FIGHT THE POWER

‘Up and out! Up and out! Let’s be having you, ladies and gents!’

Tom sat bolt upright in bed and opened his eyes groggily. He felt as if he had been asleep for days. He had dreamt he was in prison for a crime he knew he had not committed, and just as he was about to escape using a rope conveniently dangling down from the ceiling Mr Grimal appeared banging a saucepan…

‘And you too, Mr Scatterhorn!’

Mr Grimal banged the saucepan on the door.

‘Up!’

Rubbing his head, Tom swung himself off the narrow bed and watched the grid of black insects retreat into their holes, leaving the white walls blank. Yes he was in prison. It was not a dream.

‘Aha—if it isn’t the owner. Feeling better are we?’

Tom watched Mr Grimal march towards him as a line of inmates shuffled down the stairs.

‘How long have I been asleep?’

‘Twenty-four hours, which is more than enough, young man,’ boomed Grimal. ‘I was going to wake you up but seems you have some friends in high places. Can’t think why.’

And neither for a moment could Tom.

‘Perhaps they were hoping that if I slept for long enough I might forget who I really am.’

The warder’s eyes narrowed and he stared at his dishevelled new charge.

‘Still stuck on that one I see.’ Mr Grimal’s peeling pink face loomed down and Tom noticed that he looked very clean indeed. In fact, even his breath seemed to smell of soap. ‘A word of advice, young Scatterhorn. Don’t go thinking that your name makes you special. Because it doesn’t. Not in here.’

Tom shrugged innocently.

‘I don’t.’

‘Good. You’ll find breakfast that way.’ Mr Grimal extended a large pink forearm towards the spiral staircase at the far end of the corridor. ‘But I suggest you put your new clothes on first. If you don’t want to look daft, that is. Or maybe you do?’

Mr Grimal nodded inside and, turning round, Tom saw a heavy brown cotton shirt and trousers folded up neatly on the chair. Beneath them was a pair of plastic clogs and a small round hat. It looked like someone’s idea of a uniform.

‘Correct.’

Tom sighed deeply. He felt very hungry and even though Mr Grimal was hardly pleasant, he could see no point in making an enemy of him on his very first morning. Who knew what sort of power he held in this place.

‘Now that’s much more like it,’ grinned Mr Grimal, as five minutes later Tom emerged from his cell in his ill-fitting uniform. Tom held up the small round hat.

‘This as well?’

‘If you please, Mr Scatterhorn, if you please. So you’re just the same as everyone else.’

Tom jammed the hat onto his mop of blond hair then walked nonchalantly down the corridor. He felt slightly taller in his clogs, but his swagger was only skin deep. At the end there was a girl mopping the floor who glanced up at him as he passed.

‘Ignore him, Evie,’ bellowed Mr Grimal from his desk. ‘His name’s Tom Scatterhorn and he thinks he owns the place. He’ll be telling you what to do in a minute.’

Evie smiled to herself and went back to her mopping with a peculiarly determined expression. She must have been a couple of years younger than him, her elfin face half hidden beneath a large orange cap. Tom did not feel inclined to explain. In fact, he had no idea how he was expected to behave. Like an unwanted echo, however that might be…At the bottom of the stairs Tom followed the sounds down a narrow corridor and, steeling himself, pushed open the heavy swing door to find himself in the main hall of the museum. The cases of animals had all gone, replaced by a rowdy eating hall that reminded him of a school canteen. The room was full of inmates all dressed in the standard brown uniform eating at long refectory tables. In the centre stood a small pulpit, where a grizzled warder kept order with a beady eye. The air was thick with a sickly, sweet smell, but this was not enough to stop Tom from walking straight over to where a line of cooks was busy and join the back of the queue. The closer he got the hungrier he felt and the cooks barely glanced up at him as they piled his plate high with shining heaps of what might have been beans and chips and peas, each coated in a different colour. Finding the quiet end of a bench, Tom had just taken his first mouthful when a man sat down opposite.

‘Surprising, isn’t it?’

Tom’s shock was so great that the spoon clattered down onto his plate.

‘Like chocolate on the outside—but on the inside—’

‘Do I detect notes of cabbage? I think I do. Hmm, I rather like them.’

Another man had sat down next to the first, equally unkempt, but in a different way. He wore a beard, and his cap was set back at a jaunty angle.

‘So much easier when you realize that whatever you get it will all taste of chocolate. So much easier, that.’ The man crunched his food noisily and smiled at Tom. ‘You’re new here, aren’t you?’

