Entangled (10 page)

Leoni thought about it: ‘OK. I guess I can see that. If my consciousness isn’t generated by my body and brain, and if it doesn’t depend on them to exist – if it’s like the TV
signal
, rather than the TV set – then there’s no reason why it should die when my body and brain die.’

‘No reason,’ Bannerman affirmed. ‘On the contrary, you’d expect it would continue to have experiences separate from the body. So maybe that’s what OBEs are – non-physical consciousness, liberated from the body and brain, continuing to witness and overhear events in the physical world.’

‘In which case that conversation between Mom and Dad could have been real?’

Bannerman shrugged: ‘I’m not saying that. I’m saying we – I mean doctors, scientists – actually don’t know what OBEs are. They’re mysterious. Unexplained. Most of my colleagues would reject the idea that you really are out of your body when you have these kinds of experiences …’ A pager attached to his belt began to bleep: ‘And they’d think you were delusional if you tried to tell them that you’d accessed real information in such a state. But honestly, after what I’ve seen and heard in the ER I’m not so sure …’ He silenced the pager and picked up the telephone by Leoni’s bed: ‘Excuse me for a second. I’ve got to respond to this, OK?’ He dialled a number, listened and hung up. ‘I have to go,’ he announced. He was already heading for the door. ‘Get some sleep, Leoni, and I’ll see you tomorrow. I still want to hear about that angel you met.’

‘Wait. Dr Bannerman … John … Orange sneakers. Purple and green laces.’

He paused: ‘Sorry … I don’t understand.’

‘Something else I saw yesterday while I was out of my body. There was a receptionist. Behind a desk in the main lobby of this hospital. She was wearing a dark suit. Looked very prim and proper. But she had orange sneakers on her feet, with striped purple and green laces …’

‘So … ?’

‘If that person exists, then it means I saw real things, doesn’t it?’

‘Not necessarily … Look, I’ve got to go …’ Bannerman gave her a nice smile. ‘But I’ll check it out, OK? I mean, about the receptionist. I’ll be in to see you around ten a.m. Now sleep.’

* * *

Just after six a.m. Leoni awoke with a start to find a crowd in her room. Mom and Dad were there, a janitor pushing an empty wheelchair, two men in suits and several nurses. Without a word one of the nurses got hold of her arm and began prepping her for a shot. Leoni screamed and struggled to pull free, but in an instant she felt the needle pierce her skin. The last thing she saw, as her vision blurred, was the look of absolute triumph and vindication on Mom’s face.

‘You know where we’re going,’ said Ria to Brindle. ‘I don’t. So help me find a place where we can set an ambush.’ She experimented with a thought-picture, envisaging a forest with open country beyond it. Eight of the Uglies and Ria herself would hide amongst the trees to await the men following them. But the main column, still numbering more than forty, would continue on out of the forest where they should be in plain view for a long while as they crossed the open country. ‘Is there somewhere like that?’ she asked.

Brindle’s eyes lit up: ‘Yes!’ He hesitated: ‘But near Secret Place. Maybe not good to let them get so close …’

‘It doesn’t matter how close it is. We have to kill them and then they won’t be telling any tales. The more important thing is, are you ready to murder these strangers? Because that’s what we’re going to have to do.’

Brindle hesitated again and Ria felt herself becoming irritated at his instinctive gentleness: ‘I don’t want to hear any crap about them being spirits and people just like us,’ she prompted. ‘They’re killers. They slaughtered four Uglies for no reason. Just because they could. So now it’s their turn.’

‘I know,’ said Brindle. ‘Uglies must kill or be killed. Clan already teaching us this lesson every day. But hard for us to learn.’

After reaching the lip of the plateau they hiked down a steep densely forested slope, in the lee of the wind. Ria loved all forests and this one was beautiful, silent and lit up at intervals by glints of golden sunlight thrusting down between the branches.

At the bottom of the valley they emerged from the trees onto the rocky shore of a narrow gleaming lake and began to trek four abreast alongside it.

Ria and Brindle were in the second rank, right behind the lumbering, grizzled leader. Now Ria noticed, as she had not when he had intervened to drag Duma, Grigo and Vik off her this morning, that three
deep parallel scars ran down the outside of his right arm to a point below the elbow, the token of some violent encounter with a wild beast – bear? lion? – many years before.

Brindle’s voice popped up inside her head: ‘Ten winters ago, hungry bear came into our camp and tried to grab Grondin’s wife. Wanted to eat. Grondin had other ideas. There was fight …’

‘And?’

‘Bear lose. Grondin’s wife got fancy necklace from teeth and claws. Wears all time.’

‘Is Grondin part of a longer name, like Brindle?’

‘Ha! You really want to know? OK. Here goes: Grondinondin-grand-inadin-apciprona.’

‘The “apciprona” bit on the end sounds familiar.’

‘I am Brindle-phudge-tublo-trungen-apciprona, remember? Grondin is my father’s brother.’

Again Ria shared a wash of sorrow and pain with Brindle and knew that thinking of his father had led him to recall the death of his mother and siblings at the hands of the Clan. She also received strong imagery of an Ugly elder, looking quite a bit like Grondin, but even taller and more massively built.

‘You’re showing me your father, aren’t you?’

‘Yes. I love him! He’s a great guy. Best friend as well as father and King of all the Uglies.’

