Jimmy Coates (6 page)

Before anybody could answer, the news cut to the next item – and there was Christopher Viggo. His head was held high and his presence seemed to fill the screen.

“Look!” Felix exclaimed, pointing at the very edge of the picture. “It's your mum!” Helen Coates and Saffron Walden were standing among Viggo's supporters, listening to his speech.

“I've travelled thousands of kilometres around Britain,” the man said. “I've heard millions of voices: in person, in letters and in messages on the internet. Every one of those voices – your voices – is telling me that change must come.”

“He shouldn't admit that he hears voices,” Felix cut in.

“Shh,” said Georgie. “I want to hear this!”

“Those voices,” Viggo went on, “tell me that you no longer want to listen to your doubts and fears, but to your greatest hopes and aspirations!”

He was building to a climax, and so was the response from the crowd, but the report cut back to the studio, where three women were droning on.

“What about the rest of his speech?!” Georgie complained. “How is that fair? He can't win an election if they won't even show his speeches on the news.”

“They showed a bit of it,” Jimmy replied. “That's better than it used to be. And at least they admitted that he made a speech – they even called him ‘the opposition leader' instead of ‘enemy of the state' or ‘traitor'.”

Georgie grabbed the remote control from Jimmy's knee and switched off the TV in frustration.

“We didn't see anything,” she said.

“He was wearing a new tie,” mumbled Felix.

“You say the most random things sometimes,” said Georgie with an exasperated sigh.

“It's not random,” Felix replied. “I was just thinking…”

“What?”

“Somebody must have paid for that tie.” He pushed himself off the floor. “And we still don't know who.”

There was no great fanfare to the start of the election. Felix realised that he'd been wrong to expect it. He'd never witnessed an election before. The last election in Britain had come before he was born. But he knew there'd been a time not too long ago when elections were routine events.
They must have had them all the time
, he thought to himself.
What a hassle
.

He turned up the collar of his duffel coat and hunched his shoulders against the wind.

“Vote Viggo,” he said automatically, thrusting a leaflet into a woman's hands as she walked past, into the school hall behind them. Felix imagined school halls all over the country similarly transformed into polling stations.

“Efficiency. Stability. Security!” Felix read aloud from one of the government posters in a mock-serious voice. He went on, waggling a finger in the air, “Insanity. Stupidity. Toxicity, and a nice cuppa tea!”

“Shh!” said Georgie, with a smile.

Felix let his thoughts stray to whether the hall of his own school was also being used for the election, then he wondered whether he'd ever be going back there. He would never have admitted it out loud, but he missed some things about school life – the security, the friends, the football… his parents telling him to do his homework.

Viggo and Saffron had left Felix and Georgie to handle this location on their own, while Viggo travelled round to as many other places as he could to gather last-minute support.
Every vote counts
, he'd said over and over to them.

Felix peeked round the doorway into the hall. A couple of armed policemen stood chatting to a young woman with identity tags who was obviously in charge of running this polling station.

“Hey, you can't go in there!” Georgie whispered.

Felix waved away her concern. “I'm just looking.”

Past the policemen was a registration table, piled high with papers, and beyond that Felix could see the school gym. Lined up in rows up and down the length of the hall were dozens of voting machines. Each one was a touch-screen kiosk that looked to Felix like it could have dispensed train tickets or lottery tickets.

Strange way to choose a government
, he thought, imagining how great it would be if instead of having to pick one of the choices the machine gave you, you could go on the internet and select anybody in the world to be Prime Minister.

Felix watched the woman he'd given the leaflet to. At the moment she was the only voter in the hall. She bent forward so close to the screen on her kiosk that her forehead almost pressed against the name at the top of the machine. Every kiosk bore slanted silver letters saying HERMES.

After a few seconds, the woman tapped her finger against the screen, gave a firm nod, as if the machine could see her, and marched back out of the hall. Felix kept his eyes on her, searching for some clue about who she'd voted for. The woman's face was completely blank until she passed Felix, when she briefly glanced at him and gave a quick smile. Felix drew in a sharp breath.
Did that mean…?

