I Am Margaret (39 page)

I shrugged. I wasn’t wasting time telling tales on the Menace. He knew what she’d done.

“The last time Jonathan was put in with the boys, they broke his stick.”

“That boy again.” The Major turned back to his flowers.

“Do you have any idea how important a stick is to a blind person?” I demanded, more forcefully than I’d intended. “We’ve fixed it and fixed it but now it’s past fixing. He needs another one. May he have one of your garden canes, please?”

He turned and stared at me for a moment, arms folded across his chest. Then he walked towards the hut and my heart leapt. Would he really? He came back, a cane in one slender hand, and held it out.

“
I was not responsible for the breaking of the boy’s stick,” he stated, as my hand closed eagerly around the replacement. He didn’t let go. “So this is a
gift.”
He let go then, leaving it in my hand.

I glared at him, I couldn’t help it. Like most of the reAssignees—and guards—I hated the Captain, to my shame—but feared the Major. He seemed to trigger a fight or flight response, and for some reason I kept choosing
fight!

“
On
Jon’s
behalf, thank you,” I replied, just as deliberately.

He smiled slightly, his eyes glinting. Green eyes, I realized with a jolt, like my own.

“Out,” he said, pointing at the door. There was a slight edge to it that warned me not to come back a third time.

I made to go, but the question just popped out.

“Why did you do that to Finchley?”

I saw those blond eyebrows rise, this time.

“Was I misinformed? Did he not try to have his wicked way with you? With notably little success,” he smirked.

“No, you weren’t misinformed.”

“Then I don’t understand the question.”

“I meant… why didn’t you sack him?”

“Why, I assure you, this makes a far better example of him. You must know the guards are strictly forbidden to hurt you children.”

“
Adults
. If we weren’t in here, we’d count as adults.”

“
But you
are
in here, aren’t you?”

I was thinking about the rest of his sentence.

“Shame that doesn’t apply to officers.” I bit my lip too late.

His eyes narrowed.

“
Oh, it does apply to officers.” His voice had gone dangerously soft. “A reminder seems to be in order, I agree.
Another
reminder.”

Another? I did bite my tongue this time. Had he already punished her once? Was that why she seemed to hate me so very much?

“As for Finchley,” went on the Major in a less spine-chilling tone, “now he will have to work here for at least another two or three years, on best behavior, to save the money to buy himself a new cheek. It would be hard enough for him to change career normally, and they don’t do cosmetic transplants for free, you know.”

“
That doesn’t strike me as a
plus
.”

“
I imagine not. But
you
don’t have to replace his useless carcass. Besides, I can assure you that
new
guards are the worst offenders. Especially if there isn’t a Finchley around for… illustrative purposes. The longer-serving guards seem to think better of such misconduct.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“I can.” His smile was cruel, this time; his green eyes merciless. “Now clear off, I’m busy.”

I eyed his flower beds and just swallowed a cutting remark. I didn’t want to push him too far, like last time. I turned again…
Ah
…

“Um… I kind of snuck in…”

He made an impatient noise and strode past me towards the door, unbuttoning a breast pocket and taking out his card.

“And here I assumed you’d just threatened a guard with the RWB.”

Two guards were dithering on the threshold when he swung the door open. They braced up and tried to look as though they’d been about to open the door and reclaim me.

“Um… there was a girl, sir…”

The Major stepped to one side, waving me past him.

I stopped between them like a good little reAssignee but they continued to stare at the Major expectantly.

“Just take her back to the dorm,” he snapped impatiently.

And slammed the door in their faces. Mine too, I suppose. I held the cane tightly.
Yes!
Don’t you take it, guards…

I perhaps had the Major’s ‘just’ to thank for they shut me in the dorm without showing any interest in the cane whatsoever.

“Margy!”

“Margo, there you are!”

“Where have you been, Margo?”

Then Jon came stumbling up to me and caught me in his arms, lifting me off my feet as he crushed me to him. I held out the cane behind him to keep it safe, though it was pretty sturdy.

“Margo, Margo, you’re all right! You’re all right!” He buried his face in my hair, inhaling deeply. “Thank God,” he whispered into my hair. “Thank God…”

He kissed me, seeming beyond all restraint, and I didn’t dare pull away. It wasn’t quite time for the escape, after all. His lips weren’t
unpleasant
on mine, anyway, just
not quite right
. But he went back to hugging me pretty quickly, hugging me and... trying not to cry?

“Jon, Jon, calm down, I’m fine. I’m fine. What’s wrong?”

“
What’s wrong?” he echoed incredulously. “You disappear into thin air and you ask what’s wrong? Just
now
?” he added under his breath, lips buried in my hair again. “I thought they’d found out! I thought they’d taken you! I thought they were… I thought they were…
Lord
, Margo!
What’s wrong!”

“Hush,” I whispered, my stomach clenching guiltily, “hush, be careful. I’m sorry, I only meant to be quick… well, to be honest I didn’t really think at all, I just acted on the spur of the moment. Here, I got this for you…” I pressed the cane into his hands.

“A stick!” He ran his fingers along its length, sniffed it, looked up in surprise. “A garden cane?”

“Yes, from the Major’s garden.”

“
You didn’t
steal
it!”

“No!” I slapped his hand lightly. “I asked for it for you.”

