The Hunted, page 6
At times he longed for the company of other children more than he even longed to discover some clue to the past. He saw them occasionally, but rarely got near. They mostly passed by in securely locked cars, with a minder sitting next to them or a security guard staring out from the back window.
Poor parents, who couldn’t afford that kind of protection, instantly fled the city at the first sign of pregnancy, to take up residence in some remote cottage, in a farmhouse or a smallholding, where they could sleep at nights without a gun by the bed and a ferocious watchdog prowling the yard, worrying about an unannounced nocturnal visit from the Kiddernappers.
The early months and years of childhood were the worst in terms of risk and vulnerability, for they were also when the child was most valuable. Then the commercial worth of a child steadily diminished with age – just as Tarrin’s own value was gradually diminishing – until one day you were grown up.
And then you weren’t worth a damn thing to anybody. Unless they were mad enough to love you, of course. Once you had reached the age when you were not a child any more, the Kiddernappers weren’t interested.
Tarrin gave up on his Net search and picked up the geography Edu-Pack again, but try as he did to read it, his concentration wavered.
It was the PP. Deet talked about it more and more now, about getting the PP implant. He never used to mention it at all, once upon a time, but now he talked about it at least once a day.
Deet could see his livelihood, his future, his life, all slipping away.
How was he going to live without a child to support him?
‘A few more years, kid, that’s maybe all we’ve got, then nobody’s going to want you. You’re going to be just one more nobody in a world of nobodies. The world’s full of nobodies, kid, all with faces on them like stopped clocks. Just look around you and see it for yourself. People get to forty and they start to take the Anti-Ageing and then they all look the same – waxworks, kid, frozen smiles, plastic complexions. It’s the world’s revenge, kid, if you ask me.’
Tarrin hadn’t asked him, but he looked at him with curiosity. ‘What do you mean, Deet? The world’s revenge?’
Deet had sat back in his chair and prised the ring pull off another can and had chuckled to himself.
‘All the well-meaners, kid, all the do-gooders. All the medics and researchers who were going to transform it all – the whole meaning of existence, I’m talking about the whole mortal span, kid. You a Bible reader?’
‘Not especially,’ Tarrin said, though there was always a Bible in each motel room, one in every room he had ever stayed in, placed there courtesy of the Gideons, who financed the spread of the Word. He glanced at them occasionally.
‘Nor me,’ Deet conceded. ‘But I’ve flicked through a copy every now and then, when I was sitting getting bored in some motel room or maybe couldn’t sleep. It tells you in there, kid. The very words.’
‘Tells you what?’
‘Man’s allotted span, kid, it’s threescore years and ten. That’s seventy years old to me and you, here in the modern world. We don’t use expressions like “allotted spans” or “threescore” much, but a score is twenty and three of them is sixty and ten on top is seventy and that’s about how long we’re supposed to last. Anything above that is a bonus. But these well-meaners and do-gooders, all so proud of themselves with their awards for this and that and their Nobel prizes, what did they do, kid?’
‘What did they do, Deet?’
‘They fixed it so we could live longer. Little by little. Century by century, decade by decade. It was going to be the answer. A long, long, long, long life. Why, the way they were going to fix it, kid, we were even going to be immortal! We were going to live forever and never die at all! Ha!’
Deet knocked back a mouthful of beer and then spluttered a little.
‘Hell, I’m going to choke to death! Hit me on the back, kid.’
Tarrin did.
‘Harder.’
He gave him a good solid thump – there was feeling in it.
‘Not too hard, kid. I’m OK now. What was I saying?’
‘About living forever.’
‘Oh yeah. Well, they couldn’t quite do that. But they gave us up to two hundred years or more. That’s threescore years and ten doubled, tripled even. Only if nobody was dying and people went on getting born, what was going to happen?’
‘The world would get crowded, Deet.’
