Edsel Grizzler (16 page)

‘Richard told me that whatever I wanted to try, I could try. Except skydiving. Why?'

‘Because … because—'

‘Because if I went up in a plane, I'd see Verdada from the air.'

‘Let me have a look.' Jacq gently pushed Edsel out of the way so she could stick her head through the hole he'd made. ‘Oh!' she said again. ‘You're right! You're right!' As she withdrew her head, the edge of the hole caught briefly on her helmet and pulled it slightly crooked. Her face was pale. ‘What does this mean?'

‘I don't know,' Edsel replied. ‘But it seems to me that there are far more questions in Verdada than answers.'

E
dsel rang the bell, and heard its pure, clear tone ring around the foyer of the Hub. In all the time he'd been in Verdada – however long it was – he'd never had any need to come here in search of answers. So far, all his questions had been answered by talking to others, or by gathering his own evidence, or from the Charter. Conversations, experiences, observations, direct questions to some of the other kids. And even though he had no way of knowing whether the conclusions he came to were true or not, he accepted them because they made enough sense. But this …

He sat on the couch in the foyer and waited. Through the window he saw the sky, so blue, like a lie. A huge, filthy lie. And perhaps everything else he'd been told up until now was a lie as well. After three or four days in Verdada he'd stopped pinching himself – actually, literally pinching himself until he winced – trying to work out whether this was all some kind of very vivid dream. But now he was doubting it. Maybe it was time to pinch himself harder than he'd ever pinched himself before. He closed his eyes, took a fold of skin between his right thumb and forefinger, just beside the logo on his forearm, got his nails tucked in good and hard, and began to squeeze.

‘Robert.' Man was standing in front of him.

Edsel's eyes flew open, and he stood. ‘I need to talk to Richard. It's important.'

‘What is it regarding?'

Edsel wished Man had some kind of facial expression – it was so hard to relate to a faceless person in a featureless silver skin.

‘It's about something I've found. It's
very
important.'

‘Wait here.'

A minute or two later, the door to the turret room opened, and there was Richard. Behind him, Edsel saw a young boy, maybe ten or so, looking pale and rather terrified, and on the chest between the couches were four boxes, neatly lined up. ‘Robert, this is Lloyd,' Richard said. ‘He arrived today.'

‘Hi, Lloyd,' Edsel said. ‘Richard, I need to talk to you.'

‘Clearly. But now might not be a good time. You see—'

‘You said I could talk to you any time. You said I just had to ring the bell and you'd come and talk to me.'

Richard smiled. ‘I also said that you might need to wait, didn't I? And this is one of those times. I'm busy with Lloyd, you see. In fact, you could help me. Would you like to show Lloyd around? I'm sure he'd love to—'

‘Verdada's not real, is it?'

Whatever reaction Edsel might have expected from Richard, it wasn't the one he got. No surprise, no horror, no anger. Just a calm, slightly unnerving expression as he turned and said to Lloyd, ‘Just wait here, will you? I won't be a moment.' Then he stepped into the foyer, and pulled the door closed behind him. ‘What did you say?'

‘It's all a lie, isn't it? Or a dream.'

Richard shook his head. ‘It's neither, Robert. This – all of it – is reality.'

‘I was playing golf,' Edsel explained. ‘And I saw something. There was a gap.'

‘A gap?'

‘In the forest. Except I don't think you can even call it a forest, because it's just this … this wall, with trees painted on it. And they're not even painted very well.'

‘Just because the reality of that forest doesn't measure up to your recollection of forests doesn't make it any less real. It's simply real in a different way,' Richard explained in his unruffled manner. In fact, his voice was so placid that Edsel, for the very first time, found it a little annoying.

‘But I saw through the cracks, Richard,' he protested. ‘And I know what I saw.'

‘Really? And what was that? What did you see?'

‘That Verdada is a fake world, just hovering in all this nothingness. It's like a computer game or something, all two-dimensional around the edges, so it looks real from the inside.'

