Fierce September (17 page)

I didn’t bother answering.

Wilfred woke again at 5 am. Vima went to work instead of going back to sleep. No wonder she was tired.

I tidied up after we’d eaten breakfast, telling Wilfred what a crazy mum he had. He splashed the bath water and chortled. ‘Today,’ I told him, ‘I’m going to read
The
Three Little Pigs
. You’d like to hear that, wouldn’t you?’ Today, his half-brother was due to be born. I didn’t tell him that. I wondered if Vima had remembered.

Wilfred went to sleep when the third little pig was building his house of bricks.

The long day passed, helped by Vima’s obvious gratitude that I was there. ‘I still can’t quite believe it,’ she said. ‘I keep thinking I’ll come in here and you’ll have vanished.’

But there would be no vanishing allowed. I’d be quarantined if I left. I was here for as long as it took, whether I liked it or not. Neither of us mentioned Sina or her baby. I tried calling Mother but she didn’t answer. I couldn’t get hold of anyone else either. Would Sina be all right without a physician to help her birth her baby? I discovered I hoped she would be.

It was late when Mother called. ‘Darling, I’m so glad you’re still awake.’ She looked weary but happy. ‘The baby has arrived. They’re both well and he’s lovely.’

‘Have they named him yet?’ Sina had wanted to call him Hope when we were on Taris and in dire danger. Perhaps she still would, for we were still in dire danger.

Mother smiled. ‘He is to be Jovan, after his dad.’

Jovan, son of Jov. ‘That’s nice,’ I said, and kept my thoughts to myself.

When Wilfred woke in the night to be fed, I told Vima about the baby. ‘Jovan,’ she said. ‘That’s telling the world, wouldn’t you say?’

I didn’t say that I thought Sina had managed to distance Vima even further by calling her son after his father. But what about the two babies? Would they get to know each other as they grew up? Would Wilfred get to know his father? I couldn’t imagine how any of it would be possible.

The next day news came that Nixie was ill. I read
Goldilocks
and wished Nixie well.

He died in the night.

Camnoon again led us as we honoured Nixie and remembered his life. I was the only absent one who was able to be present via a mini-comp. Nobody else could take time out from their work. After the honouring was over, I thought about Nixie and about Grif. Then before the tears could start again I read
Rapunzel
and occupied my mind with wicked witches. How many wicked witches were behind the campaign against us? I checked the internet, hoping the blame would have died. It was worse than ever. People rejoiced that we had lost Grif and Nixie. I hit the off button and worked out my rage and sorrow by doing press-ups till my muscles gave out.

That evening, when Dad talked to Mother, Hera and me, we spoke of Nixie again. ‘We honoured him as well as we could,’ Dad said. ‘He and Grif are very much in our thoughts. And you, Juno, you are in our thoughts too. Are you well? Are you happy?’

‘I’m well and I’m happy. Vima couldn’t have gone on much longer by herself. It’s good that I’m here.’ I smiled and hoped they believed me.

Silvern, when she called, was much more blunt. ‘You gone stark raving bonkers yet?’

It was a relief to speak the truth. ‘Nearly. Remind me to never wish to be alone again.’

That night I cooked fish pie, with pancakes and syrup to follow. ‘Heavenly,’ Vima said. Then she went back to the lab.

The next day I read
Sleeping Beauty
. ‘What do you think of people who sleep for a hundred years, Wilfred?’ I asked, and got a gummy grin in reply.

In the hours between taking Vima morning tea and lunchtime, Marba called. ‘What’s it like being shut up? How are you handling it?’

I turned the question back on him. ‘What would you do, Marba? How would you handle it?’

His face on the television screen frowned in thought. Eventually he said, ‘I think I’d find it difficult. I think I’d need something to occupy my mind.’

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Well, if you think of anything to occupy mine, let me know.’

I was pleased he’d called.

I read
Sleeping Beauty
again and filled my mind with thoughts of hundred-year-long sleeps. What if Grif wasn’t really dead, only asleep, and she could wake up again – though not after a hundred years. She could wake up when all this was over.

I set the book down. Why had she died? She would have been so careful; she knew how much we loved her. My thoughts drifted through what I had known of my grandmother’s life and it seemed that her presence filled the room to bring me comfort.