“Margo, how could you go in there? I thought he hated you!”

“So did I, the way he spoke to me before. Who knows. He’s a strange, twisted man. He gave you that, anyway.”

Perhaps just to get one over me, but who cared.

“Margo, oh, Margo, thank you so much…” He went back to hugging me, in mingled thanks, reproach and profound relief.

But mostly thanks.

It wasn’t until the day of publication that I told the dorm we were to escape in three days time. And that they MUST NOT mention it to anyone. Nor must they mention the little gun I had. They must not, must not, must not. I went round to each girl in turn to make sure they really understood.

Satisfied at last, I instigated an ‘orchestra’ game to cover up a quick trial of my most likely shooters. With everyone rapping out tunes on metal chair legs and drumming on tabletops, the unexceptional noise of the air gun was drowned out.

Jon agreed with Bane’s judgment that he could probably do it better than anyone else available, so he was going to be number one of the second pair. Jane and Rebecca were my first choices for backups, but that plan only lasted as long as it took Rebecca to take her go.

“
Well,” I sighed, when she’d finished, “I think we can safely say that a pair of barn doors are in no danger from
you
. Never mind. Not everyone’s a natural shot. Jane, would you try?”

Three times in a row Jane came close enough to the piece of paper on the door that she’d have hit the person she was aiming at.

“Good. You’re one backup, then, if that’s okay with you. We still need another.”

Emily was pretty sharp, but there was no way to test her shooting abilities without passing the gun through the wall. I eyed the girls in our dorm. Some were slightly smarter than Caroline, but I knew her. If things were explained clearly beforehand, she’d probably do what was necessary.

“Caroline? Would you come and try?”

“Me? Yeah, I want a go!”

She hit the paper itself twice, with a third near miss.

“Right. You’re the second backup.”

“
Really?
Is it difficult?”

“No, it’s not difficult at all. You’ll be with me and you probably won’t have to do a thing.”

“
Okay. I’m it. Harriet, did you see that? I’m a
backup
…”

“Is it dangerous?”

“Um… hope not.”

As they carried on speculating, Jon dipped his head to the general vicinity of my ear.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, fine. No one should know yet.” I concentrated for a moment on checking that the air gun was unloaded, then took it back to Jon’s bunk and put it in his chest. Jon followed.

“Don’t you think you should carry that with you?”

“I don’t dare. The exercise sacks are baggy, but not that baggy. If someone spots it… I can’t use it anywhere where there are cameras, anyway, not in daytime. It would be over before we even started.”

“True enough. You’ll have to carry it on Friday, though.”

“I know. I’ll just stick it inside in the waist string and hunch like I’ve got tummy ache. I’ll get off exercise as well.”

Jon looked startled.

“How?”

“I’ll say I’m having really bad cramps from my period. They won’t say another word.” When Jon didn’t reply and suddenly felt the need to open his chest and check his clothes were over the gun, I said, “See. Foolproof.”

“All right, it’ll work,” said Jon, flushing, but he stopped fiddling around in the chest.

It was really rather weird. The day I’d been thinking about for so long, dreading, waiting for, and it was passing silent as a dream. Elsewhere, people were (hopefully) taking copies of the book off shelves and handing over money for them, they were plugging their Readers into bookshop terminals; the wealthiest would even be downloading it from the comfort of their own homes. And here, most of the people in the dorm didn’t even know it’d just been released. And only a handful of people in the entire world knew the truth.

But after another moment, I couldn’t help voicing a secret fear.

“D’you think any of the guards here have ordered the postSort novel?”

“Possible,” said Jon honestly. “But there’s no post until Friday, is there? They won’t get their books or any newspapers until then. By which time the cavalry will be ready and waiting. And most of the guards don’t know our names, so I really wouldn’t sit around worrying about that.”

“Umm. You know, we’ll have to be careful about the Major.”

“Hmm?”

“Well, he’s always in his garden, isn’t he? And he might smell a rat if he sees everyone marching along the corridor at the wrong time.”

“The glass is frosted outside the dorms, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but he might see shadows moving. I just think we should bear it in mind.”

We sometimes caught a glimpse of the Major from the cafeteria corridor, reading or messing around with his plants. Not always, because the off-duty staff ate at the same time as us, in their mess hall, and apparently he sometimes ate with them. But one day when I’d idly asked Sally if he liked to watch all the boys’ dismantlements the way the Menace watched those of the girls, she’d replied,

‘Oh no, not the Major. He just sits in his garden and pretends the world doesn’t exist, as far as I can see. Unless someone crosses him and then…’ She’d trailed off in the manner of prudent subordinates the world over.

Well, I was worrying for nothing. Surely a Resistance attack would drag him from his retreat, even if nothing much else could.

The next two days were far worse than the days before the competition result was announced; far, far worse than the days before my Sorting. Every moment was agony—if the truth became known now, there would be no question of escape; no question of anything but the unthinkable or the unendurable.

I drilled the others in the Silent Crocodile both mornings and began to brief them more fully. From now on, I told them, they must not stir a step without their crocodile buddy beside them. And I explained carefully and repeatedly that by Thursday evening everyone was to have everything ready. Everyone was to wear their warmest clothes and their stoutest shoes—
yes, I know it’s midsummer, but it will be cold at night
—and they could take only what they could fit in their pockets.