I Am Margaret (38 page)

“Bane, I’m not going anywhere with the Resistance. You know that, right?”

“
Relax, no one’s going anywhere with the Resistance but the Resistance. We’ll be heading off a different way. Anyway… Oh, hell, I said a lot and they said a lot, but I couldn’t argue
too
hard, ‘cause I’d presented the whole thing primarily as a propaganda exercise—embarrass the EuroBloc and get them some good press for once, y’see? To keep them from leveling the place and killing everyone. Which it turns out, you’ll be glad to hear, would be so expensive in terms of resources, both live and inanimate, that they’re not up for it.

“Well, anyway, we’re waiting until Friday night if we can, zero hour at eleven o’clock. But we’ll be in position as soon as the newspaper deadline has passed and I want you to have everything ready as well. If they come for you, if you have any reason to think you can’t wait, just get started. Wave this out the dorm window so we know to start the clock.”

His hand reached up and pushed a large red silk handkerchief into the hatch. I tucked it inside my jumpsuit with the three guns.

“Now, timings?” he said. “You know how long it takes to get around in there. I don’t.”

“
Okay. One minute after zero hour—or the red handkerchief—start the attack. On all the towers, I think, but the east ones most, to draw all the spare guards over there. If it’s nighttime, wait ten more minutes, then intensify the attack, making sure you hit the two west towers a bit harder—they’re the ones we’ll be taking, so they need to be panicking about then. But not too hard, because the last thing we want is a load of reinforcements
actually
running over there!”

“I wouldn’t worry,” put in Bane, “at least nine out of ten of those guards will never have heard a gun go off outside a shooting range. I reckon they’ll panic way before their officers see the need to send reinforcements. Before I forget, how many are there?”

I’d made this addition already.

“There are fourteen internal guards and twenty-eight external. There’s just the two officers, Major Everington and Captain Wallis.”

“How many other people are inside?”

“Two dismantlers and three minions—that is, lab assistants. A nurse. The minions come and go in six-month shifts like the guards, but the others are permanent staff, like the Captain and Major.”

“Some life,” sniffed Bane. “Well, we’d got as far as a ten-minute delay at night…?”

“
Yes. But if it’s daytime, wait twenty minutes instead, because we’ll have to deal with the camera room. So
please Lord
we can wait until night, because that’s just one more thing to go wrong? We’ll wave white pillow cases from the west towers to show they’re neutralized, intensify the attack on the east towers then, to keep them distracted. But carry on firing into the forest or something on the west side, so they don’t suspect.

“While the towers are being taken, someone will be freeing the boys. The girls will head straight across the west exercise yard once it’s safe and out the little gate and leg it up to the forestline—they should be pretty organized. The boys shouldn’t be far behind, but they’ll probably be all over the place. Getting everyone away after that is over to you.”

“That’s all planned. We’re going first to the glade in the Fellest below Rayle’s Pass—you remember those caves there? Well, if things go to plan, no one will be looking for us in the Fellest, but if things don’t, they’ll be a good place to hide until the initial search passes. Then we’ll… well, never mind now, let’s just say I’ve figured out what to do with seventy reAssignees. Now,” Bane added, “do you remember what I told you about ‘nonLethal’ being something of a misnomer?”

“Yeah, one shot puts someone out for a few minutes, two shots for hours, three shots for about a week—or forever if they have a health problem—and the fourth shot is fatal.”

“You got it.”

“I’ll make sure everyone else knows. Right. Newspaper deadline, midnight on Thursday night. Red handkerchief any time after that means start the escape. What if it’s dark?”

“Have you got a flashlight in the dorm?”

“Several.”

“Shine a flashlight through the handkerchief, then. That’ll show up clearly enough.”

“Okay. Otherwise, zero hour at eleven o’clock Friday night. And if we fail to get into the towers, fire the flare gun. I think I’ve got my half.”

“One minute after zero hour or red handkerchief, start attack. All towers but concentrating on east towers. Ten minutes later at night or twenty minutes later in daytime, intensify attack on west towers. At the white pillow case, intensify on east towers again to keep attention there. Girls coming out first, then boys. Okay?”

“I think that’s it. My parents, Jon’s parents? Is everything arranged?”

“They’re all sorted, Margo. They’ll have quietly disappeared well before the truth comes out.”

“Good. I thought that was what they were telling me and so did Jon, but… good. Well…” My brain wanted him gone to safety, but my heart wanted to hang onto him, in case something went wrong and this was the last time I saw him in this life. But with a certain effort, common sense took control.

“You’d better go.”

“Yes.”

He sounded as reluctant as I felt. He sat up and took my hands again and we remained a few minutes in silence. The moon had finally gone behind a cloud so he didn’t seem quite so exposed.

“We’ve got a good plan,” he said at last, giving my hands an encouraging squeeze. “And I know you don’t like it and I don’t like it as much as I did, but we’ve got expert help. It’s going to be all right. And…” he hesitated, then went on bleakly, “if by some chance it doesn’t work, you could always let yourself out the gate during exercise and run for the forestline.”

It was my turn to squeeze his hands gently.

“You know I can’t do that, Bane.”

“You might make it.”

“You know I wouldn’t. Let’s not think about that. Let’s just think about a week on Friday, being together, free.”

“I can think about that.” He kissed my hands and for once it was he who decided it was time to go. “I’m off, Margo. ‘Cause if I get shot just now, it will be a bit of a nuisance.”

