Lionboy Part 2

Around three or four in the morning, in the real dark when even the slugs and the night creatures have gone back to sleep and before the birds have woken, Charlie leaped up with a start.

Rats! How much time had he lost?

The apartment was quiet. His bedroom door was closed.

Charlie tiptoed over to it. Locked-on a latch. Well, that was easy: He got his ID card from his bag and slid it gently into the crack of the door. Jake at the fountain had taught him how to do that years ago. A little twitch of the wrist and-bingo. The latch jumped out of its slot, and the door eased open.

Dark in the grimy hallway.

Breathing sounds from the other bedroom: steady, heavy, male breathing. Heavy dog breathing filling up the gaps.

Stay asleep, you big lugs, Charlie urged, inside his head.

His bag over his shoulder, he crept to the apartment door. Locked: two bolts, easily slid, and a double lock needing a key.

Charlie peered through the dim light, and then almost laughed out loud. Here was the key, on the hall shelf. Rafi obviously thought him totally useless. Well, he'd show him.

He slid silently through to the communal landing of the housing tower and let the door shut behind him. Rather than call the noisy elevator, he opened the gla.s.s door to the stairwell and scampered down, down, down, down, flight after flight until he was giddy. He stopped to get his breath and his balance back: His head was spinning. Outside he could see the cold gray that begins to light the sky before dawn, and the morning star hanging like a distant gold coin against the gray.

By the time he got to the bottom and out into the yard, crimson streaks were shooting up the sky, gray was fading to let through a beautiful clear blue, and a few strands of white cloud blew like flags high, high up. First hurdle crossed, and it was going to be a beautiful day. Charlie lifted his nose, caught the river smell, and started to run south, following the sweet damp smell that would take him to the river and to the sea.

He was starving when he got in reach of the Thames. In front of him was one of the pleasurebanks, which during the afternoon and evening would be bouncing with rides and games and stalls selling fluffed sugar and sweet fruit. Now it was silent, the rides wrapped up in canvas against the damp, and the pleasurebank people all still asleep, or beginning to fry up their bacon for the new day. The smell tormented Charlie's nose, which actually began to twitch. "Bacon sandwich," he murmured.

So he skirted the pleasurebanks, feeling rather grown-up (because his normal reaction would be, I want to go on the rides! I want to go!), and moved east toward the rising sun. He started along a towpath lined with pretty houseboats: He could hear the people inside yawning, and see them popping up out of their painted hatches to stretch in the morning air. He kept hurriedly along. He didn't want people to remember that they had seen him. Rafi would be waking up. The "humans" of whom Petra had spoken might have friends or helpers. Charlie pulled his head in and scurried on like a spider along a wall.

It was only another half hour or so before he was back on the riversides near where he lived. Ahead of him were the ruins, left over from the times when thousands more people lived here, before they fled the car fumes and treachery of city life for the New Communities (Private Gated Village Communities, s.p.a.ce Communities, Empire Opportunity Communities-all kinds of promises of a safer, cleaner life). Along the edge, the muddy flats of low tide, he could see the little fishing boats. Better still, he could see a shimmer of heat rising from near the sh.o.r.e end of the jetty and hear the low crackle of a grill, and smell the unmistakable smell of a riverman's breakfast: eel, gasper, and sparrowfish, by the sniff of it. Charlie leaped over the little wall from the towpath to the fisherguys' territory, landed in a shallow splat of salty mud, and ambled over to the jetty.

He recognized the fisherguy at the grill: It was Mr. Ubsworth, Steve's dad. Mr. Ubsworth looked a lot like a fish himself-long and grayish pink and wet-looking. Behind him was a large canvas with a small mountain of slithery silver fish: last night's catch. Mr. Ubsworth had a big old eel up on the table and was cleaning it for grilling, sc.r.a.ping the silver skin and crimson innards off the table into an old sack. A skinny brown cat was picking around it.

Mr. Ubsworth looked up and saw him. Too late to be discreet. Oh well.

"Morning, Mr. Ubsworth, sir!" called Charlie cheerfully.

"Hey, Charlieboy!" returned Mr. Ubsworth. Then, "Early!" he commented. Charlie agreed. "Hungry?" Mr. Ubsworth wondered. Charlie agreed again. Two minutes later he was wrapping his mouth around a toasted eel sandwich, b.u.t.tered up with lemon and pepper, and he'd never tasted anything better. The eels here were huge-eight feet long, some of them. Their meat was more like chicken than fish. Some of the schoolkids said snake tasted like eel, but Charlie had never eaten snake. "Africans don't eat them," his father had said. "Like the English don't eat snails." So Charlie's dad ate snails, and his mum ate snake, and Charlie didn't eat either. When it came to it, he didn't actually want to. Give him a good eel sandwich any day.

