Box Page 9

  ‘She’s something.’ Marti was laying the mandarin segments in a row on the cardboard. ‘She’s got about five sisters, one in every year at school, just about. She dances, I know that much about her. She’s brilliant at it. She was the bad fairy in this punk adaptation at school of Sleeping Beauty. Really scary.’

  ‘So should we help her?’ I needed the others’ advice here because my instinct was for the three of us to strike out on our own and blow everybody else. Yes, we should get the information off the computer but we should hoard it. Knowledge was power and we couldn’t just hand it to Becka on a plate.

  ‘I don’t think Becka’s doing this for herself,’ said Marti, pulling a string of pith from a segment. She sure knew how to make it last. ‘What do you reckon, Disco?’

  ‘Me? I say she’s Spiderwoman. She’s lured the entire teenage population into her web. Next she’ll kiss us.’ Disco was on his feet, jiggling, fuelled. He opened his big mouth and breathed out. ‘Haaaagh! Then she’ll eat us. We are the feeding network!’ He went off into maniacal laughter which cut out suddenly as he bent in half, head down. ‘But actually …’ He flipped up into an untidy handstand and marched across the cardboard, ‘… she’s got something pretty cool going there.’ He dropped to a squat, red in the face. ‘And I don’t reckon you got a lot of choice. If you want to be part of anything.’

  ‘I’m part of us, aren’t I?’ I stared at my friends.

  Marti looked down at her hands. ‘I like hanging out with you guys. A lot. But I’m going to help with getting wands out.’

  ‘And I don’t mind helping stake out an Endorsement station,’ said Disco. ‘I mean, this is the happening thing, eh? And we get a chance to be in there. Who’d miss it?’

  I would. I’d just go and live quietly with Marti — Disco too if he could keep his hands off her — somewhere near my parents, collecting food on the tides, growing vegetables, fishing. Why couldn’t it be that simple? ‘I’m just going for a walk,’ I said.

  ‘We need to get onto a computer soon,’ said Disco. ‘Start memorising.’

  ‘I’ll be gone half an hour, max.’

  Marti slid down flat on the cardboard and lay her head on her arms.

  I headed up into the trees, across country. I walked until I found a patch of sun and a dry branch to sit on. For a few minutes I didn’t think. I just watched a couple of blackbirds come near and scrabble round in the leaves, kicking them up, digging out grubs, their yellow eyes alert, heads swivelling. Imagine living like that, like this, full-time: knowing there might be something or someone out to get you, never able to totally relax. Becka was like a bird. Sharp and alert and purposeful.

  My thoughts pecked about: birds … bees … bumblebee … honey-bee … beeswax … patterns … When you thought about the gathering on the landslip, you could almost believe some big pattern was forming, frightening all the kids off Endorsement in the first place, bringing them — us — together, using an unlikely queen bee called Becka.

  I knew how my parents would see it. They loved staying home and keeping to themselves when they could, but they’d gone to Berlin because they were thinking about hundreds, thousands of people. And here in Dunedin I had information that could keep their work rolling. I didn’t have the right to hoard it. I stood up, feeling stiff and tired and dutiful.

  On the way back I climbed the tree and fished the carrots out of the bag. There were only two and one was going slimy.

  Almost back at the school a bee buzzed close to my ear and hovered against a shrub. Up close, I saw its back legs packed with pollen, like fat yellow clown pants. I shook the bush and scared it off.

  Marti grinned when I gave her the washed carrot. ‘I should complain more often.’ She and Disco had packed away the box, filled their water bottles and were ready to head to town. We agreed to do what we could on the remains of the library Internet cards, after we’d checked our e-mails one last time.

  We took the back route, if you could call it that, using alleyways, empty school grounds, avoiding the main streets.

  ‘I always thought that if something bad happened, like a war or an alien invasion, it would feel really weird, like waking up on another planet,’ Marti said as we waited for a young couple to get out of a taxi and go into their house.

  ‘But what?’ I asked.

  ‘But this is still Dunedin, same as ever, mostly.’

  ‘Like it looks the same, smells the same — it’s got the same people?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s hard to believe that people could suddenly start hunting you down — if it’s true what we hear. Last week they were ordinary old students. Now they’re tracker dogs. If you’d been away and suddenly turned up here from overseas, you wouldn’t spot the difference. It seems the same but actually, something terrible’s happened.’

