Escape
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Synopsis
In the country she inhabits, Meiji is unique. The only surviving female in a land where women have been exterminated, she has been brought up in secret, cloistered and protected, by three men she knows as her uncles – Eldest, Middle and Youngest. Now, as she approaches adolescence, her guardians must ensure that the dictatorial clone Generals who rule their world never get to know of her existence, and it falls to Youngest to escort Meiji on a long and treacherous journey through ravaged landscapes to the very edge of the world known to them. An adventure story like no other, a tale of love and self-discovery in several unexpected layers, Escape is a novel that is as unsettling as it is unputdownable. In its captivating portrayal of tender relationships blooming and thriving in a vicious, forbidding landscape, it bears out Manjula Padmanabhan’s genius as a creator of compelling alternative worlds.
Release date: July 20, 2015
Publisher: Hachette India
Print pages: 400
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Escape
Manjula Padmanabhan
There are those who told us, the larger mission is impossible.It can’t be done. To them we said, Be Bold.
– from: A Manual for Bold Soldiers
The suitor had arrived without companions. He was in his midtwenties and appeared to be healthy. He swore that no one knew of his mission. So he was taken in and kept under surveillance for twenty-four hours before being brought via circuitous paths, to the first of three warehouses. There too he was made to wait with no explanations. His clothes were replaced with new ones, he was interrogated again, and searched for electronic bugs. There were none.
On the morning of the sixth day, a hood was placed over his head and he was transported to a new location in a wheeled cart. When he was on his feet once more, two silent escorts walked him through carpeted corridors until he entered a cool, enclosed space. Then his blindfold was removed and he saw he was in a windowless chamber. Chilled air poured in through invisible vents. Concealed lighting spilled from the grey stone ceiling onto grey stone walls. Underfoot, the floor was carpeted. In the centre of the room was a great rectangular slab of black granite, polished to a mirror finish. It was the height of a dining table, built to accommodate six diners on each of the long sides.
All three Brothers were present. Two sat on high-backed chairs in the far corner to the right, looking towards him. There were no other chairs in the room. The third brother stood by the door in the wall opposite. The suitor remained standing.
His name was not announced nor did anyone ask him for it. He was tall, with glass-green eyes and black hair combed straight back from a narrow forehead. His nose was shapely but his cheeks were taut with hunger and his chin a little weak. There was a worrying slackness about his mouth, but his teeth had been inspected earlier and been declared perfect. He wore a maroon tunic given to him that morning. It suited the tobacco brown of his skin.
No one spoke.
Footsteps made by slippered feet were heard approaching the room. There was a knock. The third brother slid back the door he was standing next to. For an instant, a figure was silhouetted in the doorway, against the sunlit courtyard beyond. Then the door slid shut once more and the figure came forward to stand beside the table. A spotlight developed directly over that place.
In the harsh overhead light the suitor saw what looked like a child of twelve, covered from head to foot in spider-grey chiffon veils. The air coursing through the room caused the draperies to shift this way and that, now revealing now concealing a slender, angular form wearing a dark tunic beneath the veil and a floor-length skirt. The face was in shadow.
‘Here she is,’ said Eldest. ‘A prompt little thing.’ He turned to her. ‘Say something, Meiji. Let him hear your voice.’
The figure kept her head bent. Perhaps she gazed through her veils at the suitor’s reflection in the tabletop. In a low tone she said, ‘Hello.’
The suitor leaned forward, squinting, his voice thick. ‘The face!’ he said. ‘Surely I must see the face!’
‘For the moment, this is all.’
‘I – I will pay,’ said the suitor, ‘…anything…’
‘Please!’ said Eldest. ‘Let us not be crude. There will be time enough later for discussions of that type –’
‘But then this is a cruel farce – a tease!’
‘Very few have come even this far,’ said the second brother, Middle, cutting in. His voice rumbled up from deep within his rounded belly, making a sound like pebbles being stirred in an earthen water pot. Like both his siblings, he wore black robes that swathed him from the neck down. He had silver clasps at the neck and along the dart of the chest. Two diamond studs flashed in each earlobe. ‘It is a unique privilege merely to breathe the same air as her. As you well know.’
The mood in the room shifted immediately from sombre to dark.
