‘Yeah,’ said Mika, not really paying attention. He was watching her hands make patterns of golden light from the floor to the case as she put the things back into it. There were subtle differences to people’s light trails, and he was beginning to recognize these as echoes of their character. His mother’s light trail moved sinuously: warm and smooth and the colour of honey. Audrey’s was bright and fractious, broken up sometimes when she was excited or moved quickly, like sparks from a fire. Kobi’s were strong as if he had a force field around him, and Tom’s were confused and sometimes darkened as Mika approached him, even when he looked friendly, which made Mika wonder whether the light trails showed emotions too, even those people chose to hide.
They had three false starts leaving for the holiday. A chauffeured pod waited for them on the roof of their tower but the lift was broken as usual, so they had to climb the stairs with their cases. The first time they had to go back because Asha had forgotten to pack their toothbrushes; the second time, David wanted to check he’d turned off the air con, and the third time, Mika had forgotten Ellie’s holopic of mountain lions, and even though they’d struggled up the stairs and had nearly reached the roof, he insisted on going back for it. Their chauffeur looked grumpy and impatient by the time they’d climbed into the pod and he didn’t help with the bags.
The pod had an egg-shaped interior; the chauffeur sat at the front with a glass divider behind him and in the back was a comfortable curved seat for the passengers. They put their luggage in the middle between their legs and Asha got out the box of sandwiches she’d made for the journey.
‘We haven’t even left yet,’ David said, smiling, as she offered him one.
‘I know, but they are nice,’ she replied, sheepishly.
They flew north across the whole length of Britain, over towns and cities they’d never seen before. The last time they were in a pod, Mika had been choking to death, so it felt great to be doing something pleasant in one.
The air roads were marked at either side by air buoys – brightly lit balls that hung at twenty-metre intervals. They had messages on them, one word on each, so you read the whole thing as they flashed past. Some told you how far the centre of the next town was – Leamington Spa. 2km. Some gave you the weather forecast – Thirteen. Degrees. Cloudy. Rain. Wind. SW. Moderate. Most were advertizing. Miracle. Hair. Grow. Grows. Hair. Like. Weeds. Centimetres. Per. Week. Guaranteed.
Mika watched them until he got bored, then he looked down on the passing towns, all exactly the same as theirs with the hundreds of towers of fold-down apartments punctuated by factories and sewage plants, the heart of each town marked by an enormous yellow plague siren on the tallest building. He looked across the landscape and the yellow sirens in the distance looked like buoys on a concrete sea.
The real sea was not what Mika was expecting – in Pod Fighter it was calm and blue, but off the north coast of Scotland it was a restless mass of iron-grey water that hurled hundred-ton waves at the cliffs and made the tiny pod feel as fragile as a bath bubble. Mika watched the colour drain from his parents’ faces as the land shrank behind them, and it was several anxious minutes before the outline of the domed shell of the Caribbean World Holiday Complex appeared on the horizon.
‘Chrise, look at that,’ David said.
The dome was huge, at least as big as Barford North, and higher than the tallest skyscrapers they had passed on the way. It seemed impossible that such a large thing could float on the sea, but there it was, camouflaged partly by its mirrored surface, which reflected the cresting waves around it and the grey sky overhead.
As the pod flew over the dome, a hole appeared in the top to let them in. They hovered for a moment, then quickly descended, allowing them a brief glimpse of a tropical island surrounded by a friendlier sea, sapphire blue and twinkling in the light of a warm sun. They landed in the middle of the island on a pod strip surrounded by gently wafting palm trees.
‘Look at the sky!’ Asha exclaimed. ‘It’s blue!’
‘What did you expect?’ laughed David. ‘Red?’
‘You know what I mean!’ she retorted, slapping his arm. ‘When was the last time we saw blue sky? It’s so beautiful! Look at all the trees.’
The pod door opened and the tropical heat hit them like a bucket of hot sand. They staggered with their bags on to the pod strip to be greeted by a man in a brightly coloured shirt. He smiled in a friendly way as he loaded their bags on to a hover trolley, then he escorted them to a grass-roofed building nestled amongst the palm trees.
