Fierce September (20 page)

‘Banks are to do with money, aren’t they?’ Vima asked. ‘But you still use money. Fergus said we needed to get accustomed to using it.’

‘Huh! What we’ve got now is just a means of bartering. There was a time when money just washed around the big cities. London, New York, Tokyo – all awash with money and big spenders.’

He saw that he’d lost us, heaved a sigh and gave us a reasonably understandable summary of interest rates, investment and global markets. ‘Then the whole thing crashed, the world hotted up and we’ve all gone to hell in a hand basket.’ He sounded quite cheerful about it.

Vima held Wilfred against her shoulder. She looked at me and said, ‘Well, good luck with sorting out a motive from all that.’

An icon popped up on the mini-comp. It was Willem, smiling at us but looking a decade older than when he’d driven me through the city. ‘Good news, people, you can stop working.’

James leaned forward, his face alive again. ‘Have they found a cure, a vaccine?’

Willem nodded. ‘Yes, once they knew it was an artificial virus, it all fell into place. It’ll be a week or two before the vaccine is ready, but we’ve got a fairly crude treatment already. It’ll need refining but it’s still useful for acute cases.’

But too late for Grif and Nixie.

‘You’ll have to stay quarantined for six days, so rest up and relax,’ Willem said. ‘Good work, all of you.’ And he was gone before I could ask him if he’d talked to my stratum.

We stared at each other. ‘Just like that?’ Vima asked. ‘It was all go and now it’s all stop?’

‘Yep,’ said James. ‘It was like this last time too, only we had to hang about longer in quarantine. Count yourselves lucky.’ He stood up. ‘I’m off to bed. Night night.’

‘Come again in the morning,’ I said, then realised it sounded like an order. ‘Please.’

He flicked me a grin and with a hand on his heart said, ‘Aw shucks, Juno – I didn’t know you cared.’ He disappeared out the door before I could throw something at him.

Vima was laughing but she too headed for bed. ‘I’m going to sleep for a hundred years.’

‘You’d better not,’ I said. ‘We’re a bit short of handsome princes round here.’ But she hadn’t read
Sleeping Beauty
and was too tired for explanations.

I stayed in the lounge, searching the net for clues, trying to find out about the world before the pandemics changed it.

Silvern called around ten, bubbling with excitement. Before she could say anything, I asked, ‘You got hold of Willem? He’s given you names?’

She shook her head. ‘He won’t answer, but I don’t care because … wait for it! We’re allowed out tomorrow! I’d be out now if Fergus hadn’t made us all promise not to rush around in the dark.’

‘Lucky you. I have to stay here in quarantine for another six days. But why can’t you go out in the dark?’

‘According to Fergus, people go crazy for a few nights when quarantine is lifted.’ She imitated Fergus’s voice. ‘Not safe, dear people. Not safe at all, especially for newcomers.’

‘What he meant was not safe for us.’ I spoke before I thought, but I saw it clearly: Fergus meant there was danger for anyone from Taris.

Silvern shrugged. ‘Well, I’m going out tomorrow, whatever happens. Don’t care if it’s safe or not.’ She leaned forward, wagging a finger at me. ‘I tell you, Juno – it’s not safe to keep me locked up for even one more day.’

‘Well, lucky old you.’ I jabbed the finish button.

Cow
. Yabbering on like that when she knew I had to stay locked up.

I went back to searching the net. For sure Silvern and the others wouldn’t be looking for clues, trying to find out who was behind the pandemic. They’d be way too busy having fun. I lay back on the floor to think. We had to keep going – the hate against us would still be there ready to flare up when something else went wrong, unless we discovered who had done this thing.

I tried calling Silvern again. No answer.

The next morning James rolled in for breakfast around ten. Vima had gone back to sleep after feeding Wilfred, and I was getting ready to bath him. ‘Can I do it?’ James asked.

I watched as he deftly undressed Wilfred, threw him in the air, making him shriek with glee, then blew raspberries on his tummy. He dunked him in the water, holding him more expertly than I did.

‘What happened to your children?’ The words popped out unbidden.