The table was almost as broad as the suitor was tall. To his credit, he managed in one energetic bound to get halfway across it. He was actually in mid-air, his hands yearning towards the girl, before the short muscular figures on either side of him caught him, flung him to the floor and, with a swift jerk, broke his neck. There was little noise: the escort-drones were deaf-mutes and the suitor did not cry out. He must have known, from Middle’s remark, what the outcome of this interview would be. Still, he had to make the attempt, if only to be original. The drones left the room at once, dragging the body behind them, one foot each.
The door closed.
The girl remained where she stood, her head bent. Only a slight trembling of her veils showed her reaction.
Middle turned to her and said, ‘You may go, Meiji. Wait in your Morning Room. One of us will come very soon, to speak to you.’
She did as she was told without a word.
The moment she had gone, Youngest, who had held the door open for her, spun around to his brothers, crying, ‘This is wrong!
‘Which part?’ asked the Eldest, turning his white-haired head in the way of an old man whose neck is no longer supple, by slanting his chin up to the right. ‘The suitor? Or the method of his dispatch?’
‘Exposing her to these incidents!’ said Youngest. He pointed to the floor where the girl had been standing. ‘Do you see?’ he demanded of the other two. ‘She wet herself.’
Middle shrugged. ‘I am not surprised. It is shocking after all –’
‘But it cannot be good for her!’ exclaimed Youngest. ‘She will be scarred –’
‘Tell us something we don’t know,’ said Eldest.
‘If you will never act upon something you know, then it’s the same as not knowing it,’ said Youngest. His face was smooth-shaven and had not yet acquired the jowls, the scattering of tiny black moles and the beetling eyebrows of his older siblings. But his mouth, like theirs, was the colour of ripe plums, strongly outlined and heavily creased. His hair, though thicker and blacker than theirs, was streaked with grey. He wore it looped in coils at the back of his head. His own robe had a less severe cut than his brothers’. Instead of the dart, it had a vertical slit down its front, fastened with jewelled studs.
‘Must we discuss it this instant?’ Eldest looked tired. ‘I do not enjoy the sight of young men being killed any more than you do. Who will go to be with the child? She must not be alone with her thoughts.’
‘I will go. Her lesson is long overdue,’ said the middle brother, rising. ‘We are memorizing yet another ancient text. A dictionary. More than nine-tenths of the words are empty sounds now.’
‘But what will you tell her about what she witnessed here?’ said Youngest. ‘How will you explain these rough strangers who appear in and disappear from her world with the suddenness of shooting stars?’
‘Unlike you,’ said Middle, ‘I see no reason to confuse her. I explain nothing. And she asks nothing –’
‘– she asks me!’ said Youngest.
‘– because you tell her more than she needs to know,’ riposted Middle.
‘I said, enough!’
That was Eldest.
‘We need to discuss this matter, yes. And we will do so, at the night meal. Now go. Leave me. Are there any entertainers with us? Good. Send me one. And a masseur too. Tonight, we will talk.’
TWO
Sentiment is the breeding place for fear and sorrow.
– from: The Thoughts
Meiji stood in the centre of her Morning Room. She had changed out of her veils and now wore a short-sleeved white blouse over a pale pink skirt, gathered at the waist, reaching down to mid-calf. She was standing on a footstool, positioned so that she could see her reflection in both of two mirrors, set into columns in the room. The mirrors were high enough that she could only see her face if she added a foot to her height. In her hands she held a pair of fluorescent green goggles and a broad-brimmed straw hat.
She put the hat on first and turned towards the reflection on her right.
‘Well, my dear,’ said Meiji to her reflection, ‘you’re in a shocking mood today!’
Then she whipped the hat off and placed the goggles on her face. Turning towards the other mirror, she said, ‘So would you be, Mister Piggie, if you had seen a big black Creeper being subtracted! Right in front of your eyes. Why, it’s enough to make a little frog like myself quite ill.’
She replaced the goggles and turned. ‘So that’s what you did today, Mister Frog! I asked myself where you’d disappeared, and that too on a Word List day, imagine! I was right here, of course, and managed to learn the whole lot. Shall I recite them to you? I like the short ones best –’
‘Oh, stop with your endless words! I don’t know if I can take any more of them. I’d rather talk about the Creeper. He was horribly awful, you know. Just like the rest.’
‘Nonsense! I don’t believe a square root of it!’
‘You must. You-Know-Who was there. You can always ask her.’
