Relatively Strange (37 page)

“Right then,” I said, “Let’s get this show on the road.” I was, I realized, still sitting on the floor, Sam and Hamlet both looked at me expectantly and even I could see we weren’t going to get far unless I made a move. I clambered laboriously to my feet, at least things were consistent – everything hurt – and extended a hand across the bed to Sam. After a moment’s hesitation, he took it and scrambled off to stand next to me. I looked around, I couldn’t see anywhere there might be clothes kept for him, he read the thought and shook his head. He was wearing a pair of Ladybird pyjamas. I couldn’t take him out like that, he’d catch his death.

I pulled him after me to the outer room. The all-in-ones of which there were about half a dozen, looked to be pretty uniform in size, still needs must and at least that would also give him some kind of foot covering. I yanked one down, yelping at the twinge that hit when I raised my arm. The suit was a silvery, slippery textured item, but the material was substantially thicker than it looked – it would do the trick. It undid with a series of overlapping fastenings at the side, collar and wrists. I bundled him into it as fast as I could and he submitted wordlessly to my ministrations. Needless to say, there was a darn sight more suit than Sam.

Necessity being the mother of, I nipped back into the other room and yanking one of the trailing electrodes and flex from the broken monitor, knotted it round his waist as a make-shift belt, draping and tucking the slack of the suit in and around it. On the spur of the moment I grabbed another of the suits for myself, it was the sort of thing Napoleon Solo, the Man from You Know Where was always doing – blending in. Maybe, anybody seeing us would assume we’d just come from the restricted area – which indeed we had! Sam giggled, just a very small breath of a giggle but I took that as a tremendous step forward.

“Right,” I said again, more gung ho than I felt, “Orft we go.” Sam pulled back, he wanted a mask too – well, in for a penny. I grabbed one for him and took one for myself. Maybe, I thought, as we looped elasticated bands over our ears, it would alleviate the unnaturalness of that smell permeating the corridor on the way out. We looked a right pair, although of what, was open to question. Cautiously heaving open the outer room door I peered out. I could see the nurse, still nose to lino, she hadn’t budged and the coffee had cooled to a dull brown puddle on the floor. I reached behind me for Sam’s hand and he and Hamlet sidled out after me. I could feel Sam’s recoil at the sight of the nurse, he thought she was dead and that he’d done it, I reassured him she wasn’t and he hadn’t. I paused, listened, couldn’t hear anything other than the pervasive hum of the air conditioning. With an effort I opened the heavy door at the end of what I now thought of as ‘Sam’s Corridor’. We slipped through and I pulled it closed behind us, twisting the heavy round locking device a few times. I wasn’t sure whether that would secure it, but it might just give us a bit more time before Sam’s absence was discovered.

We turned back the way I’d come, padded the short distance to the end of that corridor where I flattened myself against the wall and peered round. I really think I might have seen one too many spy films. Everything seemed quiet, I motioned to my two companions and they obediently fell in behind me. Our jog down that corridor, which in reality wasn’t that long, seemed to take forever. We were both also being badly affected by whatever lay behind the closed doors we were passing. Something I couldn’t identify, but recognised instinctively as unnatural, was knotting my stomach and making my flesh crawl, worse now than on the way in. Sam’s clutch on my hand had increased to bone-cracking proportions and what little I could see of his face above, matched the white of the mask below. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and it wasn’t really that hot. Hamlet, on the other side of Sam, was pressed close, shivering and whimpering quietly as he walked. I absently noted Sam had replaced the shocking pink lead with one of his own design, a sort of tasselled wild-west thing.

Although I tried to quicken our pace, the atmosphere felt thickened in some way, so it began to seem as if we were wading through water. Sam was slowing down, pulling against my hand, eyes wide and turned towards the closed doors, I could feel something happening to his mind – a sluggishness overtaking him. I tightened my hold but he pulled back and away more strongly, I was losing him. His hand, covered as was mine, in the integral, slickly slippery suit glove, was sliding away, I couldn’t get a proper grip. I stopped, turned and grabbed him, yanking him up off the ground. I don’t know whether he was taller or heavier than the average six year old, he weighed a ton.

