Speaker Dawson looked like she wanted to protest. Bouda rolled her eyes. Historically, of course, the Silence had been used in ways that were perhaps less than desirable. Possibly it still was. Gavar and his pals had acquired a reputation at Oxford for parties attended by commoner girls that guests found strangely unmemorable the following day. But here in the House of Light, both acts were perfectly legitimate.
The Chancellor stood impassive until the hubbub had died down. Then he took a final look at the order sheet in his hand, as if he couldn’t quite believe what was written there.
Bouda watched eagerly, one hand pressed to her mouth. Even her father had hauled himself upright and was listening with interest.
Zelston spoke.
‘I Propose the abolition, entire and immediate, of the slavedays.’
6
Luke
It was amazing how much you could do in ten minutes.
Luke checked his watch – a cheap plastic thing stamped with the gaudy BB logo, Millmoor standard issue for all slaves – then slid into the shadows on the side of the hangar and upped his speed to a jog. Although tools-down was brief, the movement of workers throughout Machine Park made it the perfect opportunity for all sorts of activities best conducted unnoticed.
He’d learned that, and a lot more, under Renie’s tutelage. After he’d delivered the glasses for her, the kid had come back a few days later with another request. Then another. And Luke found that no matter how bone-meltingly knackered he was after his shifts in the components shed, he could draw on some last reserves to accomplish what she asked.
‘I’m pretty sure I’ve worked off any favour you think I owe,’ he’d told her after taking some bits to fix a busted air-conditioning unit in a skanky block over in West, where the residents’ pleas for repairs had gone unheard and people were developing breathing problems. Breathing the air inside the building had been like sucking an exhaust pipe. Luke thought he’d coughed up a bit of lung just making the delivery.
‘Course you have.’ She grinned gappily. ‘Now you’re doing it ’cause you like it.’
And Luke had found that he was.
As far as he could see, Renie-Rhymes-With-Genie was indeed in the business of granting wishes. Or not wishes, so much as simple, everyday needs that Luke couldn’t believe weren’t being met by Millmoor’s authorities. Yes, she was operating outside official channels. But Renie sourced a lot of her info on what folk needed from a Millmoor doctor, which must make it halfway legit. And for all Ryan’s warnings, it surely wasn’t as though they’d slap you with slavelife for taking people medicine, books and food.
He’d reached the canteen. Six and a half minutes remaining. Three to find what he needed, then three and a half to get back to Williams at their workstation.
Luke had laughed when Renie had issued his latest task – liberating food from the Zone D stores. He could just about choke down the canteen’s offerings without hurling. Surely the only ones to benefit from him taking the stuff would be the Zone D workers who no longer had to eat it.
‘It’s got extra calories and protein,’ she’d explained. ‘To keep you heavy-labour guys going. You should see what people get fed in the other zones. Just as nasty, but only half as filling. An’ you know the junk in the dorm kitchens. People get scurvy in here, Luke. I’m not kidding.’
Luke had wondered about Renie herself. Even for a thirteen-year-old she was tiny – scrawny and hollow-cheeked. Her dark skin didn’t hide the even darker circles round her eyes. She looked malnourished in a way that shouldn’t be possible in Britain today. Had she come to Millmoor aged ten? Was this what three years of life here had done to her?
And as he had many times in the month since their separation, Luke gave silent thanks that none of his family was here in this nightmarish place. Especially not Daisy.
He ducked into the storeroom. The shelves rose above his head. Each was labelled, but not arranged in any obvious system. There were so many boxes; so many cartons. He jogged along one row looking up and down, scanning the labels.
Then slammed forward against the shelf edge as something smashed into the back of his skull.
Luke crumpled to the floor, half blind with pain. Had something fallen on him from a high shelf behind?
A steel toecap dug under his shoulder blade and turned him over.
The strip of fluorescent ceiling light threw off throbbing coronas. One of them formed a queasy, technicolour halo around the head of the figure that stood over him. Luke blinked to try and steady his vision. What he saw wasn’t an improvement.
‘Taking a little stroll, Hadley E-1031?’
The boot nudged beneath his chin. Luke’s gaze followed the leg up to a barrel chest, a bull neck, a square head crowned with writhing light.
Luke’s very own angel of pain: Kessler.
‘Feeling peckish, were we?’ Kessler continued, looking around the shelves in the food store. ‘Are we not feeding you to your satisfaction here in Millmoor, E-1031? Disappointed you’re not eating roast swan with your betters at Kyneston?’
The tip of his baton thrust deep into the soft space beneath Luke’s ribs. Work in Zone D had been layering muscle onto Luke’s abdomen, but it was inadequate defence against Kessler’s jabs. The baton angled up, probing – the man’s grasp of anatomy was as good as Mum’s – and thrust again, and Luke’s body jackknifed as he curled onto his side and coughed up the lumpy remains of breakfast.
Luke moaned, and wiped sticky strings from his mouth with the cuff of his boilersuit. Even that small movement made his head yammer with hurt. He remembered Mum crouching over Dad on the driveway. What had she yelled out? Something about blunt force. He closed his eyes.