The Vulpine, page 13
She continued to sign as she spoke. “It’s not a stupid question. It’s so that we’re prepared.”
“Prepared for what?” I said.
“For revolution,” Ivy said dryly, raising an eyebrow.
“Not a revolution, exactly,” the girl said diplomatically, as if she was used to Ivy’s sarcastic comments. “The Vulpine have long-term plans. And, one day, we will have to be ready.”
“Atticus drones on about his ‘plans’ every time we gather in the chamber,” Ivy said. “Though he never tells us exactly what they might be.”
The girl went on patiently. “That’s because he doesn’t want any information escaping to the skyfolk. But it’s easy enough to get an idea of what he’s planning. Think about the lessons we have down here.”
“Like lock breaking?” I said.
She nodded. “Among other things. We’ll need these skills when the time comes to go above.”
“If the time comes,” Ivy said.
The girl ignored her. “You’re from up above, aren’t you, Ora?” she said to me, a glimmer of excitement in her voice.
“Here we go,” Ivy groaned.
“What’s it like?” the girl asked. “I mean, how does it feel, living under all that sky?”
She was looking at me, not with contempt, as I had feared, but with awe. For some reason, this felt almost as frightening.
“It’s…” I began.
What was the world I had come from like? How could I explain it all in just one sentence? It was bright and airy and filled with light. It was sunshine and trees and buildings. But it was also fear and lies too, the extent of which I was only now beginning to see.
“It’s OK,” I said with a shrug.
The girl’s face fell, and guilt washed through me. How often did they get a chance to meet someone who had lived up there? And all I could come up with was “OK”?
Next to her, the red-headed boy had been following our conversation closely. Now, he made a series of swift gestures with his hands.
Awkwardness rose up inside me. “I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“Eyeth says, ‘You still look sun-blessed,’” Ivy interpreted. “Least, I think that’s what he said.”
“He did,” the girl confirmed. “We have many in our community who use BSL,” she explained to me, “and we always try to sign if we’re able, or translate if someone can’t yet sign. It’s polite.” She lifted one hand to the side of her head, clenched loosely in a fist. “Sun,” she repeated, making her fingers burst open. “Blessed,” she added, holding both fists in front of her, thumbs out to the side, almost touching each other, then lowered both hands down.
“Sun-blessed,” I said, attempting to sign it too. Eyeth grinned, replying in sign language, and I looked to the green-eyed girl.
“He says, ‘It means you’ve spent so much time out in the sun, your skin is touched with its kindness,’” she said. “It’s a compliment.”
“They mean you’ve got a tan,” Ivy added, her voice droll.
I looked down at my hands. They looked as pale as ever. Sun-blessed. I had never heard the term. But then I wouldn’t have, would I? Everyone above ground was sun-blessed.
“We have to take vitamin D supplements down here,” the girl said.
“God, I miss the sunshine,” Ivy groaned.
They began getting down from the bench, and I noticed that the girl with the green eyes had a chair with wheels, like those I’d seen in the cafeteria.
“Where are we going next?” I asked her.
“Med chem,” she said. “And then Braille, and then lunch. Come on, I’ll show you. I’m Jade, by the way.” She swung her bag down from the table, and I followed them out of the room.
As we were walking, Jade pointed out the different classrooms. “That’s the food tech room,” she said, and I glimpsed a brightly lit room filled with shining metal kitchen equipment. The savoury smell of a stew drifted enticingly towards us.
“It’s where we learn ever more random things to make with mushrooms,” Ivy said.
“And here’s British Sign Language,” Jade said as we passed another classroom. The tables were arranged in a rectangle so that the students could all see each other. Eyeth stopped to watch for a moment as the class went through the signs. He shook his head, smiling, and carried on.
“How many different classes are there?” I asked.
“Well, there’s the two languages, Braille and sign language. Then there’s English and maths, STEM, which covers robotics, engineering and hacking. There’s med chem and echolocation.”
“Like Atticus does?”
“Yes. We use it in the darkest areas, especially if the power fails down here, but also in above-ground missions. What else is there, Ivy?”
“Food tech, sense—”
“Sense?”
“Yes,” Jade said. “Many here have conditions that affect at least one of our senses. Sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste. Over time, the other senses can become honed to compensate. People with visual impairment can be really tuned in to their hearing and touch, and consequently, they can hear things we don’t even notice. The sense class helps us all explore our own senses to the full.” She smiled. “Then we have physical training, and culture.”
“Physical training is basically improving our fitness,” Ivy said. “That and learning how to protect ourselves by kicking our attacker in the privates.”
I laughed. “And culture?”
She made a face. “History, politics and current affairs. Extremely boring.”
“It’s more than that, Ivy,” Jade chided gently. “It’s important to understand how and why the Vulpine came about, and what the world is like up there now, so that we’re prepared.”
But prepared for what? I thought.
“Here we are,” Jade said.
We had arrived at a brightly lit room. It looked like a laboratory, the sort I always imagined my mum working in. Just as I was about to step inside, I heard someone calling my name, and Elda came hurrying along the corridor towards us.
“Ora, the doctor wants to see you.”