‘Exactly, kid, sharp boy. I brought you up all right. The world would get so crowded we’d be standing shoulder to shoulder, we’d be swarming and crawling all over each other like termites in a mound. So what did the world do to rectify that situation, kid? To stop the trouble happening? What was the world’s revenge?’
‘It made people barren.’
‘Sure did, kid. It made them infertile so they couldn’t have any more kids, kid. The death rate fell, sure it did. And the birth rate fell right along with it. Ha! I like the world, kid. I like its sense of humour. I like the way it gets its own back on the know-it-alls and the stuck-ups and the well-meaners. They got us into this predicament and they can’t get us out. What a deal! What a place!’
‘Except for some people, Deet. They can still have children.’
‘Some people, kid, some lucky, lucky people, can still have kids and no one knows why about that either. But are they lucky, kid? Are you lucky to have children when every childless person in this world envies you and hates you for having them and would steal your children from you if they could? Is that lucky?’
He took another swig of beer and looked philosophical.
‘It’s a hell of a world, kid. You’re better off as you are and not growing up at all. If there aren’t so many kids around, make childhood last longer, make childhood last forever, kid. Don’t ever grow up. You’re better off with the PP, kid. I tell you.’
‘But that’s not nice – for the kid who has it. He . . . she might want to grow up.’
‘Sure. That’s why it’s illegal, kid. But everyone knows you can still get it. And once it’s done, well, the law just has to accept it or . . . or that would be punishing the victim, right? So they let Miss Virginia Two Shoes go right on dancing. And why not, kid? She’s cute as a button, and she’s got fifty-plus years of experience in that line of business as well. She knows more about it than any five-year-old. She’s a professional, see, kid. She doesn’t have fits and tantrums or lie on the floor and cry.’
‘She’s a fast-food kid, isn’t she?’
Deet seemed to suddenly sober up. He put his can down and looked across the room at Tarrin.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean . . . I suppose I mean . . . you know . . . it’s like . . . giving people what they want in a hurry . . . feeding them the easy way . . . no cooking . . .’
‘No cooking?’
‘Just . . . ready to eat.’
‘You worry me, kid,’ Deet said. ‘Sometimes you sound too grown up for your own good. You’d better not go talking to the customers like this when you’re out on the hour.’
‘I don’t, Deet.’
‘You’d better not, you hear?’
‘I hear.’
‘They don’t want this kind of thing, kid, they want kiddy-talk.’
‘That’s what I give them.’
‘Then you be sure you do, and keep it that way.’
‘Yes, Deet.’
‘You hear me?’
‘Yes, Deet.’
‘Sometimes I think, kid, that the sooner you get the PP, the better it’ll be for both of us. Why, in five or ten years, you could learn to be a real professional kid.’
‘I am a kid, Deet. I’m a child already.’
‘I mean a proper one.’
‘I am a proper one. I’m more proper than they are.’
‘I’m talking about expectations, kid. Let’s not cover that ground again. I’m just saying, if I had the dough right now I’d treat you to the implant and you could be a kid forever and ever, right till the day you die.’
‘But, Deet . . .’
His eyes narrowed as he picked up his beer can again. ‘But Deet what?’
Tarrin swallowed. He had to tell him sometime. Best to tell him now.
‘I might not want to be a kid forever, Deet. I might want to grow up.’
‘What for?’
‘To be big. To do things – you know. Just to . . . be me . . . become who I am.’
Deet didn’t say anything for a time. He just sat there, sipping and looking and sipping again. Then finally he shook his head. ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you the PP, kid. Soon as I get the money.’
‘But I still might want to grow up, Deet.’
‘What for?’
‘I just . . . might . . . rather . . . I don’t want to be a child all my life, in a child’s body, but with some sort of grown-up’s mind.’
‘Wish I could be a kid again,’ Deet said, opening another can. ‘Someone to look out for you. No worries, no responsibilities. No bills to pay. You don’t know when you’re lucky.’