‘He was a nice man,’ Asha said, as they watched him walk away.
They stood by the door of the hut and tried to take in their new surroundings. After forty-three years surrounded by mouldy concrete and floodwater, the Caribbean World Holiday Complex was a bit of a shock to the senses. All around them greenery rustled in a coconut-scented breeze and it was difficult to accept that even the flowers by the door to the hut and the sun beaming down on them were fake. Everything was made of plastic, even the sand.
‘Look at this,’ Asha said, touching a fragile-looking flower. ‘It looks so real!’
She screeched suddenly, making them jump.
‘What’s wrong?’ David asked, looking nervously at the flowers.
‘A . . . a . . . a . . . oh!’ Asha spluttered and a moment later, a crab scuttled towards them. She screeched again and hid behind her husband.
‘It’s not real!’ Mika laughed, picking it up. ‘Look, Mum, it’s made of plastic and it’s got a switch on the bottom.’ He flicked the switch so the crab’s legs stopped wiggling and held it out. Its pincers and legs went floppy so it looked sad.
‘Don’t,’ she said, covering her face. ‘Please, Mika, I can’t bear it.’
Mika reluctantly turned the crab back on and put it in the flowers. He heard flapping in the tree overhead and looked up to see a parrot and he felt happy suddenly, even though he knew it wasn’t real.
The hut looked as if it was made of roughly hewn wood with woven grass walls. Inside there were fifty tables, some occupied by competitors and their families who had arrived before them and some empty. The atmosphere was cheery; a Caribbean band played steel drums in one corner and waitresses in colourful skirts with flowers in their hair shimmied around the tables. One greeted them at the door and led them to a table where Audrey and her mother and aunt were waiting. They leaped up. Mika liked them immediately; their light trails were bright and warm and they threw their arms around them as if they were happily reunited with old friends. He could see Audrey in their features; they both had the same Russian lines with a hint of oriental blood, but instead of red, their hair was black.
‘Good to meet you at last,’ Audrey’s aunt said. ‘I’m Tasha.’
‘And I’m Una,’ her mother added, kissing Mika’s cheek.
There were hugs and kisses all round and David blushed and cleared his throat as he weathered a hurricane of lipstick, but he sat down happily enough and Mika was relieved to see them all getting on. Audrey was quiet. She looked incongruous with her punky red hair and borg eyes in that place: an alien elf in Eloper sneakers. She looked around the hut and he realized she was searching for evidence of the game.
‘The arcade must be close,’ he said.
‘I want to go and look for it,’ she replied. ‘I hope we don’t have to stay here long. It’s boring.’
Their waitress came to the table with a tray of cocktails that were so full of fruit, plastic palm trees, flamingos and umbrellas, they had to remove half of it to get their lips near the drink. This amused the adults, but Mika and Audrey fiddled with theirs pensively and they didn’t feel better until everyone had arrived and there were signs of progress. A man took to the wooden stage. It was the Hat Man from the message they had been sent by the YDF. He was wearing a straw hat and an orange, flowery shirt and he looked impossibly happy as if someone had superglued the corners of his lips to his cheekbones.
‘Welcome everybody to the Caribbean World Holiday C
omplex!’ he cried. They heard a trumpet fanfare, he made a flourish with his hand and a pair of wooden doors swung open to reveal a black hover car on a revolving platform. Then, with a second trumpet fanfare, lights flashed on above it and everyone gasped as they caressed the car’s elegant curves and shiny paintwork.
‘It’s a Jaguar!’ David whispered.
‘What do you think of that?’ the Hat Man cried. ‘As you can see, the prize for the third round of the competition is a top-of-the-range hover car with built-in widescreen televisions and heated wraparound seats! And we have twelve of these beauties to give away, so you’re in with a good chance of winning one, kids, so what do you think?’ He raised his arms as if he was expecting riotous screams of joy, but the hundred competitors responded with self-conscious silence. ‘Come on! Let’s hear you!’ he insisted, waving his hands above his head.
Mika gritted his teeth and Audrey rolled her eyes as some of the others joined in a half-hearted chorus of ‘Yeaaaah.’