  ‘It’s how they cook crayfish.’ Disco took a run and leapfrogged a green wheelie-bin. He spun round to face us. ‘Put it in cold water and heat it up so slow it doesn’t know it’s turning into dinner.’

  ‘This didn’t happen slowly though,’ I said. ‘Endorsement got announced one week, started the next.’

  ‘But remember your essay: stuff that’s happened in the last two years. People were shocked at first, then they got used to the changes.’

  ‘Got used to things changing, too,’ said Marti. ‘And stopped making a fuss each time.’

  ‘Like crayfish.’ Disco slapped a power pole. ‘They stop scrabbling round, just start floating. Dead.’

  ‘But I can’t believe there aren’t adults protesting.’

  ‘I think if they’re part of the network my parents are in, they’ve been warned to wait and see what happens this first week or so. If people speak up too soon they’ll lose jobs, or they’ll be watched closely.’

  The librarian at the desk seemed suspicious. She followed us to the IT section and patted at the shelves nearby as we opened our files. ‘You know we’ll need evidence of Endorsement from tomorrow on?’ she finally said.

  ‘Yeah, we know that,’ said Disco, giving her his 100cc grin.

  ‘So make the most of it, won’t you?’ She reached into her pocket and dropped three Internet cards by Marti’s elbow. In the same instant I saw that Marti’s sleeve was twisted up so her wrist was exposed, with its fine scar, its absence of nu-skin.

  There was an e-mail from my father. He hinted that there were interesting legal developments in Europe, over the New Zealand experiment. He said that he and Mum had barely had time for early morning stretches since they arrived, let alone for Scrabble, so in view of that he was sending my mother home early. Of course that made no sense but I could read into it that they were worried and that she was coming back to check on us. What a relief.

  ‘What legal developments could they be?’ asked Marti when I told them.

  ‘Apparently it’s illegal to force people to take drugs, even supposedly for their own good. They always said Endorsement would never stand up in the world court, whatever that is. But that other countries have been curious to see what would happen here, so they’ve let it go ahead.’

  ‘Wow.’ Marti slumped down at the adjacent desk. ‘It makes you feel useless, doesn’t it? Never mind how strongly you feel, the morons in power can just move in and make the most horrible things happen. What’s the point fighting it?’

  ‘The point is,’ said Disco, ‘we can be the crayfish who climbed out. We are teetering with very hot feet on the rim of the boiling pot. Lobster heroes.’

  Marti tried not to laugh. ‘I know we’re here because there’s something going down. Becka’s proof of that. And Dek’s parents over there. It’s just that you feel small and useless, fluffing round in the trees here at the end of the world. What about Auckland? Wellington? Everywhere else. What’s happening there, d’you reckon?’

  ‘I bet it’s the same’, said Disco. ‘Kids refusing the wand. Otherwise why would they be so worried about the Internet and everything. A few dozen kids in Dunedin is nothing.’

  ‘Hope you’
re right,’ she said, ‘cause nobody loves me — no e-mails — I need some reason to keep going.’

  ‘Aw, I wuvsya, Mardi.’ Disco leaned over the desk opposite and made big calf-eyes at her, made her laugh out loud.

  Aaagh, why couldn’t I do that — tell Marti how I felt about her? I could hardly chip in now with, ‘Me too! Me too!’ A carrot was hardly competition for a mandarin. I kicked at the desk leg and opened up the Internet. ‘You two ready to start memorising?’ It came out gruff but they pulled their stools closer and we began.

  For two hours we sat, with me breaking through the codes, opening up page after page, giving Disco and Marti names of feeders, of cafés, of people who’d made their homes or services available. Then there were those who might help out if resources got badly stretched.

  While I opened and closed files and websites, they copied me on a second computer and made a system for remembering: every name had an associated object, so the whole thing could be reeled off like a game of Grandma’s Attic. Oliver Stone became ‘a sour pip’; Richard Jones, ‘Indiana Dick’; the Styx café, predictably, ‘a ferry ride’.

