The Lotus Caves (13 page)

• • •

The apartment had a spare bedroom, once used by the Kennealys' daughter, who had married and left home. Rob was put up there, in a pink bed patterned with roses. He read for a time and then, tired, thumbed out the light and was soon asleep.

He woke again, feeling thirsty, and made for the bathroom to get a drink of water. He went very quietly, imagining it was the middle of the night and not wanting to disturb anyone, but heard voices as he crossed the lobby and noticed a line of light under the sitting-room door. Men's voices, three at least. They seemed to be arguing about something. Coming back quietly from the bathroom he heard his father's name mentioned, and stopped to listen. He could only catch a word here or there—not enough to get the sense of what was being said. He realized how bad it would look if someone were to come out and find him eavesdropping, and went back to bed.

He did not sleep, though. He could hear the low murmur of voices through the wall and found that he was straining to listen to them. Then after what seemed a long time there was the sound of a door opening, and the voices louder and clearer in the lobby outside.

A man said: “There's something wrong. I told him a week ago he needed to watch out.”

“Accidents happen,” another voice said.

“You can't take chances,” the first voice insisted. “I'd warned him. You have to take account of the risks. This is a dangerous business. We'd all better remember that. Not just for ourselves but for the others, too.”

“Quiet,” Mr. Kennealy said. “The boy's in there. And the door's ajar.”

There were footsteps and the door was gently shut. Rob heard their muted voices for a few more moments before the two visitors took their leave and Mr. Kennealy went to his bedroom. Rob lay awake still, thinking about what he had heard. He was angry at the things the men had said, the first speaker anyway. He was not only blaming his father for what had happened, but suggesting that he had put others at risk. How could that be true, when it was just a matter of touching a wire that was live when he thought it was insulated?

And Mr. Kennealy . . . he had stopped the man, but only because he had thought Rob might hear. He had not stood up for his father as he ought to have done. Rob was hating him, too, as he finally fell asleep.

• • •

The hospital was a fairly new building, more than forty floors high, its exterior in pale-green plastibrick with anodized aluminum trim on the windows. The windows gleamed brightly in spring sunshine—the sky was blue except for a few white clouds in the west. At the very top was the balcony ringing the roof garden and heliport, toward which an ambulance copter was at this moment dropping. The doctors also parked their copters up there, coming in from the County, but there would be few at present. Only a skeleton staff remained on duty on Sunday.

The Kennealys and Rob joined the queue of people waiting for the lifts, which did not operate until the start of visiting hour. At least, this being a hospital, they were all working. They were whisked up quickly and into a second line of people waiting outside the ward door. A bored medical clerk, his head tonsured in the latest fashion, checked off names on a list. When they reached him, he said, “Randall? Not down here. You must have come to the wrong ward.”

“We were told F.17.”

“They're always getting things wrong,” the clerk said indifferently. “You'd better go and ask downstairs.”

Mr. Kennealy said in a quiet but hard voice, “No, you call them up. We're not wasting time going all the way down there again on your say-so.”

“The procedure . . .”

Mr. Kennealy leaned over the desk. “Never mind the procedure,” he said. “You call them.”

The clerk obeyed sullenly. He did not use the visiphone but his handphone. They heard but could not make out the tinny whisper of speech at the other end. The clerk asked for a check on Randall, J., admitted the previous afternoon. He said: “Yes, got that,” and replaced the phone.

“Well,” Mr. Kennealy said, “where is he?”

“In the morgue,” the clerk said. “He was taken into Intensive Care this morning and died of heart failure.”

“That's impossible!” Mr. Kennealy said.

His face was white, Rob saw, while the shock hit him too. The clerk shrugged. “Death's never impossible. They'll give you particulars at the office. Next, please.”

• • •

Mrs. Kennealy came with Rob to help sort things out. She clucked over the untidiness and set about putting the place to rights while Rob packed his clothes and belongings. The furniture, he supposed, would be sold. He wondered if it would be possible to keep the saddle-backed chair in which his mother used to sit in the evenings. He would have to ask Mrs. Kennealy if she could find room for it, but did not want to bother her at the moment.

He left her cleaning and rearranging the living room and went into his father's bedroom. The bed was made, but a towel had been left lying carelessly across the foot, and two bedroom slippers were at opposite ends of the rug. There was a half-empty pack of cigarettes on the bedside table, a glass with a little water in it, and the miniradio which his father had sometimes listened to at night. He remembered waking and hearing the sound of music through the dividing wall.

