‘The City lied to you about a lot of things. Most things, probably,’ Linus said.
‘The whole place is a lie as far as I can tell,’ Raffy answered gruffly.
Linus smiled. ‘You’re right. Of course you’re right. But . . .’ He looked at them carefully. ‘But this is the worst of all. At least I think so. These people. In this tent.’
‘There are people in this tent?’ Evie asked uncertainly. ‘Prisoners?’
‘Not prisoners,’ Linus said, shaking his head. ‘Absolutely not prisoners. At least not of our making. Take a look for yourselves.’
Evie approached the tent. Through narrow plastic windows she could see faces, strange mournful faces. One of them saw her and rushed towards the window, pressing her face against it, distorting it horribly. Evie stifled a scream as more faces joined the first, their eyes rolling, saliva coming out of their mouths. Then they started to shout, to moan, and Evie cried out and tried to run but Linus wouldn’t let her.
‘You know who these people are?’ he asked her.
Evie nodded. She knew that sound. It was the sound that told her everything was over. The sound she had heard many times before, hiding under her bedclothes as her father left the house to protect the City, to protect her. Raffy recognised the sound too. He stared at Linus uncomprehendingly.
‘These are the sacrificial lambs of the City,’ Linus said, guiding them away from the tent, then stopping, his face serious. ‘They are irreparably brain-damaged. The victims of everything your great City set out to achieve.’
‘Brain-damaged? But . . .’ Evie said, her brow furrowing. ‘But they’re not. They’re . . . they’re . . .’
Linus smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you will know these people as the Evils.’
No one spoke for a minute; it was Evie who eventually broke the silence.
‘You . . . you keep the Evils here? They’re your prisoners?’
Linus shook his head and guided them away, down a covered corridor, out into a courtyard then into a large warren of tents. ‘In here,’ he said; they followed him and found themselves in a cosy room full of rugs and cushions. There was a large dark wood desk covered in green leather towards the back of the room. Evie couldn’t take her eyes off it.
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ Linus said, catching her eye. ‘One of my saved treasures. Sit, please, both of you.’
He positioned himself on a large cushion; they sat down too. Linus looked at them; he appeared to be trying to read them, to see deep inside their souls. Then he breathed out. ‘Tea?’ he asked.
Evie nodded; Linus jumped up and stuck his head out of the room, called to someone, then sat back down again. Moments later a man arrived with a tray; on it was a pot of tea, some milk and some biscuits. Linus served them; Evie took her cup gratefully.
‘The Evils are not our prisoners,’ Linus declared, after taking a sip of his tea and putting the cup down carefully in front of him.
‘But . . .’ Evie interjected before she could stop herself.
‘We have some prisoners, yes,’ Linus said, ‘but it’s not what you think.’
‘Then what is it?’ Raffy asked, looking directly at Linus, unafraid, undaunted.
Linus smiled. ‘Would you indulge me a little?’ he asked. ‘Would you let me tell you a story?’
‘A story?’ Raffy asked suspiciously. ‘Why?’
‘Because then you’ll understand,’ Linus said gently. ‘Because then you might see the world the same way I do.’
‘And what if I don’t want to see the world like you?’ Raffy asked, his tone abrupt. ‘You’re a liar. You lie about everything and now you’re lying about my father. I’m sick of people lying to me, sick of it.’
‘Raphael, I’m not lying to you,’ Linus said, looking up at him, his eyes suddenly mournful. ‘And I’m sorry if you think I am. I might not have told you everything, but that was for our protection. I needed to know you were really . . . I had to be careful, that’s all. But I’m not going to lie to you any more.’
‘Then tell me what you meant about my father,’ Raffy said, his gaze steady.
‘Let me tell you the story. And if you have any questions afterwards, I’ll answer them,’ Linus promised.
Raffy digested this for a few seconds; he looked suspicious, uncertain.
‘Tell us,’ Evie said, reaching out and clasping Raffy’s hand. ‘Tell us the story.’
‘Thank you.’ Linus smiled. ‘Once upon a time there was a man. Some thought a great man, some thought otherwise. He was a man of science, a doctor. He had an idea which he believed could save mankind, could rid the world of the violence and terror that constantly threatened to destroy all the beautiful, incredible things that humans had built. He saw a nirvana where peace reigned, where people lived in harmony with each other, where they lost the will to fight each other.’
‘The Great Leader,’ Evie said quietly.
