Scale, p.19
Scale, page 19
“Move back!” she begged him. She didn’t have room to pull the door shut.
Jake tried, but there was no space. “Throw the rabbits out,” he suggested.
She stared at him as if he’d lost his mind. Jake shifted one of the small cages that was sitting on the top of the pile, and clambered up beside them.
The woman slammed the door and turned the wheel. The nearest of the sirens stopped, but then a moment later so did the other one.
Jake laughed with relief. “False alarm!”
The compartment rattled, then a painful ringing began in Jake’s ears, but even half deaf he felt the incoming tide crash against the walls. A fine jet of water appeared at the rim of the door; where it hit the woman’s arm it carved a furrow. She bellowed and tried to pull away, but she was so cramped all she could do was subject a different part of her arm to the same torture.
Jake stretched down and tried to grab the wheel on the second door, but crouched on top of the two large cages, he was too high to reach it. He dropped to lie on his stomach, his legs protruding back toward the first door, then he squeezed his upper body down into the space between the cages and the second door, and managed to get a hold on the wheel. He spun it and pushed on it, then toppled upside-down through the doorway. He rose to his feet and tried to drag the cages out of the compartment, before he realized they needed to be lifted up over the seal. The woman staggered back into the space he’d made, her arm dripping blood; Jake helped her out, then grabbed her notebooks from the bottom of the compartment and slammed the door.
While he was turning the wheel, the woman sat down, leaning against the wall at first, then slumping forward. Jake removed his jacket, tore the sleeve off and used it as a tourniquet, then he carried her to the infirmary.
“What happened?” the doctor asked, as Jake placed her on a gurney.
“Water pressure.”
The doctor set about bandaging the wound. “Sit down, and someone will check you out in a second,” he told Jake. “You’re probably in shock, yourself.”
Jake said, “I need to move the rabbits.” He’d left his camera inside the remains of his jacket, sitting on top of one of the cages.
He ran back to the entrance to module B. Nothing had been disturbed. He moved the camera into a trouser pocket, wrapping it in a handkerchief to make the outline less rectangular, then he knelt down beside the rabbits.
Had anyone died when the water came in? Or had the woman with the notebooks been the last to leave, rushing back on an afterthought?
Either way, this idiocy just kept edging closer to an actual war. The hijackers deserved punishment, but not from Spotlight or G8; the police and the courts needed to start doing their jobs. Jake had no idea how he could get any of the prisoners back to the surface, but he’d been hired to ensure Shane’s safety, and he wasn’t going to leave him stranded down here.
The man who’d sent Jake to fetch the rabbits was approaching. Jake rose to his feet and smiled at him dementedly.
“Look – it’s a storybook ending,” he declared. “The fox, the wolf, and the farmer were defeated, and the Cottontails all lived happily ever after.”
Chapter 30
“Sign the petition?” Loretta called out. After almost two minutes at the stall, she believed her tone was improving. If she sounded too plaintive then that put people off, but the request needed a certain gravitas too, or they didn’t seem to notice her at all; her voice was lost among all the other touts trying to draw customers into their stores.
A man turned and read the banner, paused for a moment, then replied, “Let me think about it. Will you still be here next cycle?”
“Of course.” They’d be here until they had a thousand signatures, or they ran out of time, whichever came first.
“Sign the petition?” Genevieve cried; they were taking turns, to preserve their throats. A woman approached the stall.
“What’s the proposal, exactly?” she asked.
“What we’ve written above,” Genevieve explained, pointing to the banner. “The third option we want added to the ballot would call on both levels of government to enter into talks for ten days, with the aim of reaching an agreement that ensured safety and development for the whole country.”
“And what happens if they can’t agree?”
“We can still choose one of the other options, later,” Genevieve said. “We can hold another vote. But this is meant to give everyone a chance to find out how far we can get with negotiations, instead of just assuming they’d be doomed to fail.”
The woman thought for a while. “All right.” She took the pen and added her name to the list.
As she walked away, Loretta counted the signatures again. “Twenty-seven.”
“Maybe Stephen and Pablo are doing better,” Genevieve suggested.
Loretta couldn’t help feeling a little wounded. “Why would they be doing better?”
“I was trying to be optimistic.”
“We’ll get to a thousand between us,” Loretta predicted. “But it would be nice to beat Stephen and Pablo as well.”
Genevieve laughed. “If you’re looking for a challenge, wait until we take this to the Council. It might conform to all the by-laws, but I’ll bet you anything they won’t amend the ballot without a fight.”
“What happened to your optimism?” Loretta had been neglecting her duties; “Sign the petition?” she called. A young man paused to read the banner, then shook his head in reproof.
“What?” Loretta challenged him.
“You’re just doing Wendale’s job for them,” he sneered. “Trying to slow us down so they can take it all away from us.”
“You mean take away the new technology?”
“Yeah.”
“As opposed to taking away the rest of the country, which is what we risk doing to ourselves.”
“They need us a lot more than we need them.”
