Fierce September (23 page)

We complied.

‘I’m a fair man,’ he began, which I felt had to be ominous. ‘I’ve been doing some checking …’

‘On the net?’ Marba asked. ‘How? I mean, we’re on a train. How do you get the net on a train?’

The look the man gave us was a mix of pity and impatience. ‘Same way you do anywhere. Don’t interrupt.’

But my mind was racing. If we could use a computer, a phone – something – then I could find out how Mother was and we could contact Oban. I felt more hopeful.

‘Please sir,’ I said, ‘can you tell us your name?’

‘Call me Mac. That’ll do. Now shut up and listen.’ He told us he’d searched the net for any information about us other than that put out by the hate campaign. ‘What you said about the virus would appear to be right.’ He sounded grudging, as if he didn’t want to concede anything. ‘But this nonsense about Willem. I can’t swallow that. He’s a good bloke. Everyone knows that – and a lot of people know him. Can’t see anybody wanting to do him in.’ He glared at me.

‘But what if somebody does?’ Silvern asked. ‘Hera said he’s already gone to New Plymouth, so …’

It was Mac’s turn to interrupt. ‘That’s rubbish. She said that at what, four this morning?’ We nodded. ‘So it’s impossible. He was in Wellington yesterday? You saw him?’

The others agreed. He’d visited as usual.

Mac was triumphant. ‘So he’s still in Wellington. This is the only train to New Plymouth. Leaves at five every morning. It’s the only way to get there. Nobody drives that far now.’

We were silent, our minds spinning. I knew Hera must be right.
He’s gone to the mountain place.

‘Well, what if he’s on this train?’ I asked.

Mac curled his lip. ‘I’ve checked. He’s not. I know what old Willem looks like, and he’s not here. Hasn’t applied for a travel pass either, and he would have – not like some people I could mention.’ He frowned at us.

‘Is there any other way he could get there?’ Silvern asked.

Mac snorted. ‘Not unless he’s grown wings.’

‘Are there no planes now?’ Paz sounded wistful.

‘No planes, no choppers, no long-haul buses either,’ Mac said. ‘If you want to go any distance you go by train or you walk. Which means Willem hasn’t gone anywhere.’

‘Hera said he’s gone to the mountain place,’ Marba said. ‘Is there a mountain near Wellington he could have gone to?’

Mac shook his head. ‘You’re clutching at straws. Why didn’t you check to find out if Willem was safe at home and all tucked up in his bed before you set off on this harebrained journey?’

We said nothing for some moments, our minds turning over the possibilities. I didn’t think Hera was wrong. She must have got a very strong picture in her mind if she woke up and left the Centre by herself in the dark.

Paz sat upright suddenly. ‘What if he is on this train? Could he be hidden somewhere? What if they’ve drugged him, or knocked him out?’

I gasped. Surely nobody would do that? But Silvern and Marba sparked into life. ‘Can we look, Mac?’ Marba asked. ‘It is, after all, a matter of life or death.’

Mac shook his head. ‘You’re crazy, the whole boiling lot of you.’

Silvern grinned at him. ‘You’re probably right, but can we look anyway? Where could they hide an unconscious person?’

My brain started to work too. ‘Have you got a list of passengers’ names? That might give us a clue.’

‘I’d only be breaking half a dozen different laws to show you that,’ Mac said.

We just sat there, looking at him the way a bunch of birds would sit waiting for food. In the end he gave a frustrated sort of hiss, stood up and lifted a cover.

‘That’s my computer. Can’t help what you look up when I’m not around to see, can I?’ He clicked a button or two, then stalked out the door we’d entered by.

We leapt for the computer. He’d brought up the passenger list for us. ‘Will you just look at that?’ I pointed at two names. ‘Soraya Billings and Khan Regan – two of the doddery old dears.’

‘Are you sure, Juno?’ Paz screwed up his face, struggling to decode the names. ‘Wish I could read better.’

‘I’m sure.’ I jumped up. ‘I’ll tell Mac.’

The three of them grabbed me, hauling me back before I’d gone two steps. ‘Don’t be daft, Juno,’ Silvern said. ‘They don’t know we’re on the train. You want to lose that advantage?’

I flopped back down. ‘Sorry. Didn’t think.’

‘Thought before action, my child,’ Marba said, doing his old man act. ‘Some of the Taris rules are good.’