“The doctor?” A trickle of dread tapped insistently at my chest. Doctors were feared where I came from.
“Don’t worry,” Elda said, reaching out her hand, not gloved this time. “They just want to check you over and get you on some more medication. Come on.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I sat with Elda in the small waiting room of the medical bay. I had never visited a doctor before. Doctors were rarely used in the world above, unless you broke a bone or had a baby. The thought of visiting one for anything else was embarrassing, as if you were admitting you had something wrong with you.
Across from us was an old-fashioned TV on a stand. It was switched on but muted, showing a news channel. Three doors led off the waiting room, with a glass panel set into each, like the door to the nursery. Except that these panels were made of mirrored glass, preventing me from seeing what was on the other side. We had passed the nursery on our way here, going in briefly to see baby Rose. She was asleep, her lips milky and her cheeks flushed from a recent feed. I thought of Casta, up in the world above. He would be at school now, living his old life. I felt a flicker of jealousy.
“What’s through those doors?” I asked Elda.
“That’s the doctor’s office,” she said, pointing to the one on the left. “The medical bay’s next to it, and that’s the chemistry lab – where they synthesize the medication we need.”
My eyes flicked nervously to the door of the doctor’s office.
“You’ll be fine,” Elda said, and I nodded, but inside, my stomach was turning somersaults.
I tried to distract myself by watching the TV. It was showing an interview with the Leader of the Government, the picture flickering and buzzing. The reception down here was patchy. His once-blonde hair was pure white, his translucent skin lined with age. It struck me that he must be very old, and yet there was a youthfulness to him, too, a sprightliness that belied the years he had been in power. A great rush of hatred came over me. This man was the reason we still had Imperfect and Perfect, the Hospital and the Vulpine.
“How can people be so gullible to believe what he says?” I said.
Elda glanced at the screen. “They’re not gullible. They’re brainwashed and frightened.”
“But he’s meant to govern our society – surely that means helping the most vulnerable, doesn’t it? Why does he let all this go on?”
“I don’t know. Your friend’s intel might help us with that one.”
Casta again. It seemed that much depended on what he could find out.
“You two are close, huh?” Elda said, noticing my silence.
“Yeah. We’ve known each other for ever.” I shrugged, and she laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s just – I used to shrug like that. For a second, it felt like I was looking in a mirror at my teenage self. Take a look.” She got up and went to the mirrored panel in the doorway, and I followed.
“Watch,” she said, shrugging at her reflection. “Now you do it.”
I felt a bit silly, but I did it anyway. I saw how our eyebrows rose in the same way, our lips pursing slightly. It was disconcerting and comical. “This is so weird,” I said, looking from her to me, comparing. It was like standing next to a big sister.
“Is it too much?” Elda said, her face suddenly serious.
“No,” I said. “No, it’s nice. Weird, but nice.”
She grinned as the door to the doctor’s office opened, and a woman stuck her head out, looking momentarily taken aback at our proximity to her.
“Err…” she began, and Elda and I burst out laughing.
“We were comparing genetic traits in the mirror,” Elda said.
The woman laughed. “Sounds very scientific – I heartily approve.” She turned to me. “Ora, I presume?”
I nodded, suddenly nervous again.
“I’m Hazel,” she said. “One of the doctors here.” She was young, probably only ten years older than me. “It’s all right,” she said, seeing my face. “I won’t bite. I know doctors have a bad rep up there, but down here we’re the good guys, I promise.”
She ushered me into the room, leaving Elda outside. This space felt more like the nursery – a proper, well-lit room with white-painted walls and no hint of jagged rock.
“I’m going to do some basic tests to get an overview of your current health. Don’t look so scared: I’m here to help.”
Help. The word felt at odds with everything I knew of doctors and hospitals. Yet Hazel was smiling at me, her face filling me with reassurance.
She took note of my weight and height, attaching clips and straps to my arm and ear, then got me to blow into a tube attached to a machine that beeped when all the air had left my lungs. My chest felt heavy afterwards, bruised and tired. A machine in the corner started spewing out a ream of paper, and Hazel ripped it off and studied it.
“The muscles around your lungs are strong,” she noted.
“How is that possible, if my lungs are so weak?”
She looked up. “Your lungs aren’t weak, Ora. If anything, they’re the opposite. You’ve had to work so much harder than most people just to breathe.”
I felt suddenly proud of my body, of what it was able to achieve in the face of adversity. I had never thought of my Imperfection in this way before. Ever since my parents had told me the truth, I’d only seen it as a weakness, but what Hazel said made sense.
She was still studying the results. “The drug you were on before has kept you quite well, but any longer without medication, and there might have been irreversible damage.” She leant on the edge of her desk. “Now, do you have any questions for me?”
I only had one pressing question. “The medicine that Atticus gave me yesterday – might there be enough of it for me?”
Hazel smiled and opened a drawer, taking out a little white bottle. It rattled as she passed it to me. “Of course. That’s why I asked you to come here. Take one morning and night,” she said, passing me a glass of water.
I opened the bottle and tipped out a pale pink tablet. It was easier to swallow this time.
