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The next morning Aunt Trude and Jenny shook me awake to join them on the scavenger run for the day. I thought I was quite polite when I told them I wasn’t interested, but I got a disapproving sniff from my Aunt and a kick from Jenny, so I guess they thought I’d been grumpy. I turned over, pulled my blanket over my head, and tried to get back to sleep as they bustled around.
Outside the door, in the shared area we called ‘commons’, peace reigned for all of thirty minutes before the working parents brought their children to be minded by the aunts and the less able. When the noise from that pack of wild animals got too much to ignore I dragged myself out of bed. The washroom was empty, which was a welcome change, but the lack of hot water wasn’t. What was it Aunt Trude said? 'In through one door, out through another.'
Fat Stan had already left his office by the time I had got there yesterday evening, so I had taken the halo home with me. The release bump reappeared sometime between me trying to find it in the park and the Wrangler’s office, which also made no sense. I had just been happy to get the thing off. Now, I was holding it out to Stan.
'You might want to look at this one, or retire it. Gave me a screaming headache yesterday.'
Stan looked concerned as he took the halo from me. 'That’s the second one you say you’ve had trouble with.''
'Getting old?' I suggested, then pointed to the halo as Stan’s eyebrows shot up and his face darkened. 'Those, man.'
His head shook. 'You’re the only one complaining. Last time I saw anything like this, the girl had to stop taking Leeches. The Dag’s sent a message on the console one day and she was fired, and blacklisted.'
A bubble of sick burned at the back of my throat, and I decided not to tell Stan about hearing the voice in my head. I’d be fine if I cut back on the rides. I had plenty of food credit stacked up. 'Did she get better?'
'Dunno,' Stan shrugged. 'Never saw her again, but then why would I?'
I scratched the side of my face for a moment, then stuck my thumb out. No point worrying about it, and I should still get paid for the ride yesterday. Stan glared at my extended digit as though he’d never seen one before, then his eyes snapped back into focus and he turned to his desk. One hand reached for the scanner, but slowed and stopped, hovering in mid-air as he read a message on the screen.
'Well, seems you did something right yesterday,' he said a moment later, handing me the scanner. ‘Your patron wants a permanent contract with you.'
I froze with my thumb a couple of millimetres of the pad. 'What?' Had I nearly signed my life away? Fat Stan grinned and waved the scanner.
'This is for yesterday’s ride. Don’t panic.'
I let my thumb rest on the pad and waited for the beep. 'So what’s the offer?'
Stan whistled tunelessly through his teeth once his eyes turned back to the screen. 'Ten credits per day, regardless of how many connected hours. Full sensory, though.'
I held up my hands then felt stupid when I realised Stan couldn’t see them. ‘Wait up. Full sensory? I don’t do that.' After the story he had just told me, it was an even worse idea.
Stan’s happy face had taken a break by the time he turned to face me. 'Don’t fuck with me. You don’t want to turn this down, and you don’t want to stiff me for five rations a day quibbling over full sensory. So what if the pervert wants to know what it feels like when you take a shit? You’re too young to get into anything else anyway. You take the deal and you only wear the damned halo for an hour a day if you got a problem.'
The flip side of Stan. Greedy, angry, and not worried about sending a couple of his helpers around to kick your face in if you stitched him. 'Four,' I said, cutting him off.
'What?'
'You get four rations, not five.'
His angry face chilled out for a moment, became more calculating. If we could make this work for a week, he’d pull in more credit from me than he normally would in a month. ‘You going to make an effort on this, boy? You’re not going to agree to anything to get out of here and then screw the deal? Coz if you do...’
I raised my hands again, this time where he could see them. ‘At least a week, at least two hours a day.’
The smile was back. He held the scanner forward with one hand as he clapped me on the shoulder with the other, and the deal was done. He handed me a new halo, this one with a thin red stripe in the centre of the band. There was a last handshake and I headed out the door with the merest trace of a wobble in my knees.
What had I done? It was stupid enough arguing with Fat Stan, but agreeing to a full sensory halo? Whoever was on the link could feel anything I did; wind on my skin, hunger, the beat of my heart. Or the pain of a fist in my face, or my leg being broken. There were some bad stories about people who took full sensory trips. The Mule on the receiving end didn’t always know what was coming when they signed on.
