Pathfinder (32 page)

Mara can't answer; she only knows that she does want to.

They talk deep into the night. At some point, in the gap between words, they both fall asleep, sprawled in exhaustion beside each other on the floor with the scatter of old world treasures all around them. In the middle of the night Mara wakens in fright. The world sways and lurches and she can't remember where on earth she is. On a boat out on the ocean? In a nest in a tree?

“Mom?” she whimpers. “Broomielaw?”

Someone reaches out and pulls her close. Mara hears the gallop of heartbeats—her own and another's. She feels her own fear and the still intensity of the other one. And something else, something raw and primitive, thrilling and scary.

“Fox?”

“Here.”

His touch becomes the whole world. His mouth, hands, hair, every limb and muscle, every cell of his body, becomes part of her own. All thoughts of the past and the future scatter. The outside world and the sky city all around them, everything beyond this moment and this room, seem distant, fragile, unreal. All that exists, all that Mara feels, is the power of now.

Mara wakens as darkness is lifting. Drowsily, she watches light ooze into the room from some unknown source, like a gently breaking sunrise. Yet there are no windows in the room, just the undulating walls. Fox is still wrapped around her, his face soft with sleep.

She still can't believe she has found him. As she gazes at the face that, until last night, she had never seen, studying his features, learning him by heart, he yawns and opens his eyes, wide awake in an instant. For a second he looks bewildered to see her there, right beside him. And all of a sudden Mara feels shy and strange to be so close in the bright morning light to someone who is, in so many ways, unknown. His face mirrors her own clash of emotions. Then he closes his eyes again and, slowly, kisses her. The kiss rushes through her like a live current. Her body knows with an astonishing certainty what her mind still struggles to comprehend—that she has never felt such a strong connection with anyone or anything in the world.

They lie together, close and silent, for a while.

“I'm
starving
,” he suddenly grins.

He jumps out of bed and grabs a jug of juice and a bowl of the large, soft bread rolls that seem to be full of air. But Mara tucks in ravenously. Fox gulps juice, watching her,
as if he hasn't a clue what to do about this girl who has fallen out of the Weave and crashed into his life.

“What about your parents?” she asks, to break the tense silence. “Where are they?”

He mentioned them only briefly last night, Mara noticed, though they talked for hours.

“They head the start-up team for new cities, so they're always away on business—but we meet up almost every day in the Noos.” Fox frowns, swallows a mouthful of bread. “My other relatives are over in New Texaco. Apart from Caledon, my grandparents are dead.” He sighs. “I've always felt different, hankering after the past instead of living for now, like everyone else does. Maybe it's because that old Treenester woman should have been my grandmother. Maybe I really belong to the old world. No, no, that doesn't make sense either,” he bursts out. “I loved my own grandma. She was the only one who was always here for me. Always. I can't believe
she
knew about all this brutality, I just can't—”

He breaks off, chucks his bread roll on the bed, and sinks his head in his hands. His devastation tears at Mara's heart.

“But it's not your fault,” she tells him. “
You
didn't know.”

“But now I do and
if I don't stand against it, then I'm part of it,” Fox counters. “Caledon's cruelty becomes mine. From this point on, for the rest of my life, I'll be guilty too
.”

“Not if you help me rescue everyone that we can.”

“I'll do that. I'll do whatever I can to help you. But even if we rescue every slave and every refugee and set them free, that doesn't change the fact that this world of mine is rotten at the core. How can I live in a world that, day by
day, I'll hate more and more? I'll begin to hate myself too, if I live in a place that's built out of other people's misery.”

Mara's heart leaps. She has hardly dared to hope for this. The future—that black, terrifying thing—is suddenly shot through with light, as if the sun just broke through the heaviest storm.

“Don't stay here—come with me!”

He doesn't answer.

Mara fumbles on the floor to find the book on Greenland. She picks it up and hurriedly flicks through the pages till she comes to a map. “Look! There's land here, I'm almost sure of it—high lands that have been freed from mountains of ice in the arctic meltdown. They should be within reach if we have good, solid ships—like the supply ships.”

Fox studies the page, sighs, and lays the book back down.

“You must come with me,” Mara murmurs. “Now that we've found each other. You
must
.”

Fox turns his head away. “I can't.”

He sounds broken. Mara stares at him in bewilderment.

“Why can't you? You can't stay here. You hate this world now, you said so. If you come with me, we could try to build a world that's better than this one, the kind of place you'll be proud to live in, not full of hate and shame. That's the kind of future you want, isn't it?”

Fox still doesn't answer, just looks wretched beyond words.

“Is it because of your family—you can't leave them? I understand that, of course I do, but you said you hardly see them.” Mara feels desperate. Her self-control breaks. “What will you do? Fox, what is there in this world for you now? If Caledon could throw Candleriggs out of his
world then he's ruthless, he's capable of anything. He might be just as ruthless with you, if he knew you were his enemy.”

Fox gets up. Restlessly, he paces around his room.

“What are you thinking?” Mara pleads when she can stand his silent pacing no more.