‘How embarrassing,’ Audrey muttered with her head down.
‘OK!’ the Hat Man said. ‘Glad to hear you’re all still alive! Listen carefully now, competitors. As you’ve already been told, you will be competing in the third round of the competition while you are here! And we’re not going to keep you waiting! In just a few minutes, you will be leaving your parents and going to our special competition centre on the island, where you will spend the rest of the day! And then tonight, you will rejoin your parents on the beach for a delicious barbeque! Won’t that be fun, everyone! Then, for the rest of the week, you will be training for a new game! So I hope you haven’t forgotten to bring your swimming costumes, kids, because you’re going to need them!’
‘What?’ Audrey whispered. ‘What does he mean, new game? When are we going to play Pod Fighter?’
‘Where’s the arcade?’ one of the competitors shouted.
‘There isn’t one,’ the Hat Man said. ‘You won’t need an arcade for this round.’
‘So how are we going to play Pod Fighter?’ someone else asked.
‘You won’t be playing Pod Fighter,’ he replied. ‘But the water games we have arranged will be just as exciting!’
There was an uncomfortable silence and Audrey looked at Mika angrily.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered. ‘All that time we’ve spent practising and we’re not even playing Pod Fighter!’
‘Calm down,’ her mother said, touching her arm. ‘Don’t you think it would be nice to do something different? You’ve spent every night in the arcade for weeks. You hardly see any light. Whatever you do it will be enjoyable in a place like this.’
‘I want to play Pod Fighter,’ Audrey said, scowling angrily. ‘That’s why I entered the competition in the first place.’
‘Now then!’ the Hat Man bellowed. ‘Parents! What will you be doing this week? Eh? Eh? Well I’ll tell you – nothing, unless you feel like it!’
He raised his arms again and the adults cheered enthusiastically.
‘If you want to try something new,’ the Hat Man cried, ‘you can use all the facilities. There are windsurfing and scuba diving lessons, scores of pampering beauty treatments and much, much more. But if you fancy lying on the beach all day drinking cocktails and soaking up the sun, feel free! It’s entirely up to you!’
Waitresses began to walk through the tables with baskets in their hands, which had gold ribbons tied to the handles. The adults started talking loudly, and as baskets were given to Asha and Una, Mika began to realize that the prizes in this round were for the parents, not for them. After all, what use was a hover car to a twelve-year-old boy? He wondered uncomfortably why the YDF would need to bribe their parents.
‘Look at this!’ Asha cried, when she’d untied the ribbon on the basket. ‘It’s full of real food! Look, Mika! Bread!’
‘Wow,’ Mika said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
‘And soy cheese!’
‘Right then, everyone!’ the Hat Man shouted. ‘It’s time to take the competitors to our special competition centre, so say goodbye to your parents and follow me!’
The Hat Man left the stage and walked towards a door at the back of the hut.
‘Goodbye, darling,’ Asha said, holding a piece of cheese in one hand and her cocktail in the other. ‘Good luck!’
‘Thanks, Mum,’ Mika said. ‘I’ll see you later, on the beach for the barbeque.’
He walked with Audrey through the door at the back of the hut feeling as if they were passing through a portal into another world – on one side, warm and colourful, and on the other, cold and blank. They found themselves in a white room that contained nothing but grey plastic chairs, and when the door closed, the happy sound of their parents’ laughter abruptly halted.
22
HAVE A NICE HOLIDAY
In the white room, the hundred competitors were told to sit on the rows of chairs and wait for their names to be called. Audrey left first and she looked at Mika anxiously as she was led away by a man in a YDF uniform. Mika felt his stomach twist as the door closed behind her and it suddenly occurred to him that they weren’t competing as a team any more – they were on their own. With her gone, he felt darkness draw in on him as if his nightmares were showing through the fabric of the day and he heard the mutter of the Telly Heads, watching.
He was glad when his name was called. He followed a man through the door and they walked along a shrub-lined path bathed in fake sunlight towards a pair of metal gates with razor wire at the top.