He still could not properly grasp what had happened. The suddenness was as shocking as the fact. His mother had been continuously ill for a long time before she died—he could scarcely remember a time when she was not ill. Her death had been no less horrifying for that, but even then, when he was ten, he had known it to be inevitable. His father, on the other hand, had been a strong, active man, always in good health. It was impossible to imagine him dead. He could not be.

Rob opened the wardrobe. The clothes would probably be sold, too—they would fit Mr. Kennealy. He felt his eyes sting, and pulled open one of the drawers at the bottom. More clothes. A second drawer. Folded pullovers, and a cardboard box. On the outside was written “Jenny,” his mother's name. He took it out and opened it.

The first thing he saw was her photograph. He had not known one existed: he remembered his father once trying to get her to have a photograph taken, and her refusal. This was an old-fashioned 2-D print, and it showed her as much younger than he had known her—scarcely more than twenty, with brown hair down her shoulders instead of short as she had worn it in later years.

He looked at it for a long time, trying to read behind the slight, anxious smile on her face. Then he heard Mrs. Kennealy calling him. He had time to see that there were other things in the box—a curl of hair in a transparent locket, letters in a bundle held together by a rubber band. He closed the box and put it with his own things before going to see what Mrs. Kennealy wanted.

• • •

Rob was called from geography to the principal's office. They were without a master at the time, though of course under closed-circuit TV observation at the main switchboard; and the holovision set was taking them on a conducted tour of Australia, with a bouncing, breezy commentary full of not very funny little jokes. The voice blanked out though vision continued, and with a warning ping a voice said, “Randall. Report to the principal immediately. Repeat. Randall to the principal's office.”

The commentary came up again. One or two of the boys made their own even less funny jokes about possible reasons for his being summoned, but Mr. Spennals was on the switchboard that morning and the majority kept their attention firmly on the screen; he was not a man to trifle with.

Assemblies apart, Rob had seen the principal twice before; once when he joined the school, the second time when they met in a corridor and he was given a message to deliver to the masters' common-­room. He looked at Rob now as though wondering who he was. This was not surprising since there were nearly two thousand boys in the school. He said, “Randall,” tentatively, and then more firmly, “Randall, this is Mr. Chalmers from the Education Office.”

The second man was broad where the principal was thin, with hairy cheeks and a quiet watchful expression. Rob said, “Good morning, sir,” to him, and he nodded but made no reply.

“Mr. Chalmers has been looking into your case, following the regrettable death of your father,” the principal said. “You have only one close relative, I understand, an aunt living in”—he glanced at a pad in front of him—“in the Sheffield Conurb. She has been consulted. I'm afraid she does not feel able to offer you a home. There are difficulties—her husband is in poor health. . . .”

Rob said nothing. It had not occurred to him that this would even be suggested. The principal continued, “Under the circumstances it is felt that the best solution to your problem—in fact the only solution—will be to have you transferred to a boarding school where you can have full care and attention. We feel . . .”

Rob was so surprised that he interrupted. “Can't I stay with the Kennealys, sir?”

“The Kennealys?” The two men looked at each other. “Who are they?”

Rob explained. The principal said:

“Yes, I see. The neighbors who have been looking after you. But that would not be suitable, of course, for the longer term.”

“But they have a spare room, sir.”

“Not suitable,” the principal repeated in a flat, authoritative voice. “You will be transferred to the Barnes Boarding School. You are excused classes for the remainder of the day. Transport will be sent to pick you up at nine o'clock tomorrow morning.”

• • •

Rob took the bus to the stadium where he knew Mr. Kennealy was on duty. On the way he thought about the State boarding schools. Some were supposed to be not quite so bad as others, but they were all regarded with a mixture of contempt and dread. They catered to orphans and the children of broken marriages, but also to certain types of juvenile delinquents. There were ugly rumors about the life there, particularly about the terrible food and the discipline.

Rob sent in a message asking for Mr. Kennealy, who came out to the leisure room ten minutes later. Rob had been watching the closed-circuit holovision which showed what was happening in the arena. It was gladiators in high-wire combat. In this, men fought with light, blunt-ended fiberglass spears from separate wires that approached each other at differing heights and distances. The wire system was complex and changed during the contest. The drop could be into water or onto firm ground, which in this case was covered with artificial thorn bushes, glinting with murderous-looking spikes. A loser always got hurt, sometimes badly, occasionally fatally. There were three men in the present fight and one had already fallen and limped away with difficulty. The remaining two swayed and probed at each other in the bluish light cast by the weather screen which at the moment covered the top of the stadium.

