too small for Petar and Jemmie. Petar push me through. Shout to run, hide.
Wingers fly them away. I saw in the soon-to-be-now. The Meat Factory took them in.
No more Petar and Jemmie.
Only Gold-Eye. Running and hiding.
Like Petar said.
Shade’s secret home was a submarine. Soon after the Change it had come away from its mooring and drifted in between two old, long, wooden finger wharves. Now the bow was wedged under the decking of one wharf and the stern trapped against the other. Sand had built up on the seaward side, locking it in place.
Shade’s children came and went via a torpedo tube in the bow, safely out of sight under the wharf. They could then wade between the piles up to a storm-water tunnel that led into the city’s network of drains.
The drains had the advantage of being hidden from Wingers, Trackers and Myrmidons, but it was always a gamble between two perils. Too much water in the tunnels meant a quick death by drowning – but a dry tunnel was nearly always infested with Ferrets. Even in their dormant stage during the day, they would still wake long enough to kill a careless human.
Gold-Eye, Ninde, Drum and Ella arrived under the wharf in midmorning. Exhausted from the night before and sodden from the neck, armpits or waist down (varying according to their height) from the drains, they were not pleased to see that the tide was high.
“The tube will be shut,” Ella said wearily. “We’ll have to wait a few hours for the tide to go down. It looks like it’s on the turn.”
“Wait where?” asked Ninde. Like the others, she was hugging the rim of the storm-water tunnel, the water cascading around her legs before swooping down the short drop into the sea.
“Here,” replied Ella. “Or we can swim out to the Sub and hang on. Stand or float. Your choice.”
“I’ll stand,” muttered Ninde, in a tone that hinted things should have been better organised.
They stood in miserable silence for another three hours. Gold-Eye almost fell at one point, his leg muscle suddenly cramping and giving way, but Drum pulled him back and pushed him upstream. After that, Gold-Eye just sat in the water, letting it wash around his shoulders and under his chin.
Finally Ella judged that the tide had receded enough for the torpedo tube to be accessible. She jumped down first, checked that the water came up only to her waist and signalled the others on.
The Submarine was much bigger than it had looked from the drain outfall. Its hull loomed up above Gold-Eye five or six times taller than Drum – a giant black cylinder that had forced itself under the wharf, twisting and warping the planks so that lines of sun shone through the gaps, falling on Gold-Eye’s upturned face and glittering across the sea.
Ella led them right up to the rounded nose of the Submarine, where four round hatches could be seen outlined in bright-yellow paint. Danger warnings and safety and maintenance procedures were stencil-typed next to them; flakes of rust around three of the hatches proclaimed that this maintenance had long been neglected.
The fourth hatch was rust free, and this was the one that Ella reached up to and knocked on with the hilt of her sword, creating a hollow, metallic boom that vibrated through the hull and into the water. Gold-Eye felt its buzz around his knees.
The knock was answered by a hiss of compressed air and the hatch slid open just a crack, a metallic tentacle suddenly springing out. Made up of hundreds of silver rings, it writhed in the air for a second, then turned so the end of the tentacle was facing them. A lens glittered there and Gold-Eye had the curious sensation that it was somehow looking at him.
“Don’t worry,” said Ella, noticing that he was unconsciously edging away. “It’s only one of Shade’s Eyes. He’s just checking to make sure we aren’t creatures.”
True to Ella’s explanation, the tentacle hovered in front of each of them in turn before wavering back to take another look at Gold-Eye. It looked at him from all sides before it seemed to be satisfied and withdrew back into the Sub.
After it disappeared, there was another burst of compressed air and the hatch slid completely open, revealing a narrow cylindrical passage, apparently lines with mattress foam.
Ella reached up into the passage and pulled down a heavy, knotted rope, letting it fall into the sea with a loud splash that sprayed everyone on the few places where they were still dry.
“Ella!” squealed Ninde, and even Drum seemed displeased, stepping back half a pace with a scowl momentarily passing across his face.
“Sorry,” apologised Ella. “Still, hot showers and clean clothes soon. Ninde, you can go first.”
Ninde needed no encouraging this time. Ignoring the knotted rope, she used Drum like a ladder, climbing up him and stepping off his shoulder as if he were a piece of furniture. Then she was wriggling her way down the tube and out of sight.
Gold-Eye was next, though he used the rope. He was surprised to find that the tube was wider than it looked from down below. He’d wondered how Drum would fit, but even his bulk would slip through all right – despite the thick padding that made it more comfortable to crawl along.
The tube ended in another hatch, which was closed. Gold-Eye hesitated for a moment, then knocked on it.
There were a few clanking sounds as the locking wheel spun; then it opened outward, revealing a large, well-lit chamber – and Ninde, wearing only her underwear and a large white towel wrapped turban-like around her head.
Gold-Eye stared, then blushed and looked down as Ninde said, “Haven’t you ever seen a girl in a bikini before?”
“Only pictures,” he croaked, sliding out of the tube and on to the floor. Trying not to look at Ninde’s body, he looked everywhere else, noting the towels hanging on hooks on one wall and various baskets and boxes lined up on the other.
“We leave our outside clothes here,” said Ninde. “Get a bit dry and then report to Shade before we shower and eat. Come on – get those wet rags off.”
“Nothing else on,” muttered Gold-Eye. He was confused. The sexes were segregated in the Dorms, except at meal time, and they always washed separately. Petar and Jemmie had washed together – and done other things as well – but that was all just a hazy memory of half-seen sounds and misremembered images. He didn’t know how he was supposed to behave.
“Here, I’ll help you,” said Ninde, coming up close and taking hold of one extremely grubby sleeve. “It’ll be interesting to see what’s under all this dirt…”
“Ninde!”
The voice was Ella’s, followed a moment later by the girl herself, leaping down from the tube like a dangerous cat.
“Leave Gold-Eye alone – and put your towel on. You know the rules.”
“I was just teasing,” said Ninde, letting go with a shrug.
“He’s