But I’d let this patron Leech on me many times before, or at least someone using the same code had paid for it. I’d never been asked for anything weird, so maybe it would be all right. Who knew? Most of us never had a clue why the Dagashi wanted to ride us. They could have seen more in a day with one of their flying bug-things than we could show them in a year, so it made no sense for them to travel around with us.
When it started they said they wanted volunteers to help them understand us better. We would let them see how we lived in return for their help with food and power. It had all seemed so reasonable. Now they used it for recreation. Leeches wanted their rides to show them new places, places their rides weren’t comfortable going. That was why I normally didn’t have anything to do with full sensory. Too much of everything.
And yet here I was, walking away from Fat Stan’s with a sensory halo dangling from my hand and an open-ended contract. The leech hadn’t even said anything about a code. ‘Yes’, ‘no’, ‘change’’ and ‘end’ were all standard, but for contracts this big there were usually others. Stan had given me nothing, so I assumed there were none. The more I let it wander around in my mind, the less I liked the way this deal smelt.
I stepped into a disused doorway somewhere along Moorgate. I wasn’t trying to hide; I wanted to keep out of people’s way. There was a window beside me. The glass was still intact and the darkness within made it a mirror. I looked at myself as I raised the halo to my head and slipped it on. It startled me how much the white band stood out. I got my dark skin and tightly curled hair from my father, Trude said, and the rest of my face from my mother; European lips and nose, and dark brown eyes. The halo seemed to glow in the mirror, and an uneasy shiver tickled my arms though I couldn’t have told anybody why.
The halo did what it was supposed to do and connected, and I braced myself for my ears to start ringing or a headache.
The lift was out of order when I got back to the Gherkin, and I took my time climbing the stairs to my floor. The air in the stairwell was stale and muggy, and my armpits got decidedly fragrant. By the time I got to the commons outside our room, I was out of breath and needing some water — and not only to drink.
The back of my neck itched as soon as I stepped into the open space. There were usually a few oldies hogging the best seats, lounging about because they didn’t have to work for their food ration. The space served around fifty rooms, each room with two or three people in. There wasn’t much, just some clusters of tables with benches or chairs around them. Today there were maybe two dozen loitering, and it seemed they were all looking at me.
'Got another of those damned spy bands on your head, boy,' snarled a voice behind me. I turned slowly, trying to guess which of the faces had spoken. It wasn’t difficult. His face was chewed up with anger and hate.
'Making a few extra food credits, Pop, nothing more,’ I replied, trying to keep a smile on my face. I really didn’t want to pick a fight this afternoon. My ears were buzzing, but I’d been spared the headache. Until now.
‘Don’t you Pop me, you little punk,’ he said, struggling to his feet. A neighbour pushed him up on one side and he held a stick in the other hand. I kept an eye on the stick and took a cautious step back.
'You tell him, Calev,' said a woman to my right. I didn’t take time to look at her. Calev had taken another step towards me and his weight was on his good leg. I was more worried about the stick.
'All the time you come and you go with that... that... thing around your head. You let them watch us, hear us. We can’t talk, we can’t think with that thing hearing everything we say and do.'
'You have a beef with the people who give you food and water?’ This was crazy.
‘People? What people? All we see is Proctors throwing their weight around and snitches like you.’
‘Hey, I’m no—‘
‘Snitches,' said Calev, poking me in the chest with his finger. ‘Like you.’
I went to bat his finger away but he was surprisingly fast.
‘So where are these saviours, then? Why don’t we see them?’ I didn’t have an answer and shrugged, but it seemed like he wasn’t expecting me to reply and rolled straight on. ‘Its cos they are up to something, and they don’t want us to know what.’
His voice was getting louder, as were the rumbles of agreements from the other grey-hairs sitting around the commons. This was freaking me out. I’d never heard stuff like this said about the Dags before. People passing the commons were slowing to look, to see what the fuss was about, and a crowd was starting to form. Everything this old fool was saying was going straight back to my Leech through my halo.
I didn’t owe the old man anything, but I didn’t want him getting in trouble. I didn’t know if the Dag would be interested. I’d never seen Proctors come rushing in because of something I’d overheard, but there were stories. I backed off another step and tried to turn away, but he grabbed hold of my arm. His fingers dug in with surprising force, hurting me and jerking me back to face him.