“Well, Rob, what are you doing away from school?” Mr. Kennealy asked.

Rob told him what had happened. Mr. Kennealy listened in silence.

“They said I couldn't stay with you, but it's not true, is it?”

Mr. Kennealy replied heavily, “If that's what the regulations say, there's nothing we can do.”

“But you could go and see them—you could apply for me.”

“It wouldn't do any good.”

“There was a boy at school last year—Jimmy McKay. His mother went off and his father couldn't manage. He went to Mrs. Pearson in your block and he's still living there.”

“The Pearsons may have adopted him.”

“Couldn't you? Adopt me, that is?”

“Not without your aunt giving consent.”

“Well, she won't have me herself. She's said so.”

“That doesn't mean she'd be ready to sign you away. She might be thinking things will change later, that she can take you then.”

“They could ask her, couldn't they? I'm pretty sure she'd say yes.”

“It's not as easy as that.” Mr. Kennealy paused and Rob waited for him to go on. “What I mean is, this may be the best thing for you. You'll be safer there.”

“Safer? How?”

Mr. Kennealy started to say something, then shook his head.

“Better looked after. And with boys of your own age. Mrs. Kennealy and I are too old for a boy like you to have to live with.”

“You said ‘safer.'”

“It was a slip of the tongue.”

There was a silence. Mr. Kennealy was not meeting Rob's eyes. Rob felt he could see the truth of the matter. All these were excuses, attempts to conceal the central fact: the Kennealys did not want him. He felt a bit as he had when Mr. Kennealy had not spoken up for his father against the man who had said that he was to blame for getting killed, but now it was more a feeling of desolation than anger.

“Yes, Mr. Kennealy,” Rob said.

He had turned away. He found himself grasped by the shoulders, and Mr. Kennealy stared into his eyes.

“It's for your good, Rob,” he said. “Believe that. I can't explain, but it's for your good.”

Inside the holovision screen one figure lunged, the other parried and struck back and the first dropped ludicrously on his back, into the thorns. Rob nodded. “I'd better go back and see about packing my things.”

Read on for a peek at another exciting adventure novel by John Christopher!

I
AWOKE WITH THE EARLY MORNING
SUN dazzling my eyes. This was not in itself unusual because my window faced east, but it triggered a sense of something being wrong. There had been a bothering light in my eyes the night before, from the full moon, and in the end I had climbed out of bed and drawn the curtains against its brilliance. Yet they were open now.

That was when I remembered the nightmare. I'd had nightmares before, when I was little—I could call up hazy recollections of smoke and fire and fear—but there had been nothing like that for years. I had slept, in those days, in a cot beside Mother Ryan's bed, and been lifted in beside her to be comforted. Last night, too, Mother Ryan had provided comfort, but she must have come the length of the corridor to reach me. She had sat on the edge of my bed, trying to persuade me there was nothing to be frightened of. In the end, she had left me and gone to the window and opened the curtains to show me there really was nothing out there but moonlight. Even then I had taken some convincing.

It had seemed so real! And yet it was a reality without shape. I had known there were things outside but could not tell what sort of things they were. All I was conscious of was that howling, ebbing, and swelling as they circled the house. Each time it died down I thought they might be going away, but each time they came back and there seemed to be more of them than before.

My one concern was to escape—hide under the bed, or better still run and find somewhere in the house where I could not hear them. But I could not even sit up; my legs refused to move, and a dead weight pinned my shoulders. Then the shapeless voices stopped circling and were wailing monstrously against my window. Glass could not hold against such a volume of sound . . . and as I thought that, it shattered, and I knew they were in the room with me.

I suppose that was when I started yelling, still not knowing what they were and not daring to look. It seemed a long time before Mother Ryan was beside me, telling me to hush, it was only a bad dream—urging me to open my eyes and see there was no one there but her—no sounds except those of the distant sea and the wind in the pines, and her voice, part chiding but more reassuring.

“It's Andy's the cause of it, the little-good-for. He was at the Master's brandy again yesterday, and when the liquor's in him his tongue flaps nonsense. But I'm astonished at you paying heed to him. You should be used to his blather.”

