A few people have come in and chosen tables while we’ve been talking. Their left wrists all sprout feathers. Birdie Blue is retro, so there are waitrons, also Feathers. One of them has come over to our table and is looking enquiringly at Orpa and me.
“What can I get you?” she asks, and I see Lizwi bite back whatever she was going to say to me.
I hear something in the waitron’s voice. Contempt, I think. She looks at my forehead quickly, and looks away again.
I stare at her feathers, wondering why anyone would want to choose to have quills inserted under their skin. I’ve heard they’re all fake feathers these days. Skin grafts like Silver’s are mostly grown from the preserved cells of long-ago real animals, but something went wrong for the feather industry.
That’s why Skins are cooler than Feathers. They’re real.
“Don’t those get in the way?” I ask the waitron in my most aggro voice, to get back at her for the contempt. “Like when you’re waiting tables or having sex or sleeping? Do you ever moult?”
“You got a problem with Feathers?” she comes back at me. “So what are you doing in a Feathers joint? That’s what this is. Birdie Blue. Get it? Or does that Stain go right through to your brain?”
“Hey!” Orpa erupts from her chair, while Meyi starts up with his wailing again.
“Stop it,” Silver says. “Jabz? Orpa? What I was just saying? I don’t think we should hang around, but if you want something to drink before we –”
“Forget it,” I say, because even if I wanted something, I’m not wasting my tokens in this place or anywhere in the damned Sprawll. “Nothing for me.”
“Nor me,” Orpa rages. “I’d probably be sick.”
“Fine.” The waitron stomps away.
There’s a rush, a clatter, at the door, and two more people enter Birdie Blue.
“The expedition, the expedition?” A girl’s voice, laughing and breathless. “Adventure people? I know I’m s’posed to find you here! I saw the messages you sent each other.”
I’d guess she’s about seventeen, but tiny, small enough to be a Pet, cute enough too. She’s not a sepia, but her skin is way lighter than Lizwi’s, Meyi’s and mine, light enough for a scatter of dark freckles to be visible across her nose and upper cheeks.
Little flecks of darkness, the colour of my inherited Stain, so maybe if the Stain had been flicked at me like tiny drops from a wet brush, I’d also be adorable.
She seems to skim across the floor when she spots our table. Her frizzy black hair stands straight up from her head, as if she’s received a shock.
“It has to be you, because you’re young. Please say it’s you guys?” Her brown eyes sparkle with life. “The expedition? We can pay –”
“You intercepted our messages?” Silver’s chair squeals on the floor as he jumps up. “Then who else might have done the same?”
“I’m so excited.” The girl ignores him, shaking her head. “I can’t wait! You will take us, won’t you? Because I’ve got nowhere else to go except out. You see, I’ve run away from my owners. That’s how I saw your messages. They’re both CCC monitors, they get to work at home sometimes, and I was being a bad Pet, spying. Don’t worry, I’ve erased everything you said to each other, because I knew at once that I had to go with you, and I don’t want anyone catching me and taking me back. Then I ripped off my collar and took off. Hit my folks’ place, got my little brother, and came straight here.”
“Brother?” Silver is disbelieving.
“Little brother?” So am I.
“All right, half-brother.” She gets what we mean. “I’m Ril. This is Boa.”
He has followed her over to the table. Close up, you can see he’s younger than she is, but he’s a big, lumbering boy, as dark as me. He’s a Bleeder it looks like, unless he grazed his knuckles accidentally.
“You’re a Pet?” Lizwi is sympathetic, looking at the girl. “You poor thing.”
I know what she means. Everyone else is nominally free, including the dregs of the Margins and probably even those who’ve escaped into the Wildlands. Pets aren’t; they’re owned.
“A Pet who wants to use us to help her escape,” I say, because she’s pretty much admitted it, this lively little girl, talking so fast.
“Can you blame me? I can’t believe I’ve done it at last. Seeing your messages and what you were planning; it was like getting an answer to all the years of wishing.” She shakes her head again, and she’s smiling but amazed at the same time. “It’s like it was meant.”
“But what will you do after the adventure?” Silver is suspicious. “You can’t stay in the Wildlands when the rest of us come back.”
If we come back.
“I haven’t really thought.” A little crease appears between her black eyebrows. “Maybe there’ll be a place? Or we could live in the Margins? Boa will look after me. But I need to disappear until they’ve had time to, you know, write me off? Hello? What are you saying?”
She’s talking to Meyi who has been getting very loud. He seems excited, saying more of those words that aren’t words. It’s as if his tongue gets in the way of itself.
“Please! He’s a retard.” Even I know Orpa is offensive.
“Shut up.” Lizwi looks at me and Silver. “Meyi is saying we need to go. Now.”
“Never mind him,” I say. “What about this girl? I agreed to take three of you into the Wildlands. You’re right about this not being legitimate, Silver, although I don’t know if it’s actually breaking any rules. But suppose it is, how do we know she isn’t a plant? Anyone could have intercepted our messages to each other, and not as innocently as she wants us to think she did.”
Because now that I’m seeing possible threats, I’m also realising how important to me this business of finding my mountain is. I should have gone on my own, not landed myself with a bunch of innocent (or not so innocent) Sprawllers.
I can still walk away from them.
“Especially anyone in the Controlled Communications Centres,” Silver is agreeing with me.
“The monitors she claims won’t be able to see what we were sending. Minder-class officials.” I look at Lizwi.
“Totally everything is monitored and recorded,” Silver says. “Every word, every signal.”
“Blame Ricochet and Leoli for the final clampdown.” I look at Lizwi again. “Remember? Nothing was private after that. Because that’s how the last uprising nearly happened. Ricochet and Leoli used texters to publicise their rally, and they were getting massive numbers planning to attend.”
“Right, I heard that’s when the Minders started having everything monitored,” Silver says.