‘But, Deet—’
‘I ain’t talking about it no more. I’m looking out for you, kid, that’s all. There’s a few years left in you, I reckon, and then you’ll not be a kid any more. So we need to get it done before things start changing and your voice gets deep.’
‘But you haven’t got the money, have you, Deet?’ he asked, afraid that somehow Deet might have acquired it.
‘I know that, but I’m working on it and I may even be sitting here hatching out the master plan, even as I’m sitting here speaking and sipping on this beer. You leave it to your uncle Deet, kid, and he’ll look out for you, just like he always has. Have I ever raised my hand to you, kid? Or even my voice that often?’
‘No, Deet, no.’
‘Ain’t I more than your owner and legal guardian? Ain’t I more like a friend?’
‘Yes, Deet.’
‘The best one you’ve got.’
‘I never get to play with any other children though, Deet, nor the chance to make any friends . . .’
‘You’re hair-splitting. That’s irrelevant. Have I ever let you down? Don’t I get you work regular and make sure you get all your meals and your education?’
‘Yes, Deet.’
‘Exactly. And it’ll stay that way once you’ve had the PP. Except that maybe, as time goes by, we’ll be more of partners and I’ll let you keep a little of your earnings back for yourself.’
‘Thanks, Deet.’
‘Won’t that be nice?’
‘Yes, Deet.’
‘Well, I’m going next door to bed now, kid, but you don’t have to worry as I’ll be listening out for the Kiddernappers. They’re not going to take you, kid. Don’t you worry. None of them nasty Kiddernappers is going to take you from your uncle Deet.’
‘Yes, Deet.’
‘Whadda you say?’
‘Night, Deet.’
‘Night, kid. And brush your teeth. Keep them clean and white and shiny. The customers like that – clean, white shiny teeth on a boy. You can’t do better than shiny teeth and shiny smiles for getting your foot in the door and grabbing those bonus bags.’
Then finally Deet would go to bed and snore loudly until eventually he rolled over and the snoring stopped, and then Tarrin would get to sleep too.
The PP worried him. It was the thought that Deet really meant it. That he would have it done to him, whether Tarrin wanted it or not. Right now he didn’t have the money. But what if one day he did?
Tarrin felt that he should get away, that he ought to escape. Only how? And to where?
There was no disappearing.
How did you hide in an ocean of adults when you were a child?
Sure, he could run, but where could he run to? How long before someone would find him? Deet. Or someone worse than Deet . . .
Who could he turn to? Where could he go? He didn’t have a friend in the world. He didn’t know anyone at all. For all the attention he got every day from the people Deet rented him out to, he felt as lonely as a bird in an empty sky. He felt so lonely sometimes, so desperately lonely. All he wanted to do was to sleep then, and never, ever have to wake up again.
It was another aspect of the world’s revenge. One of those little ironies which had eluded Deet, for he had no profit or feeling resting on it. It was the fact that now that children and childhood were the rarest and most valuable things in the world, they had become almost intolerably unhappy and lonely and filled with fear.
Tarrin put on pyjamas and then went to the bathroom to squeeze some toothpaste on to a brush and to shine his smile. As he watched himself in the mirror, the song came back into his head.
There’s a green land far away
Going to get there one fine day
That was all Tarrin knew of it. The opening words and a snatch of the tune and no more. He didn’t know if it was a real song or something he had made up in his own mind.
Or something he had heard someone singing, a long time ago.
He had a memory; he could see the squint of sunlight in his eyes and a canopy being pulled over and then a view of the sky as from inside a tent with the flap slightly open. Then there was movement, a rocking motion, and the sound of a woman’s voice singing that song, or maybe it was a hymn maybe, or a lullaby.
There’s a green land far away
Going to get there one fine day
But was it an invention, or a true memory? And that woman’s voice and that perfume and the squint of the sun and the blue of the clouds and the canopy of shadow, had they ever really existed at all?
Or were they just his imagination and thinking?
Thinking.
Of the wishful kind.
He left the bathroom, went to bed, put the lights off and soon fell asleep.