He just shook his head. I wanted to apologise, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead I asked what he’d like for breakfast. He fancied pancakes with maple syrup, followed by scrambled eggs on toast.

Wilfred was lying kicking on his rug and James had eaten two pancakes when he said, ‘The last pandemic. It mostly hit the kids.’ He ate another pancake, his eyes never leaving Wilfred.

I didn’t have the courage to ask what had happened to his wife, and he didn’t mention her.

Vima wandered in when James was drinking a cup of black coffee. She sniffed the air. ‘That stuff smells better than it tastes.’

James grinned at her, and it was as if he were shaking off memories. He turned to me. ‘So hit me with it. What do you wanna know today?’

How could you know what you wanted to know when you didn’t know anything?

Vima said, ‘I’ve been wondering how things work here.’ She shook her head. ‘I mean, on Taris we didn’t have money. We all worked at our specialised stuff in the mornings, then in the afternoons we did the physical work like gardening and maintenance.’ She waved her spoon in a semi-circle. ‘From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t work like that here.’

‘How can you tell?’ He leaned over the table. ‘You’ve been in the country for how long? And you’ve been shut up in here most of that time.’

But she was right. ‘Kids don’t have to work after school,’ I said, thinking about it. ‘They’re at school for part of the afternoon, but after that they do what they like.’ They hung around the streets, worked in techno shops, played music – probably other stuff too.

‘So,’ said Vima, ‘who produces the food? How do people like Willem get food if they don’t have to spend time growing it?’

James rubbed his hands through his hair and groaned. ‘Okay, quick lesson in the workings of Aotearoa coming up. Pin your ears back.’

He talked for ages, but what it seemed to boil down to was that nobody was allowed to earn too much more than anybody else. Salaries were low, but the government still took some of the money, which they used to run hospitals, police, transport and schools. ‘That’s why people said we shouldn’t rescue you,’ he told us. ‘The government had to use money that was supposed to go towards upgrading one of the railway lines.’ He sat back and regarded us. ‘All the crew on the ship were volunteers. Did you know that?’

We shook our heads. We didn’t know anything. Nothing.

‘They didn’t get paid. Had to take time off from their own work. Very difficult for some of them.’

Vima and I looked at each other. Willem hadn’t told us. None of the others had even hinted at the sacrifice they’d made. I sent Willem a silent apology for the anger I’d held against him.

‘Do you mean,’ Vima said, thinking it through, ‘that the ship cost money to send?’

James nodded. ‘They said that was all they could afford and we really couldn’t afford that.’

I shivered. ‘Did they hope nobody would volunteer?’

‘Nah,’ James said. ‘They knew people would. There’s so little chance to go outside Aotearoa now that people line up for any old opportunity. They knew they wouldn’t have to pay for a crew. Cunning really.’

I cleared away the breakfast things, thinking that none of what he’d told us added up to a motive for releasing a pandemic, and for blaming us for it. ‘Are things more or less the same now as before the pandemics started?’ I asked. ‘The same but not as big?’

James muttered, ‘Hell no! Where to start?’ He stared at nothing for about half a minute. ‘You need a bloody social historian,’ he grumbled, ‘but they’ve vanished along with a hell of a lot of other professions.’ He leaned his elbows on the table. ‘In a nutshell, it’s like this. We haven’t got money now to support all the services we used to have. We have to be more self-sufficient. We live in smaller communities so that we know our neighbours – the idea is we help out if somebody needs it.’ He relaxed back in his chair. ‘It kind of works. Better in some places than others. There’s a lot of suffering still.’

Just then Wilfred began to cry, but before Vima or I could move, James leapt to his feet. ‘I’ll get him. Where are the nappies? I’ll change him if you like.’

‘You might be sorry,’ I said, but I pointed at the cupboard where we kept Wilfred’s gear.

James laughed. ‘I’m one brave man.’

Vima looked at me and raised her eyebrows as he disappeared into the bedroom.

I whispered, ‘I think he lost a baby in the last pandemic.’

He came back holding Wilfred with one arm, cradling the baby’s head in his hand. He gave him to Vima and said, ‘Right, you two, enough of the serious stuff. This afternoon we play poker.’

