Paradigm (9781909490406) (10 page)

‘But for today, we are glad to have you on the team. This…' she gestured to the old man two machines away, ‘…is Morton Dickenson. Carter nodded to the old man who raised one wrinkled paw in his direction.

‘Welcome to the Plant, kid.'

Carter smiled. He doubted he would be on the production floor for long but it was worth making a few friends.

‘Pleased to meet you,' he said and held out his hand. They took a second to rub palms with him and, for a second, he caught the trace smell of Lily's skin as she moved close to him. In the second she moved away it, was gone and all that was left was the overwhelming smell of chemical rosemary powder and kelp sauce. Within minutes it had permeated his own work shirt, his mouth mask and the space between him and Lily. The warmth of her skin was gone and his eyes watched as she moved across the floor. The old man Morton looked at his clothing in mock disdain.

‘Take this, kid,' said Morton, handing Carter his belt. ‘You need it more than me.'

‘And even a great leader needs to know how to make food,' said Lily with a laugh and went back to her position. Morton grinned at him, showing gums that were as red as his hair. Carter glanced over at Lily, hands firm on the machine, and a warm glow enveloped his body.

‘Just like Isabella, ain't she?' said Morton, grinning and flashing the room a glimpse of his gums. ‘Shame about her. That's love for you.'

Carter stopped dead, mid pour.

‘What did you say?'

The room went quiet. The question had sounded a great deal more confrontational than he had meant it to. Morton looked around, tufts of hair on his head puffing about in the breeze coming from the ventilation fans. Carter closed his eyes as if to extract the details from some distant synapse within his recollection and then turned to face Morton.

‘I don't think I believe in love,' he said. ‘Love doesn't get things done.' The second point came out more quietly. As he looked around for Lily, Morton laughed at him.

‘There's always love,' said Morton and turned back to his machine, nodding to himself and smiling. ‘A girl, or a boy or something. Anything that keeps your heart beating while you're underground. They said we'd die without it; it's the one thing that we still have. The one thing they can't stop. And it blindsides you when you are least expecting it.'

‘I'll be sure to watch out for that love thing,' Carter replied cautiously and the old man whirled around, switching legs as he did so.

‘You need any advice, feel free to come to me, son,' said Morton with a wry smile. ‘I can let you know what you need to know.' He winked at Carter and carried on with the chicker, feeding it through slowly, all the while keeping his gaze directly forwards.

‘I think I'm all okay,' said Carter and turned back to his machine.

‘You think?' said the old man. Then he whispered something that Carter could barely hear and shuffled around in his pocket.

‘What?' said Carter. ‘I didn't hear you.'

Morton coughed hard, pulling his identity card out of his trousers clumsily and dropping it onto the floor, just as two of the Industry security guards headed directly towards his machine. As both he and Carter bent down to pick up the card, Morton spoke in a hurried whisper, his words cutting Carter like the icy shards of rain that often fell from the skies. There was no mistaking what he said, even after the guards took the old man Morton out of the Food Plant and into the lifts. The words echoed in Carter's ears:

‘I know who you are. You're Carter Warren and you're here for the Uprising.'

T
he first place
they took Alice to was cold and damp with metal walls that were covered with pictures of red-and-yellow hot-air balloons that soared upwards into an invisible sky. It was called the Playroom, although there was nothing in there to play with. There were rows of small bunk beds with hardly any space between them, each covered in thin plastic covers that made Alice much too warm at night. At one end of the room was a large bathroom that had plastic shutters for doors. Most of the other children were younger than her but almost all of them cried like babies in the beginning, sometimes all night. Different children came and went. They cried for their parents and they wanted to see the sun. Alice knew that there wasn't much point in crying; it didn't bring you what you wanted and it usually caused more trouble.

For the whole of the first two weeks there was no school, which should have been a good thing but it also meant that they weren't allowed to leave the room very often. The only adult they saw, apart from the porters who brought them food, came twice a day. She was called Miss Kunstein, a spiky-looking woman in a long coat with tails who took them out of the room and down some corridors past the laboratories, through a tunnel and the wrong way along grinding, black travel belts. They walked for two hours every morning and for two hours every evening. Kunstein always walked upfront alone, swishing her long coat through the miles of cavernous passageways. The underground facility was huge. The network of tunnels extended deep under the city and into the heart of the earth.

‘Daytrip time,' said Miss Kunstein as they left one morning. ‘Alice, you lead.'

Alice walked on ahead through the maze of corridors, turning left and right, following the course they had taken every morning in the two weeks since they had arrived. At each junction, although both ways looked the same, she always took the correct one. Somehow, she could feel the corridors like she'd been able to feel the hum of the streets of the city, never getting lost. When they got back to the Playroom, Kunstein let all of the others back into the room then turned to Alice.

‘How did you know the way?' she said.

‘I just did. We walk that way every day.'

‘We pass through eighty-seven junctions, Alice, and each one looks almost identical.'

