I Am Margaret (35 page)

“
I’m so sorry, Jon.” My insides churned guiltily. Without my stupid custard attack, there wouldn’t have been any crush. He relied on that stick so much.
My long eye
, he called it. “I’ll fix it if I possibly can, I promise.”

From then on, as we sat discussing escape plans, my hands were busy with string, rulers, pencils, pieces of card… But I couldn’t get the thing to stay together for more than a few minutes.

“Margo,” said Jon one day, taking my busy hands and stilling them. “It’s broken and you can’t fix it. Not with a handful of stationery and a ball of string. You need to have your mind on this plan of ours and right now you haven’t. I know my way around. I’m fine.”

“But you don’t know what’s in the way…” I protested, running a gentle hand around the cut over his eye, acquired from the concrete wall after he’d tripped over a mop and bucket the day before. “I’ll figure it out….”

“
We’ve only got time to figure one thing out and it’s not
this
.”

He took the pieces of the stick from my lap and walked across the room with a hesitance that twisted a knife inside me, so used to his confident grace. Before I’d realized what he was doing he’d opened the trash hatch and thrown the pieces in. He picked his way back across the room and sat beside me again.

“There. Now you have no excuse not to concentrate on the plan. So concentrate, damnit!”

After that sacrifice on Jon’s part, I tried very hard indeed to
concentrate, damnit,
and two weeks later Jon and I walked down to dinner trying not to look too pleased with ourselves.

“Now we’re really getting somewhere,” I said under my breath, face close to his. “Keep trying, though. Just because you didn’t immediately pick any holes in that plan…”

“
I know. I’m working on it. ‘Cause I
was
hoping we’d have things a bit more settled by now.”

The letter I’d posted that morning suggested the following Monday for my meeting with Bane. That would leave only nine days until the publication day so it wasn’t much time for Bane to make final arrangements.

“We’ve got almost a week before you meet Bane, though,” Jon was saying, “and I think we have nearly cracked it. There’s still a lot that chance could wreck, but I’m not sure we’re going to be able to avoid that.”

“No…”

“Cheer up, Sally, here’s your two lovebirds…” Brandon’s voice broke in on our murmured conversation in a tone of clumsy commiseration. “They normally cheer you up.”

Nice Sally stood by the cafeteria door, her eyes red and puffy. I drew Jon to a halt in front of her.

“Sally, what’s the matter?”

She turned her head away slightly and shook it.

“Sally, you look really upset,” I persisted. “Has something happened?”

Brandon followed everyone into the cafeteria and Sally relaxed a little. No longer feeling she had to keep up appearances in front of her colleague, perhaps.

“Did you hear about Wearmfell factory?” Her voice was choked—tears clearly weren’t far away. My chest tightened in sympathy. Whatever had happened?

“Wearmfell. Military factory, isn’t it? Just over Wearm Pass?”

“
Military!” sniffed Sally fiercely. “It makes up ration packs for the EuroArmy.
Ration packs!
Real high-tech weapons systems, don’t you think?”

“No, of course not. It’s just food, isn’t it?”

“Just food that happens to be going to the army,” remarked Jon. “Not weapons, no.”

“Well, tell that to the Resistance! They raided Wearmfell Factory last night. Burnt the whole place down. But before they did that, they…” Tears were spilling down her cheeks now. “They lined up all the guards and shot them. My… my brother was a guard there, see… and he was… he was on shift…” She was crying in earnest now, rather jerkily as she tried to stop herself.

“Sally, that’s awful!” I’d no need to feign sincerity. “I’m so sorry!”

Jon just looked grim. Of course, he looked grim a lot of the time now.

“
Ration packs!”
sniffed Sally. “He was guarding ration packs! Why him? I keep thinking, why him? I’m here guarding… guarding
you
, and he’s guarding
ration packs
, and it’s him who gets… gets…” She wrestled a sodden hankie from her pocket and buried her nose in it.

“Oh, Sally, they’ll let you go home, won’t they?”

She sort of nodded and shook her head all at once.

“
Captain said no, Major said yes. But I’m not going. I can’t face his wife—registered partner,” she corrected herself with the reflex of EuroGov employees the Bloc over. “Can’t bear the thought of her looking at me and wondering how it is David’s dead and I’m not. Though I’m guarding reAssignees and he’s guarding—oh!—
was guarding
ration…” she broke off, sobbing into her dripping hankie until Jon held out a large dry one.

“Oh, thank you. How can you… how can you be so kind to me?”

“Your brother’s been murdered! That’s terrible!” I said. “What’s so kind about feeling sorry for you after something like that?”

“‘Cause… ‘Cause I’m guarding you,” she sniffed.

“Sally, you told us you took this job because you wanted to make sure we were looked after properly. Seems like you meant it, too. You don’t deserve to be shot any more than your brother did.”

“
But it is a job, y’see... D’rather it’s someone here who’s going to be nice to you poor things, I do mean it, but… it is a
job
… Oh!
David
…” She sobbed even harder. I frowned.

“Look, I can sort of see why you don’t want to go home, but can’t you… you know, stay off shift for a day or two until you feel better?”

Sally shook her head unequivocally this time.

“Major said I could go or not go, but if I didn’t go, my shifts were up to the Captain, and she said normal shifts, so it’s normal shifts.” She blew her nose and wiped her face, trying to get herself together. “Look, you two are missing your dinner. Go on in. I’ll be fine. Thank you for… for even caring.”

“Hard not to care about something like that,” I said.