‘NO idea who you mean…’
‘Of course you do. The one who looks just like us, but then again, is completely different.’
‘Such lies!’
‘I can’t believe you don’t remember. Your memory is null and void.’
‘Lies, lies, lies! Why – you’re a whole Island of Liars, all to yourself!’
‘Never mind the lies. I want to tell you about the Creeper. He was as tall as a building and his eyes were like spears. With points like flame. They poked right into me, and burned me as they went. And they went right through me too and bumped against the door behind. Ooh! I hated him so much –’
‘How much, exactly?’
‘There aren’t numbers enough in the world to express how much!’
‘Then use quantities –’
‘Twenty rivers and fifty-six oceans –’
‘Is that all?’ said broad-brim-hatted Meiji. ‘Hmmm…I would have said –’
‘– but you weren’t there!’
‘Oh – that’s right – well…judging from YOUR reaction –’
‘I only saw his reflection in the tabletop. It was quite bad enough. But the drones caught him and killed him –’
‘Killed him!’
‘– but not before he jumped up and flew through the air towards me. I could feel his breath up my nose – it was hot and stinky – and I could feel his hands on my neck, squeezing like a pair of pythons. He had a gecko-skin face and only two teeth in the front of his mouth, like pictures of a beaver.’
‘I hope you screamed and jumped back –’
‘I did no such thing. Uncle One has told me what to do, at times like this: stay still. He’s told me many times – you too, I bet, except you won’t admit it. I’ve had dozens of practice sessions with him. He raises both his arms and comes screaming towards me, while I stand perfectly still. And that’s the whole point of the exercise. Learning to remain perfectly still, no matter what.’
‘– better hush. I saw one of the minders twitching, just now.’
‘I’ve not finished telling you about it, though –’
‘You haven’t said a thing about her. Was she there too?’
‘Of course. She was the centre of attention, with her eyes cast down and her hands crossed in front. Covered from head to foot. Her heart was thumping like a diesel engine. At the moment the Creeper jumped, she almost stepped back, but I stopped her in time.’
‘Hmm. And is that all?’
‘Well, the drones caught the monster and threw him on the floor. I couldn’t see what exactly they did, but I heard that cracking sound, like a walnut being broken open. Just like the others. Then they dragged him away, out the door. He was entirely dead. Not the least little part of him was twitching.’
‘What about her? Did she say or do anything?’
‘No, nothing.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure! I was there, wasn’t I? While you were hiding in here, memorizing useless words –’
‘Well then! That proves it! You really are a liar.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about –’
‘Because she told me what she did! And since you were there, you must have known about it too.’
‘Tell me anyway. Just in case I missed it.’
‘No, I won’t and anyway, I can’t now coz here comes Uncle Two –’
Meiji stepped down from the footstool and removed the green goggles. The youngest of her three uncles was still some distance away but she could tell he was in the vicinity from the behaviour of her minders. The permanent drones, the ones whose only function was to remain in place within her cavernous living quarters, arranged themselves differently for each of her three uncles. It was second nature to her now, to know which of them was about to appear.
Youngest called out to her as he walked down the ramp. ‘Squirrel!’ he called. ‘Where are you hiding? Come quick, we have much to discuss.’
The space of the Morning Room was divided into regular sections. Over the years, room dividers and screens had been used to create a shifting maze-like interior, so that it was rarely the same from one week to the next. Meiji lived in three levels, extending down into the earth, with the fourth and aboveground level appearing to be a warehouse. She had named the layers for their distance from the surface. The one immediately beneath the warehouse was called ‘Morning’, the one below it ‘Afternoon’ and the lowest one ‘Night’.
The Morning Room had virtual windows streaming live video from the roof of the building. This was her favourite level, where she spent most of her time, where she had her lessons, ate her food and socialized with her uncles. Afternoon was her storage and utility area, where she kept her clothes and toys, where she had a bathroom, toilet and bed. Night was for her gym, her pool, her underground tennis, badminton and basketball. She played with a team of drones trained for sports. Her electric supply was linked to the warehouse on the top floor. Anyone examining the energy consumption of the unit would have had to look very carefully indeed to notice the very small anomaly that accounted for her extra usage.
She had security alerts every week at irregular timings in order that she didn’t learn to anticipate them. So far she had never been told which of them had been genuine and which not. She paid little attention to them. After all, she had no idea what they were intended to guard her from.