He dreamed of the sound of rustling leaves moving in a country breeze. He thought that in among the imaginary shufflings was the real sound of muffled footsteps from somewhere close by. He felt that there was somebody out there, out in the motel corridor, trying to tread quietly, going from door to door, from room to room, turning the handles, listening at the walls, searching for something, for somebody maybe – for a particular kind of someone.
Or maybe it was just Deet. Yes, it was probably only Deet in the adjacent room, on the other side of the interconnecting door. Deet wouldn’t let anything bad happen. Deet had his investment to protect, his own interests to safeguard.
After a while, the sense of some nearby presence had gone. There was no one there listening or watching or waiting. No one at all. Sleep grew deeper, deep as a black ocean, and how pleasant it was to drown in it – for a few hours of merciful oblivion.
The Stranger
The stranger lay on the hotel bed still wearing his boots. It maybe wasn’t big and it maybe wasn’t clever, but he was doing it just the same. It was something he had always done – lain on the bed with his boots on. Not so much from slovenliness or even from a desire to affront the proprieties, but you just never knew, that was all, when you might have to get up on to your feet again and be on the move. Not in this line of work.
So there was no real point in a person taking his boots off until a person had decided that he was well and truly done for the day. And he hadn’t reached that stage yet, even though the night was dark and the hour was late and the town was still.
He got off the bed, stretched and went to the sink in the bathroom and ran himself a glass of water. He had only recently come in from walking around the town. He had been a solitary figure, alone in the night.
It was a town of medium size, one of many he had stayed in over the years. It was not without its own distinguishing features and singular places and items of interest, yet all in all it was as anonymous to him as all the rest, and in the end they had all blurred into nothingness. He had got older doing this. Nearly seven years of his life had gone.
There were other men like him, women too, who lived this way and for the same purpose. Maybe their motives differed slightly, but their objective was the same – to find a child. To locate one, study its movements, get to know its routine, establish whom it belonged to, who was looking after it, what kind of security was in place, to assess the risk involved in attempting its abduction, and then, if everything looked right and the chance seemed worth taking . . .
To make your move.
But you didn’t want to get caught. That was for sure. You didn’t want to make any mistakes or go bungling anything or go picking yourself the wrong child.
It was an automatic life sentence for Kiddernapping, same as for being involved in PP implants. Society had to have some safeguards. The government couldn’t have children being abducted and traded. So it was life automatic. And life meant life, and life was long, it was a long, long life sentence they gave you now. In some ways it was worse than death.
According to the hotel register, the man’s name was Kinane. Whether this was true or not, who knew? He had used so many aliases in his life that perhaps he had started to use his real name by accident, having forgotten it for a while, and now maybe thinking that it was one he had invented or dreamed up.
He didn’t much look like a Kiddernapper, but then what Kiddernapper did? Why should a thief look like a thief? Or a murderer like a murderer? And what did a thief or a murderer – or a Kiddernapper, come to that – look like anyway? They looked like anyone, could have been anyone, were anyone.
You didn’t see them coming, that was the thing. Or you saw them coming, but they simply didn’t look like the trouble they were. And by the time you realized who they were and what they were there for, it was all too late. Your child had gone. Your pride, your joy, the object of your love and affection, your life, your soul, your prize possession. He or she had gone. Probably never to be seen again. Gone to another town, another city, another country. Gone, gone, good and gone. Never to be seen again.
For somebody had stolen, and somebody rich had gone and bought, the one thing that money couldn’t – or shouldn’t be able – to buy. A child, your child. And now your little boy or girl was behind a security screen in a rich person’s house, playing behind razor wire and looking out through bullet-proof windows, pining and crying for you. But if the child was young enough, it came to believe that two other people were its parents, and in time it would forget you, and not even recognize you . . . not even want you. And if, at some point in the future, it were given the choice of returning home or remaining with them . . . it would remain. For worse than the theft of the child was the theft of its feelings. They could even steal love in the end.