‘Hang on. You’re joking, right? Your father is the king?’

‘Not joking.’

‘So that means one day you’re going to be …’

‘King of the Uglies? Yes. If any Uglies left.’

Ria looked puzzled.

‘We are last Uglies in world,’ Brindle explained. ‘Five hundred of us now at Secret Place. Maybe seven hundred more still living in camps outside. Can’t protect from attacks of Clan there. Trying to bring all to Secret Place.’

‘There are no others?

‘No more Uglies after we gone. All dead.’

At once many things about Brindle that had puzzled Ria began to make sense, and she understood why he had so much authority amongst a large group of elders and braves. It wasn’t just some no-account
crippled kid she’d rescued but the only surviving son of the King of the Uglies! She decided she would help him when she returned to the Clan. Murgh’s sinister campaign to wipe out these gentle creatures was all wrong and she had to try to stop it. It might not even be too difficult if she could prove what she suspected – that he and Grigo were taking their orders from ferocious outlanders like the two who followed them now.

Ria had spent almost her entire life in the open air, gathering fruits and nuts in the forests, using her skill with stones to hunt rabbits, birds and small deer. She thought she was nearly as strong and skilled, as wily and tough, as many of the full-grown braves of the Clan. Even so, the relentless non-stop pace set by the Uglies – since they left the lake almost all their route had been up the side of what seemed to be an interminable mountain – had given her a persistent stitch low down in her side. This was embarrassing because she didn’t want to appear weak, and what made it worse was that none of the Uglies – not even the injured, or the stretcher-bearers, or crippled Brindle – showed any sign of slowing down.

It was late afternoon when they entered a swathe of ancient forest growing right across the flank of the mountain and continued to wind their way upward under the shelter of huge pines. ‘We coming to place where must make ambush,’ Brindle warned. ‘Not far from here.’

Ria peered back over her shoulder. The Uglies – despite their losses, there were still more than fifty of them – were leaving a clear trail amongst the thick layers of brown pine needles smothering the forest floor. Even a child would be able to follow them. But that was the whole point of her plan.

Now they entered an immense grassy clearing, hundreds of paces from side to side, and marched straight across it, trampling the grass underfoot. When they passed back under tree cover on the opposite side of the clearing Ria saw that the edge of the forest lay close, and that above it reared a huge amphitheatre of emerald-green mountain meadow, lit up like a promise in the declining sun, hemmed in far above by a spectacular array of high and forbidding cliffs.

Armed with flint knives, war axes and each carrying two heavy spears, Brindle, Grondin, and six other big braves stayed behind with Ria to
set the ambush. She noted how they all seemed to be waiting for her to tell them what to do. ‘We not good at this sort of thing,’ Brindle admitted.

Ria, who had filled her pouch with throwing stones at the lakeside, didn’t hesitate to take charge. Using Brindle to communicate with the others, she showed how the men behind them would be following the broad and conspicuous trail of the column. ‘If we’re lucky they won’t notice that some of us have turned back,’ she said. She pointed to the others hiking up the steep slope towards the still-distant wall of cliffs. ‘It’s just going to look like we marched straight through the forest and carried on climbing the mountain on the other side.’

There was no time for elaborate tricks or traps. Ria ordered her ambush party to take shelter behind trees on both sides of the track, ready to rain down spears and stones on the killers on their trail.

But a worm of doubt nagged at her.

With their fatal gentleness, would eight Uglies be enough to win victory against such hard and violent men?

As Leoni emerged from sedation she discovered, to her horror, that she was strapped down in a metal-framed high-sided cot in an unfamiliar room. She was groggy but she knew what had happened. Mom and Dad had pulled strings and had her committed to a mental hospital – something that they had threatened to do before.

It hit her that this must be what Mom had meant by ‘clearing up the dead wood’.

She screamed and struggled against the restraints holding her wrists and ankles, and thrashed her head from side to side. Then, realising that she must be under video surveillance, Leoni forced herself to calm down. Acting mad was the last thing she needed to do in here.

She looked around the room. It was quite large, and luxuriously furnished, but the door had three locks and an inspection hatch, and the windows were barred on the inside. Basically she was in a jail. ‘Hey,’ she yelled, ‘I need to use the bathroom.’

Silence.

‘Hellooo. Is anybody out there? I need to use the bathroom.’

Silence.

‘Look. Take me seriously. I’m going to wet the bed if someone doesn’t get me to a bathroom pretty soon.’

Silence.

Was this some kind of test? Leoni sighed and waited. She was, she realised, in very deep trouble. Mom and Dad had all the money in the world and in sunny LA, where money mattered so much, how hard would it be for them to find a psychiatrist willing to certify she was insane? The hospital was no doubt being well paid to accommodate her and would also have an interest in keeping her where she was – sweetened perhaps by the promise of one of Dad’s multi-million-dollar capital gifts.

She dozed for a few moments. The next thing she heard was the
sound of keys turning in the locks. Then the door swung open and two beaming beefy nurses marched in. ‘Hello’, they said in unison, and introduced themselves: Deirdre and Melissa. They fussed around Leoni, removed her restraints and helped her into a sitting position. ‘You were given quite a strong sedative,’ Deirdre explained. ‘You’ve been out for most of the morning so your legs are going to be a bit wobbly. We need to help you walk over to the bathroom.’