Richard gestured for Edsel to sit down, before taking a seat himself, then gesturing beyond the glass doors and windows of the Hub's foyer. ‘We don't need any of this to do what we do here, Robert. Don't you see? The trees, the beach, the grass, the roller-coasters and fun parks – they're all just there to make you feel comfortable. And by you, I mean
all
of you. Even the food and beds aren't necessary. You don't think we could keep you alive with chemicals, and store you in silos, or keep you working hour after hour? Of course we could. But we don't. We make Verdada feel real, and comfortable, and fun. Because you're here for a very long time, remember. So you might just need to ignore the odd tree that doesn't look quite right up close, or the cracks in the ground when you find yourself right near the edges of Verdada. You need to suspend your disbelief, otherwise you're going to make yourself very unhappy.'

‘But I can't – not now I've seen it.'

Richard nodded. ‘I know it's hard, but you must.' He leaned forward slightly. ‘Who else knows?'

‘Just Jacq.'

‘Robert, you can't tell anyone else about what you know. After all, what good would it do? It would simply lead to unrest, and we don't want that. Do we?'

Edsel shook his head. ‘No.'

‘Good lad. Now, how do you feel about showing Lloyd around? He's a little nervous, and you know how that feels, don't you?' Richard stood up. ‘Come on, I'll introduce you properly.'

‘So, we can do all of this?' Lloyd asked as he and Edsel stood beside the park, watching children play. ‘Richard said it could be forever.'

‘Sure, if you want it to be.'

‘I think I do.'

‘Right,' said Edsel, trying to focus. ‘The thing is, you probably don't want to rush into anything.'

‘Why not?'

Edsel paused. Why not? It was a good question. ‘Tell me, Lloyd, how did you get here?' he asked, changing the subject.

‘Why do you want to know?'

‘Because you'll forget.'

‘No I won't.'

‘Trust me, you probably will. And then you'll wish you'd told someone so they could remind you.'

Lloyd frowned. ‘All right,' he said slowly. ‘Um … I went into the back shed.' Then he stopped and looked at Edsel.

‘That's it? Why?'

‘To look for some glue.'

‘Go on.'

Lloyd sighed, as if Edsel should have already known this. ‘My dad wasn't suppose to have anything to drink. That's what the judge said.'

‘The judge?'

‘Yeah. He said that if Dad kept drinking, I'd get taken away, even if it was because of my mum's accident.'

‘You'd get taken away from your dad?'

‘Yeah. The judge just said that I would be in danger or something, and that would mean that Evie would have to come and take me away.'

‘Who's Evie? Is she your mum?'

‘No, my mum's dead. Evie's from the Service. She drives a white car, and she's always got a pen and a notepad. And a briefcase. Plus she looks at me like this,' he said, tilting his head to one side and giving Edsel a smile that involved all of his mouth but neither of his eyes. It reminded him of Graham, with the hiking boots and orange socks.

‘Is Evie a … counsellor?' Edsel asked.

Lloyd was very matter-of-fact in his answer. ‘Yeah, I think so, or maybe a social thingy. And then I went into the shed.'

Edsel frowned. This was becoming a very confusing story. ‘Lloyd, what was in the shed?'

‘Bottles. Lots of bottles, full of … well, beer, I think. I'm pretty sure my dad's been making beer in the shed. And then, just as I saw them, the shed door closed, and when I opened it again, there was the silver guy.'

‘So your dad was told not to drink or he'd lose you?'

‘I guess so.'

‘Doesn't that make you sad?'

Lloyd shrugged. ‘Not yet. Hey, is that a real beach?'

Edsel smiled. ‘Yeah, close enough,' he said.

Edsel turned off the shower and groped around for his towel. Then, as he dried himself, he looked at his reflection in the mirror.

What he saw was the same as he'd seen in that mirror every day since he'd come to Verdada. How many days was that? He didn't know. But it was the same person, the same Edsel, the same boy he'd seen drying himself off in that mirror so many times before. Not growing. Not changing. Not turning into a grown-up. The same, always the same.

‘Forever young,' he said aloud. ‘Forever Young in a place of Forever Fun.'

Somehow it didn't sound like it once had, and with a silent sigh, Edsel flicked off the bathroom light.