‘Of course he’s new. What’s that supposed to mean?’

Tom stared at the two men who in any other circumstances would have brought a chill to his heart.

‘Don Gervase Askary?’

‘I am he,’ rumbled the man on the left.

‘That is true. But so am I,’ rumbled the man on the right.

‘And so are they over there.’

Tom looked around and saw that it was true—there were Don Gervases everywhere. Some had moustaches, some sported thick sideburns, some had shaved heads and some had ponytails…There must have been fifty of them amongst the crowd.

‘Finders of the elixir.’

‘Masters of the mesmerion—’

‘Saviours of Scarazand.’

‘Except of course, we’re not, are we?’ said one with a wink.

‘So you…’ Tom struggled to find the right words for this delicate question. ‘You know…that you aren’t—’

‘The original? Of course we do,’ said the man on the left without blinking. ‘We are echoes. Echoes, echoes, one and all.’

‘And…don’t you mind?’

Both men looked at Tom curiously.

‘You really are new, aren’t you?’

‘How could we not mind?’

‘But they think we don’t. They think all us echoes are daft as brushes, ignorant as bricks, but they are very much mistaken. We know tutti.’

‘Tutti?’

‘Tutti di frutti. But we are just too lazy to do anything about it,’ said the twirly moustache, crunching up the last of his beans. ‘That’s what all the chocolate’s for.’

Tom didn’t understand.

‘To keep us happy,’ he grinned, and fixed Tom with his large, milky green eyes. ‘Has that effect doesn’t it?’

‘There’d be a lot more trouble in here if it didn’t,’ agreed the other Don Gervase, withdrawing a handkerchief from his cuff and delicately dabbing the corners of his mouth. ‘Why bother to fight the powers that be when you get a full chocolate breakfast like this every day of your life?’

‘Not to mention the beetle juice,’ chimed his friend, slurping from his cup. ‘Made on the premises of course.’

‘What’s your span, amigo?’

‘My span?’ Tom looked at these two strangely similar men and decided that Mr Grimal was right: they might look exactly like Don Gervase but somehow they were his exact opposite. ‘I don’t have a span,’ he whispered, glancing up at the warder.

‘Of course you do! Everybody has a span.’

‘I’m not an echo,’ he pressed on. ‘And I shouldn’t be in here, either. I was abducted.’

The two Don Gervases rolled their eyes simultaneously.

‘You’ll have to do better than that, compadre.’

‘Honestly. I’m Tom Scatterhorn. The real one.’

‘But you do have one of these?’ said the man on the left, pointing at the numbers on his wrist.

‘It’s fake,’ protested Tom, unconsciously concealing his arm below the table. ‘They put it on me, it hasn’t always been there.’

The two Don Gervases looked at him steadily, then at each other.

‘Delusional?’

‘Definato. Totalicos.’

‘It’s the truth,’ hissed Tom, struggling to control his anger.

‘And why would they do that?’

The note of sarcasm was unmistakable. Tom looked from one to the other helplessly.

‘This is it—I don’t know. It’s like…obviously I’m being hidden here, because…’ Tom thought about mentioning his meeting with Don Gervase at the station but decided against it. ‘I don’t know why. Maybe even Dr Logan doesn’t know why. But he knows.’

‘Who knows?’

‘Your original. He knows I’m not a real echo.’

The Don Gervase on the left raised his eyebrows quizzically.

‘So it’s like a vendetta, between us—I mean him—and you. Is that what you are saying?’

‘Yes. Sort of. Only—’

‘Did I hear the word vendetta?’

Another Don Gervase with a particularly wild look in his eye slid up along the bench. He had a ponytail and long sideburns and he smelt terrible. ‘What he do what he do—burn your house, murder your family?’

‘No. But actually I think he might—’

‘And then what? Lock you in jail with a bunch of madmen?’

‘Kind of.’

‘Throw away the key?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes? Then what—feed you food you wouldn’t give a dog?’

Tom smiled.

‘Caramba!’

‘Tom Scatterhorn, this is The Soap,’ said the moustache by way of introduction.

‘Pleased to meet you, boy,’ said The Soap, violently shaking his hand. ‘So who is this guy?’

‘Actually it’s you,’ said his friend.

‘Me?’

‘No! Old fishface, the cat’s mother—’

‘You mean the devil king of the insects—’

‘He means the ruler of all things couth and uncouth—’

‘Tweedledum? OK OK! I get the picture. Perfetto.’ The Soap rubbed his stubbly chin excitedly. ‘So how are you going to get even with this hombre? What can you do?’

