sob. Jonathan’s arm slid around my shoulders and his other hand found my back, rubbing comfortingly.

“
It’s all right, Margo. Don’t you see, you still
want
to make the Act, and that’s far more important than whether you actually manage it or not?”

I was inclined to argue with him, though it was the sort of thing Bane might’ve said, but I couldn’t because my arm had just wrapped itself around him without my permission and my treacherous eyes were leaking into his broad chest.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

Thud-thud
.
Thud-thud
.
Thud-thud
. A strange noise drummed in my ear. My pillow was strange too. Warm and so firm it wasn’t really very comfortable.

Opening my eyes, I found myself looking at... someone’s neck? My pillow was the same someone’s chest, under a blanket, which didn’t do much to soften it. Something that whispered and giggled was sneaking up behind me…

That brought me fully awake. Jon and I, now officially a couple… probably best if my nightie wasn’t visible. I checked the blankets, but they were drawn safely up to my chin. Jon opened his eyes and winked in my direction. Ah. He’d probably woken when the first whisperer set foot out of bed.

I closed my eyes and lay still, snuggled against Jon’s chest, trying to breathe slowly and deeply and not blush. Not sure how well I managed the last, but it must be pretty dark in the bunk recess.

Light pressed against my eyelids as the curtain was lifted at one end. How many eyes were being applied to the gap?
Lots
—there was a deafening outbreak of giggling. Jon stirred with convincing sleepiness and buried his nose in my hair. The giggling became briefly ear-splitting and quickly receded across the room. Phew. That was over with.

I opened my eyes and found Jon’s gray-blue ones staring through me as usual.

“Um, sorry about last night,” I whispered.

“You don’t need to apologize,” he muttered, “if I’d had to watch that, I don’t imagine I’d be too happy either.”

“Some of the others have had nightmares,” I said grimly. “Horrible woman.”

The friendlier of the two night guards unlocked the door then and stuck her head in.

“Good morning, girls and boy. Washroom open.”

“We’d better get up,” said Jon, when she’d gone.

“Yep. Now, where’s my nightie gone?” I said, nice and audibly.

Jon grinned.

“You’re still wearing it,” he murmured.

“Ah, good. I think I might put it on straight away next time. It was rather cold last night.”

“It was, rather,” said Jon, more audibly.

There. Hopefully we wouldn’t need to worry about being seen in our nightwear in future. I exited Jon’s bunk and climbed back up onto mine to get dressed, once again failing not to blush. How long would it take for this to get back to Bane?

The thought made me feel horrible. Bane knew enough to figure out the truth, surely?
If
he was able to think about it clear-headedly enough. Perhaps I could find some way of hinting at the truth in my letter?

Right. Time for breakfast, and no doubt a whole load of
very
personal questions with it.

***+***

13

THE 1001 LIVES OF ANNABEL SALFORD

“…‘Annabel Salford,’ called the dismantler, consulting his clipboard.

“Annabel stepped forward, not waiting for the guards to reach her. Her heart pounded with a foolish, irrational fear but she ignored it. Her mind was full of people, the people she would help, the people she would save. Her eyes might let a great-grandmother see her great-grandchild, her heart might save the life of a young mother, her hands might spare a grandmother from long years of arthritis-ridden agony…

“The list went on and on. She would change almost as many lives as there were parts in her body... and there were, she knew, because she was a smart and well-educated girl, a very great many parts in the human body.

“She held her head high, excitement thrilling through her as she went to meet her destiny, and her only, faint, regret, was that the greatness of that destiny so often went unappreciated.”

“
Stop,
please
stop, I have to go throw up,” interrupted Jon, whose expression had been growing steadily more revolted as I read. “It’s simply
awful!
I feel ill!”

“I’ve finished, anyway.” I put the pad beside me on the bunk. “Now, this is very important, when you say it’s awful, do you mean the content or the actual writing?”

“The content, of course, the writing’s as good as usual, though… rather sickly.” He did actually look faintly green around the edges. “You make it… you almost make it sound okay. You almost make it sound like someone could think it was okay. Even when… it was happening to them!”

“Good.”

“You’re not really going to send that in, are you? You don’t really think that!”

“Yes, I am, and of course I don’t. But I’m trying to win the competition, aren’t I? If I do, I’ve got a hundred thousand words to tell the real story. And if the novel is to be about Sorting, the short story also has to be about Sorting. I somehow don’t think mine’s going to win if I tell it the way it is.”