I pulled a face at him. ‘You’ve made your point.’

We argued about what to do next, what to do when we got to New Plymouth. ‘Does anybody know Oban’s contact details?’ Marba asked. ‘It’d be good to call him before Mac gets back.’

‘I could call Sina. I can check in with her about Mother too.’

Paz keyed the address I gave him into the computer.

Sina looked startled when she saw it was me calling. ‘Juno! Where are you? Sheen’s doing well, so don’t worry.’

Tears of relief burned my eyes. ‘Please tell her I love her.’ Briefly I explained where we were and what had happened. ‘But we need Oban’s contact details.’

She gave them to me, then reassured me again that both Mother and Hera were fine.

Silvern nudged me. ‘Hurry up. We need to call Oban before he goes to work.’

I said goodbye and stepped aside so that Paz could call him. ‘Damn it,’ he muttered, ‘he’s not answering.’

But just as he went to log off, Oban came online, sounding out of breath.

‘Oban!’ I squeaked. ‘We’d begun to think you weren’t home.’

‘Damn near wasn’t,’ he said, ‘had to run back when I heard the mini-comp. What’s up?’

Marba told him. He was good at summaries. ‘Can you meet us at the station? The train gets in at eleven.’

Oban checked the time. ‘Hmm, three hours. Look, I’ll do my best. Depends on the boss. Have to go now. Juno, I hope your mum gets better quickly.’

Back to the discussion, to the arguing. We were going around in circles, and were no nearer to resolving what to do next. I wished Mac would come back.

Half an hour later, he opened the door. His face was grim. ‘Come and give me a hand,’ he said.

We leapt to the door and stopped dead. The luggage compartment where we’d started our journey looked as if a giant had stirred all the stuff around.

‘Over here,’ Mac snapped. ‘Make it quick.’

He was bending over behind a heap of suitcases, crates and pieces of machinery. We edged around it, squeezing along in the narrow space Mac had created next to the wall.

‘Take a look at this.’ He heaved up the lid of a wooden crate, then peeled back the flap of blanket inside it.

‘Willem!’

His eyes were shut, his skin leached of colour. ‘Is he alive?’ He didn’t look alive.

Mac grunted. ‘He’s alive. Drugged, by the look of it. Help me get him out. We’ll take him to my compartment.’

Silvern and I backed out while the others wrestled Willem free of the crate. It was hard to lift him and harder still to carry him, but once the others had freed him, Silvern and I helped lay him on one of the bench seats.

We hovered, not knowing what to do.

Mac said, ‘They’ll have given him enough to keep him out of it till we get to New Plymouth. We can’t be expecting him to wake up yet.’ He put his fingers on Willem’s pulse. ‘His ticker’s doing okay.’

‘What do we do now?’ Silvern asked. ‘We found two names on the passenger list. Willem said they protest outside his school. Soraya Billings and Khan Regan.’

‘Can’t say I know them,’ Mac said. ‘But what we do now is ring the cops. We’ll organise a little reception committee for them.’

Marba frowned. ‘Better tell the cops to watch out for the people collecting the crate, because Willem said these two were doddery old dears and they wouldn’t be strong enough to carry that crate.’

Mac ignored that, stood up and pulled down the blinds. ‘We’re coming into Whanganui. Bit of a stop here. You lot stay out of sight. I need to get on with my usual duties, but I’ll make sure no one comes in here to surprise you.’

We watched him go. ‘Man, I’m hungry,’ Paz sighed.

I scrabbled in my bag. ‘There’s still food here. I’d completely forgotten.’

We ate and tried to make sense of Willem’s abduction, but all we came up with were questions: were the abductors part of the group that didn’t want us in the country, had they helped spread the virus and were they posting lies about us on the internet?

‘Or,’ said Silvern, ‘they might be completely different. They might just have it in for Willem.’

We could make no sense of any of it. 

W
E KEPT WATCH OVER WILLEM, sitting on the floor beside him to keep him from falling off the narrow bench. We didn’t talk much, and when we did we whispered. Sometimes he stirred.

Mac came back, checked Willem and nodded. ‘He’s doing fine. We’ll be arriving in ten minutes. He’ll be in hospital quick smart after that.’