‘I erm…’ Tom smiled awkwardly: he had never really been asked this question before. ‘First I’d have to get out of here.’

‘Of course you would. And then?’

‘And then…if anything were possible?’

‘Why not anything?’ smiled The Soap.

Without even thinking Tom knew the answer.

‘I would destroy Scarazand,’ he whispered. ‘Get rid of it for ever. And him too—if I could.’

The Soap slapped the table and grinned madly.

‘CARAMBA! Fighting talk! I like this boy!’

Tom sat grinning inanely. There, he had said it, and expressing his deepest wish to these three strange men had made him feel relieved, somehow. The warder in the pulpit swivelled round to stare at them.

‘But if you destroyed Scarazand you would destroy us,’ whispered the Don Gervase in the middle. ‘Is that a good idea?’

Tom shrugged awkwardly. The truth was brutal.

‘It’s not your fault. But he’s poisoning the world, killing everything, destroying everything.’ Even me, Tom might have added. But he didn’t. ‘It doesn’t have to be like this.’

‘Doesn’t it?’

‘No. Not at all.’

The three Don Gervases sat for a moment in thoughtful silence. Tom watched them. Could these echoes really help him plot the downfall of Scarazand, the place where they had been created? The idea of it made his heart beat faster. Tom felt breathless, almost light-headed.

‘It would be totally crazy!’ giggled The Soap at last, drumming his long fingers on the table. ‘And not as hard as you might think.’

‘I have spotted a snag,’ said the Don Gervase on the left.

‘What’s that?’ asked Tom.

‘No more chocolate!’

A great gong clanged out across the room, and Mr Grimal strode out through the tables.

‘Right everyone, form two orderly lines if you would be so kind!’

There was a general murmur of discontent as everyone reluctantly stood up and began to wander towards the double doors in the corner.

‘What happens now?’ asked Tom, following the three men as they shuffled into the nearest line.

‘The other bit, Mr Tom Scatterhorn. That’s what happens now,’ groaned a Don Gervase.

‘The bit in between the chocolate,’ added his friend.

‘So we have to work, then?’

‘And how!’ howled The Soap. ‘I’m insane! I should be locked up! Work is too good for me—I don’t deserve it. I demand to be put in a straitjacket this instant!’

‘Smallest at the front, tallest behind!’ roared Mr Grimal, thrusting The Soap into a shambolic line that began to vaguely form across the hall. ‘Hurry along otherwise we will all still be here at lunchtime!’

‘With any luck,’ muttered a Don Gervase under his breath.

‘Not there, Mr Scatterhorn, if you please.’ Nurse Manners hauled Tom out of the line by the shoulder and frogmarched him down towards the front. ‘Now, do exactly as he does and keep that trap of yours shut,’ she barked, slotting him in behind a gaunt looking boy with dark hair.

‘Hi,’ said Tom.

‘Shut!’ she bawled.

The boy turned and formally offered his hand for Tom to shake.

‘How do you do. I’m Francis. Francis Catchpole.’

The boy’s skin was so pale it was almost green. He didn’t look well at all.

‘And your name is?’

‘Tom Scatterhorn.’

‘Oh. Like the name above the front door.’ Francis looked at him without interest. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Erm…’ For some reason Tom did not feel like sharing his secret again. ‘I just am.’

‘What’s your span?’

‘Right, people, let’s be having you!’

A large steel grille opened, revealing a long tunnel with wires and pipes snaking along its roof.

‘Quick march!’

The two lines jerked forward in a disorderly fashion, and the thunder of clogs filled the darkness.

‘Where are we going?’ asked Tom above the din. This wasn’t any part of the museum he remembered.

‘To the factory,’ Francis replied.

‘And what do we have to do?’

Francis shrugged absently.

‘You’ll see.’

Tom was vaguely wondering if it was the same work Mr Vee had mentioned as they eventually reached some steps, trudged over a bridge, and then in through the side of another building towards the sound of machinery clanking somewhere ahead. Blasts of hot air greeted them as they crossed over a wide hexagonal space several storeys high, in the centre of which hung a fat chimney suspended above three large open fires.

‘That’s purification,’ said Francis, pointing down at the men sitting on the edge of the embers sprinkling long cotton tubes with water and scraping away a thick black glistening treacle that oozed out of the sides. Others were squeezing the ends of the tubes like enormous rolls of toothpaste.

‘Purifying what?’