“I suppose not.” He shuddered. “Ugh. That’s ghastly.” He was quiet for a moment. “You know, the monsters at the EGD might just love it.”

“That’s the idea. Right, I’d better get it copied out before supper.”

It’d taken me several days to hammer the idea out in my mind, several more to write and re-write and re-re-write it. It probably wasn’t the best possible submission ever, but it
was
the best I could come up with in the time. It was Thursday, our letters would be posted in the morning; there was no time for anything else.

I copied ‘The 1001 Lives of Annabel Salford’ out as neatly as I could, then got out my letter. I could finish it off now.

I’m enclosing the story you asked for. I think you should give it to Sue when you’ve typed it up. Here’s a few lines for Sue, anyway.

Hi Sue, I hope you’ll be able to drop me a line some time. Bane’s got a short story to give you—he can explain all about it. There are some people who will enjoy reading it more if they think you’ve written it. But if you write anything down about the story, you’d better put my name, don’t you think? Otherwise you could get in trouble.

Anyway, I hope no one’s stolen that entry slip you were worried about and that your application’s gone okay—sometimes naughty boys will go taking anything that’s not nailed down, won’t they! I hope to hear from you soon. Love, Margo.

“Who goes around stealing entry slips?” asked Jon, after I’d read it to him in an undertone.

“
No one. Y’see, she’ll have to actually
enter
to get the entry slip from school. But she’ll incriminate herself if
she
then hands the story in with my name on it. If no one sees who leaves Sue’s envelope, then if and when they realize it’s a reAssignee’s entry, Sue can say she never entered because she lost the slip and hopefully they’ll assume it was stolen. If things get sticky enough she can even blame Bane. He won’t care.”

Jon frowned.

“I’d have thought it would be better to hide behind Sue’s name for as long as possible.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to put a black mark beside her name for the rest of her life and I doubt she’d do it then—who can blame her? As it is, let’s face facts; the story probably won’t even win.”

“But if it does?” said Jon, levelly.

“They might very well make it public as the winner without noticing that the name on the entry and the name on the story’s manuscript don’t match. Then even if they found out and disqualified me, everyone would know a reAssignee had just written a better story than any of their perfect New Adults. Embarrassing, huh?”

“
Very. I wonder if they
would
disqualify you? If they found out after the announcement? Or would they just keep quiet. Claim you missed the novel deadline.” His brow darkened. “And have you dismantled a.s.a.p.”

I firmly suppressed the worm of disquiet wriggling in my belly.

“Quite honestly, Jon, I’ve no idea. But I can’t get Sue in trouble and it’s bad enough getting her to lie for me to make the entry.”

Jon winced.

“
Yeah, I know, but… that story’s great propaganda for them. If you win, but don’t manage to present the other side of the story—the
real
side—who’s to say it won’t have done more harm than good?”

“
A reAssignee would’ve won a competition designed to prove the benefits of Sorting to the human race. They’d have a hard time playing
that
down! And I think as soon as it was known a reAssignee wrote it, a lot of people wouldn’t take that short story seriously at all: they’d take it as satire. Anyway, I honestly don’t think it’s going to make things
worse
.”

Jon snorted softly.

“
Yeah, s’pose you’re right about
that
. It needs to be typewritten, though. Will Sue have to go into the school to do that?”

“No, I asked my mum to give Bane my laptop, he can do it. Well, I say ‘my,’ but it’s half his, really. We washed posh tourist cars for a year to get it.”

“I wouldn’t have thought Bane would be prepared to wash one car for the sake of a laptop!”

“Yeah, well, he claimed he wanted it so I’d let him help me, but I can’t say I was fooled.”

He hadn’t asked to use it once in the four years we’d had it. But that was okay: we’d spent most of the next year washing cars to replace his old bike, which’d been held together by love and a prayer. Bane’s love, my prayer.

“She’ll have to go into school to print it, though, won’t she? And that will show on the print logs. But I don’t know anyone with email, do you? And she could hardly claim it was Bane then, if they looked into it thoroughly enough…”

“Relax, Bane has my prehistoric printer as well.” Fortunately, because I didn’t know anyone with internet either. Expensive internet connections were the preserve of the rich in the cities.