  When anyone came close, we’d lean into our computers and they’d mutter the list under their breaths. It was almost closing time when, beside me, Disco let his face drop against his screen. It slid down, leaving a smear of breath from his open mouth. ‘I’s about done-in, boss. Famished.’

  Marti rolled her head and stretched. ‘Yeah, there’s a limit to what you can stuff in at one sitting. I need a walk.’

  ‘Food!’ Disco moaned. ‘The boy needs food.’

  ‘Did you notice I’ve got my father’s nifty fishing rod tucked into my pack?’ I said, putting the pink cards in my pocket. ‘And bait. It’s gone so smelly we might catch an eel.’

  ‘Oh groan, the slow, slow process.’ Disco unstuck his face and wiped the screen with his sleeve. ‘Sneak down to sea, wait for fish, catch fish if lucky, pull out innards, trek to bush, wait for night, light fire, burn fish, inflate shrunken, despairing stomach, poke in teaspoon of fish …’ He jumped to his feet with a face like a rabid dog. ‘Let’s do it!!’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘Erase Recent Items and History from your screen before we go.’

  There was no wind down at the wharf. The sea was smooth and heaving under its slick of ships’ oil and debris. It didn’t smell fresh, more like rotting seaweed and diesel.

  ‘Can we truly eat anything that comes out of there?’ said Disco.

  ‘If it’s alive it can’t make us sicker than it is itself,’ I said.

  ‘Yah, ugly logic, Dek, but starving boy not in position to argue.’ He folded himself up on the boards and spread a piece of squid bait in front of him. ‘Give us your pocket knife?’

  Marti sat a little way off. She pulled out a notebook and scribbled with fierce concentration.

  ‘You’re not writing the names and stuff, are you?’ I said.

  Marti scowled at the insult.

  ‘Sorry, I just …’

  ‘And I just need space for myself in my own head.’ She spun on the bench and put her back to us.

  Disco and I took turns casting. We got tiny nibbles but either the fish weren’t hungry for smelly squid or, Disco suggested, they were too sick to be bothered.

  A group of young men came and sat nearby and ate from McDonald’s boxes. We couldn’t understand a word they said.

  ‘Russian sailors, what’s the bet?’ said Disco, swinging the sinker out in a high arc. ‘See that ship. The Glumskykorsky.’

  ‘You can’t read that from here.’ I shoved him.

  ‘How d’you know I haven’t got kryptonite eyes?’ He flicked the rod impatiently.

  ‘Because if you were Superman we wouldn’t need a fishing rod. You’d be submarining up and down the harbour, picking meat off the fish before they knew what was tickling them. You’d be laying eggs and growing wheat under your fingernails, mixing batter in one hand, boiling up oil in the other …’

  ‘Stop, I can’t stand it. And now Boris is bringing his hamburger into sniffing range. Quick, pin my arms down.’

  But it was our arms ‘Boris’ wanted to check out. He and his two mates came over grinning and pointing at their wrists. ‘See?’

  ‘They want to see what nu-skin looks like,’ Disco muttered. ‘Divert them.’

  I was smiling my small, polite, don’t-understand smile when Disco wailed, ‘Waahhaah! Help, it’s a woppa!’ He ran away along the dock, trailing the rod, then got yanked back suddenly as if something huge was fighting the line. He stopped to wind and release and jiggle. But he accidentally pulled the hook up to water level — with its five-centimetre spotty.

  Everybody laughed.

  ‘Leave it on, eh?’ Marti snapped her notebook shut on the bench. She took the rod from Disco and wound the little fish into the air. Setting her feet wide like a discus thrower, she flung the spotty up into the blue. It arced out with the nylon thread flickering behind.

  ‘Woah, what a cast!’ said Disco as it plopped down fifty metres away.

  Marti’s concentration was intense. She looked as if she was trying to hypnotise something up from the depths. She let the line sink for a few seconds, then began to wind it in, weaving the tip of the rod like a magic wand through the air. Suddenly it snapped taut and quivered. Marti’s mouth fell open as she let the winding handle go. It spun in a blur as metres of nylon raced off into the harbour.

  ‘Here, I don’t want to do this part.’ She was begging me to take the rod so I took it and slowed the outward reel to a halt. Something slammed into the end of its tether and you could see the nylon gut stretch and strain before it suddenly went slack then taut again as it began to drag out to the right.

