The Territory

Title Page
Dedication
The Territory
Acknowledgements
Copyright

THE TERRITORY

SARAH GOVETT

for Noa and Alba

My name’s Noa Blake. Yes, that’s Noah without an ‘h’. Yes, it’s a real girl’s name. Apparently Noa means
movement
in Hebrew, and I moved a lot in the womb. And now. I’ve only heard of one other Noa – my godmother’s best friend’s daughter. She flunked her TAA last year, so now she’s a Fish.

New Year’s Resolution 2059: Pass TAA and don’t become a Fish.

Uncle Pete told Mum there’s an 85 per cent chance that I’ll become a Fish. He didn’t say ‘Fish’ obviously. He said ‘Wetlands Citizen’ in that weird, nasally voice of his, as if there was something stuck up his nostril. (A cobnut probably. Uncle Pete’s always eating cobnuts, the roasted, salted type. His breath stinks of them.) It’s because I’m a Norm, he said. If Mum and Dad had actually listened to him fifteen years ago ‘rather than acting like mindless hippies’ and paid for the ‘enhancement programme’, I’d be a Childe and there would be a 99.5 per cent chance that I’d pass my TAA and be able to stay in the Territory.

I couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation. When Mum saw me listening at the door, she did her funny look, wrinkling up her forehead like detailed shading in Art. I’m so malc at Art. She shut the door and all I could hear then was:

Mum: ‘Mumble mumble mumble … how could you … mumble mumble mumble … she’s clever enough …. mumble mumble mumble … never forgive.’

Uncle Pete: Whine whine whine … she has a right to know … whine whine whine … you need to prepare yourself … whine whine whine … you could speak to someone in the Ministry … whine whine whine … late upgrade.’

Then Mum started to cry so I went upstairs. When she cries, Mum ‘needs to be alone’.

I’m pleased I’m a Norm not some freakoid Childe though.

Today’s assembly was about sacrifice. Yawn. Loads of assemblies are about sacrifice at the moment. It’s THE topic of Mr Daniels. I doubt he’s ever had to sacrifice anything – apart from his hair. I can’t think of him without seeing his shiny, bald, fat head with its squirrel’s tail of grey clinging desperately to the sides.

Anyway, he was going on about Species Day or ‘Dead Dog Day’ as Jack and I call it. About how it had been necessary for the survival of the Territory that we put our species first and kill all the pets so they stopped using up our food. Of course he didn’t put it quite like that, but that’s the basic gist. We were then supposed to reflect in silence for five minutes about difficult and important decisions and how we grow from them.

It was weird looking round the hall during the silence. Most of the freakoids had their heads bowed. Jack was picking his nose (he can be grim) and Daisy was practising raising one eyebrow. I’d learnt to do this last week and Daisy thought it looked cool. A couple of other Norms my age were struggling not to cry as the memories came back. To cry would be BAD. Deduction of a point from your TAA score BAD, and then, before you know it, ‘Hello Fish Face’. The strangest thing was looking at the blank faces of the youngest pupils. They had been born after Species Day so didn’t have a clue what it meant to have a dog or a cat as a friend. To feed him, stroke him, play with him and then have THEM come along and take him away.

I’ll never forget that Saturday. I was seven. Jack and I had been playing fetch with Rex in the street all afternoon. Jack didn’t have his own dog as his mum thought they smelt bad and wasn’t prepared to pick up their poo in plastic bags, so he always played with mine, and Rex ended up sort of being half his. I remember it starting to rain. The raindrops were massive and soaked through my clothes and started literally dripping off Jack’s nose so he looked ridiculous. Rex’s normally long hair was plastered to his skin so he seemed loads smaller, as if he had shrunk in the wash. I hugged Jack goodbye and sprinted up the stairs to my flat, Rex bouncing along at my heels. I knew something was wrong as soon as I saw Mum. She was standing in the kitchen with a white face, red eyes and a really straight back. And she didn’t even mention the muddy trail that Rex and I had made. She talked fast, too fast. I didn’t understand at first, didn’t want to. Because of her job at the Laboratory, she’d been given advance warning. That night at 9pm the police were going to round up all the pets in the Territory and kill them. No one was supposed to know so that they wouldn’t be tempted to hide them or resist. The police would get to keep their attack dogs, of course. The rules never applied to them.