“A lot of mines here in D7, are there?” Loretta countered.
“You’re just a puppet,” the man replied. Loretta didn’t dignify that with an answer; the man gazed at her with a mixture of pity and amusement, then walked away.
Genevieve said tentatively, “The policy is to not get argumentative ... ”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Loretta had agreed with the decision when they’d made it, but it was hard to keep her mouth shut. “People keep lecturing me about the evil politicians in Wendale, which is fine, but I know for a fact that our own Mayor is at least as bad. The real trick is to stop either side from ruining our lives.”
Genevieve was intrigued. “What do you have on the Mayor?”
“Nothing I can prove,” Loretta admitted. “I think she conspired to have a woman kidnapped, but the victim doesn’t want to talk about it. And even if she did, she can’t prove who was behind it.”
“You know if Beech was charged, she’d have to stand down until she was cleared?”
“I don’t have enough to get the police involved,” Loretta stressed. “And I could probably face a libel charge myself for even talking to you about it.”
That only seemed to make Genevieve more curious. “Why did she want this woman kidnapped?”
“To keep the lepton shuffling quiet as long as possible.”
“If you can’t get the police involved, what about a journalist?”
Loretta considered the idea. “The victim doesn’t want to be named, and the fact that I think I know what happened doesn’t mean I can make a case that anyone else would believe. And if we start spreading rumors, it could all backfire anyway: people will assume it’s just Wendale shamelessly smearing our beloved Mayor.”
“Fair point,” Genevieve conceded. “I almost want to say: of course it will be a good thing if we can get to the vote without anyone playing dirty.”
Loretta laughed. “But what you mean is ... ”
Genevieve said, “What I mean is, maybe we’ll get to the vote without anyone knowing a fraction of what’s really going on.”
Chapter 31
Jake slid the tray through the slot at the bottom of the door to Shane’s cell, but left his hand on the flap and leaned down to whisper, “Do you want to get out of this place, before the whole thing floods? The part your friends broke is already full of water, and I wouldn’t count on the rest of it holding up much longer.”
“Fuck off, traitor.”
“I’m not with these people.” Jake glanced back down the corridor to check that none of the other guards had joined him. “I told you before, your mother hired me to find you. Did you really think she wouldn’t worry about you? And can you imagine what’s going through her head right now?”
Shane was silent for a while, then Jake heard him approach and pick up the plate. “If you’re really not part of this, why aren’t you in a cell yourself?”
“I guess all the time I spent doing improv paid off. Though to be honest, the audience down here makes it easy.”
Shane was incredulous. “Do they think you’re the Mayor of Underwatertown? Because if you’re not in charge, how are you getting anyone out?”
“You’re going to have to help with that.”
A door creaked open at the end of the corridor; Jake straightened up and continued pushing the food trolley down the row of cells. The fact that G8 and Spotlight had their own private prison already in place was a revelation, but maybe they were prepared to defend that on the basis that they’d built an entire city down here, and so they needed all the same facilities as any other modern metropolis.
It was Sandrine who’d entered the corridor; she approached Jake. “They couldn’t find your paperwork on the sub,” she said. “The hijackers must have thrown it away after they searched you up at the dock, but you’re going to have to go back to Spotlight and get a new copy.”
“Damn.” Jake hid his relief as well as he could. He’d overheard people lamenting that the phone line from the base to the surface had been cut, but he hadn’t been entirely sure that there was no alternative way to contact head office. “No problem. At least I didn’t get crushed in module B before I was officially part of the crew. Imagine the paper-storm that would have triggered.”
“It’s not funny,” Sandrine berated him. “A lot of people could have died.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Jake cast his eyes down and looked suitably chastened, before asking, “When’s the sub leaving?”
“In about ten minutes.”
“Okay. Don’t worry, I won’t miss it.”
Sandrine left him to finish his deliveries. With the trolley empty, he returned to Shane’s cell and hissed softly through the slot, then waited until he saw an ear come into view.
“You need to say you’re willing to blow the whistle on the navy,” Jake whispered, keeping his voice as low as possible.
“I’m not doing that!” Shane replied in disgust. “Anyway, I never spoke to those people. I don’t know anything about it.”
“You don’t need to do it, you only need to say you will. Just come up with a believable story about the navy’s involvement in the attack, and say you’re willing to tell the people of D7 all about it at a Council meeting.”
“But what happens when they take me to the meeting?”
“They won’t get the chance. I’ll be going back to the surface at the same time; I just need to make sure I’m the one escorting you.”
Shane said, “What if they give me ten guards? How will we get away from the others?”
“They’re not going to give you ten guards,” Jake assured him.
“If my story’s so important, maybe they will,” Shane insisted.
“Let me worry about the guards; you just concentrate on getting your story straight. I’ll tell my superiors you have something to say, but you’ll only talk to someone higher up than me. When they interview you, you need to tell them how betrayed you feel by the way the navy used you and your friends. Tell them you want to go public with all of it, to stop anyone else being tricked the same way.”