Alice shrugged. ‘I know my way around places. It's what I do.'

Kunstein smiled in a strange, knowing kind of way. ‘You've had to find your way around quite a bit, haven't you, Alice?'

Alice bit her lip and said nothing as the door opened. It was only when she woke up in the middle of the night, hot and sweating under the plastic cover, that she remembered where she had met Kunstein before.

I
t had been
the day they went to the museum and Alice's mother had soaked herself in perfume that smelled like violet creams. The museum was one of only two buildings that stood more than a couple of storeys tall in that part of town. They climbed the steps surrounded by grand white pillars and, as they stood in the doorway facing the rain, Alice's mother pointed outwards.

‘Look, just there, you can see Prospect House.' The dreary tower-block shape of the flats loomed black and imposing against the other surrounding buildings. Alice nodded. Even across town it carved an ugly, dirty shadow across the skyline.

They crept into the museum and waited as the security man spoke into a scratchy radio and ushered them through the turnstile. He threw an icy stare at Alice's dirty, drippy footprints as she sloshed past.

‘She yours?' he said to her mother, nodding his head.

‘Yes, but she won't be no trouble. We can still, you know?' Her voice trailed off and got lost in the domed entrance hall, eaten up by the portraits of fat, bearded men that watched them with empty glances.

‘Keep her out of the way,' said the security guard. He had a sharp uniform and a shiny head that was clean of hair but a wisp of furry fluff above his top lip. Alice put her hand over her own hair and gathered up her soaking hair into a ponytail.

‘See you a bit later, then' said Alice's mother to the guard with a weak smile.

‘My break's in ten minutes,' the guard grunted, going back into his security booth. ‘And don't shake yourself in there, you hear me?' he called to Alice from behind the glass, narrowing his eyes as she and her mother disappeared through the door and down a curved flight of stairs that extended deep underground. When they reached the bottom, a warm rush of air whooshed to meet them and Alice thought that she felt a moth flutter across her cheek.

They went through a low corridor and down some more stairs until they reached an alcove where there were two archways covered with thick red curtains. Over one there was a felt-tip pen note that said
Private
and the other had a sign that read
Natural History
. Alice's mother pushed open the curtain to
Natural History
and they walked on until they spilled out into a room full of pastel pink marble pillars etched with leaves and reeds that curled over the edges of the ceiling and gripped onto the walls with firm, emerald tendrils. She wondered if the pillars were holding up the whole world above her.

Along each side of the room, crystal cases were packed with stuffed animals, hundreds of pairs of glassy eyes locked on Alice as she stepped carefully through the centre. In the first case on her left was a blue-and-gold kingfisher, beak shining with silver-finned fish dangling out of it. Alice gulped.

‘Is it real?' she said to her mother.

‘It was, but it isn't anymore.'

They stood there at that first case, warming their fingers on the glass cabinet which was being heated by the bright light focused on the kingfisher. Alice watched as her fingers pulsed back into life, red and stingy, and pressed them hard against the glass to stop the tingling.

Next to the kingfishers there was a case full of butterfly cocoons that looked like they were made of cotton wool, soft grey-white and empty. Beside them, pinned helplessly against a board, were hundreds of butterflies and moths. Alice focused her eyes on them in the gloom until she saw one of the wings lift sadly off the board.

She pulled her mother's sleeve. ‘They're still alive,' she said, horrified, ‘they can move.' Her mother dragged herself from her own reverie and smiled, ignoring what Alice had just said.

‘I have to go and do some business now,' she whispered and crunched her fingers slowly. ‘You just have a look at the other animals and I'll be back soon. No wandering off now, just wait in the café upstairs when you're finished, okay?

.

Alice nodded and wandered through the museum, following the corridor past all the other cases until she got to the lift at the end that led to the café. When it stopped at the top, she stepped out of the creaking carriage and found herself a table, watching as the fan in the ceiling whirred around rhythmically. A sign on the wall in shiny red plastic said
Only customers that have made a purchase at the café are invited to sit here
, so she wrapped her hands around a three-quarters empty mug still on the table. She squeezed the last of the heat out of the cup and kicked her feet against one of the other chairs, licking tiny sprinkles of sugar and powdered chocolate off the edges of the mug. It tasted good.

‘I'm waiting for my mother,' she said to the waiter who came to wipe the table. He scraped a crusty cloth across the film of dried coffee and carrot cake crumbs and straightened the chairs without saying anything then went back to the cappuccino station. Alice said it again. This time her voice was louder and streamed over the piped soft jazz in the background.

‘She gon' leave you?' said the waiter running his crusty cloth over the nozzle of the cappuccino machine. ‘She gon' chat with Mr Security in his
love
box?' The waiter made the word love loop around his mouth a few times before he spat it out and then made a whooping sound when he was done. Alice scrunched up her shoulders and shrugged.