I poked him with a finger. ‘Poker?’

So he taught us to play poker. We used dried peas for stakes. He cleaned us out and demanded dinner in place of his winnings. We didn’t cook the peas.

‘Would you like to go back to how things were?’ I asked when he got up to leave. ‘Back to how it was before the world went to hell in a hand basket?’

‘Crikey, girl! You never bloody give up, do you?’ He opened the door and was gone.

‘I’d take that as a yes,’ Vima said.

J
AMES AMBLED IN THE NEXT morning demanding hash browns, spinach, bacon and mushrooms for breakfast. Vima shuddered and settled for porridge.

‘Cards,’ he said, dealing before we could object.

Halfway through the morning Vima won a hand. She scooped up James’s mountain of peas, shoved half of them over to me and said, ‘Easy game, this. Once you get the hang of it.’

James said nothing, but judging by the look on his face he wasn’t going to let her win again if he could help it. The next time it was his turn to deal, he flicked out the cards even faster. He dealt me a hand that made my eyes bulge. I was still gaping at it when he burst out laughing.

‘Poker face, young Juno. Cultivate the blank face.’

I lay the hand down on the table, face up. A royal flush.

After that I barely featured in the game, except to lose at every hand. Maybe James was taking pity on me, or maybe poker was better with three players, but he kept me there by dropping in small snippets about life as it had been before the world fell to pieces.

‘Would you go back to how it was?’ I leaned my elbows on the table and looked at him. ‘I know you’d like to – at least that’s how it seems to me. But would you, if you could?’

He shuffled the cards so fiercely it was a wonder the spots didn’t fall off. ‘Are you daft? We damn near killed the planet. Going back would finish us off completely.’

‘But what if somebody does want to go back?’ I asked.

He let the cards fall. ‘If they wanted that, then yes, they’d be crazy enough to let loose a rogue virus.’

For the next few hands, our minds were not on the cards – which resulted in my winning a hand. James frowned and shook his head, muttering to himself. Then he looked up. ‘Listen, I don’t know any more than you do. But I’ll think about it. Now concentrate on the important stuff.’

Vima won the next four hands.

Late in the afternoon, my stratum called from Marba’s apartment. As soon as I saw the icon pop up I sighed, bracing for them to be bubbling over with their day out in the city.

But there wasn’t a smile among them.

‘What?’ I demanded. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘You’d know if you’d bothered to check the internet,’ Silvern said, her voice fierce.

‘Hey!’ James said. ‘Don’t shoot Juno. She’s not even the messenger.’

She rubbed her hands across her eyes. ‘Sorry.’ She hauled in a deep breath. ‘I’m just disappointed.’

‘Angry too,’ Yin added. ‘I’m so fired up I could smash things.’

‘Deep breaths all round,’ Vima ordered. ‘Come on, hurry up. We need to know what the trouble is and none of you is in a fit state to say anything understandable.’

Even Marba looked shaken. ‘The techno shop turned Biddo away. They said they wanted nothing to do with any Tarian. They said only the truly evil would bring a disease with them, then blame it on the inhabitants of the country that had saved them.’

Silvern, with deadly calm now, said, ‘We split into small groups after that and sort of drifted around the city. We all heard people talking. They’re all saying the same thing.’

Vima and I sat motionless, stunned into silence. Could we do nothing right in this new country? Now they said we brought the virus
and
that we were evil enough to try to blame an Aotearoa citizen for it? How could they think such things?

James jumped to his feet. ‘Holy Saint Peter’s ghost!’ He strode around the room, hampered by its smallness, and shoved his hands through his hair again and again. ‘Okay, you lot, listen. Privately I’ve been thinking Juno was out of her mind – all this stuff about conspiracy theories. An evil genius releasing a smart virus for some hidden reason.’

‘Not so privately,’ I muttered, glad to focus on something understandable.

He ignored me. ‘The only motive I can think of is to destabilise the government, so that all the laws we’ve got now about the environment can be chucked out and we’ll go back to being a consumer society.’