“And what about my uncle? What about his friends?”
Jake said, “Once we’re back in Mauburg, you and I can testify that there are people being held here illegally. The police can’t come down and raid the place, but if we can put enough pressure on the Mayor, I think we can get everyone brought up to the surface.”
Shane hesitated. “But what will the police do to them?”
“They’ll probably be charged,” Jake admitted. “And you will, too. But whatever happens, you’ll be safer up there, and the process will be fairer. Down here, they could just hold you for as long as they like.”
“Maybe the navy will rescue us,” Shane suggested optimistically. “Then the whole thing will stay quiet, and we won’t have to go to prison anywhere.”
“Umm ... anything’s possible,” Jake conceded. “But they’re not going to have a submarine of their own that can dive this deep anytime soon, and the separatists are going to be a thousand times more careful guarding their own sub, after what just happened. If you’re back in Mauburg, and things turn against the separatists, you could all get pardoned.” As opposed to being down here when things turned, which might easily go the way of module B.
“But they have the bombs,” Shane lamented. “And our side doesn’t. We failed.”
“What bombs?”
“The power generators. They’re really bombs. What do you think we came here for?”
Jake didn’t know what to make of this claim; the hijackers had certainly wanted to get their hands on the generators, but whether or not they’d been lied to about their potential military value, he didn’t have time to get bogged down in an argument about exotic weaponry while whispering through a slit with his face against the floor. “If you stay down here, you’re screwed,” he said. “If you can talk them into sending you to Mauburg, I’ll do what I can for you and your friends. Do we have a deal?”
“What if I tell them you’re an impostor?” Shane replied sullenly. “I could rat you out, instead of talking about my real friends.”
“Yeah, go right ahead. What kind of reward do you think you’d get for information like that? Maybe they’d start offering you desserts, as a special treat?”
Shane grunted, in what Jake took to be a reluctant concession that he hadn’t really thought through the threat.
“I’m your only ally here,” Jake said. “You have ten minutes to convince your captors that they should send you up to the surface with me. After that, you’re on your own.”
Chapter 32
“The kid wants to talk to someone,” Jake told Sandrine.
“I bet he does.” She swiveled around in her chair and gave Jake a knowing smile, as if they were both old hands at this game, and knew all the tricks that desperate convicts would try to play on anyone foolish enough to let their guard down.
Her office looked like something from a furniture display, or an unconvincing theater set, not yet fully lived in. G8 certainly wouldn’t have been able to hold Cara in this prison, so the hijackers were probably the first inmates ever, and Sandrine’s new job as warden was clearly a role she was still easing her way into.
“He puts on a tough front,” Jake said, “but he’s young, and he’s scared. If anyone’s going to crack, I’d put my money on him.”
Sandrine mulled this over. “Sure, but what does he actually know? You think the ringleaders would have confided in him?”
“Not intentionally,” Jake conceded. “But they might have been careless when someone like that was around – just doing some menial tasks, not showing up for a strategy meeting.” He stopped before he went too far and made it look as if he was invested in the matter. “Anyway ... I’ve passed it up the chain. Whatever happens now is above my pay grade.”
“Okay.” Sandrine nodded, dismissing him.
Jake’s shift was over; he made his way back to the accommodation block and took a shower. As the hot water pelted his skin, he felt like he was dreaming. He now had a job, a room of his own, a new set of clothes, a whole system he belonged to ... inside a magic metal box at the bottom of the river. But the lies about himself that everyone had swallowed were wrapped in another, grander layer of delusions that let them treat this place as its own reality, and its made-up rules as having the force of law. In part because they were unreachable by anyone else – but they also seemed to believe that they were nurturing a seed here that would burst out of its shell and impose itself on the world above. They’d imagined a future, and set about rehearsing it, but now they’d convinced themselves it was a fait accompli.
He dressed and went to the cafeteria, grabbing a few things from the buffet then choosing an empty table so he wouldn’t be compelled to make small talk with anyone about Gabriel’s life. He was lucky that there were no Spotlight employees here who’d crossed paths with him before, but inventing a credible backstory for someone their company might have hired, but none of them had actually heard of, was a task he would not have willingly attempted without at least half a day of research.
“Am I disturbing you?”
Jake looked up from his meal and saw the woman with the bandaged arm, holding a plate in her good hand.
“Not at all,” he said.
She put the plate down and sat opposite him.
“I’m Madeleine Stritch.”
“Gabriel Levy. I’m glad to see you’re recovering.” He nodded at her arm. “Do you think you should get that looked at again, up on the surface?”
Madeleine laughed. “Hardly. The doctors here are the best in the world.”
Jake couldn’t tell if she was joking. “I hope the notebooks were worth it,” he said.
She flinched, as if he’d made the remark about a child they’d rescued from the water together, then seemed to decide that he was the one who wasn’t serious. “Never mind how many weeks of my own life were in them; they’d be worth a limb whoever had written them.”