‘Lac beetles,’ Francis replied, suddenly sounding a little more enthusiastic.

‘Lac beetles?’

‘Tachardia lacca. They live on twigs, millions of them, and they excrete that stuff. It’s collected in the Far East and sent over here to Dragonport. Where we make it into shellac.’

By now Tom was feeling very ignorant, and he could tell Francis was more than happy to explain. In fact he seemed almost proud of the importance of this work.

‘Shellac. You know—it’s in everything—varnish, polish, dye, fireworks, food, juice—’

‘Juice?’

‘Beetle juice. What you had for breakfast. And this is Spongs: the greatest handmade shellac factory in the world.’

Just as Tom was beginning to wonder if everything he had eaten had been coated in shellac, a sweaty-faced foreman began directing the echoes into various doorways according to their size.

‘With him, son,’ grunted the man, turning Tom by his head and shoving him after Francis into Nine A, a long low room overlooking the chimney. A group of boys and girls were already there, lounging on the ground. They looked both bored and hostile.

‘Welcome, nutters all,’ said a thin, sharp-faced boy at the front, breaking the surly silence.

‘Hi, Slim,’ murmured Francis, sitting down meekly in the corner. He seemed very uneasy.

‘Who’s yer friend, nutter?’

‘Oh this is—’

‘Tom,’ said Tom, looking round at the weary faces. ‘Hi.’

‘It speaks,’ tittered a girl.

‘Tom who?’ demanded Slim.

‘Tom Ssk—’ Francis touched Tom’s arm and shook his head violently. There was a giggle at the back. At that moment the burly foreman rolled in.

Approaching the wall on which a sign was written: ‘Room 9A. Today’s quota:’ he switched on the oily machine and set the mechanical numbers to seven, zero, three.

‘Seven hundred! Seven hundred and three!’

The room erupted into a chorus of howls and indignation.

‘But we’ve got two of them doolalls!’ protested a short girl at the front. ‘How’s that ever gonna square?’

‘Yeah!’

‘That’s impossible!’

‘Shut it, you lot!’ rasped the foreman, dropping open several hatches to reveal machinery behind. ‘There’s nineteen of yous, so that’s thirty-seven a piece, by my reckoning.’

‘But they’s never gonna do that!’ the girl spat back, pointing at Tom. ‘Not him! He’s never done nothing! Ten more like!’

‘Well then you’s gonna have to make up the difference, aren’t you, sweetheart?’ snarled the foreman. ‘You know the rules; no quota—no pay!’ and with that he slammed the door and locked it.

The children swore and protested as the heavy boots marched away down the corridor, then glared murderously at Tom and Francis in the corner as if it was all their fault.

‘What we gonna do, Slim?’

‘See these doolally-boys pull their weight, or else,’ said Slim marching towards them belligerently.

‘Is it difficult?’ asked Tom. Slim was a full head shorter than he was, and he didn’t feel intimidated.

‘No it ain’t, nutter. So don’t you go pretendin’ it is.’

‘I won’t.’ Tom held his gaze steadily. ‘Maybe you could show me what to do.’

Slim glared at Tom. He was obviously the self-appointed leader of this bunch, and he seemed surprised that Tom had answered back. And so did Francis Catchpole.

‘He’ll show yer,’ he snarled, looking disdainfully at Francis sitting quietly on the floor. ‘Won’t you, Francis?’ he added, giving the boy a swift kick. Those large milky blue eyes looked up at him blankly.

‘I will, Slim.’

‘All right then.’

Somewhere in the distance an alarm sounded, and there was a great clanking of wheels as the machinery in the hatches began to turn.

‘This shift has begun!’ declared a loudspeaker out in the corridor. ‘You’re late already!’

The children wearily hauled themselves to their feet and gathered beside the hatches. A series of wooden compartments began moving vertically upwards and soon small metal trays began to appear, each one heaped with a pile of that strange treacle-like substance Tom had seen being prepared below, together with a long flat piece of wood.

‘What do we do with this?’ Tom whispered to Francis as they took a tray in turn and walked over to the corner. Francis pointed at the hatch on the other side of the room, where children were hefting steel cylinders off a horizontal conveyer belt and rolling them to an empty spot on the floor.

‘Spread it on one of those,’ he said.

‘Spread it?’

Tom was mystified, but he followed the rest, grabbing a jar and finding it was surprisingly warm and heavy.

‘But it’s full of water,’ he murmured, placing it carefully on the floor. He was about to ask what next when he saw the girl in front of him was already using her long flat stick to spread the golden treacle-like substance over the curved surface in long deliberate strokes.