I asked Mum what the plan was. She’s always been the boss in our family as far as organising and planning stuff goes. Dad’s a bit malc at stuff like that.

‘Where are we going to hide Rex?’ I whispered. ‘He could live under my bed. Or in the gap behind the washing machine. They won’t find him there. Jack didn’t even find me there when we were playing hide and seek and he’s really good at looking.’

Mum pursed her lips. ‘We’re not going to hide Rex. They’d find him and then that’d mean…’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. We’re just going to say goodbye to Rex ourselves. Take responsibility.’ Her voice trailed off.

We waited until Dad got home from work just after 7. We gave Rex the meat we would have had for dinner, hugged him as hard as he’d let us and then sang the ‘Rex is Cool’ song that Dad had invented and that always made Rex’s tail thud on the floor in approval. In the middle of the third verse, Mum hit him over the head with a cricket bat and he made a quiet whimper and then was silent.

We handed Rex’s body to the police when they came and they wouldn’t look me in the eye.

We had double Art today. Mrs Foster got us to draw a picture of something that represented someone we knew. Most of the class, the freakoids especially, looked massively confused. All term we had been doing these well boring scale drawings of buildings and stuff, to train us up to be ‘useful’ architects and engineers instead o
f
‘mere’ painters, so this was a bit of a shock. Hugo Barnes stood up and asked whether we should check with Mr Daniels if this was on the curriculum, but Mrs Foster just raised one eyebrow and gave him such an evil glare that he shrank back onto his stool. Daisy and I spent the next few minutes raising eyebrows at one another in celebration.

Anyway, most drawings were typically limp. Amanda, who spends 80 per cent of her freakoid brain obsessing over Hugo and the other 20 per cent deciding how best to draw attention to her non-existent boobs, stayed true to form and completely failed to understand the task. She drew a picture of her brother to represent, wait for it: her brother (durr!!) If you can’t upload it… I can’t believe she’ll probably pass her TAA. I mean, the whole point is it’s supposed to keep the best brains in the Territory.

I drew a picture of a blanket to represent my mum. I explained to Mrs Foster that this was because Mum’s always there to comfort me and wrap her arms around me. Jack and Daisy both mimed puking, but I think Mrs Foster must have liked what I said because although, as usual, my drawing sucked, I actually got 80 per cent this time.

You should have seen Jack’s drawing though. Jack is ACE at Art. He did a charcoal sketch of a dog chained to a post. It was supposed to represent his dad. The dimensions were all a bit off, in the way that only people who are properly good at Art can pull off, but the eyes just stared back at you in a really haunting way. Black, with dots of soul at the centre. What was so weird was that the picture was exactly like Jack’s dad. Not exactly like him obviously
,
’cos he’s not a dog, but at the same time just like him. I think it seemed so shocking as you just don’t see pictures of dogs anymore, not anywhere. Not since Dead Dog Day. And because Jack’s dad was a Subversive. No one mentions them either. No way. Particularly not the dead ones. Luckily, I guess, Jack’s mum had already shacked up with some rich transport company boss, the guy who pays for him to come here.

Mrs Foster called the picture ‘mesmerising’ and hung it in one of the display frames on the Art room corridor; the one next to the window. It looked out of place next to all the other frames with their neat scale drawings and straight lines.

It’s lucky that Jack is so amazing at Art. He finds Maths and science properly hard, but if he wins one of the 500 Special Artistic Merit awards he’ll only need to get an average of 50 per cent in the other subjects, rather than the normal 70 per cent. Which is actually doable. And Mrs Foster is really helping him prepare his portfolio for the SAMs. She calls Jack her ‘protégé’ and spends so much time with him that it’s almost creepy, but she’s like the least creepy person imaginable and definitely not a paedo, so it’s all good.

I wish I was someone’s protégé. Most teachers, apart from Ms Jones, reasonably like me. But it’s often a kind of pitying kind of like. Whenever they say, ‘Really well done,’ I know in their heads they’re also saying, ‘for a Norm.’ It’s like they don’t want to invest too much in me as chances are I’ll be shipped off to be a Fish. I’ll show them!