‘Squirrel?’ called her uncle. ‘Where are you? I don’t see you – ah there!’
She leaned out from behind a nearby column. ‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is.’
‘Oh all right, then,’ he said. ‘I won’t force you. But why don’t you come near, so that I can nibble your hair and eat up your fingers? And have you toasted them for me, like I asked you to, and covered them in jam, ready for me to eat?’ He put his arm around the slight figure and drew her towards himself. The fragrance that always rose up from her was a combination not only of the soap she used in her bath but also of another scent, entirely her own. He breathed it in appreciatively. ‘Mmmm! Pencil shavings, rubber bands, freshly cut paper and…is that a touch of modelling clay I detect?’
When she began pushing away from him he let her go. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ She slid her hand into his, however, looking away.
‘Come, come,’ he said, drawing her to the west-facing video view, ‘let’s sit down – here, by the window.’
It showed a desolate landscape, mile after mile of grey scrub through which nothing moved, nothing stirred, all the way to the horizon. But the sky made up for the lifelessness of the earth. Just now, at mid-morning, it featured rolling white clouds against a blinding blue backdrop. Youngest sat down and drew the girl onto his lap.
‘Tell me everything.’ He crossed his right ankle over the knee of his left leg so as to afford her the widest possible seat. ‘Oof. Someone’s growing heavier every day!’ He supported her in a light embrace as she leaned against him.
‘Oh hush, Uncle,’ said Meiji, with her elbows braced against his chest so that she could play with the jingles dangling from the jewelled studs holding the front of his black kurta together. ‘What did you want to discuss?’
‘I’ve forgotten,’ said Youngest, smiling at the young face inches from his. Meiji’s colouring was altogether lighter than all three of the brothers, but her features were a scaled-down replica of theirs: she had the same pronounced nose, forehead, heavy-lidded eyes and dark lips as they did. Her hair was straight and thick, drawn back in a severe ponytail. Unlike them, however, she wore no ornaments of any kind, nor were her nose or ears pierced. ‘Isn’t that silly of me?’
‘You never forget,’ said Meiji, making her voice sulky and not looking up. ‘You’re just teasing, as usual. I wish you wouldn’t! Why can’t I have buttons like these on my clothes?’ She tugged at the fasteners.
‘Because your clothes have buttons sewn onto them,’ he said, pointing them out to her, trailing his finger down the row of white ones on the front of her blouse, down the middle of her chest. It was still very much a child’s chest, flat as an ironing board. He could feel the little ribs beneath, expanding and contracting with each breath. ‘See? Whereas I have only these empty slits, which need studs rather than buttons and I’ve got to choose a set of studs every single day and wrestle them into place in the morning and then wrestle them out again at night –’ Then he laughed as she began to winkle the topmost fastener out from its mooring place. ‘No – stop! Help, help – she’s undressing me!’ He put his hand over hers and pulled playfully at them.
But instead of continuing the game, she collapsed forward now, burrowing into his chest and neck, like a young animal. ‘That awful man, Uncle,’ she said in a breathy whisper charged with tears. ‘I hated him. Why did I have to meet him? Why do these people come here at all? Why!’
Youngest tightened his grip around the young girl, rocking her from side to side. He caressed the smooth head with its bunched ponytail, saying nothing. His hand loosened the ribbon holding her ponytail together so that it came off, releasing the black tide of her hair. He combed it back, then found the crisp whorl of her left ear and stroked it with his finger.
His throat bulged with words of comfort and reassurance but he said nothing. Her legs were starting to slip off his lap. He reached under her knees to haul them up again and as he did so, his hand chanced upon the bare skin of her thighs, under her skirt. Something shifted in his heart. He repositioned the cloth immediately, but in his mind he could see the imprint of his hand on her skin, glowing scarlet. He frowned and shook his head as if to loosen the grip of the image upon his memory.
He did not succeed.
THREE
Men have conquered death.
– from: A Manual for Bold Soldiers
They sat outdoors, under the stars, on a canopied platform. The wind blowing in from the east smelled of rain but the sky was clear. Food was brought in covered containers and placed inside a tiered steamer. A wood fire crackled in a copper-lined pit, throwing sparks against the night.
‘We cannot forever hold back time,’ said Youngest.