He stops and faces her.

“I'm thinking that for good or for bad, this
is
my world. I can't abandon it—or I'll be just like him. He abandoned his world for this one, didn't he? And that's what we're blaming him for. I need to understand the past, Mara. I need to understand exactly what happened and why. Then, maybe, I can begin to change the future.”

“You'll change the future
now
by helping people escape. You don't need to do any more,” urges Mara.

“Yes I do,” Fox responds. “Because I won't have changed the way this city
is
. It'll still be rotten at core. And what about the other New World cities? What about the corruption in them? Won't they use slaves too? Won't they have walls to keep out refugees?”

“But what can you do about any of that?” cries Mara. “They're so far away.”

Fox sits down beside her. “You told me that Candleriggs believed there were lots of good-hearted people in the New World and that they probably only acted as they did out of fear. I want to believe that she's right. I want to…”

He reaches out and takes her hand.

“I want to be with you. But I'm the only one who can restart the battle that Candleriggs never got a chance to fight. See, this is
your
battle, Mara. Mine is to come, and it might be even worse than yours because I'll be fighting my own people, my own family. Can you imagine that?”
Mara can't. “I
want
to come with you but if I do …” Fox gives a huge, shaky sigh, “well, I think this world will haunt me forever. What I might have done will haunt me till the end of my days.”

He's on the verge of tears. Miserably, Mara wraps her arms around him and holds him because she knows he is right about the haunting; the ghosts of her own lost world will always haunt her.

“But how can you start a revolution all on your own?” she demands tearfully. “Once Caledon finds out he'll lock you up—or worse. It's not possible.”

“It
is
possible.” Fox frowns, thinking hard. “Caledon won't be able to do anything to me because I'll already be gone. When you escape, I'll go down to the ruins of the old world and I'll take my mobile godgem with me. It's all I need. They're satellite powered so I can make my own connection from the ground. I don't need to go to any other city. I don't need to go anywhere. The whole of the New World meets in the Noos every day—I can reach people there, plant seeds of dissent, and gather support. I won't be caught. I've got endless tricks. I'll be as careful and clever as a fox.”

He gives her a shaky grin. “I'll hide away in the ruins, and there are plenty of places for a fox to hide in the Noos—you know I can run faster than anyone. They'll never catch me. And then one day …” his face grows still and serious, “one day, when I'm ready, I'll come back and I'll begin the revolution—the one Candleriggs wanted, and fight to make this world a fairer place.”

Mara bites her lip till it hurts to stop herself from crying. She can't bear to think of him alone in the netherworld when he could be with her. She can't bear to lose him when she has only just found him. She can't bear any
more loss or pain. She will tell him that. She'll sob her heart out, then he'll see that they cannot be parted, not for anything in the world.

Mara takes a deep breath, and swallows hard.

“If only you could meet Candleriggs,” she says softly, her voice barely under control. “She could help you. It's so strange, as if—as if you really are her grandson, more than you are Caledon's.”

He nods. His eyes look hot, his fingers grip hers. He is just as tormented and torn apart as she is. She hears him take a deep breath, hears him swallow hard too, feels him rein in his emotions, just as she has.

“Right,” he announces. “You need to find your friends. You need ships. That's the first thing. So let's get to it.”

Mara nods bleakly. She remembers the slogan that the cybercath hackers scrambled.

“All right,” she says bitterly. “Let's do it. Let's be meenies in New Mungo.”

The first thing they must do, says Fox, is find a way to disable the city. If they don't, the whole plan is a nonstarter.

“Security is so tight that once you found the slaves you'd never get them out of the city. You wouldn't stand a chance of escaping.”

“I know. But how can we disable the whole city?” Mara despairs. “I've thought and thought and I can't see a way.”

Fox shoots her a red-hot glance from beneath the scarecrow mess of his hair.

“You know a way?” Mara's face lightens.

He just grins as he clips on his godgem.

The rooks are their main threat. Rooks, says Fox, are secret police who live like normal Noosrunners among the
citizens of the New World, but are on constant lookout for any deviants or criminals that might undermine the smooth running of the system. Occasionally, someone disappears and everyone assumes they've had to leave in a hurry for a work placement in another city, but often they've been taken by the rooks. And even if anyone did suspect that the rooks were involved, says Fox, they would probably just tell themselves that that person had it coming. They must have been up to something that was a threat to the rest of the New World.

You never know who the rooks are, says Fox, but they're everywhere, trained to look and act just like anyone else.

Dol could be one
, thinks Mara.
Tony Rex could easily be one
.

“You could be one.” Fox shoots her another of his lightning-bolt glances. “You could be an elaborate trap to root out the meeny in New Mungo that is Caledon's grandson.”

“Or you could be a rook out to catch me,” Mara returns.

He laughs. Excitement lights his face; his eyes are beautiful with it, as he gears up for a cyberleap. She hasn't a clue what he's doing. But he grabs her hand, squeezes it tight, and his husky voice is breathless with excitement:

“I feel like I've been waiting to do this all my life.”