Grunting with effort, I tried to hoist him up further. He’d gone completely limp, I thought he’d passed out, and I had him in an awkward grasp, holding him against me with my arms round his waist, his arms hanging loose and his legs dangling and banging against mine as I tried to walk. The smooth surface of his suit against the surface of mine didn’t help either, I could feel him sliding downwards and just didn’t have the wherewithal to haul him up again. My arms felt like they were fast departing their sockets and although we were still moving forward, I didn’t know for how much longer. In desperation I pulled Hamlet closer, showed him what I intended to do and when he didn’t seem to have any objection, half lowered, half dropped Sam across his back. His legs dangled either side of the big dog, while I kept my arm round his waist with his upper body leaning against me. It wasn’t that easy to keep in step and no-one could have described our progress as smooth, but Hamlet was now bearing much of the weight and I was in no position to be picky.

As we moved away from the row of closed doors and nearer to the one, still thankfully ajar at the end of the corridor, Sam started to stir. He gave a small grunt of surprise as he registered his unusual mount, but seemed happy enough and continued to lean against me although he was now tightly grasping some of the excess material in my suit and was holding on, which made things a whole lot easier. I didn’t ask him about what had just happened, nor what had caused it, I thought perhaps there might be some things best not to know at that point.

As we reached the door, I heaved Sam off, pulled it just wide enough for us to slip through and then swung on it with all my weight, pulling it closed behind us and we headed full pelt through the swing doors and down the two flights of stairs,

“Left here, then we’re on the home run.” I gasped and perhaps it was the euphoria of getting past that ghastly stretch of corridor that made us hurtle round the corner with no precautions, smack bang into a familiar figure who, with another woman was hurrying straight towards us. The shorter of the two women, white uniformed like our friend with the coffee, had been carrying a covered kidney bowl in one hand and a small tray of food in the other, both of which went flying. The taller of the two had an armful of paper files which, with the force of the crash were distributed, and probably not in alphabetical order, all over the floor.

Chapter Forty-Four

She hadn’t changed in the nearly five years since we’d last met, although I’d heard so much about her in the last couple of days, it seemed far less time than that. She was, as always, white-coated, tightly buttoned into a starched, stiff-collared shirt and totally in control of the situation. You had to admire that. It was the middle of the night, she’d been knocked flying by two silver-suited figures where there shouldn’t have been any and she didn’t bat an eyelid, although I knew straight away, our disguise wasn’t going to carry the day.

She leaned forward and ripped my mask off, the elastic twanging painfully against my ear.

“Ouch.” I said. Despite all the kids who’d passed through the Foundation, her memory was faultless, her recognition almost instantaneous and in a second she’d mentally reviewed her file on our brief and frustratingly unsatisfactory encounter.

“You.” She hissed. I couldn’t resist it, after all things couldn’t get much worse,

“Yes, ‘tis I.” I said, and regretted I had no swash to buckle. I was scared witless, but she didn’t need to know that. She registered I was older but no less annoying and didn’t waste further time, I had Sam with me and that wouldn’t do. Her companion, a gimlet-eyed, skinny item in her early fifties with down-turned mouth, tight mass of permed black curls and regulation trousers and tunic, was scrabbling on the floor, gathering the contents of the bowl – hypodermic, antiseptic swabs and ampoules. She was made clumsier by apprehensive upward glances at Sam.

