There was no way to judge how much of that was true. All she could see from here was a grey immensity. She checked herself for a response to the physical presence of this wall, this thing that took up so much space in the imagination of the unsheltered. Looked away and felt no gravitational pull. Frank had always found it strange how uncurious she was about the other side, about the people living there. Don’t you wonder what it’s like? he’d asked. She’d only ever wondered about three of them and she was pretty sure her parents were dead now.
I would hate to live inside the wall, Matti had said in their tent, somewhere into the second week on the road to Valiant. It was after midnight, Frank sleeping steadily on the other side of her.
Why? Li asked.
Well, because how do you breathe?
Oh, right. It doesn’t mean inside the actual wall – it just means the other side. Like going into a house. This, where we are, is outside and the other side is inside.
But why is that side inside?
Because it’s safer, I guess. And they get looked after. There are things on that side that we don’t have out here.
She waited, tiredly, for Matti to ask what things but Matti was quiet. Maybe she’d gone back to sleep. A mosquito whined and she slapped it away, held her watch up to her face. Before dawn and after sunset were the times when walking was easy, without the heat pressing down from the sky and up from the road, making the air shake. In two hours they would have to get up and start walking again.
I still don’t want to live there, Matti said. It’s not the Best Place.
What would it have meant to her to see the XB, finally, know it was real? Not just a story they told kids. What had Agency told them before they drove them out here to the middle of nowhere because no precinct would take that many minors? Where did she think she was going now?
Is the Best Place real? She had asked Frank, prone and sweating under the tarp in the middle of the day. Can we actually go there?
I told you already, beansprout, Frank said. We’re going to the best place we can find.
There wasn’t much left of the bus when she got to it. Pulled off roadside. No mistaking its shape from a distance, the trademark government yellow, but as she got closer she saw that it had been picked clean. Doors, windows, tyres and wheels. A gouge in the back where the engine and transmission had been. Windshield gone, bumper bars, tail- and headlights. Every removable piece of metal and plastic. A man and a woman approaching from the other direction barely glanced at it as they passed.
Out of habit, Li looked through the space where the back door had been. The inside had been stripped too, including the seats. Six, seven days? Apart from the lack of rust, it could have been abandoned years ago. She limped a slow circuit around it and saw how the sand and gibber were churned up on all sides. Looked pointlessly for signs of camp, for something dropped or discarded, for a message with directions scratched with a stick. What she saw was footprints, drag marks, tyre marks, signs of scuffle. You could do a lot with a jack and a socket wrench but you’d need a vehicle, too, something with a tray. This had the look of a dedicated salvage crew.
It was only a few more kays to the start of the old army access road but it took her an hour to walk them. She stood at the turnoff and studied the gibber. No trample of feet, nothing but old tyre tracks. No barriers or warning signs anymore, nothing to stop her limping all the way to the barracks, just in case. But they said if they went back, Army would get them. She walked past the turnoff and kept going up the highway.
What happened at school? Frank asked Matti. Valiant. Dinnertime around the small kitchen table in Teresa and Navid’s flat.
Nothing. She mashed her beans with a fork and scooped them up with her fingers. Oh. Soldiers came. After literacy.
Li kept her voice neutral. What kind of soldiers?
Matti shrugged. They had those grey-y-green uniforms? Like the ones when we were coming into Valiant.
Li hadn’t known they would send recruiters into the school – not this soon. She should have known that.
Don’t they have to send a note home? Teresa asked.
Hani said, Handsup! Bangbang! And started coughing.
Into your elbow, mate. Navid gave him water in his sippy cup.
Matti looked at Frank. I don’t have to go to Wars till I’m fifteen.
No. Frank said. No you don’t.
But then if I get picked I have to go. The soldiers said we have to keep our promise.
Jesus, Teresa said softly.
Frank was still. Li couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He said, That isn’t something you have to worry about now, sprout.
Matti kept looking at him for a second and then nodded. You don’t have to worry, Hani, mate, she told her cousin, cos you won’t have to go to Wars for ages.
She took a couple of sips every hour, feeling the waterbag lightening. She should be drinking morning and night, holding off while she walked so she didn’t sweat