The pandemic bacterium was like Sleeping Beauty. It was alive but sleeping until it had the strength to sicken the body that hosted it.

Yes
, I imagined Grif saying,
keep going
.

I must remember to tell Marba that the imagination was likely to run away with you when you were isolated.

Think, child.

Bacteria. Sleeping. The bacteria slept for six days, then sprang into life. Six days. That was important.

Six days meant the bacterium couldn’t have been brought from Taris.

Concentrate, Juno
.

Six days. Not from Taris. Then where?

I remembered the maps showing the spread of the illness. I logged into the net and brought them up on the official government site. The first map had dots scattered through the country, but there were none in Wellington.

What if … But that was unthinkable! Nobody could be that evil.

I stilled my mind, listening for Grif’s voice in my head. Nothing.

But what if somebody
was
that evil? Evil enough to send infection from afar, knowing it would sleep until after we arrived from Taris?

I didn’t want to believe anyone would do such a wicked thing. But I searched a number of citizen sites. The blame was fierce, the words full of poison. Somebody could have done it – started the pandemic deliberately, carefully arranging it so that they could blame us.

It had to be the people in black, the same ones who had tried to injure us when we arrived. But why? If Hera was right, it was done to hurt Willem. But that didn’t make sense. Magda from the café had said Willem was a good man; Hera said he was good. I believed he was good. But what if somebody believed Willem was not good?

I thought of Lucy’s interview with the prime minister soon after we’d arrived. She’d made it clear he hadn’t wanted to spend the money to rescue us. There must have been other interviews about it. I searched, looking for any reason for not rescuing us other than cost. A woman called Eleni Fergusson spoke with tears in her eyes. How could the country take in five hundred people, she asked, when it couldn’t look after its own? Her husband had died because of a lack of adequate medical care. A man said it was irresponsible to try to take in so many aliens – they always brought trouble. Other people said similar things, asking who would support us, how many jobs would we steal from the citizens who took us in? Their eyes were hard, their bodies tense with the passion of their belief in the trouble we would cause.

I couldn’t bring myself to search for commentaries uploaded after the pandemic broke out. I listened to music instead while my mind wrestled with the idea of a sleeping virus, of wickedness, and of the concept of the scapegoat.

Wilfred woke up. I went into the office and called to Vima. ‘His lordship wants his lunch.’ She waggled a hand at me, holding up five fingers.

I picked Wilfred up, changed him, then carried him around, putting all my unanswered questions to him. He wasn’t soothed, and speaking my thoughts aloud made me doubt them the more.

Vima came in. I made a pot of tea but didn’t speak to her of my wild ideas. She didn’t look desperate any longer, but she was still bone weary. We talked instead of the snippets of gossip I’d heard via the mini-comp. I told her that Sten was driving his mother demented by dragging her up to the roof so that he could count birds; that Justa had started classes for the five-and six-year-olds; that Mother was taking dance sessions twice a day for anybody who wished to come; that Camnoon was teaching reading and writing to any who wished to improve on what they’d learnt on the ship.

Vima smiled and her eyes were misty. ‘I’d never have believed I’d feel starved of gossip. It’s like getting a drink when you’re dying of thirst.’ She stroked Wilfred’s head. ‘I thought being here by myself would be bliss. How wrong can you be?’

I poured her another cup of tea, picked up the cup and put it in her hand. ‘Drink!’

She took a sip, then put down the cup. ‘You know, it’s probably what it was like on Taris when they lost contact with Outside.’

‘But they weren’t alone.’ I shoved the cup back in her hand. ‘There were five hundred of them. That’s different from being by yourself.’

She shook her head. ‘They still would have felt it, being cut off, not being able to talk to those they’d left behind.’ She managed to drink the rest of the tea. ‘I’m beginning to understand why they got so lawless after it happened. I think they would have grabbed at anything that meant they didn’t have to face the isolation.’

She could be right, but I had other things on my mind that I decided not to burden her with yet. ‘How’s the work going?’ I asked. ‘And actually – what are you guys trying to do?’

‘The researchers are trying to find a treatment.’ She stood up, kissed Wilfred, then handed him to me. ‘I just process their experiments.’