‘After you,’ the man said, as the gates swung open. He put his hand on Mika’s back, encouraging him to walk forward towards a low white building, its mirrored windows reflecting the surrounding shrubs and palm trees. It looked formal and secretive, and inside the smell was medical. The man left him in a room that reminded him of his doctor’s surgery in Barford North, only there wasn’t any mould on the walls and everything was new.
There were two people in the room, a man and woman in white coats. They didn’t introduce themselves. They fitted him with a yellow wristband, which had a bar code on it, then told him to stand in a glass cubicle that looked like a shower. He heard a whining noise and a slice of light moved slowly down his body. It didn’t hurt, but he felt it right inside him, hot and prickly. After this he was told to pee in a bottle, which he found very difficult. He had to think about dripping taps and gushing fountains while they huffed outside the door.
After his pee was labelled and put in a fridge, they looked at his webbed feet. He had to lie on a metal bed while they stared at them and whispered, and this was even more embarrassing than peeing in the bottle. By the time they’d finished, a three-dimensional model of his webbed toes rotated on a screen.
‘Is that it?’ Mika asked, desperately, as they dropped their gloves down a waste chute.
‘Not yet,’ the woman said. ‘Wait here.’
As she walked out of the door, Awen appeared and nipped her on the backside. The dog disappeared instantly, but Mika could hear him snuffling around the floor as if he was doing some detective work. Mika sat on the edge of the bed, wondering why the YDF were interested in his mutation. It was nothing compared to some, like Lara with her sweetcorn teeth, and Audrey, who was born without eyes. While Asha was in hospital giving birth, the woman in the bed next to her had a baby covered in fur and they had to shave her to see what she looked like.
Awen sneezed as if he had fluff up his nose, then rubbed his muzzle against Mika’s leg.
A man entered.
‘Come with me,’ he said.
Mika followed the man deeper inside the building and into a dark room. In the middle of the room was a reclining chair, like those used by dentists, but this one was black and had straps hanging off the arms. Mika looked at it and felt beads of sweat break out on his forehead. Another man in a white coat stepped forward to greet him.
‘Hello, Mika,’ the man said. ‘Relax. You’ve got nothing to worry about.’
Yeah, right, Mika thoug
ht, looking at the straps on the chair. He wondered what his parents would think if they could see him at that moment. They were probably only a few hundred metres away drinking cocktails on the beach thinking he was playing a game. Strange game.
‘I want you to lie on the chair and make yourself comfortable,’ the man said.
Mika tried to do as he was told; he lay on the chair, but there was no way he could make himself comfortable on it, his body was rigid with fear.
You’d better be grateful for this, Ellie, he thought. You’d better be nice to me after this.
‘Relax,’ the man insisted, seeing the distrust and fear in Mika’s eyes.
Mika took a deep breath but tensed again as he felt the man’s hands on his head.
‘I’m going to attach a few electrodes to your forehead but they won’t hurt, OK?’ the man said.
‘OK,’ Mika replied, but as he felt the cold electrodes press on his forehead, he wanted to rip them off and run away.
‘Right, that’s good,’ the man said, stepping back to admire his work. Mika could see wires in front of his eyes. The man moved them so he had a clear view of a screen on the ceiling above him.
‘I’m going to put the straps on now,’ the man said. ‘They’re only to stop you moving so our equipment can look in your eyes, so don’t worry about them.’
Mika gritted his teeth as he felt the first strap tighten over his forehead. Then his arms were strapped to the sides of the chair, his legs to the end and another strap was tightened over his chest.
‘Can you breathe all right?’ the man asked.
‘Yes,’ Mika replied, shakily.
This is how I feel when the Telly Heads are standing around my bed, he thought: paralysed and about to be eaten.
‘I’m going to show you a film now,’ the man said. ‘It’s going to be like the cinema but with no popcorn.’
Mika considered making a sarcastic comment like, ‘Oh good, how fun,’ or, ‘I hope I haven’t seen it before,’ but swallowed instead and tried to ignore his heart, which was throwing itself around in his chest as if it was trying to break out. The man walked away for a moment and Mika tried to turn his head to watch him, but was unable to move. When the man returned he was holding a syringe.