Had I been thinking clearly, it would have surprised me too. I'd known he was drunk when he came in, from his careful stiff way of walking. I hadn't believed a word of his ramblings about the black Demons, and the way they winged across the night skies, hunting for sinners—children ­especially—to take back to their lairs in the moon. Paddy and I had laughed about it after he'd gone, over our bedtime milk and biscuits.

“There's all manner of things happen,” Mother Ryan said, holding me close, “over on the mainland. We know little about them, nor need to. They've nought to do with the Western Isles. There's no cause to fear Demons here. You know that, Ben, you know it well.”

She must have stayed with me till I fell asleep. Wide awake in daylight, I writhed at the thought. If the noise I'd made had been loud enough to rouse her, Paddy might have heard it too. And Antonia. I visualized the little twist that lifted a corner of Antonia's mouth when she was hiding a smile—or pretending to.

Paddy and Antonia were Mother Ryan's ­daughters—no kin to me but, since I had lived with them all my life, almost like sisters. Elder sisters: Paddy by eighteen months, Antonia more than four years. Antonia was tall and thin, with fair hair that until recently had been kept tied back in a bun but was now let down, falling to the middle of her back. She had sharp gray eyes, quick and impatient movements. When she was angry it was in a held-back way more alarming than Mother Ryan's hot bursts of temper.

I doubt if anyone would have taken her and Paddy for sisters. Paddy was more sturdily built and ruddier; she had blue eyes, thick black hair cut short, and a much greater inclination to talk and laughter. We fought quite a lot because she had a bossy streak, but we did nearly everything together. I could not imagine life without her, though for that matter it was impossible to imagine life without any of the people among whom I had grown up—Mother Ryan, Antonia, Andy, and Joe, even the remote forbidding figure of the Master.

• • •

That morning, after we had our own breakfast, Paddy and I went down to the little paddock to give Jiminy his. Jiminy was a horse, swaybacked and nearly blind, who had been put out to grass. We took him his favorite snack—a sandwich with jam from last summer's plums—and he performed his usual trick of whinnying when he saw us coming, then backing away and circling before returning to the fence, yellow teeth bared in a greedy grin.

We went through the routine of feeding him and stroking his still velvety muzzle, but it wasn't the same. There had been an awkwardness over breakfast, and it persisted. Eventually I moved away toward Lookout, the highest point on the island, with Paddy following. Apart from a bank of cloud far off in the east and a few small clouds on the western horizon, the sky was blue, the air warm and carrying scents of spring.

From Lookout one could see all the other islands. Sheriff's, the only one with more than two score inhabitants, lay southeast across the central bay. John's and Stony were to our left; to our right, Sheep Isle and West Rock and January completed the ragged arc. Some of the names were self-­explanatory: Stony was stony indeed, the green turf of Sheep was studded with white shapes, and it was from Sheriff's that Sheriff Wilson governed all the isles except the one on which we stood. This was Old Isle—I didn't know why except that it had a ruin much older than those on Sheriff's, which we knew were left over from the Madness. It was built with stones that bore the marks of hundreds, perhaps thousands of years of weathering.

We had explored all the islands, summer by summer. At one time we had been obliged to rely on Joe to take us, but since the previous spring we'd had the use of a small dinghy and could, with Mother Ryan's permission, roam freely. We had planned to camp a night on John's during the coming weekend.

Paddy chattered while we looked out—about when Liza, the tortoiseshell cat, might have her kittens; about Bob Merriton, who had come over from January to court Antonia but been quickly mocked into a shamefaced retreat; about the school of seals Joe said had come into the bay on the far side of Stony. But her chatter had an uncertain note, and as is likely to happen with people who are using words to fill an awkwardness, in the end she ran out of them. The silence that followed was heavy. She broke it with a yawn.

“I don't know why I feel tired. I slept like a log last night.”

The yawn was too obvious, but I would have known she was lying anyway—and why. I said curtly, “Better go back to bed, in that case.”

I walked away, but she came after me. “I'm sorry, Ben.”

“What about?”

She was silent again but continued to follow as I walked down the hill. At last she said, “I get frightened, when I think about them. I know there aren't any here, but that's not to say they might not come one day. There's no telling how far they can fly.”

I swung round to face her. “So you did hear me yelling, in the night!” She made a movement of her head that could have been a shake or a nod. “It was a nightmare, that's all. Anyone can have a nightmare.”

It was definitely a nod this time. “I know.”

“When I'm awake I'm not scared of them.”