While the two older men faced one another on the platform, the youngest of the brothers had positioned himself at an angle, half-faced towards the west. All three had each changed out of their black robes into loose, soft mulmul tunics and pyjamas, white-on-white. They had bathed in rosewater and milk, and soaked in steam for an hour before coming up for the evening meal.
‘She is sixteen,’ continued Youngest. ‘Yet she looks like a child. If we hold her any longer at this threshhold, she will never cross over it. Already I fear the worst.’ He stopped and shrugged. These discussions had taken place before. They were weighed down with futility.
‘The “worst”? And what is that, brother? That she will never develop? That she will forever be a bud, never a flower?’ This was Middle. He held a silver container of brinjal curry in his left hand. With his right, he scoured the inner surface of the container with a whole roti, folded into quarters so that it provided multiple surfaces for sopping up the curry, then conveyed the entire load to his mouth. He slurped, chewed and swallowed before continuing. ‘Personally, I believe we were wrong to have ever wanted it otherwise.’ He held his right hand out for a drone to place a fresh roti within it. On his left, two drones approached in order to fill the silver container with fresh curry taken from the steamer, pulsing with fragrance.
‘Yes, we know,’ said Youngest. ‘You have believed that from the outset. Yet you have persevered with her education. For sixteen years, you have filled her mind with arcane languages, verb conjugations and numerical calculations, with lists of names and quantities, with useless formulae and rhyming mnemonics. Don’t you ask yourself what the purpose is, of all your labour? Isn’t there a hope, somewhere in your heart, that it will not all go to waste?’
‘Unlike you,’ answered Middle, ‘I know how to separate hope from expectation! It doesn’t matter how much time I spend with her and how much I enjoy that time – even her frowns and her tempers are charming – but I cannot believe in this project. It was doomed from the beginning. Neither of you agreed with me. Both of you insisted that nature and biology would prevail and that ultimately I would be proven wrong. Yet it is the reverse: I was right.
‘Not only that, but with every passing year, the risk we expose ourselves to by maintaining her secret existence grows greater. When we embarked upon this folly, there were at least a few others who thought like you then – that some day there would be a market for our unique, irreplaceable jewel. A day when there would be a line of suitors stretching from horizon to horizon and –’
‘It was never a question of markets and suitors,’ said Youngest. ‘Never.’
‘Not for you, perhaps. And perhaps not even for me,’ said Middle. ‘But that does not change the fact that we have spent the middle years of our lives in the shadow of the terror of exposure –’
‘Where are you going with this?’ asked Youngest. ‘You’re not telling us anything we don’t already know.’
‘I’m building a case for a plan of action. I know that you and Eldest disagree with me about what we should do.’
‘It’s the suitors who worry me,’ said Eldest, entering the fray. ‘The suitors who come to us because they have heard rumours that if any hope exists of finding females, it will be with establishments like ours.’
‘In five years, we have had only six,’ said Youngest.
‘But how do they find us at all, is what I want to know,’ said Eldest.
‘One of them told me,’ said Middle, ‘that he had gone from estate to estate, across the land –’
‘How many?’ asked Youngest.
‘He said, two or three hundred, over the course of three years. Not that I would necessarily believe him. He would’ve said anything he thought we wanted to hear.’
‘In which case, that’s what you conveyed to him –’
‘If you want to take over the interrogation next time, be my guest –’
‘– there should be no next time!’ said Youngest. ‘That’s my point.’ He looked from one brother to the other. ‘The pressure on her is too great.’
‘And the risk,’ said Eldest. ‘If there are suitors to sniff around the gates of estates, there will be the General’s Boyz to sniff around the suitors.’
‘For sixteen years we have kept them at bay,’ said Middle. ‘They have searched all our grounds and our buildings, and they continue to search, periodically. But the light has gone out of their torch: I believe even they do not take themselves seriously.’
‘Maybe,’ said Eldest. ‘But the threat is ever present.’
‘Yes, yes – but what I want to discuss goes beyond threats,’ said Middle impatiently. ‘I want to address the issue of what will become of our dainty dinghy once she has made the crossing – as you would say, little brother, speaking in your roundabout poetics – from her sheltered mooring place, this side of puberty, to the storm-tossed waters of the open ocean.’