  ‘Wind it in!’ Disco was bouncing high, slapping his knees and making sounds like, ‘hy-unk, hy-unk!’ The sailors jabbered and pointed.

  ‘Dunno what it is,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think this rod’ll manage it.’

  ‘Do what you can, Dek. Stick with it. That there’s food!’ Disco was bouncing behind me now, left, right, hands miming an invisible rod, all but snatching mine from me. A shadow rose in the green and fell away. ‘Thar she blows!’

  The three sailors were running along the wharf and when they got close enough, yelled to their shipmates.

  Marti’s fish was weaving back and forth. I managed to bring it in a few metres but it made Dad’s rod look like a toy. I’d only ever seen the rod catch a middle-sized blue cod off St Martin Island.

  ‘We’ll just have to wait until it gets tired,’ I said.

  ‘Or till we’re skeletons on the wharf.’ Disco sucked his cheeks in.

  My hands felt like cramped metal. I couldn’t have opened them if I’d wanted to.

  ‘They’re dropping a boat over.’ In her excitement, Marti was hanging onto my sweatshirt. I knew I should do everything in slow motion now — to keep her there.

  The sailors had been thrown the rope for a rubber dinghy already on the water. They towed it along to the first set of iron steps then climbed down and kicked the outboard motor into life. They drove out into the middle of our fish’s range and raised their palms at us.

  ‘Bring it up, they’re saying,’ said Disco. ‘Shlupsky-upsky, pronto, Deksky.’

  ‘Why should they get it?’

  ‘They just want to help,’ said Marti. ‘They’ve had their dinner.’ She folded the discarded box and tucked it between slats on the seat.

  ‘Well, we’ve got no choice, I reckon. It’s too big for this line once it’s out of the water.’ I went on winding and taking a breather, winding and waiting, and at last we saw the silver shape working the water, fighting for its life.

  ‘Poor thing.’ Marti pressed her hands to her cheeks.

  ‘You’re the one, Marti,’ Disco reminded her.

  ‘I know. I just hadn’t thought this far ahead.’

  ‘Well, I’m thinking like two hours ahead, to this thing sizzling on the frying pan we don’t have. Tell the truth I don’t even like
fish,’ said Disco. ‘But I’ll hold my nose and swallerit down.’

  ‘Oh, what are they doing?’ Marti said.

  One of the men was leaning out to grab the fishing line as it sliced the water under their bows. He pulled out a rowlock, jammed it across the line and wound it round and round and round … A metre away the fish — as long as my arm — broke the surface, and the man went on winding until its mouth was hard against the rowlock. I looked at the fishing rod, dead in my hands, and shrugged at Marti.

  ‘That’s novel. Never seen a fish caught that way.’ Disco clapped and punched the air as the boat puttered up to the wharf. ‘Boris’ stood and tossed the whole package — fish, line and rowlock, onto the boards at our feet. He sat down and touched the other rowlock, indicating that he’d wait for us to untangle and return ours.

  We squatted around the fish. I touched the silver scales. It was beautiful.

  ‘Gees, doesn’t it make you think someone’s looking after us?’ said Disco.

  ‘Yeah, Marti and Boris are,’ I said, touching the quivering gill.

  ‘Like someone arranging for this fish to land on Marti’s one cast.’

  ‘Oh, Neptune, you mean?’ I teased. ‘How are we going to kill this thing? Should we ask someone to strike it dead and cook it for us?’

  Just then an oar slid up beside us, from the boat. ‘Ask and you shall receive.’ Disco picked it up, aimed, and with eyes clenched shut, brought it down wham! on the head.

  Marti screeched, thankfully louder than I groaned, and the fish jerked and lay still.

  We felt like thieves walking back up the hill with the heavy plastic bag Marti had found and rinsed. Happy thieves, until Disco reminded us that we were supposed to be spending the entire afternoon memorising lists, that someone from Becka’s organisation would be waiting to meet us in less than an hour.

  AS WE PASSED under a street light, Marti pulled on my sleeve. ‘Hold still. Scales.’

  Her nail went flick, flick on my cheek, then she wiped her thumb across it.