‘The Great Leader.’ Linus nodded thoughtfully. ‘That’s one word for him. Me, I prefer Dr Fisher. That was his name, before the Horrors, before the City, before any of this. That was his name when he took his ideas to various medical journals, to a number of conferences. And do you know what happened?’
‘People didn’t like the idea because they didn’t want to get rid of the evil, because it didn’t want to leave.’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’ Linus shrugged. ‘But what really happened was they laughed at him. Ridiculed his theories. Refused to publish him, wrote comic comment pieces about him, called him Frankenstein’s successor. You know who Frankenstein was?’
Evie and Raffy shook their heads. ‘No, of course you don’t,’ Linus said, smiling to himself. ‘Well, that doesn’t matter. What matters is that Dr Fisher refused to give up on his dream and tried to recruit people to be experimental subjects, to have pieces of their brain removed. Only it didn’t go so well. And when the medical and scientific authorities found out, they struck him off and started court proceedings to have him put away. He wasn’t, though. Put away, that is. He pleaded insanity. Got off . . .’ He caught Evie and Raffy’s blank stares and smiled again. ‘Ah. Court case. Something else you don’t know about. Okay, forget that. What happened was that he went underground. Off the radar. Started to hang out with the kooks and the freaks, people who didn’t laugh at him, people whose own great ideas had been thwarted too. People like me.’
‘Like you?’ Suddenly Linus had Evie and Raffy’s attention. ‘You knew the Great Leader?’
‘We were friends,’ Linus agreed. ‘Of sorts. Comrades, really. We both had a dream. Both had an idea of how things should be.’
‘What was your dream?’ Evie asked breathlessly. ‘The same as the Great Leader’s?’
‘No.’ Linus shook his head. ‘But . . .’ He breathed out. ‘You want to see my idea?’
They both nodded.
‘Okay, come with me.’
He jumped up lightly and left the room; Evie and Raffy exchanged tentative glances then followed him back across the courtyard, through the corridor, past the Evils’ tent, across another courtyard and into a guarded compound. Linus escorted Raffy and Evie through the entrance, down another corridor and into a huge room, which was full of computers.
Raffy seemed in awe as he looked around, while Evie stared uncertainly. The room was warm, full of the buzzing and whirring sound of computers at work.
‘You have so many,’ she breathed. ‘How? How did you get them all here?’
Linus grinned. ‘These are my babies,’ he said, his eyes suddenly full of affection, of something almost approaching love. He turned to Evie and Raffy, his eyes glittering. ‘My idea,’ he said, ‘was a system. A system that could make the world a better place, an ordered place, a place where no one wanted for anything because the system pre-empted that want. Where no one went hungry, or did badly at school, where no one was bullied and everyone found the person they were destined to be with. All because of the system.’
Evie looked at him dubiously. ‘You mean . . . like the City’s System?’
Linus shook his head and his eyes clouded over. ‘I mean what the City’s System was supposed to be like,’ he said abruptly. ‘The system that I designed. The system that I built and established.’
‘You built the System?’ Raffy asked incredulously.
‘I built the System,’ Linus confirmed. ‘And for that I am sorry. For that . . .’ He sighed. ‘I will never forgive myself.’
Raffy walked towards the machines. ‘May I?’ he asked, approaching one of them.
‘Of course,’ said Linus.
Raffy put his hands on the keyboard and started to type; screens emerged, data fields, rows of figures and letters that meant nothing to Evie.
‘This is your system?’ Raffy asked.
Linus nodded; for the first time since they’d met him, he seemed tense, anxious – as though he were scared of something.
‘Wow,’ Raffy breathed. ‘This is . . . It’s incredible.’
Linus grinned, his face suddenly like a little boy’s in spite of the mass of lines that travelled across it, and Evie realised that he hadn’t been scared; it had been Raffy’s approval he had wanted, that had caused his jaw to tighten, his brow to wrinkle.
‘What does it do?’ she asked.
Raffy turned and pulled up a chair. ‘See these codes? There’s one for every person, interlinked with needs, desires, first-degree, second-degree, third . . . All prioritised, all factored into the communities’ resources, people’s time . . . It’s incredible,’ he repeated.
Linus shrugged bashfully. ‘It’s got its good points,’ he said.
‘So, then . . .’ Raffy frowned, swung his chair round. ‘How come there are no labels? If you built the City’s System?’