Mr. Ubsworth had a cup of tea ready too.

"Where you off to, boy?" asked Mr. Ubsworth.

"Lessons," said Charlie, lying automatically.

"Aye," said Mr. Ubsworth. He carried on with his cleaning, pausing only to take Charlie's diram, until a group of other fisherguys came up from the water's edge.

"Be going along then," said Charlie. "Thank you."

"Aye," said Mr. Ubsworth.

Rafi did wake up. Troy was whining and slathering at him, so he pulled his head out from under his pillow. He listened for Charlie. Hearing nothing, he leaped lightly from his bed and looked into Charlie's room.

First, he was just surprised. It hadn't occurred to him that Charlie would have the guts to run off.

Then he was angry. His lips went thin, and his face grew hard. Turning from the empty bed, he kicked the dog. "Could've bliddy woken, couldn't you?" he snarled. "Barked, or something? Or is that too hard for you?" Troy yelped and skittered across the floor in a way that suggested he'd been kicked often before.

Rafi grabbed his phone and without even thinking started punching in a number so he could shout at someone-when he realized that he couldn't. If he told his people that he had let the boy escape, he would be humiliated. This could not get out-the Chief Executive must not hear about this. Even when you got everything right, it was tough enough being a teenage criminal-getting people to believe you could do stuff, making them have faith in your abilities. But mistakes-mistakes were out of the question. His reputation was at stake here. n.o.body-n.o.body-was going to have the chance to call him a stupid kid.

That bliddy Charlie!

He thought fast. Then he called all the contacts he had for friends of Aneba and Magdalen. None of them had heard from Charlie. They all thought he'd gone off on a sudden trip with his parents, to start their new job in a toxic post-flood area where communications were very bad but they'd be in touch in due course and not to worry. The reason they thought this was because Rafi had spent the previous afternoon on Magdalen's computer telling them so, by e-mail.

Rafi had done his job too well.

He couldn't send Sid and Winner after Charlie because they had their hands full on the submarine.

So, what-should he call the police?

He laughed. And then thought: Well, why not?

But he didn't. Rafi knew which side he was on.

"So, Troy," he said. "Shall we go for a run?"

The kid couldn't get far. Troy would track him down, the little rat.

As Charlie shouldered his bag after breakfast, he caught sight of a flick of furry brown tail out of the corner of his eye. He looked around. Again, a brown flick. It was beckoning to him-directing him back onto the towpath. With a gesture of thanks to Mr. Ubsworth, Charlie jumped over the little wall again and saw there in front of him as he landed a very proud-looking cat's bottom, tail waving erect above it as it sauntered away from him. Of course he followed it.

Behind a hedge, out of sight, the cat turned around. Charlie didn't recognize it.

"So 'ow's you gettin' dahn river?" it said briefly. Charlie was used to the quick, brusque way these cats talked, but anyone else might think they were a bit rude.

"Jump a ship, I thought," said Charlie.

"Funny time of day for stowing away," said the cat. "Follow me."

Charlie followed-back along the towpath for a mile or so farther east, then, when they reached the marina, across the larger pool where the pleasureboats lived (again Charlie felt a pang of yearning, to go out on a pleasureboat, with the bunting flapping and the sun shining, and they could eat cherry sherbet and dive off the stern) into the darker, smaller water-yard of the riverpolice. Nearest the entrance was a riverpolice launch; polished wooden deck, extra large engine, riverpolice insignia on the side and a policeguy fast asleep in the c.o.c.kpit.

"Go in quietly," whispered the cat. "Curl up in the bow on the anchor chain. 'E'll be leaving for Greenwich soon on his patrol. As soon as 'e wakes up. He was drunk last night"-here the cat took on a look of disdain-"and 'e'll be in a rush when he sees 'e's late. At Greenwich he'll tie up and go to the pub. Soon as 'e's gorn, orf you go and catch yourself a seaship. They're 'eaded acrorss the channel. France."

"France!" he exclaimed. France! He didn't know what he thought about that. France!

"Get on," said the cat impatiently. "Ain't got all day."

Charlie would have to climb right over the policeguy to get to the bow. He had to step over him without waking him, then sneak down the companionway into the boat and along to the end. It was all right for cats-they could leap so lightly, it was almost like flying. But a boy makes a thump when he lands.

Charlie edged himself slowly and carefully along the railings that lined the deck, bypa.s.sing the policeguy, and was able to sneak past and swiftly down the stairs.