‘Maybe she ain't never comin' back,' said the waiter and flashed a perfect white smile, giggling to himself as he stacked the plates into piles according to size.

‘She always comes back,' said Alice fiercely and bit her lip hard. The waiter smiled and raised his eyebrows.

‘One day she won't,' he said and tucked the sticky cloth into his waistband. ‘I got tha' evil eye, I know everythin'.' Then he cackled like a witch and set about putting the cups and mugs into a similar order. Alice turned back to the teacup she was holding and swirled around the dregs.

That was when she saw her. She hadn't noticed the lady at first, sat in the corner with her hands fixed around a mug. She was dressed in a long black coat that was wrapped around her tightly and done up all the way to her neck. Her eyes gleamed dark and hard as she watched Alice.

‘What's your name?' the woman asked her.

‘Alice,' Alice replied slowly.

‘You're a brave girl, out here all on your own.'

‘I'm not afraid of being on my own,' said Alice defiantly, even though part of her was. ‘I've been to lots of places on my own. I take the Tube from Prospect House all over London.'

‘You do? And what are you doing here?'

‘I'm taking care of my mother. I take care of things.'

‘That's good to know,' said the woman, getting up from her chair as Alice's mother arrived to collect her. ‘That's very good to know, Alice. Maybe we'll meet again soon.'

A
lice shivered
. She was sure it had been Kunstein.

T
he first week
underground was the hardest. It was tough not just because she missed her mother, but because she missed all the little things about their life. She missed biscuits and the map on the wall in the flat and the green blades of grass in the park and her blue dress with the embroidered red rose. Sometimes she even wondered about the man with the evil eye in the museum and whether he or any of the teacups had made it out intact. But most of all she missed the view from her balcony and being able to look out across the city, watching in the far distance the way the river snaked around the outside of her world and hugged it tight like a noose.

Like the underground and the subways of South London and the dark maze of city streets, Alice knew how to navigate the network maze of tunnels and corridors with rooms that you needed a special pass to access. Her card gave her access to almost nowhere and came with instructions from a broad-shouldered man with a grey suit. He gave them a welcome talk in the great hall.

‘My name is Wallace Wilson,' said the man, surveying the crowd. ‘And welcome to the Industry Headquarters. This will be your new home…'

‘Until when?' shouted a man near the front

‘…until we are able to establish a safe and secure environment above ground. You will already be aware that the meteorological activity over the past few weeks has rendered all areas north and west of London and all low-lying areas including the city and surrounding areas uninhabitable. We have also detected that, as a result of structural damage caused by the significant weather fluctuation to Drakewater nuclear facility, there has been some leakage of toxic waste material.'

A rumble broke out among the crowd and Wilson rolled down a shiny white screen from behind him. Some of the younger children were crying.

‘Are we safe here?' called the boy from the crowd. Wilson straightened his tie and coughed.

‘This facility is completely protected against all kinds of threats. We have been developing the underground environment here for over fifty years.'

‘Is it a bunker?' The boy at the front had pushed his way forwards so that he stood directly in front of the stage. Wilson smiled wryly.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a bunker. Nor is it a government-provided facility. As you may know, Paradigm Industries are a private group of companies that undertake a range of market-focused activities including media and communications, biochemical and biomedical advancement, banking and finance, construction and change consultancy. We have pioneered the exploitation of subterranean business development and own a significant proportion of the under-city landscapes across the south-east. This has enabled us to…'

Wilson broke off as a man began to shout from the front of the crowd. ‘We don't care about your market share this or your consultancy that. We just want to know what's going on. Where are the politicians? Has anyone called the army?'

Wilson moved right to the front of the stage so that he stood directly opposite the man.

‘Mr…Allerton. Graham Allerton, correct?' The man, Graham Allerton, nodded, his mouth wide open. Wilson moved so close to him that Alice thought he might fall off the stage at any moment.

‘How do you know my…?' Wilson ignored the man and gestured to him to move backwards.

‘Mr Allerton of Grantham Drive, Camberwell. I can only offer my sympathies regarding the loss of your wife—so close to the loss of your daughter less than a year ago.' His face softened. ‘Car crash, wasn't it?' Allerton nodded and dropped his jaw further.

‘I…' he began to say, but little, if anything, came out of his mouth.

‘But Mr Allerton, you are not the only one and there are many confused and frightened people in this hall. It is my job to let you know that whilst you are our guests here, you are all safe. Those of you with us today are the lucky ones. Anyone who has remained above ground will not be so fortunate.' Tears streamed down Allerton's face and he stepped back into the crowd as Wilson started again.

‘You will all need to prepare yourselves for some bad news. Due to the damage done at Drakewater and other facilities both here and overseas, significant contamination has taken place. Forecasts suggest that the Storms will continue for several months—if not years—and life as we knew it has changed forever. Only facilities such as these will provide any level of protection and, unless they are fully equipped, these are unlikely to provide any long-term solution. Our priority now is you.'