“Hey, Felix!” Georgie whispered. Felix turned to see a gaggle of people arriving. Georgie moved towards them and forced leaflets into their hands. “Vote Viggo!” she said. “End the oppression of Neo-democracy! Vote for freedom! Put control of the country back in the hands of the people!”

From then on, they were busy all day as a constant stream of people arrived to register their votes. Some of the voters smiled at Georgie and Felix, some ignored them completely, while a few tried to shoo them away.

“Vote Viggo!” Felix recited to the ones Georgie had missed.

“Be more cheerful,” Georgie whispered. “Every vote counts!”

“How many times do I have to hear…?” Felix stopped complaining, ready to give the most cheerful greeting of all time to his next ‘customer'. “Good morrow, fine gentleman!” he exclaimed in his brightest, squeakiest voice. “Top of the morning to you!”

“Felix!” Georgie gasped. “What are you doing?”

Felix waved a leaflet above his head, dancing an odd jig that involved twirling his wrists and clicking his heels.

“Happy voting!” he declared to the bemused man hurrying past him. “Place your finger in a voting nature on the button for
Signor
Viggo, the finest gentleman in the whole of old Eng-er-land!”

The man hunched his shoulders and scurried to the registration table, while Felix and Georgie burst out laughing.

“You can't do that!” Georgie protested, her giggles telling a different story.

“Votes might win an election,” Felix said grandly, “but make people laugh and you rule the world.”

Georgie shook her head in despair.

“If you had me at every polling station all over the country,” said Felix, “we'd win this, no problem.”

“Or we'd all get put in a loony bin.”

“That, my friend,” Felix replied, grandly, “is entirely possible.”

 

Jimmy stalked in front of the giant window on the top floor of Viggo's headquarters, glimpsing London through the gaps in the blind. The vertical slats were beginning to feel like iron bars. He'd watched the lights come on as the afternoon faded into evening, and now the darkness seemed stronger than the illumination, as if it was creeping across the whole city, smothering the place completely.

Two copies of
The Times
lay on the sofa behind him, folded open to the puzzles. There was no message yet from Eva. It was too soon, and he knew that, but he'd still used the puzzles to find the message board and checked for messages every hour. It was as if his body relished the new element to his routine.

A message would come eventually. Jimmy had confidence in Eva. The only question was whether it would come too late. Despite his desperate attempts to find a doctor, and his near-obsession with learning about the effects of radiation, he had to admit he had no idea what it was doing to him.

All he had to go on was what he could see and what he could feel. His head was pounding and his muscles felt weaker than he'd ever known them to be. He flexed his fingers instinctively but closed his eyes, forcing himself not to examine them again. The blue stain made him feel like he'd dipped his hands in pure terror and couldn't wash it away.

Now it was all he could see, as if the radiation gripped his brain and shifted every image into the shape of death. There was no comfort in the blackness. Yet Jimmy had been alone with the shadows all day, and now late into the night. He was the only one who was still being actively pursued by NJ7. Even standing this close to the window was a risk – if the Government had the building under observation, which was almost certain, Jimmy knew that advanced imaging techniques might pick out his silhouette and enable them to identify him.

I'll be ready for them
, he heard himself thinking. A rush of adrenalin fizzed through his body. But was it adrenalin, or his programming eager for action? Jimmy pictured millions of tiny tigers charging through his blood, with his body as nothing but a giant cage.

A flash made Jimmy open his eyes. Something had reflected off the window of a passing vehicle, and even with his eyes closed his retina was so sensitive he'd been aware of the change. At the very edge of the room, his back to the wall, Jimmy peeked out of the window, down to the street.

Lights. At the front of the building, right by the main gate, was a TV news van. Whatever they were filming was obscured by the trees and the top of the security fence.

Jimmy turned to look at the TV. He'd had it on constantly in the background with the sound muted. Even though he knew that every channel was controlled by the Government, he'd wanted to keep up with the events of the night. Now he realised he'd been so distracted by his thoughts that he hadn't noticed how quickly the results were coming in from the polls across the country.

Now Christopher Viggo was on the screen with a clutch of microphones thrust towards his face. Jimmy quickly realised the scene was taking place outside the building he was in, the campaign headquarters. Jimmy rushed to turn the sound on. Had Viggo won the election already? Surely it was still too early for a result.