It had been a slow day in the sorting room.
G22
was a cubicle that dealt exclusively with ballpoint pens, and with the exception of the day he'd spent handling paper clips and hole punches, it had been the most boring morning Edsel had known since he'd come to Verdada. He'd been working so slowly, in fact, that the other two kids who'd started at the same time as him had already left for the handball courts.

He'd just re-allocated a blue Ezy-Flo Extra Fine so that a New York cab driver wouldn't bend down to recover it from under his feet, look away from the road and flatten a lawyer on Fifth Avenue, and was reaching for his last box when he saw a card lying at the bottom of the crate.

He picked up the card. It was empty, except for a barcode, and some letters and numbers –
GRA-0102N3
– followed by one important-looking word:
CLASSIFIED.

He glanced around the cubicle, and through the glass walls into other cubicles. He'd been
very
slow today. The place was almost deserted.

Unsure of what he should do next, he picked up his scanner and scanned the barcode. The little screen hesitated, then after a flickering moment, a face appeared.

It was the face of a girl.

It was a face he recognised.

The face was Jacq's.

E
dsel sat back hard in his chair, his chest thumping. He felt the space between his shoulder blades go hot, then cold. There could be no doubt about it. She wasn't wearing her helmet, but it was definitely her. And below the picture was her name.
GRAVES, Jacqueline Felicity.

He glanced around the cubicle again. No one had appeared. No alarms had sounded and no lights had flashed, so he quickly scrolled down to the details page. The next words he read made him swear quietly under his breath:
UNAUTHORISED – ACCESS NOT ALLOWED FOR THIS USER.

He sat back again. Think quick, Grizzler, he thought. What do you do now?

Trying to control his breathing, he slipped the card into his pocket and quickly scanned the last box in the crate. It was a pen that a lady in Perth needed in order to write her shopping list, and after he'd chosen
Return to place last seen, pending steps retraced,
he placed the unopened box on the conveyor, signed off and hurried out to look for Jacq.

As usual, he found her at the skate park, sitting on her board as she waited for her turn.

‘Jacq.'

‘Hey. How was pens? Boring?'

‘Of course.'

‘Nothing interesting?'

He thought for a moment about how he should answer. Then, after a moment, he leaned closer and muttered, ‘My room, five minutes.'

She frowned up at him. ‘Huh?'

‘Five minutes. I'm serious.'

She knocked on his door about three and a half minutes later. ‘What's wrong?' she asked. ‘You look shocking! Are you all right?'

‘Come in. Hurry!' Edsel closed the door behind her. ‘I think you should sit down, Jacq,' he said, as he went to the window. He saw Toby by the skate park, so he knew they wouldn't be disturbed.

Jacq was perched on the end of his bed, a frightened frown tensing her brow. ‘What is it? You're scaring me.'

‘I found something,' he said, handing her the card, and she looked at it blankly.

‘And … ?'

‘I scanned it.'

‘You
scanned
it? Are you crazy? It's classified – it says so right here on the card! Where did you even get it?'

‘It was in my crate.'

‘Are you in trouble?'

‘I don't know,' he replied. ‘I really don't know.'

‘So, what did it say when you scanned it?'

‘You won't believe it, Jacq. It's you.'

‘What do you mean, it's me?'

‘This card! This code on the card! It's you! It's Jacqueline Felicity Graves.'

Her eyes narrowed. ‘I've never told you my middle name. Or my last name, for that matter.'

‘I know. It was all on the card. When I scanned it, it brought up a picture of you, and your name, and that's all it would say. But you know what this means?'

‘No. What does it mean?'

‘That you're lost too.'

Jacq shook her head. ‘No, I don't think that's what it means. Why would it … ?'

‘Something Lloyd said the other day made me think.'

‘The new kid?'

‘Yeah. He said that he came to Verdada because his father was told that he'd lose him if he kept drinking. And that's what happened – he came here.'

‘So?'

‘So he was lost as well. Don't you see? It's not just the stuff in the crates that's lost, but it's all of us. You, me, Ben, Toby, everyone, lost. Jacq, how did you come here?'

‘I … I don't really know.'

‘Think. Try to remember.'

‘I can't. It's all … blurry.'