“Well, I am. I'm glad we live where there aren't any.”

I knew she was trying to make things right, and while I still nourished resentment, I was happier. However much we fought, I could be sure of Paddy being basically on my side. And there was some relief in having it in the open.

I said, “I wonder
why
they don't come here. Perhaps they can't fly over water.”

“Mother said they had them in Ireland, and that's across water from the rest of the mainland. Maybe they don't think there's anything in the Isles that needs punishing.” She thought about that. “Or perhaps we're too far off, too unimportant.”

“Or they're scared of the Master.”

Paddy laughed, but it wasn't entirely a joke. It was hard to imagine even Demons taking on the Master. We had come to the ruins, and a couple of early ­butterflies—clouded yellows—waltzed overhead, spiraling up past a pillar of crumbling gray stone.

“Do you want to talk about it,” Paddy asked, “the nightmare?”

“No.”

I was certain of that. Discussing Demons in an abstract way was one thing. I couldn't begin to talk about the howling and my impotent panic. Awkward­ness started to come back.

Paddy said, “I was thinking . . .”

“What?”

“Liza's kittens—she had her last litter in the old pigsty. I wonder if she's gone back there?”

I said more cheerfully, “She might have. We could go and look.”

• • •

Later that day Andy brought me disturbing news: I was to accompany the Master on his customary afternoon ride around the island.

On my previous birthday, the Master had surprised me by giving me a present, in the shape of a pony. He had not previously marked such occasions for any of us. There always was a present which was supposed to be from the Master, but we knew Mother Ryan had made it or got it from Sheriff's and wrapped it up before putting the Master's seal on it.

And a pony was something special. Joe had brought it across secretly the night before, but the Master himself summoned me to the paddock and handed me the reins. He didn't say much, only, “So you're fourteen, boy. On the mainland, they would call you a man.” Then, without waiting for thanks to emerge from stammering confusion, he turned and walked away.

Antonia had just been scornful; for two or three days afterwards she greeted me by dropping her voice and saying, “On the mainland, they would call you a man.” I don't think she minded my being given the horse; she was not fond of animals and shooed the cats away if they ventured into the parlor.

Paddy, though, had been resentful at first, pointing out that all she'd had for becoming fourteen was a new hat. But she got over it quickly, principally by treating the pony as if it were a present for the pair of us. It was she who provided him with a name, Black Prince, and when Andy taught us to ride him she learned faster. She was older, of course.

The Master's own horse was a big gray gelding named Sea King. Andy called him willful, but he seemed docile with the Master's hands on the reins. I had only looked on from a respectful distance and found it hard to take in Andy's instruction that I was to join him.

“Join him, how? Walk alongside?”

“On Black Prince, fool.” Andy pushed up the forelock which disguised a bald patch on the top of his head. “And mind you don't discredit me by riding like a sack of seaweed.” He grinned unpleasantly. “Else I might send the Demons after you again.”

The direction was for meeting at North Point. As I came up to him, I said, “Good day, Master,” and put a hand to my forelock. He nodded silently and clicked his tongue for Sea King to walk on.

For several hundred yards the path lay inland, before emerging to where the sea lay directly beneath us. He halted there. The western cloud had thickened, but the day was mild still.

The Master spoke abruptly. “That was a fine caterwauling you treated us to last night.”

I was thrown once more into confusion. The Master's quarters were at the far end of the house, and it had not occurred to me he too might have been wakened.

“I'm sorry, sir . . .”

He stared down at me. He was more than six feet tall, his horse better than seventeen hands to Black Prince's thirteen and a half. Letting go the reins, he rubbed his hands together slowly.

“You have put on some height in the past year. How much?”

I had no trouble answering that. At the foot of the back stairs, pencil lines on the plaster marked where Paddy and I measured one another, regularly on birthdays and quite often in between.

“Three inches, sir. Well, above two.”

He nodded. “Are you happy here?”

His voice was deep, and his manner of speaking strange. As Mother Ryan's was, but in her case we knew the reason—she was proud of being born and raised in Ireland. The Master's accent did not ­resemble either hers or the local one, which was also my own. It took me a moment to grasp the question, and “here” perplexed me. Where else should I be?

I said quickly, “Yes indeed, sir.”

“It's a small place for a growing boy. You have wanted education.”

Again I was puzzled. This was the spring holiday, but normally Paddy and I were taken daily to school on Sheriff's in Joe's fishing dinghy.