A light swept down from above. Leaf looked up, but the flashlight beam fell short of her.
‘Nothing!’
The guard’s voice echoed down the pipe, from at least fifty feet above. Leaf stared up at the light, choked with panic, desperately trying to draw a breath so she could scream for help, fear now overriding her desire to escape with the pocket.
The scream suddenly became a stifled grunt as a dim red light spilled in from the side. Leaf just had time to throw herself against an open inspection port and grab hold of the lip before the wheeled unit continued on its way down.
As Leaf hung there panting, she heard a splash below and then a glug-glug-glug as the inspection unit continued down the riser, into deep water.
Two seconds later, the weary but relieved girl pulled herself up and slithered out onto the floor of a narrow tunnel filled with pipes, cables, and all the other circulatory systems of a major modern building. She lay there for several minutes, gathering her strength, then sat up and looked around.
As above, the inspection panel here had been unbolted. In this case the nuts had been put in a plastic bag taped to the panel.
The tunnel stretched off as far as she could see to the left and right, but that wasn’t far, because there were only the small, dim red lights in the ceiling every fifteen yards or so. It was also extremely cluttered, with only just enough space between all the pipes and cables for a small adult to crawl along.
That was plenty of room for Leaf. She chose a direction at random, checked that she still had the box with the pocket, and started crawling.
Eleven
‘ I CAN’T LET them wash me between the ears,’ said Arthur.
‘There’s not much choice,’ said Fred gloomily.
‘Even if you hide, they always find you. We’d better start getting ready.’
‘There must be a way to avoid it,’ Arthur insisted.
‘And what do you mean “start getting ready”?’
‘Start writing down the important stuff,’ said Fred.
‘You know, name, friends, favourite colour. Sometimes it’s enough to bring some memories back. Of course, if we had some silver coins and some salt …’
‘We could even forget our names?’ In Arthur’s weary state it was only just beginning to hit home that cleaning between the ears could be even worse than he’d thought. He’d been worried about forgetting some details about his life on Earth, or his family, or the Morrow Days and the Keys … not that he might entirely forget who he was.
‘You must have been cleaned quite recently if you can’t even remember that,’ said Fred. ‘If they do a complete job you’ll forget everything about yourself. And they don’t care if you were only done yesterday, they just do you again.’
‘What was that about silver coins and salt?’
‘A silver coin under the tongue is supposed to help resist the washing,’ said Fred. ‘And salt in the nose. But we’ve got neither, so we’d better start writing. I really hope I don’t forget how to read this time. It’s going to set back our training too. I’ll never make general if I get washed between the ears too often. Come on.’
He marched back to the beds, Arthur following more slowly and out of step. But no NCOs appeared to berate him. As far as he could tell, it was the middle of the night and their appointed wake-up time would be in only three or four hours.
Despite his weariness, Arthur followed Fred’s lead and got out a service notebook and scarlet pencil with the platoon name on it in gold type. But while Fred wrote busily, Arthur wondered about what he should put down. If he wrote his real name and other important stuff, someone might see it.
In the end, he compromised by starting his list with Ray Green and then putting underneath it Real name? and then AP. After that, he put down his favourite colour, which was blue, his parents’ first names, Bob and Emily, and his brothers’ and sisters’, Erazmuz, Staria, Patrick, Suzanne, Michaeli, and Eric. Arthur thought for a while, then added Suzy TB, Leaf, and Mister Monday, Grim Tuesday, and Drowned Wednesday. If those names didn’t trigger memories, he’d be in a really bad state.
He wanted to write more, but he felt faint. The paper was swimming around … or maybe his vision was. He managed to lose a few seconds in between writing Drowned and Wednesday, waking with a start as his chin hit his chest. So he closed the notebook, slid the pencil into its pocket, and lay back on his bed. He told himself he’d just sleep for a little while, maybe half an hour, and then he’d wake up and write some more.
The next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake by Fred. Groggily, Arthur swung his legs out of bed and stood up. There were trumpets blasting out long, irritating notes, and only half of the hurricane lanterns were lit. Fred thrust a towel and a leather case into Arthur’s hands.