‘They fall out of the sky just a year after the Earth was burnt, crushing our city, killing god knows how many people. They tell us where to live, what to eat, and round us up into one place so they can watch us. They make us tear our own city apart, and then what? What about when we’ve finished? Will they start to destroy us?’
‘They’re helping us,’ I shot back. ‘Who’s feeding you? Where is the power coming from?’
‘Why are they making us destroy everything? Why aren’t they helping us build again? We collect all the things that used to make the world work and they take them away. Then they crumble the buildings. How is that helping?’
I didn’t have an answer. I’d thought about it sometimes, but I didn’t know what the stuff we collected was for, and there weren’t enough people to live in all the buildings, so it hadn’t occurred to me there was anything behind it. If I could have found a way past him, I would have, but Calev was still ranting and I didn’t want any word getting out that I pushed oldies around.
‘And what about the Stolen? Where are they?’ he said. ‘What have they done with them?’’
‘Who?’ I’d never heard of any ‘Stolen’. Calev’s little gang of supporters all fell silent and flicked glances at each other. The people snooping outside suddenly needed to be somewhere else, and a moment later only Aunt Trude stood in the doorway. Her lips were a colourless line and her eyes were hard and narrowed. She marched up to Calev, took hold of his shoulder, and spun him round so fast he almost fell.
‘Old fool. You should know better than to talk of such things aloud. And to a youngster. Or have your years softened your brains?’ Calev didn’t say a word, but I watched the anger fade from his face to be replaced by embarrassment. Trude checked he had his balance before she gave him a gentle shove back towards his friends. ‘Talk about something safe, Calev, like the flavour of food rations.’
Now it was my turn. She tapped me on the chest then pointed to our room. ‘And take that thing off your head before Jenny and I join you.’ She spoke quietly, but in her ‘don’t argue’ voice, so I did exactly what she said. They joined me a few minutes later, and Aunt Trude gestured that Jenny should shut the door. The room was stuffy in an instant, but I decided it was a good time to keep my mouth shut.
‘Calev may be an old fool,’ she began, ‘but he does have a point. Its time you learned, so ......’ She sighed. ‘When the Dagashi landed on London, they did not just flatten the place and kill folk, no matter what the likes of Calev might want to believe. They came and hovered over us for nigh on a month, giving everybody who was in the way time to get out of it. A week after they landed, the first food dispensers were rolled out, then they started asking for people to help them.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘Really badly spelt signs,’ answered Trude, her lips twisting into a bitter grin. ‘But two or three went to them. A few weeks later the signs got better, asking for people who could do particular things. Soon after we got water, then power. But some of the people who went in never came out again.’
‘Ever?’ asked Jenny, her voice an excited whisper. I jumped, forgetting she was there, then wanted to poke her arm for being such a kid.
‘Not exactly. There were screens set up where folks could talk to them, but the ones that went inside came to the screens less and less, then stopped coming at all. The older folk call them the Stolen Ones.’
‘So why doesn’t anybody talk about them?’ I asked
Aunt Trude shrugged. ‘It is what it is, boy. There are a lot of people not happy with the Dags, but most can’t see how they can do much about it. So they keep quiet, and they do what they’re told, and they wait; for an end or for an answer. Whichever comes first. That’s why they don’t like people with halos.’
‘Nobody ever said anything outside.’
‘But you are bringing one into our home. You let them see us when they should not.’
I’d never thought of it before. But then, I wasn’t sure I understood exactly what it was they were upset about. Still, there was no point getting myself in trouble with those I was living with. I slipped the halo into my pocket until I could put it on without annoying anyone.
The commons was quiet that night. Even though I sat in the far corner and didn’t join in, people kept looking over at me. At least, anybody older than Aunt Trude did. I didn’t like what I saw in their faces. Suddenly, they didn’t trust me. That hurt. I’d never done anything to harm any of them. I’d always thought I was fairly helpful, fetching their rations for them, shifting stuff. It made me feel sick that things could change around so quickly.
There were even some angry glares directed at Aunt Trude and Jenny. I wanted to put myself in between them, to deflect the anger and say it was nothing to do with them, but Trude was simply ignoring them. She knew they were there, and where they were coming from, but she chose not to say anything. That meant I would get a clip around my ear if I stepped in. So I sat in the corner, bored, letting everybody see where I was so they could know I wasn’t up to mischief. It was a long night.