Marba said, ‘Mac, I’ve been thinking – should we make that crate the same weight it was when Willem was in it?’

‘Put you in it instead, you mean?’ Mac slapped his leg and chortled. ‘Don’t worry, laddie. We’re not stupid. Everything’s under control. You just stay put until I come to get you. Meantime, stay out of sight. No peeping through the blinds.’

When the door shut behind him, the three of us grinned at Marba and chanted, ‘Don’t worry –
laddie
!’

The laddie wasn’t bothered by the name. ‘They’d better have it under control. It’s our future on the line here.’

That sobered us.

The sound of the train changed.

‘We’re slowing down,’ Paz said. ‘Can’t be ten minutes yet, though.’

Silvern grumbled about wanting to see out. I sat on the floor, hugging my knees. Paz beat a tune on the seat with one hand. Marba watched us.

Minutes later we stopped. Sounds came from the luggage compartment on the other side of the door. Were they emptying it out? It took a long time for the noise to stop. Silvern crouched on the bench opposite Willem, her head tilted as she tried to make sense of every sound filtering in. It was impossible to work it out. And the wait seemed endless.

‘So much for getting Willem to hospital quickly,’ I muttered, but just then the door opened and we were scrambling out of the way of a team of people in white uniforms. They ignored us as they checked Willem before loading him onto a stretcher. Only then did one of them say, ‘Mac says to sit tight.’

So we sat tight, grumbling now and then about being hungry, bored and fed up.

‘Don’t talk about feeding,’ Paz sighed. ‘My gut is killing me.’

Eventually Mac came to get us. ‘Follow me.’

‘Where to? And can we have some food?’ I was sick of being ordered about, sick of being treated like an imbecile, of being told nothing.

‘You’ll see, and no.’

‘I might faint,’ Silvern remarked.

Mac jumped down onto the platform and kept walking. We followed, forgetting our stomachs for the moment as we looked about us.

‘Oban!’ We charged towards him, colliding in a flurry of hugs and questions – what … do you … why …?

‘It’s so good to see you! Where’s the mountain? When …?’

But Mac turned around and bellowed at us. ‘Get a move on!’ He pointed at Oban. ‘And you – scarper.’

Oban linked arms with me and Silvern. ‘I am one of the leaders of our community, sir. I’m coming with them.’

Mac glared, frowned, then strode off. We followed.

Silvern giggled. ‘Mr High and Mighty himself, are you?’

Oban grinned. ‘Yep, that’s me, so watch yourself.’

We bombarded him with questions as we walked. Yes, he liked New Plymouth. And when all this was over he intended to climb the mountain.

‘Will you live here?’ I asked, feeling suddenly cold despite my warm coat. He would leave us, I realised. Vima would too.

‘Probably. There’s a uni I can go to, work here I can do. Interesting stuff.’ He gave my arm a squeeze. ‘We won’t be staying together, Juno. You know that. We’ll have to go where we can work. All of us.’

Maybe I had known it, but all the same it hit me hard hearing it spoken aloud. ‘But families might be split.’ I didn’t want to think about that.

‘Grow up, Juno,’ Silvern snapped. ‘This is Outside. Where you were so desperate to escape to. Remember?’

Cow
. I leaned around Oban to smile at her. ‘I remember too how hunger always makes you snarky.’

‘Shut up, both of you,’ Marba ordered. ‘Looks like we’ve arrived.’

We shut up and hurried after Mac into a building with the sign
New Plymouth Police Station.

My stomach churned with nerves as well as hunger. Mac handed us over to a man in a blue uniform. We barely had time to bid Mac a hurried goodbye and thank him before the uniformed man was ordering us to follow him. He led us up some stairs, knocked on a door, then ushered us in.

‘The Taris people, ma’am.’

A woman stood up to greet us. ‘Detective Inspector Marion Whitely. Please sit down.’

Oban introduced us, then said, ‘With respect, Detective Inspector – these four haven’t eaten today.’

She grinned, and immediately looked much less intimidating. She pushed a button on her desk and snapped out an order to bring us food. I stopped shivering and relaxed.

DI Whitely seemed keen to talk. She leaned back in her chair, smiling and joking, but the questions she put to us weren’t idle chatter. She wanted to know about us, about Taris. I could almost see a pair of scales in her mind: this piece of information on the guilty side, that piece on the innocent side.