He paused. ‘I want to address the issue of which port she will take her cargo of carnal destiny to – assuming that she is capable of even beginning to float. You speak about nature and biology, little brother – what do you think nature does to a female in heat? What do you think she will become, our friendly, sweet-natured paddle boat, if we permitted her sails to sprout, to fill with air and launch her, rudderless and innocent, out upon the waves?’
He threw back his head and emptied a carafe of lassi into his mouth. Then he thumped his chest to bring up a burp, while a drone massaged his back. ‘In my opinion,’ he said, when he had recovered his voice, ‘the question is not when we should bring our bud to flower but…’ he burped here, ‘…how we should bring her flirtation with life to a close.’
There was a pained silence.
Younger said, ‘If you were not my brother –’
‘But I am,’ said Middle.
‘– and there are three of us,’ said Eldest. ‘Whatever we do, it will be by consensus.’
‘That means we will do nothing,’ said Middle. ‘There will be no consensus between me and that one,’ he said, pointing to Youngest. ‘Who is wrong, by the way, to think he knows what I meant by my last remarks. Or that I have no depth of feeling. It is just that, unlike him, I am able to control my emotions, I am able to divert them. I am more conscious of our long-term goals and self-preservation – unlike him, who is still at the mercy of his…glands.’
He allowed two drones to come forward and wash his hands, separately, in bowls of warm water. Using half-limes, they scrubbed the grease off the thick, fleshy fingers, scraped under the nails then washed the hands again, before drying them on towels that they wore folded over their forearms. ‘He fumes to hear these remarks from me, yet that is at the bottom of all his impassioned arguments. His youth.’
‘Then why is Eldest not taking your side!’
‘Because he has appointed himself the peacemaker,’ said Middle, reclining now against his cushions. ‘That is his role. We each of us do what is appropriate to our ages. You would do as I do, if you were my age.’
‘Not true,’ said Youngest. ‘We are only ten years apart, you and I. Yet you were always opposed to our project, if that is what you want to call her. You opposed the idea from the start yet you didn’t disdain from contributing to it! I remember that! You did not give up that right!’
‘Why should I have? Once we were determined upon our path, there was no reason for me to hold back. Being practical does not extinguish self-interest.’
‘Ahh! You disgust me!’ Youngest sprang to his feet and strode away.
The terrace onto which the platform had been built was long, with low parapets. The western prospect faced away from the Estate. Along the distant horizon there were low hills, but nothing in between. No buildings, no twinkling lights, nothing but a featureless dark.
‘Brothers, brothers,’ admonished Eldest. ‘We are no closer to a decision.’
‘We have not so much as framed the terms of a decision,’ said Middle.
Youngest stood a short distance away, waiting for the rage within him to die down. It was not his brother’s fault that he had been correct. But did that give him the right to be so smug? Youngest felt his reason twisting within himself, like an eel of slippery hate flashing through black waters. It was hard to catch hold of it, tame it, subdue it.
‘Does she even know what she is?’ asked Eldest. He too had finished his meal now, and had rinsed his mouth out into a spittoon held for him. Now he was assembling the elements for a paan while a drone held the container of ingredients for him. It was a pretty thing, made of polished brass and shaped like a lotus flower. The lid of each individual compartment formed a raised petal. A central screw allowed the lids to be raised and lowered together. Yet the drone fumbled as he turned the screw, as if he had not performed the task often enough to be adept at it. Eldest glanced sharply at him, frowning. But the short figure with its bandy legs and truncated arms, with its colourless bare skin and skimpy loincloth, had skipped back, out of range of slap or kick.
‘Meaning what?’ asked Youngest. He had heard the question and drew close once more, re-entering the discussion.
‘What does she know about her condition? Does she question the fact that she is solitary? Does she know she is unique? And indeed – is she unique? Do we know that for a fact?’
Only a few drones now remained, clearing the last of the dishes, removing cloths, wiping down surfaces that may have been touched by food.
‘I have never allowed our talks to go in the direction of questions,’ said Middle.
‘She knows she’s not the same as us,’ said Youngest, ‘without understanding the implications of the difference. She thinks of it in the same light as the difference in our clothes, our hairstyles – as if it were a choice!’
‘But does she know,’ asked Eldest, speaking slowly, deliberating over the thoughts that his own words stirred up in him, ‘that she is yet a child? That she…how shall I put it?… that in the natural order of events, she must expect to change?’
‘No,’ said Youngest. ‘She sees the drones and knows that they
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