"Whisht!" hissed the cat, and Charlie heard a sort of rumbling snore-y noise, a rumbly, creaking, yawning, groaning sound that could only be the noise of a hungover policeguy slightly disturbed by something and waking up in the open air, on a boat, and feeling stiff and stupid and cold and uncomfortable. Charlie hurtled into the bow, folded himself up in the dark as tiny as he could, and lay still. He could smell engine oil, canvas, turpentine. The anchor chain was cold and hard, coiled beneath him. Never mind. The policeguy, just as the cat had predicted, was already rubbing his head, cursing, and trying to start up the engine. As soon as the noise of the engine was covering any noise he he might make, Charlie positioned himself so that he could peer out of the anchor's chain-holes, and settled in to think about Rafi. might make, Charlie positioned himself so that he could peer out of the anchor's chain-holes, and settled in to think about Rafi.

He hadn't caught up with him! He really hadn't! Yet . . .

He wondered for a moment how much effort Rafi would put into pursuing him.

He couldn't imagine why Rafi would bother with him. But then he couldn't imagine how Rafi could be involved with his parents' disappearance. Rafi was just a kid in the neighborhood-older, and cool, but still just a kid. Kind of. He was still a teenager.

But he could certainly see that someone like Rafi would be annoyed at a younger kid like Charlie getting the better of him.

He didn't like the idea of an angry Rafi.

Then he smiled. "But I'm angry too," he whispered.

Several miles downstream, Aneba was saying: "Who are you and where are you taking us?" It was the seventeenth time he had said it. And for the seventeenth time Winner was sneering and smiling nastily and replying: "You don't want to know, sunshine. You don't want to know." And Aneba's heart constricted-his child, his wife, his wife, his child.

But he wanted to know very much. When they knew, they would be able to work out what to do about it.

He sat back, closed his eyes, and thought. If he thought enough, he might be able to work it out for himself.

CHAPTER 5.

There are worse ways to spend a day than chugging down the river, even if you are curled up on an anchor chain, stowing away on a police launch. After his early start and long walk that morning Charlie was tired, so he ate an apple, peered out at the view of the city as it floated past, and dropped off to sleep on a canvas sack. Unfortunately, Charlie was asleep when the riverpoliceguy docked at Greenwich, and asleep when he went for his lunch and and when he came back, and still asleep when he pulled away and headed his boat down the river to Silvertown. when he came back, and still asleep when he pulled away and headed his boat down the river to Silvertown.

Charlie was awakened by the shuddering of the boat starting off, and a scrabbly scratchy thing running over his foot.

"Yow!" he yelped, sitting up hurriedly, before remembering that he was in a low locker in the bow and the ceiling was about two feet high. He hit his head sharply.

"Yow!" he yelped again, tears springing to his eyes, and he lay back down, awkwardly. A sneaky-looking black rat, presumably the scratchy scrabbly thing that had just run over his foot, was looking at him with an expression of disdain. The cabin was dim. What light there was, was coming in from the west. The position of the sun and his own growling stomach told him it was certainly past lunchtime.

"Oh, no!" Charlie whispered, remembering now not to yelp, as the policeguy would still be in the boat. "Where are we? What am I going to do, rat?"

The rat gave him a look that said clearly "Waddo I care?" and slipped out through the anchor hole and down into the murky water below.

"Oh!" said Charlie. "I thought you were nice. Well, there you go." He lay on the k.n.o.bbly anchor chain, being as quiet as he could, wondering if anything good would ever happen to him.

Well, he thought, we're still heading east, i.e., out to sea, and that's where the cats said Mum and Dad were being taken, so that's all right. But now I've missed the chance to meet the Greenwich cats, and hear if they have any more news. He wondered if he should try to slip overboard like the rat and swim ash.o.r.e . . . Or if he should push the riverpoliceguy overboard and steer the boat back to Greenwich . . . No. Stupid ideas. He had to be sensible.

The problem with having to be sensible is that if you think about it too much, soon nothing seems sensible, and this is what happened to Charlie now. Within a few minutes it seemed to him that he had been foolish to leave Rafi's, half-witted to take the cat's advice, stupid to sleep all day, idiotic to think he could just set off "to sea" and expect to find his parents. The sea is huge. The brown cat had said France. France is huge. How many ports are there on the channel coast? Hundreds. Why on earth had he thought this was a good way to try and find them?

Charlie was a boy who liked to do things, to act. Stuck in that anchor-chain locker, unable to do anything, his misery seemed about to overwhelm him. But then he heard a most peculiar noise.

It was music-loud and raucous music, but not ugly. No, it was wild and exciting, pulsing like drums and wailing like violins, though it wasn't either of those. There was a sound that he half-recognized but couldn't put a name to-a whistling, pumping sound with a swirling melody, like all the things he'd ever wanted to do but couldn't, like adventure and danger and strange, interesting people, like long ago and far away. His heart immediately began to beat faster, and he slid out of the locker into the boat's little cabin without even thinking of the riverpoliceguy.