“Give him his injection here.” snapped Miss Merry, “Quickly.” Sam backed behind me and Hamlet backed behind him, I appreciated their confidence, but couldn’t help feel it was misplaced. The nurse was torn between her fear of Sam and her fear of Miss Merry, she’d had bad experience of both. She made a snap decision based on economics, in favour of the woman who held her P45 and began to fill the syringe from one of the vials. Sam, from behind me, shattered the thin glass in her hand and she jumped and let out a small shriek, but didn’t drop the nearly full hypo. She started to advance and Hamlet, Sam and I backed away, moving in such perfect unison, we looked like a pantomime horse without its costume on. I could feel Sam’s fear mounting,

“Don’t touch him,” I warned, “He’s very scared, he’ll hurt you, I won’t be able to stop him.”

The nurse paused, she’d been dealing with Sam for a good few weeks now and she knew I wasn’t kidding. I could see Miss Merry calculating the odds. The boy had to be sedated first, then she’d deal with me.

“Do it, Muldrew,” she barked, “
Now
.” The unfortunate Muldrew jumped, then moved forward quickly. She was thinking, just a wee bit closer, one more step and she’d stick the little sod before he had a chance to play any tricks. Holding the needle like a dart, she drew her arm back,

“Sam, no,” I warned, but too late. With an expression of surprise, Muldrew neatly and professionally administered the injection, shooting the contents of the syringe in and pulling the needle out in one swift, smooth, professional movement. Text-book delivery, job well done. Still astonished at the turn events had taken, she staggered two paces backwards and toppled over.

If Miss Merry was fazed, it didn’t show. She reached out one hand and grabbed my arm in a painful grip. With the other she grabbed Sam by the hair. Hamlet gave a practice growl but she cowed him with a glare. As I started to struggle, she let go my arm for a second reached into her lab-coat pocket and sprayed something directly into my eyes. My world turned agonising, my mind chaotic.

As we were hauled bodily back up the stairs – there was surprisingly wiry strength in those thin arms – my main concentration was on clearing my painfully streaming eyes and stinging nose and throat. But I knew we were heading back towards whatever lay behind those closed doors and felt sick with fear. There was something else very wrong, I couldn’t get into her head. I could feel Sam trying too but there was something blocking the way. He and I, true allies at last, exchanged confused thoughts as we were frog-marched in exactly the direction we didn’t want to go. As we passed through the door with its ominous warnings, I could feel the now-familiar, stomach-clenching nausea and I began to sweat and where the hell were my support team?

Reaching the first door, she opened it and shoved us roughly inside, flicking on the light as she entered. Sam stumbled, fell and hit his head hard on the floor as he went down. The harsh fluorescence threw into stark relief, utilitarian desk and chair, shrouded typewriter, phones, metal filing cabinet and Sam’s paper-white face, the only colour a trickle of blood from his temple. One of the walls of the office was busily occupied with charts and graphs, another was mirrored, two-way I imagined. The atmosphere was ghastly and not just on a social level.

Sam had taken his mask off, I wished he hadn’t, I could have done without knowing his lips were turning an unhealthy blue. I didn’t feel too clever myself, battered and bruised and now light-headed and even more swollen-eyed from whatever she’d sprayed. Hamlet had settled meekly in a corner in response to an intractably pointed finger. Laughing Girl herself seemed totally unaffected by whatever it was we were sensing. There were a couple of chairs in front of the desk. I didn’t wait to be invited, but sat down and Sam climbed to his feet and sat too. Merry was at the desk, dialling and drumming her fingers impatiently as she waited for someone to answer the phone at the other end. When they did she was crisp.

“I’m in the New Block, get over here now. Get John too.” The person on the other end must have looked at their clock and remonstrated, but she wasn’t having any. “I said
now
. We nearly lost the boy. You need to be here.” She put the phone down decisively and it tinged in protest. “Well,” she said slowly, looking from one to the other of us, “Isn’t this nice?”

Whatever was jamming my senses and preventing me reading her was as uncomfortable, unnatural and unpleasant as a lash in the eye or a hair in the throat. I couldn’t shake it, couldn’t understand it. I could identify Sam quite easily and in the background, soft flashes from Hamlet but Merry might just as well have not been there. I shifted in my seat, desperately probing outward. She smiled, a thin rictus.