‘That’s right, Tomsk—use your stick,’ she said, expertly evening it out to the corners, ‘then do this.’

Standing up, she took a corner of the flat square and carefully peeled it off the side of the cylinder and held it out in front of her like a dishcloth.

‘Now for the hard part,’ she said, slipping off her clogs. ‘Watch carefully, doolally boy, cos I’m only showing you once.’

The girl crouched down and slipped the bottom side of the square beneath her toes, gripped the top side between her teeth, and moved her hands around either side of the shellac. Then with one violent motion she began to pull at the material. Incredibly, it began to stretch—not much—but a little. And the girl did it again, then again, then again, each time pushing her legs up a little further, spreading her arms out a little more.

‘See?’ she gasped. ‘It’s not difficult.’

Looking around Tom saw that all the children were at it now, crouching and stretching in a strange, bird-like dance, holding their teeth clenched while working their legs and arms wider and wider apart until the shellac was a floppy translucent sheet of gold stretched between their outstretched limbs like a kite. Some of the taller boys had already stretched their first sheets as far as they could and were now onto the next phase, carefully spreading them out on star shaped boards and setting them down on a conveyer belt. Ding! A bell rang as each sheet shot down into the darkness—and so the mechanical numbers began to turn: eleven, twelve, thirteen…

‘Get a move on, nutter!’ shouted Slim as he walked across the room with his stretched sheet. ‘Shellac don’t spread itself!’

Tom took a deep breath. Whatever work he might have imagined them being forced to do, it was nothing like this. He peeled off the shellac and, slipping off his clogs, crouched down and sank his teeth into the top and curled the bottom under his toes. He began to pull. It moved a little. The second time he tried a little harder but promptly lost his balance and fell over. Scrambling to his feet he expected howls of derision from the other children but there was nothing—just hard-bitten scowls. They all knew that if he fell short it would be them making up the difference.

‘Try lots of small pulls, not one big one,’ said Francis, stretching out his sheet. ‘You’ve got to coax it.’

‘OK.’

Tom wiped his brow and crouching down grabbed the shellac between his teeth. Coax it—be patient. Slowly.

After half an hour of pulling, stretching, falling over, dropping the shellac into a sticky mess and starting again Tom proudly laid out his first floppy sheet on a board. His neck burned, his fingers ached and his thighs felt as if they had been pulverized into jelly, but he had done it. Ding! The bell rang and it shot down into the darkness beyond. One down, only thirty-six to go…Thirty-six…

Tom glanced around at the other children, all bending and stretching mechanically like robots. Even Francis, pale and vacant, had already finished his third. This was slave labour: how could they possibly keep this up all day? Seven hundred and three…it was impossible.

By the time he staggered into his cell that evening Tom felt more dead than alive. Just about every muscle in his body was burning and he could barely lie down on the bed without feeling himself seize up.

‘Nighty night, my friends!’ shouted Mr Grimal cheerily slamming one cell door after another. In the half-light Tom was dimly aware of those curious black beetles descending all around him to form their living, watching grid. Tom was so tired he didn’t care any more. He closed his eyes and a blizzard of conveyor belts, sheets of shellac and snarling young faces danced before him. Strangely, he almost envied his fellow prisoners now: at least their short life span meant that they did not have to put up with this torment for long. But what was he going to do? He couldn’t live in this cell and work in that infernal factory for the rest of his life, which for him meant not weeks but years, maybe decades—it would kill him, wouldn’t it?

It would. Tom knew it would. That must be Don Gervase’s intention. His words at Waterloo station floated back…

Become something more than what you are—an ordinary, snivelling boy, who will grow up to be an ordinary, snivelling man, live a brief and boring life, and die a premature death.

Tom stared at the tiny pink-eyed insects glowing in the quickening light. This was that life. It had begun. Eventually he would become nothing more than an empty stretching machine: an insect. A worker. An echo. Tom closed his eyes. Last night he felt like laughing at his predicament—tonight he felt very much like crying. But even as the waves of desperation welled up inside him another emotion began to surface. Tom felt an anger so fierce that it began to burn through him like electricity, tingling his fingers and swelling in his heart till it felt tight enough to explode. He stared at the beetles, centimetres from his face.

Don Gervase Askary has put me here to die. He has hidden me away with all the other forgotten echoes. But I am going to survive. And I am going to escape. And then I am going to destroy Scarazand. He won’t stop me. Never. There will be a way…somehow.