As it turned out, it didn't matter whether Charlie thought about him or not because the riverpoliceguy was busy doing his job: He was up against the railings of his little boat with a megaphone, addressing the ship alongside them, saying: "You are breaking the rules. You are causing a nuisance. Under Waterway Bylaw 1783 zx (1), you are not permitted to play music on a public waterway without a license. Unless you produce a valid license within five minutes, I am obliged to board your vessel and prevent further nuisance being caused. You are under a warning. You are breaking the rules . . ." and so on. But Charlie took no notice of all that. He was too busy gazing at the extraordinary ship before him.

For a start, the ship was huge: a great, tall, wide, old-fashioned steamer. And not only was she huge, she was crimson. Not a soppy dolly pink, but crimson like blood, like the sun going down on a burning African night, like blood oranges and garnets and pomegranate seeds. Where she wasn't crimson she was gold: the hair of her gorgeous carved figurehead, for example, with its green eyes and sidelong inviting smile, and the sculpted rims of her many portholes, and the curled leaves and vines carved all over her magnificent stern. She had three masts, a bowsprit, cannons and life-boats along the decks, and two fine smokestacks amidship. In front of the smokestacks was a low circular canvas awning in crimson and white stripes like seaside rock, and gay flags fluttered in her rigging. She was heading out to sea under power, catching the ebb tide, but her sails were not yet up. Charlie suddenly wanted, more than anything, to see this amazing craft under canvas, bowling along on the high seas.

The wild music was coming from this ship, and it seemed that neither the ship nor her music cared about the pesky riverpoliceguy any more than an elephant cares about a fly on its bottom: He kept on bawling through his megaphone, the ship kept on moving downstream.

And then suddenly a figure appeared on the deck, and seemed to notice the policeguy, for it leaned over the side as if listening to hear what he was saying, and then disappeared for a moment, and then reappeared, casting down a rope ladder from the deck and making beckoning noises. The ship slowed a little to stabilize in the flowing stream of the river, and the policeguy maneuvered his little boat up to the great crimson hull. He made fast to the bottom of the ladder and began to climb up.

Charlie, watching for his opportunity, knew exactly what he was going to do. The moment the coast was clear, he was going to board this ship. It was so beautiful, so exciting. What kind of people could be on board? Who would own such a vessel? He had never seen anything so tempting in his life, and he had to find out about it.

Something was going on up on the deck. He couldn't see clearly because the little riverboat was tied up against the ship's crimson side and the deck was way above him, but he could hear shouting, and scuffling, and suddenly-a great splash.

He looked to where the sound had been.

There was the riverpoliceguy, closer to the river than he would have cared to be: i.e., in it. He was splashing and struggling and trying to catch his breath, which is hard with your boots on when you've been thrown overboard.

"Sorry, fella!" came a hoa.r.s.e cry from overhead, and then the tempo of the ship picked up, the music suddenly stopped, and the ship began to cruise swiftly, like a fighting swan, on down the river-leaving the riverpoliceguy in its wake, and pulling his little boat along beside her almost as if it had been completely forgotten. Which perhaps it had.

Charlie, sitting alone in the little boat's cabin, being dragged at considerable speed to who knows where, couldn't say a word.

Several miles upstream, Rafi and Troy were standing by Mr. Ubsworth's stall on the riverside. Troy was panting and drooling. He'd run all the way, following Charlie's scent. Rafi had followed him in the long silver car, and was looking cool and pale. He was staring at Troy, his lip twisted.

"You stupid animal," he said, quite calmly to start with. "You stuuuupid stuuuupid animal. This is not the kid, it's a fish-stall. Didn't you get a decent sniff of him yesterday in the car? What do you think I feed you for, you plackett! It's not for the charm of your company, it's for your nose! And if your nose can't tell the difference between a boy and a plate of fish, you're not worth your keep! Are you? So pig off! Go on!" He picked up a stick and jerked it in Troy's face. animal. This is not the kid, it's a fish-stall. Didn't you get a decent sniff of him yesterday in the car? What do you think I feed you for, you plackett! It's not for the charm of your company, it's for your nose! And if your nose can't tell the difference between a boy and a plate of fish, you're not worth your keep! Are you? So pig off! Go on!" He picked up a stick and jerked it in Troy's face.

Troy, whining, his tongue flobbering, went to the edge of the water and ran up and down.

Mr. Ubsworth observed and said nothing.

"You been here all morning?" Rafi said to him.

"Aye," said Mr. Ubsworth, rinsing a sparrowfish in his bucket.