‘I built the original system,’ Linus said, his mouth twitching. ‘Not the System as it exists today. I did not build a system that labels people, that punishes them, that . . .’ He looked down. ‘The system I designed is not the System that exists in your City. That was built later, by others. Using my prototype. That’s the problem with dreams, you see – they get distorted. No one has the same one. And dreams, when they become reality, are never what you anticipated, never what you hoped for.’
He turned away; Evie stood up and walked to his side.
‘What about the Great Leader’s dream?’ she asked. ‘That didn’t get distorted.’
‘Didn’t get distorted?’ Linus looked at her grimly. ‘You really don’t know anything, do you?’
Evie frowned, folding her arms defensively. She was getting tired of Linus with his meandering stories that never delivered the things he said they would. ‘Yes we do. We know loads of things. And if we don’t know everything, it’s because you won’t tell us.’
Linus looked at her carefully. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Sit down. I’ll tell you all about the Great Leader’s dream, shall I?’
Evie nodded and returned to her chair next to Raffy, who she had to forcibly pull away from the computer screen.
Linus took a deep breath. ‘Back to my story,’ he said. ‘So there we were, Dr Fisher and me, drinking lots of coffee and talking about how the world would be a better place if only we were allowed to run things. And then the Horrors started. You know why they called them the Horrors?’
‘Because it was a war and war is full of horror,’ Evie said.
Linus pulled a face. ‘There had been wars before. Plenty of wars, plenty of death, cruelty and destruction. That never stopped anything. No, the Horrors were so named because all the soldiers were children and all the bombs were aimed at civilians. There was no combat, no strategy, just merciless killing with no end in sight. The people who started it weren’t fighting for a purpose; they simply wanted to destroy everything and everyone, and they nearly succeeded. You can’t fight an enemy like that; can’t hide from them, either.’
‘You hid,’ Raffy said, his eyes narrowing. ‘You must have – otherwise how are you here now?’
Linus laughed. ‘Clever boy. Yes, I hid. Dr Fisher hid. We’d been hiding for years, it wasn’t anything new for us. When we saw what was happening, we knew that this was our chance; that the only way to make sense of the horror, to make it mean something, was to build a new world of peace and hope. A place where people weren’t evil any more, where their needs were looked after, and they could relax and just live instead of fearing every moment. That’s all we wanted. That’s all we were trying to do . . .’
His voice faltered and he cleared his throat. ‘So we established the City.’
‘You?’ Raffy frowned.
‘Me and Dr Fisher,’ Linus agreed.
Raffy looked at him dubiously. ‘Then why aren’t you ever mentioned? How come you’re not in any of the Sentiments?’
‘The Sentiments?’ Linus laughed. ‘You actually listen to that crap?’
Evie was shocked; fear washed over her. She tried to push it away, but couldn’t. Not entirely.
Linus noticed her reaction. ‘Don’t worry, your System can’t hear me. It can’t hear anything, not any more.’
‘What do you mean?’ Raffy asked uncertainly.
Linus sighed. ‘Can I finish my story?’
Raffy shrugged. ‘Fine, finish it.’
‘Thank you,’ replied Linus, affecting a deferential air. ‘So we had some followers. The Horrors had ended and everyone was fighting over food, water, the basics. The world was disintegrating into mayhem and tribal warfare. So Dr Fisher and I set out our vision and people bought into it. They wanted a new way, a new chance. We colonised what had been the city of London before the Horrors, took over those buildings still standing and the resources that remained. There was a river; we had the base we needed to build on. And we had men to help us build, who built the wall, built homes, tirelessly and stoically. Men who believed in us and the dream we promised them. I started to build the System. And Fisher . . .’
He swallowed; his eyes started to dart around uncomfortably.
‘And Fisher?’ Raffy prompted him.
Linus looked down. ‘Dr Fisher started his operations.’
‘Removing the amygdala. The New Baptism,’ said Evie. ‘Everyone has it in the City.’
‘They do, do they?’ Linus asked, a hint of sarcasm in his voice.
‘Yes,’ Raffy said, frowning. ‘You know that.’
Linus shook his head. ‘What I know is that the men he operated on were turned into vegetables. Only he wouldn’t admit it. He told me it would work, that he’d done it before, and when I discovered the truth, he made excuses – blamed the equipment, his helpers, anything. He told me it would work the next time, the time after that. On and on he went, and I didn’t stop him. Not until it was too late. Not until . . .’