Tanglewreck (22 page)

Underneath was a cast-iron grille made in the eighteenth century. This he pulled aside with both hands, then, fiddling in his coat once more, fished out two miner’s helmets with lamps. He offered one to Mrs Rokabye, and strapped the other on his own bald head.

‘Down the Town!’ he said cheerfully.

Mrs Rokabye looked into the hole. There was no ladder, no rope, no stairs, no lift.

‘What do you expect me to do?’

‘Where there’s no stair, it’s both feet in the air. Jump!’

‘JUMP???????!!!!!!!!!!!’

Sniveller recalled that ladies are the fairer sex, and fainthearted, and in need of encouragement and support. He had never been married but he knew his manners. Bowing slightly, he arranged himself at the edge of the black yawning gap, with the flourish of an Olympic diver.

‘Dear lady, away I go, and don’t be slow.’

Without hesitation, Sniveller leapt down the Walworth Hole.

Mrs Rokabye waited for the scream and the crash. She waited and she waited and after five minutes she reasoned that Sniveller could not be dead. She considered her options; she could go back to Spitalfields, but she didn’t know the way and she didn’t have a key to the house. She could go back to Tanglewreck, but there were two dead men there already, and besides she didn’t have a train ticket.

What did she have? Sardines, peanuts and teabags. They
wouldn’t last long in this cold cruel world. She felt the pin in her pocket. She could sell that, but she had to be careful, someone might think she had stolen it – which she had done.

Very well, then. So be it. Chin up. Best foot forward. Stiff upper lip.

She fastened the miner’s helmet over the top of her hat, and tied the borrowed scarf all the way round her, to stop her coat flapping open. She had read somewhere that parachutists are always streamlined.

Stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth to stop herself screaming, Mrs Rokabye jumped.

There she goes, speeding faster and faster through infinite blackness. She seemed to be dropping through the weight of the world. She had a sense of nothing around her but open air, except that it was closed air, with a texture to it, like cloth – yes, she felt as though she was falling through cloth.

Then she felt herself start to spin. She was no longer hurtling downwards, she was spinning round and round like a corkscrew, and she was getting dizzy. She could hear voices. She closed her eyes.

Her last thought as the freezing air numbed her into unconsciousness was of Bigamist. Would she ever see her beloved rabbit again?

At the Caffè Ora, Gabriel was lying on a camp bed under a thick blanket. Ora called a doctor, who clicked the dislocated shoulder back into place, and bound up the cuts and bruises that covered poor Gabriel’s body.

Silver, Toby, Ora, Serena, everyone wanted to know what had happened to Gabriel in the Black Hole, but he was too weak to speak, and somewhere in his exhausted mind, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to tell them. Troubled and sore, he drifted off to sleep, with Dinger the cat curled up at his feet.

Ora was holding an emergency meeting. No one had had any idea that the Deportees were being Atomised.

Try as she might, Silver couldn’t make anyone listen to her story about Abel Darkwater and Regalia Mason.

‘Look,’ said Ora, patting Silver gently, but not really listening to her, ‘this place is full of people who think they can find the magic numbers of eternal life, or eternal youth, or whatever they want. It’s full of people who have nothing and who are trying to be something. A man who thinks he’s a magician is no big deal here. There’s a special Hocus-Pocus Focus Group for those who are anti-science.’

‘But the Timekeeper –’

‘Yes, and the Holy Grail, and the Lost City of Atlantis.’

‘But Regalia Mason is the Quantum, and she’s here.’

Ora shook her head. ‘The Quantum isn’t one person. It’s everything, it’s everywhere. We know that, Silver, we have our Intelligence out there.’

Silver shook her head. ‘Well, they weren’t intelligent enough to save Gabriel. And nobody knew about the people being Atomised.’

Ora frowned.

‘And I want to know about the twins,’ said Silver. ‘I saw loads of twins at Checkpoint Zero. I mean, pairs and pairs of them, like Noah’s Ark or something.’

‘Yeah,’ said Toby. ‘Sally ’n’ Kelly’z still in there. Wazappinin?’

‘The twins have been taken to the hospital. I have an excellent contact there who tells me both girls are safe and well.’

‘What goes on at the hospital?’ asked Silver.