“Bye, then. Take care.” I kissed my fingertips and pressed them to his lips and he did likewise, then he slithered back into the ditch and was gone.

I shifted the arsenal inside my jumpsuit round to the small of my back, so I’d be able to crawl under the cars—though it was all going to slide right back around, wasn’t it? Checking the door card in my jumpsuit pocket, I settled down to wait, peering through the grille and running over the plan in my mind. The moon had come out again.

SNAP

The sound came from the forestline and almost instantly a search light sliced whitely through the modest amber glow of the flood lights. I caught a momentary glint of wide eyes and a flash of white tail as the deer bounded away.

The guards seemed to have missed it, because the search light began to travel along the forest, probing the shadows under the trees. It reached the end of the forest covered by the south west tower and, swooping back to the middle, began to run down the drainage ditch, illuminating everything so clearly I could see the individual lumps of mud in the bottom.

Bane!

***+***

25

WAITING

One frozen moment of panic—
Lord-what-do-I-do
?—then I leapt to my feet, reaching the wall in one bound. I grabbed the power lever and yanked it down. All the lights outside went out. Oh no, now what? How to get away with this? And they mustn’t get the lights back on in time to catch Bane…

By the light of the moon I’d so ungratefully labeled inconvenient, I found the fuse box for the south west tower. I yanked the SEARCH circuit breaker out of its socket, licked a finger, ran it over the circuit breaker’s contacts and jammed it back into place. Lunged back to the power switch and yanked it on. Switch and dampened circuit breaker both snapped off again in unison. Bingo. Just a little forest damp, quite natural…

I was already at the door. I paused only a second to look and listen, slipped out and closed the door silently behind me. Footsteps and a distant voice came from the west exercise yard and I literally dived underneath the first car. The guns swung straight round under me, digging into my ribs and abdomen as I landed on them. Wriggling until certain no limbs were sticking out, I lay motionless, smothering my gasps of pain.

“
It was a deer.” The speaker was coming through the gate from the exercise yard. “
Of course
it doesn’t hurt to check. But I saw it, right? And see, now the blinkin’ fuse has gone again. Right, circuit breaker, whatever. Damn mist. Yes, clear today, but it was the usual yesterday. If you’d been working here as long as I have, you’d know that’s what’s done it. Keep your hair on, I’m there now…”

The guard disappeared into the guardroom, still grumbling into his wristCell, and I waited, hardly breathing. Before long I saw the dim glow in the sky over the battlements as the flood lights came on again. Bane would be at the treeline by now, though. He’d probably started crawling flat out the moment the lights went off.

Soon the guard came out and grumbled his way back out of sight.

“
Damp circuit breaker, what did I tell you? One rub on my sleeve and it’s good as new. Come off it, they’re always damp. We should just put some Perspex over that stupid grille, I’ve been saying that for years. What? Well, we could rip it back off if we
needed
to close the shutters, couldn’t we?”

I waited until he was out of earshot—which probably meant back inside the tower—before beginning to worm my way under the cars. The guns ground into me, but I didn’t waste time on a futile attempt to reposition them. As the stairwell door clicked closed behind me I rubbed my tummy, wincing. Phew. For just a few minutes more I waited, to be sure there weren’t going to be any gunshots, then I headed up the stairs.
Lord, let him be safe… Please don
’
t let him die for me!

“Careful…” Too late. Jon’s foot caught the bucket and he stumbled, palms slapping into the stairwell wall as he recovered himself.

“
Damnit,” he snarled. “Why
do
they leave those buckets around?”

It’d never used to bother him.

“I think they’re waiting for us to go back to the dorm so they can wash the floor and have it dry before we come down again,” said Caroline seriously.

Jon shut eyes and mouth very tight and took several deep breaths. I was pretty sure he was praying. Then he opened his eyes again and smiled at Caroline. His voice was calm again.

“Yes, I think you’re right…”

I didn’t hear what he said next because a guard had just gone through the door into the guard block and I’d seen something… The corridor floor beyond was wet and the door to the Major’s garden stood ajar, letting the warm summer air in to dry it before too many people walked over it.

And that was it! The Major’s garden. The pile of garden canes leaning beside the hanging wicker hut! Garden canes! Perfect!

Jon’s plight really must’ve been bothering me, because I found myself though the door into that damp-floored corridor before I even stopped to think.
Hang on
…

Click. The door closed behind me. No shouting. I hadn’t been missed. So I could go into the garden and ask for a cane or just stand where I was and be in trouble for nothing at all. But he’d been so angry with me before… he probably hated me just as much as the Menace did.

But Jon... so stressed and unhappy... I swallowed and slipped through that little door. There was Major Everington, crouched over a flower bed on the far side of the glade. The door swung shut behind me… whoops.

“Who is it?” he snapped, carrying on with whatever he was doing.

“Margaret Verrall, sir.”

“
Margaret Verrall, sir?”
I could picture his eyebrows going up and his voice went very silky indeed. “That polite little voice cannot possibly belong to Margaret Verrall. She must want something.” He stood and faced me. “Even more than last time.”

I approached hesitantly, feeling an unexpected prick of guilt. I had been very rude to him before. And yet, though he might rule this roost, he was just as much a hireling of the EGD and society as all the rest of the guards and what’d I said to Bane the other night?

“I’m sorry to come here…” I stopped a few meters away. “But Captain Wallis refused to help.”

The Major eyed the left side of my face, where an old bruise spread from temple to cheek.

“Refused quite adamantly, did she?”