Edsel sat beside her. ‘Think really hard, Jacq. It's important. How were you lost?'

‘I don't know! I don't even know if I was!'

‘Listen, the day that I arrived here, when Man told me that Verdada was the place of Lost Things, I said something smart like, “I suppose I'm lost as well, am I?” and he said, “Maybe” or “We'll talk about that later”. At the time I thought it was a weird thing to say, but then I completely forgot about it. Until now.'

‘Never mind me – have you worked out how
you're
lost?' Jacq asked.

‘You're the one on the card,' Edsel replied. ‘And there's got to be a lot more information we could find. But how?'

Suddenly Jacq clicked her fingers. ‘You know who we need? We need Ben. He's the only person I know who might be able to help explain this for us.'

‘No, no, no, I won't do it,' Ben said, rocking back in his chair. ‘We're not supposed to, and it's not worth getting busted for.'

‘Don't you know a way around the system?' Jacq asked. ‘Everyone knows how good you are with computers.'

‘So?'

‘Can you get into the system?'

‘Sure I can.'

‘Without being detected?'

He smiled slyly. ‘Of course.'

‘So what's the problem, if you won't get busted?'

‘I just don't think it's right.'

‘You don't think it's
right?
What's right about people being treated like Lost Things?'

‘We don't even know if that's true.'

‘But you're the only person we know who could find out.'

‘Besides, what if we're all Lost Things?' Edsel said. ‘Who's making the decisions about us? Richard? Man? The Mira, whoever
they
are?'

‘But why even try to find out?' Ben asked. ‘If everything is fine, and everything works, why change it?'

‘Because it's about me, and I want to know,' Jacq said. ‘I'm
entitled,
Ben.'

Edsel nodded. ‘And we need to do it before anyone realises this card is missing.'

‘Please, Ben?' Jacq pleaded. ‘For me?'

Ben slowly drew in a deep breath, then blew it out. ‘All right, but make sure that door is locked. And we won't be scanning anything, all right? That's far too risky, and to be honest, Robert, I think you were a bit crazy to do it in the first place.'

‘I was curious.'

‘Even so, we'll use the code. There's this trick I know, and I'm pretty sure it's undetectable for now, at least. If they knew that I could do it they'd find a way to stop it, but since they don't …' He went over to his wardrobe, opened the door, and began to feel around under a pile of T-shirts. ‘Is that door locked?' he asked.

‘It's locked,' Edsel replied.

From under the pile of shirts, Ben withdrew a small black box, with a black cable coming from one end, and two silver knobs on top. He set his little Braille monitor to one side, then plugged the cable of the strange little box into the back of his computer. It made a small, piercing sound, like a TV starting up.

‘What is that thing?' Edsel asked.

‘Not all lost electronic components get found again, do they?' Ben said, winking in Edsel's approximate direction. ‘A lot of computer geeks have very messy workstations. All right, shush now.'

Ben's fingers rattled the keys, and his monitor began to fill with patterns, swirling and fine, like tiny, colourful spiderwebs, or wispy, drifting clouds, which quickly evolved into globs of bright lights exploding and effusing around the screen, constantly changing.

Edsel found himself catching his breath. ‘Whoa. That's beautiful, but I can't read that, Ben. Can you make it a bit more like real words?'

‘No, I can't. Our activity on the system is only undetectable if we do it this way. Those images are fractal flames.'

‘They're amazing,' Jacq breathed.

‘Yes, they sound good,' replied Ben. ‘The algorithms in the main processor set up these fields of interaction with each other. That's what I'm reading now.'

‘Reading?'

‘Listening to, I mean. Each pixel in the screen emits a very faint, unique frequency.'

‘And you can hear that?' asked Edsel.

Ben smiled. ‘I told you the other day, blind people sometimes over-develop their other senses.'

‘So what do these pixels sound like?'

‘Like really strange music.'

‘Beautiful music?' said Jacq.

‘Not beautiful like in the way you'd imagine, but still beautiful in its own way. Now I need complete silence. Actually, can you turn off that light? The tube is buzzing and making it hard for me to hear.'