‘Any progress?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Things that were effective in other pandemics aren’t doing the business this time. Antibiotics don’t even touch it.’ She smiled at me and headed for the door. ‘Say thanks to Sheen for the gossip.’ She knew it would have come from Mother rather than from Silvern or one of the others of my stratum. Some of it had come from Sina. I didn’t tell her that either.

I switched on the mini-comp, then attended to Wilfred. He was becoming more and more satisfactory to talk to, and so long as I smiled when I asked him my terrifying questions, he smiled back, putting his whole body into it. Soon, Wilfred was in bed, the housework done to a ridiculously immaculate degree, lunch and dinner chosen, but still nobody from the Centre had been in touch or answered my calls. I was striding the three paces from one end of the lounge to the other and swearing when it occurred to me that I could try calling Marba without using technology. The distance might be too great, but it was worth a try. I sat still and focused my mind. CALL ME.

I didn’t feel the same draining of energy that I’d felt on the mountain. I’d been more desperate then. I tried again, bringing all my terrifying fears into my mind. If I was right that the pandemic was deliberate, then many more would die – perhaps more of my grandparents … Dad.

CALL ME.

Better. I hoped it would be enough. Maybe it would only work when the danger was strong and immediate.

Five minutes passed. Ten.

The talk icon beeped. I leapt for the mini-comp.

‘Marba?’

I looked up at the television screen. All my stratum were there. Hera was there too, with Brex. I waved at them all, homesickness in my heart. Hera blew kisses.

‘Juno! It works at a distance!’ Marba bounced around his lounge, jumping over those sitting on the floor. ‘I never thought it would. Amazing.’

Silvern grabbed his shirt. ‘Sit down before you crush somebody.’

Paz said, ‘What’s up, Juno? This isn’t a social call, is it?’

‘No.’ Where to start? ‘I was reading
Sleeping Beauty
–’

Biddo groaned. ‘For the love of Taris, Juno! I thought this was going to be important.’

‘And it got me thinking about things that sleep.’ I told them of my ideas about how maybe, just maybe, the bacteria had been deliberately released so that we would be blamed.

Yin said, ‘Nice idea but won’t fly, I’m afraid. Think about it, Juno – none of the cases were in Wellington, and the whole country knew we were landing in Wellington.’

I leaned forward. ‘Listen! What if those activists found people who had booked to travel to Wellington two days before we were due to arrive? But what if the bacteria acted more quickly than they thought it would and they couldn’t leave, or they got stuck halfway?’

But Yin shook his head. ‘Why go to all that trouble? Why not just infect people in Wellington if they wanted us to be blamed?’

I hadn’t thought of that, but it was obvious. So much for my brilliant idea.

But Shallym was frowning. ‘Did everyone know we were coming to Wellington? The idea makes sense if they didn’t decide where we’d be landing till the last few days. What if we weren’t supposed to land in Wellington at all? What if it was either Auckland or Dunedin?’

Nobody said anything for long seconds, then Paz said, ‘It’s possible, I guess. We’ll need to find that out before we go any further.’

‘I’ve thought about it so much,’ I said, grateful they were taking it seriously. ‘Sometimes it seems too far-fetched, but it won’t leave me alone.’

Rynd counted points on his fingers. ‘First we need to find out where the ship was supposed to dock. Second, were the activists anywhere near the sick people at the critical time?’

Silvern stuck out a foot to prod Biddo. ‘Hey computer boy, could you find out that stuff?’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. Don’t know enough about how the world works Outside.’

‘Not to worry,’ Silvern said. ‘I’ll ask Willem.’ She gave her evil grin. ‘I’m so bored I’m likely to do something really dumb just for variety. Probably better to stir up old Willem than flood the building or chuck chairs off the roof.’

Wenda said, ‘Juno, it’s pretty horrible here. We’re all driving each other mad.’ She turned to Silvern. ‘I’ll come with you.’

They all wanted to go. Marba watched them, his eyes bright – his lab rats were busy again.

I said, ‘How does it make you feel, Marba, to think that people could be so evil?’

He grinned at me. ‘I’ll have to wait until I find out whether they
are
so evil before I can know that, Juno.’

I laughed. He was hopeless. Logic would win over emotion every time.