When we emerged into the waiting room, Elda wasn’t there.
“She’s extremely busy,” the doctor said, seeing the disappointment in my face. She glanced at her watch. “It’s lunchtime now, you might as well go straight to the cafeteria.”
She pointed down the tunnel to the left, and I thanked her and began to walk, the bottle of tablets safely stowed in my pocket. But as I made my way through the earth tunnels, I drifted to a stop. I wasn’t sure I could face the cafeteria and all the questions about my life before. Turning round, I retraced my steps, heading instead to my aunt’s bedroom.
The little room was empty, and I sat down on the bed, feeling numb, staring at the bottle of pills. However nice that doctor had been, she had confirmed it: I was Imperfect. I should have been brought here long ago. Perhaps then I might have fitted in better. I felt the threat of tears well up once more, and, opening my rucksack, I searched for my phone. I hadn’t had a moment to think about it since I got here. Would my parents have messaged me? Would Casta?
But when I pulled it out, I saw the battery was dead. I looked around the room in case Elda had left a charger somewhere, but I couldn’t see one. With a sigh, I lay back on the bed, staring up at the craggy ceiling.
“Hello, stranger.”
I sat up, banging my head on the rock above. Ivy was leaning against the doorway, a mischievous smile on her elfin face.
“Oops,” she said. She stepped into the room, idly picking up a book on Elda’s desk before replacing it again. “I thought you might be here. I spent a lot of time in my room, too, after they let me out of the medical bay. Though in my case, I didn’t have the luxury of a private space like this.”
I looked down at my phone, staring at the blank screen. “Ivy, have you got a char—”
“Don’t bother,” she cut in.
“What?”
“There’s no signal down here. We’re too far underground. Believe me, I tried every tunnel and every room when I arrived. But even if there was, you can’t charge it. The electricity supply is saved for stuff the Vulpine think is more important.”
I thought about my parents. Would they worry if I didn’t reply to their messages?
Ivy’s gaze flicked to my face. “You all right?”
“Yeah. I just feel a bit…”
“Disappointed? Disillusioned? Dismayed?” She shrugged. “All the ‘dis’ words?”
I gave a sigh. “I don’t know why I feel like this.”
“It’s because you’re starting to realize that this is your life now,” she said, picking moodily at a crack in the rock above her head. “It’s not like this for the others. They have nothing to compare it to. But we’ve experienced it up there. We’ve seen the sky and breathed the air. They have no idea.”
“How did you cope with it?”
“I didn’t. I went off the rails a bit. And now, I just tell myself that I won’t be down here for ever.”
“What do you mean?”
She sat on the bed, crossing her legs. “I have to hope that Atticus will up his game. Although his so-called plans are so far in the future, we’ll probably all be in our eighties before we’re allowed up there, a crumbling army of geriatrics.” She laughed bitterly. “We need a proper strategic takedown, and soon. The end goal must be to give us equality, to allow us to live above ground. Otherwise, what’s the point of it all?”
I nodded slowly. Ivy lay back on the bed, gazing up at the rock above her. “I can’t stay here much longer. My cancer might not be killing me any more, but the thought of being underground for the rest of my life is.” She said this lightly, but I saw a shadow pass across her eyes, betraying her fear.
“You sleep in a dorm, right?” I said, and she nodded. “Do you think I could move in there too?”
A small spark ignited briefly in her eyes. “The bed next to mine is free,” she said.
“Will you show me?”
She looked at her watch. “We can’t now: lunch is nearly over. We have classes.”
“We could bunk off?” I said. “You could always tell them you were helping me settle in…”
“I never took you for a rule breaker,” she said, a smile beginning.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” I said.
The dormitory was housed in a large cavern further down the passageway. Unlike the dark granite of the cafeteria, the walls and ceiling here were hewn from a pale rock, almost white, and rimed with crystals so that it felt quite bright after the gloomy corridor.
Ivy lit a lamp near the doorway, and I gasped as the whole room came to life, shimmering like stars in a winter sky.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed, gazing above me in awe. Stalactites hung down, glittering like frosted icicles.
Ivy had gone to her bed at the back of the dorm. “You can have that one,” she said, nodding at the bed next to hers. She looked a little nervous as I sat down, as if she was waiting for my approval.
“It’s perfect,” I said, smoothing my hand over the quilt, and I saw a hint of relief pass over her pinched, solemn face.
Footsteps rang out in the passageway, and Flare appeared in the door at the far end of the dorm.
“Ora, I’ve been sent to get you. We’ve had word from your mum and dad.”
I jumped to my feet, my heart beating in excitement. Smiling an apology to Ivy, I followed him.
“What did they say?” I said in the corridor. “Are they OK?”
“You can find out for yourself. They’re waiting to talk to you.”
Joy coursed through me. “You mean, I’ll be able to hear them?”
He nodded, grinning at my elation.
He led me to a small brick-built room. A sign by the door read Communications. Inside it, a man was sitting in a wheeled-chair at a desk, headphones over his ears. The desk was filled with radio equipment, coiling wires and dials of all sizes.
“Ben, this is Ora,” Flare said. “Are they ready?”