Jacq flicked off the light, while Edsel watched the screen, with its dancing colours and flittering patterns. It was hypnotic, and he almost managed to convince himself that he could hear the pixels.

It took some time. Ben would type something, then stop, tilt his head slightly as he listened to his fractal flames, then go back to typing. Each time he did, the swirls would change. It was a slow process, and Edsel watched with a mixture of suspense, wonder and boredom.

‘All right, I think we're ready,' Ben said at last. ‘What's the code?'

‘G, R, A, dash, zero, one, zero, two, N, three,' Edsel read.

The keys rattled beneath Ben's fingertips. Then he stopped and concentrated for a moment. ‘Jacqueline Felicity Graves? Is that you?'

‘That's me.'

Ben listened some more, tapped a couple of keys, and listened again. ‘Yes, here it is. Huh,' he said.

‘What is it?' asked Jacq.

‘You were lost, it's true. But not in the way you might think. And it's different from that Lloyd kid as well. It says something here about your parents, and how they tried to reach you.'

‘Reach me? I don't remember—'

‘Yes, and you were there, and they had you, but at the same time …' Ben bit his bottom lip, as if he was reluctant to say it out loud. ‘But at the same time they didn't
have
you.'

‘What? I don't understand what that even means.'

‘It says something here about an accident.'

‘An accident?' Jacq repeated with a frown.

‘That helmet you're wearing – it mentions that.' Instinctively, Jacq's hand went to her head. ‘It's been so long since I thought about it, but … but it's starting to come back, I think.'

‘Are there any other clues?' Edsel asked.

‘Something about a coma,' replied Ben. ‘Watching movies all day, but not being able to laugh at the funny ones or cry at the sad ones? Is any of this ringing a bell at all?'

‘Of course,' Jacq sighed. ‘Oh, I see now.' Tears sprang into her eyes. ‘I think I understand.'

‘You do?' Edsel said. ‘Then can you explain it to me?'

‘Excuse me,' Jacq said, her voice choked, and standing up hurriedly, she rushed to the door. She struggled to unlock it for a moment, but then the latch moved, and she was able to swing the door open and lurch out into the corridor.

Ben was still staring blankly at his swirling screen. ‘Aren't you going after her?' he asked.

And Edsel went.

He found her down on the beach, sitting under one of the Norfolk Island pines, spotting her from a distance thanks to her ever-present red helmet. She was poking in the sand with a stick, and she didn't even look up as he sank down beside her.

He didn't say anything for a while. Then, eventually, he asked, ‘Can you explain? I'd like to know, if you'd like to tell me.'

‘It's true. I was lost too. I get it now. I guess I'd forgotten all about it.'

‘Did you die?'

‘No! No, people who are lost in that way don't come here. I'm pretty sure they go somewhere else, but I couldn't begin to tell you where that is. But it's not here. No, I didn't die. Oh, it's all so clear, all of a sudden!'

‘So what happened?'

She tapped her helmet with the stick. ‘Have you ever wondered why I wear this all the time?'

‘Yeah, but I didn't want to ask.'

‘I remember I had an accident. I was skating, and I had this on, but I mustn't have had the strap done up, because the helmet came off. Stupid, huh? But I stacked it really bad on the half-pipe near our house, and I went into a coma. They didn't even know if I was going to survive for ages. But then I came out of the coma, sort of.'

‘What do you mean, “sort of”?'

‘I could hear everything people were saying. I could see them as well. But I couldn't speak. My voice just didn't work.'

‘Couldn't you write down what you wanted to say?'

‘No, my hands didn't work either. Nothing worked. It was just me, in a bed. I could move my eyes, and that was it. I just lay there and listened to people talking to me some of the time, and about me the rest of the time. All I could do was watch TV. Do you have any idea how boring it is to do nothing but watch TV all day, every day, without being able to talk about what you're watching?'

‘It must be terrible,' Edsel said.

‘It's the worst. It was like I was a baby again, except even babies can smile and laugh and cry. And I think that's when I was lost. My parents lost me. I didn't lose them – they were still there, washing my face, combing my hair, reading me stories and putting DVDs on for me. But I wasn't there for them.