Ora sighed and sat down, exhausted. She had been up all night. ‘Silver, I can’t answer you now. You have to leave this to us now. This is very serious. This is an emergency. Go in with Gabriel, both of you, and as soon as I can, I’ll explain, OK?’

Silver shrugged. She knew better than to argue with grown-ups. You had to wait until they forgot about you and then get on with things.

The other kids from the bus were playing board games and eating bowls of steaming pasta. Toby and Silver took their plates and went into the little back room where Silver slept.

Gabriel was sleeping soundly with a sprawled-sideways Dinger.

‘Man, that cat’s well dead,’ said Toby, poking Dinger with his foot.

‘Yeah, I thought that when I first came here, but he’s a scientific cat. He was used in a famous animal experiment by someone called Dr Schrödinger – that’s why he’s called Dinger. He’s alive and dead at the same time.’

‘No, that ain’t so!’ said Toby. ‘Can’t be done, man.’

‘It’s his wave function,’ said Silver. ‘He tunes in and out of Universes. He’s just tuned in to a Universe where he’s dead, that’s all, but he’ll tune in to us again later, and he’ll be fine.’

Toby did not look too happy to be sitting next to a dead cat, but he had no choice.

‘Wot now?’ he said.

‘I’ve got to go to the Sands of Time.’

‘Yeah?’

‘There’s something there I need to find – that’s why I’m here really. We didn’t really come by accident.’

‘You think I’m stupid? I know that.’

‘Yeah.’

There was a silence. Then Toby said, ‘But I gotta get the twins out, y’know?’

‘Yeah. I think so too, and I should help you. You helped me. Let’s go together.’

‘It’s dangerous out there.’

‘Yeah, but so is a Black Hole, and so is being Atomised. It’s all dangerous here – what could be worse than Bethlehem Hospital?’

As she said these words, Gabriel sat bolt upright in his
bed, his bandage slipping from his head.

‘Fools and fiends there are and no others. It rises to the north of the City of London, isolated, majestic and imperious, brooded over by the water-tower and the chimney, unmistakable and daunting.’

Silver threw her arms round his neck. ‘Not Bedlam, Gabriel, you’re never going back there. This is a modern open white hospital in a square.’

‘It is the same place,’ said Gabriel.

He calmed down and wiped his forehead. ‘You saved me.’

The cat Dinger stirred and stretched.

‘I’m coming with you,’ said Gabriel.

Late that night, when it was completely dark, Gabriel, Silver and Toby got up and got dressed without putting the light on, and went to the window. No one was around.

They climbed out quickly and slunk like night-animals round the edges of the buildings, until they came to the hospital courtyard, floodlit and patrolled.

Gabriel was crouched down, and he began to tremble. Silver put her arms round him. ‘This isn’t the place you remember. Don’t worry.’

‘Round the back,’ whispered Toby, ‘to the kitchens. They deliver food ’n’ stuff at night. We can get in that way.’

On all fours, like cats, they slunk round to the brightly lit kitchen entrance, and, sure enough, the big doors were wide open, and some of the Scrappers were unloading pallets on to a little train that ran on its own tracks into the hospital.

‘It used to be robots here,’ said Toby, ‘but humans is cheaper.’

‘Can we get out the same way?’ asked Silver.

‘Till dawn-time. When the third of the three suns rises, thazzit. Slam.’

‘And what do you think you want, you little snoopers?’ said a voice as nasty and high as a dead rat. One of the Scrappers had come up behind them. Toby took a swing at him and winded him in the stomach.

‘You little thug …’ His friend came forward and grabbed Toby, who twisted and turned and fought back as hard as he could. Gabriel lunged from his crouched position, straight at the legs of the man who had Toby, and brought him crashing down. The boys and the men started some serious fighting, even though Gabriel had one arm in a sling. In the heat of the fight Silver was forgotten.

She hesitated. Then she dodged away and into the darkness behind the kitchens. As the train came round she jumped into a carriage, and hid herself under a sack of flour.

The train ran silently into the hospital and stopped smoothly. Silver waited, but no one came to unload the trucks. Cautiously, she raised her head and looked round. No one was there, but she could hear two pairs of footsteps. She jumped out and ran up a flight of stone stairs that she hoped might lead somewhere. The door at the top was locked with a fingerprint scanner.

She waited and listened. ‘Get those bananas in the lift,
OK? They’re wanted in the kitchens for breakfast.’