She blew her nose again and waved the hankie vaguely at Jon. “I’ll send this to the laundry. Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome.” Jon found her arm and touched it gently, then moved with me into the cafeteria. After several more trips and falls, he’d taken to walking with me all the time, though he clearly hated the feeling of dependence. ‘I’d better not break something just now, had I?’ he’d muttered. ‘Since I imagine you’d drag me along regardless.’

“Bastards!” I fumed, as we sat down with our trays and put our heads together. “Killing factory guards! What the hell good is that supposed to do, you tell me?”

“
None whatsoever,” said Jon grimly. “Bloodthirsty maniacs, the lot of them. No wonder your cousin Mark hates their guts.”

“I think my cousin Mark was with them once, don’t you?”

Jon winced.

“
Yeah, I’ve always got that impression too. Knows them far too well and loathes them far too much.
Factory guards
. Huh. Have they nothing better to do?”

“Trigger-happy morons!” I shoveled down my dinner with little regard for the taste, such as there was. “If Bane ever actually joins them I’m going to slap him silly!”

“Bane’s strong, but he’s not hard. They’d make him hard fast enough, but… I’ve always hoped it might stop him joining them in the first place.”

I sighed, putting down my knife and fork and pushing my plate away.

“They’d make him hard all right. And then they’d break him. Hard is brittle. Well,” I dropped my voice even further. “If we get out of here, we’ll be off out of the EuroBloc entirely. Get him away from them before it’s too late.”

“
Hear, hear,” said Jon, then added, “though I still think you should leave
me
here. Especially
now
.” And ducked.

“Right!” I called after morning exercise the next day, stepping into the center of the dorm and raising my voice. “Does anyone want to play a game?”

An impatient noise from Jane, a sigh from Rebecca and a chorus of assent from everyone else.

“Game, game!” exclaimed Sarah, looking as though Winterfest had come six months early.

“What game, Margo?” asked Harriet, scarcely any less eager.

“Well, it’s called the Silent Crocodile. Two people sit in the middle of the room blindfolded, and all the others hold hands in twos and make a crocodile. The crocodile has to snake its way around and around the room and gradually sneak up on the ones in the middle. So it mustn’t make any noise or break up. The pair in the middle of the room have to try and point at the crocodile.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” said Jane scornfully. “That lot are never going to be quiet and stick together! What an absolute waste of time.”

“I didn’t say it would be an easy game. We’ll just have to practice a lot.”

Some people were looking rather put off by Jane’s words, so I added, “Let’s play the Silent Crocodile this morning, then I’ll read the next bit of the Fellest Ewe’s diary after afternoon exercise. How’s that?”

Enthusiasm for the game revived suddenly. Frowning, Jane watched as I started pairing people off, carefully matching each smarter or more practical girl up with a simpler or less practical girl. I put Sarah with Rebecca, and found Jane had come over to join in after all.

“Hi, Jane. Will you pair with Bethan?” Jane grimaced slightly, but nodded. Then caught my shoulder and leaned in to hiss,

“Are you planning what I suddenly think you’re planning?”

“Well, let’s put it this way, I hope you’ll encourage everyone to play this game every day for the next two weeks.”

Jane’s eyes lit up.

“That soon?”

That soon or never.
But I didn’t say it. I just smiled, said yes, Sarah could start in the middle with Rebecca, and oversaw all the chairs and tables moved to the side and stacked out of the way.

The game was as difficult as Jane predicted, but even the best laid plan was likely to dissolve into chaos and I needed to teach everyone to stick together. Sooner or later Jon and I would have to fill everyone in, but it was better left absolutely as late as possible. Innocent tongues could flap just as destructively as malicious ones.

I did take Rebecca into my confidence as well as Jane, though I said no more than that we were to escape and this was necessary practice for that. But it was enough to make them both help to keep the games going, to encourage lots of laughter every time the crocodile was caught, and to chide anyone who let go of their partner or broke formation.

We brought Emily into the secret too and she taught the game to the Old Year, drilling them mercilessly. They were not yet at Prime Condition but there were only fourteen of them left.

When people began to look out for their ‘crocodile buddy’ outside game time, I knew we were getting somewhere. As for the boys—they’d just have to take their chances on the day.

Keeping any emotional distance from Jon was becoming impossible, though—we were clinging to each other like people drowning. Me, I was existing in a state of terror, constantly fearing the truth about my book would come out before the publication day, and Jon, Jon was feeling the loss of his long eye very badly.

How would he manage once we’d escaped? If the stick was such a help in a place he knew well, it would be utterly invaluable for facing the unknown. Watkins, bless him, offered to find something to replace it and post it to Jon when he was off shift, but that wasn’t for another two months. The most annoying thing of all was that I’d seen something inside the Facility that would do and I simply couldn’t remember what it was.

In sheer desperation I cornered the Captain in the stairwell one day and asked as politely as I could manage if she would find something for Jon. She asked so many questions about what he needed I
almost
began to hope—then the last reAssignee went through the door to the cafeteria corridor and…
ah
… she’d backed me into the camera’s blind spot. She grabbed a fistful of my hair and slammed my head into the wall so hard she left me in a dazed heap on the floor.

It was official. She hated my guts.

She hadn’t even bothered to say no and I didn’t bother to say anything about it to Jon. Not until people began to ask what’d happened to my face, anyway.

Monday night and the moon was back, adding its silvery light to the glow of the flood lights. The killing zone remained clearly, but not brightly, illuminated. The high powered lights were very expensive and the guards only needed to see well
enough
—they had their search lights, after all.