On TV, Viggo was talking rapidly about the election campaign and the state of the country, but Jimmy didn't understand the context. He wished he could go downstairs to see what was happening in the flesh. If this was Viggo's acceptance speech, Jimmy wanted to be there with him. If Viggo was Prime Minister already then maybe Jimmy could go outside freely. He could live without the unseen eyes of the Secret Service scouring the streets to find him and eliminate him. Jimmy felt relief rising up inside him, but forced himself to hold it in check.
Not yet
, he told himself.
Find out for sure.

Then Viggo's words started to sink in:

“…with thankfully little disruption, and what looks at the moment to have been a cleanly fought ballot…”

Jimmy noticed now that the man's voice seemed unusually hollow – not the slow, resonant tone he had always used for his speeches before. He was also glancing down at a sheet of notes, which wasn't like him, and his eyes darted around anxiously.

He's tired
, thought Jimmy. But he quickly realised it was something more.

“Thanks to the amazing technology,” Viggo went on, “the running total of votes has been made available to us much sooner than expected.” Was his hand trembling? Jimmy couldn't tell. There were dozens of camera flashes exploding on the man now.

“Of course, there is a great deal of formal procedure still to unfold, with the numbers being checked and tallied… but nevertheless, the time has come when I am forced to admit that it is no longer possible for me to win this election.”

There was a rising chatter of questions from a clutch of journalists off-screen. Viggo ignored them and carried on, leaning into the microphones.

“I had hoped that today would mark the beginning of a new era. A new hope for Britain, for democracy… for change.” There was a catch in his voice as he said it. “You, the people of Britain, have decided that the time is not yet right to embrace that change. So I concede defeat. But I will be back another day.”

With that, Viggo's face seemed to relax for a second, before he turned away from the camera and hurried through the gate into the grounds of his headquarters.

Jimmy found himself at the window again, watching the tiny figure of Viggo below, rushing back towards the building. Had it really just happened? Had Viggo just lost the election?

“No,” he gasped aloud. How was it possible? How could it have happened so quickly? Even if the votes could be counted straight away, how could the public have turned against Viggo? How could people have voted for Ian Coates? For this Government?

“They don't know…” Jimmy said softly, unable to keep his thoughts inside. “They don't know about NJ7.” His chest was churning with the shock. For a moment he was sure he was going to throw up. He felt an uncomfortable tingle in his nostrils.
Another nose bleed
, he thought, squeezing the bridge of his nose to cut it off. Then, with what felt like the force of a hurricane, Jimmy's programming swept through him. He leapt off the sofa and turned off the TV, then he dashed across the room and hit the lights.

His head throbbing, Jimmy ran to the side of the window again and peered between the slats of the blind.
It's happening
, he could hear in his head. While half of him still refused to believe that Viggo might have lost the election, the rest of him was already dealing with the consequences. If the election was over, and if the Government had won, NJ7 could attack at any moment. Jimmy could almost hear the whiz of the bullets. In his mind, he saw the glass shattering. His head was already plotting his strategy – evasion, survival. How could he escape the building?

“Stop!” Jimmy shouted. His voice reverberated round the room. This was madness. There was nothing to suggest that the Government was about to attack. But Jimmy's mind swirled with doubt. He couldn't work out whether this was his paranoia or a legitimate reaction to a genuine risk. Had he unknowingly seen something out of the window that suggested an imminent attack?

Jimmy held his head and scrunched his fingers into his skull, as if he was digging for the answer. Then he had to find a tissue from his pocket and wipe the blood that was trickling from his nose.

Suddenly there were noises. The corridor. Voices. Footsteps. Jimmy felt his muscles awash with power. The door burst open and the light flicked on.

“Jimmy?” It was his mother. “You OK? Why are you in the dark?”

Jimmy held himself still. It took all his effort. He diverted the tissue in his hand to wipe the sweat from his face and scrunched it up to hide the spots of blood. But before he could say anything, Viggo burst in, past Jimmy's mother.

“NO!” he roared, not even glancing at Jimmy. He charged at the sofa and kicked it a dozen times.