She peered down. Yes, she could see the lift. If she could get in, she could go higher, maybe take the lift further.

Two Scrappers started unloading the first few sacks into the open door of the lift. After three sacks, one of them stopped and offered his mate a swig at a bottle.

‘Don’t kill yorsel fur this lot,’ he said, and his mate nodded, and they turned away.

Silver took her chance and ran across behind the little train, and hid in the lift, crouched small as small behind the three sacks of bananas. After a while the Scrappers resumed their work, and at last, at long last, one of them pushed the buttons on the lift, and travelled, humming a tune, up towards the kitchens, with the bananas as required, and Silver as not required.

She felt the heat as soon as the doors opened on the stainless-steel-polished kitchen. Men in hats and aprons were making jokes she didn’t understand about bananas, but while they were busy with their banter, Silver reached out and pushed the button that said OPERATING FLOOR. The lift closed and glided upwards, and before anyone could start investigating, Silver was out and away.

She had done it. She was in Bethlehem Hospital.

Swing doors. Polish. Electrical hum. Low lights. Corridors. Trolleys. Door opens. White coat. Door closes. Conversation. Can’t hear. Beeping. A blue line on a white screen. Beeping. Antiseptic smell. Clatter of tin on tin. Tray
of swabs. Someone’s coming. Hide. Beeping. CCTV. Fear. Someone’s coming.

Silver hid behind bags of used sheets. Orderlies were changing the bedding. The ward was empty. On the door it said BOYS 8–12, but there was no one there.

Why would you have a hospital with no one in it?

At home she had heard on the news that hospitals were always in crisis because there were too many sick people and not enough beds. Here a whole ward of – she counted, twenty-two beds – was empty. Did that mean that all the boys aged between eight and twelve on Philippi were healthy and well?

At the end of the ward was another door. This one said GIRLS 8–12, and it was empty too. The whole floor was deserted. This was the operating floor, but there was no one here to be operated on.

Then Silver remembered the lines of twins she had seen at Checkpoint Zero that day. She had seen the girls going into the red hut, and when she looked in the hut, the boys were there too. Were they from the hospital? Were they going to be Atomised because they were so sick? They hadn’t looked sick.

She wandered on in the quality of a dream. A deserted hospital, endless silent corridors, herself alone, and no sound except …

Then she heard it, unmistakable, like on a loudspeaker; a heart beating.

Lub dup, lub dup, lub dup, lub dup.

Silver followed the beating heart.

She came to a pair of double doors with mesh safety glass in the small observation windows. The noise of the heart was loud enough now to hurt her ears.

She pushed lightly against one of the doors. It opened. She was in a spotless room where two big horizontal cylinders – like giant cigar tubes – were placed side by side connected by wires. Monitor screens that she didn’t understand lined the room, each showing a different moving coloured line. She guessed from the peaks and troughs of one of the screens that it was a heart monitor, but she didn’t know what the others were showing.

On top of each of the cylinders was a big clock. It was the clocks she could hear ticking like heartbeats, and she remembered that day in Abel Darkwater’s study.

Everything in the study was ticking, even the two of them, their hearts beating like human clocks
.

She was very frightened but she tiptoed up to one of the cylinders and looked through the glass panel. There was one of the twins! Silver didn’t know which one because they were identical.

Kelly, or Sally, was lying peacefully inside. Silver watched her, and saw something very strange start to happen; the girl began to age.

Faint lines appeared on her face. Her skin grew redder and coarser. The lines deepened, her hair thinned and turned grey. Her skin wrinkled. She was old.

Hardly able to stop herself crying out, Silver went round
to the other cylinder and looked inside.

The woman lying there was beautiful but not young, or rather she was getting younger every second. Her skin began to smooth out. Her cheeks plumped. The crow’s feet under her eyes disappeared and the lines on each side of her mouth vanished. Her hair was thick and blonde and her face was radiant.

She was in the prime of life and she was Regalia Mason.

Toby and Gabriel had got free of the Scrappers, but the two of them had been separated. Toby had smashed a crate over the bully twisting Gabriel’s dislocated shoulder, and then, seeing more Scrappers arriving, he had run for it, shouting at Gabriel to do the same. Gabriel scrambled up and limped off. He had only one thought in his mind; to find Silver.