The Declaration by Gemma Malley
Mrs Pincent frowned. ‘No, not Small. Make the bed up in the Pending dormitory.’
Anna’s eyes opened wide. No one had ever joined Grange Hall as a Pending. It had to be a mistake. Unless he’d been trained somewhere else, of course.
‘Has . . . has he come from another Surplus Hall?’ she asked before she could stop herself. Mrs Pincent didn’t approve of asking questions unless they involved clarification of a specific task.
Mrs Pincent’s eyes narrowed slightly. ‘That is all, Anna,’ she said with a cursory nod. ‘You’ll have it ready in an hour.’
Anna nodded silently and turned to leave, trying not to betray the intense curiosity she was feeling. A Pending Surplus would be at least thirteen. Who was he? Where had he been all this time? And why was he coming here now?
Chapter Two
Peter didn’t appear until a week later. He turned up in the middle of Science and Nature, and Anna tried not to even look at him because that’s what everyone was doing and she didn’t want him to know she was curious. No doubt he’d think he was something special and she wasn’t having that.
Anyway, she knew something that no one else knew. She knew that he hadn’t arrived that week; he’d arrived the week before, just like Mrs Pincent said he would. Only he had arrived late at night, and they must have taken him away somewhere because his bed hadn’t been slept in when she looked the next day.
It had been about midnight that she’d heard him arrive seven days before. Everyone else had been asleep, but Anna had been up on Floor 2, scribbling in her journal before hiding it away in the one place that she was sure it would never be found. The whole of Grange Hall had been silent except for a few dripping taps and the usual faint crying from the top floor, which suited Anna perfectly because it meant she was safe, that no one would interrupt her.
On her way back from Mrs Pincent’s office earlier that evening, she had told herself that she would throw the journal away, ashamed that she’d succumbed to temptation so easily.
But the thought of losing it made her wince with pain and longing, and immediately arguments for keeping it flooded her head, the most convincing of which was that it would get found if she threw it away. There was no way a beautiful pink suede journal would sit in a dustbin unnoticed, and even if she wrapped it up with old newspaper, someone would find it at some point, and when they did they’d find her writing in it.
No, she’d decided, it was much safer hidden, and Female Bathroom 2 was the only place she could think of. Female Bathroom 2 was situated on Floor 2, and it had contained a secret long before Anna’s journal entered Grange Hall – a little cavity behind one of the baths. Anna had discovered it years before when she’d dropped her soap down the side of the bath by mistake. Knowing she’d get beaten if she lost it – soap had to last four months and being Wasteful was considered a form of subversion that merited night working as a punishment – she’d managed to squirm into a position from which her arm could reach down where the soap had fallen, and had found it sitting on a little ledge which was completely hidden from view unless you knew what you were looking for.
At the time, she hadn’t really thought much about it – she was so relieved to have got the soap back, she’d just finished her wash quickly and raced back to the dormitory for Evening Vows. But later on, she’d realised that she’d found a little hiding place, and it made her feel both anxious and excited all at once. It was her little secret. And although she couldn’t pick it up and take it with her, it was, apart from her Grange Hall overalls, toothbrush and facecloth, the first thing she’d ever owned.
Surpluses weren’t allowed possessions; they had no right to own things in a world that they’d gate-crashed, Mrs Pincent said. And although Anna didn’t think that a secret cavity really constituted a possession, in the weeks afterwards, as if encouraged by this one first step on the ownership ladder, she’d begun to acquire things that were more tangible assets. Like a magpie, she had alighted upon a scrap of fabric that had been torn off a skirt from the laundry and a teaspoon that had been left by someone in the House Room, both of which she put in her secret hiding place, delirious in the knowledge that she knew something that no one else did. Of course, that had been a long time ago. She had grown out of that childish game years before.
At least she’d thought she had. Had hoped she had.
Either way, the journal was waiting for her the night that the new Surplus arrived. Anna had gone to Female Bathroom 2 for a late-night wash, just to check that it was safe, just to hold it in her hands one more time and see for herself the words that she had created, that she had made her mark with. It had been a long day, what with training, Cookery Practical and then having to make up the bed for the new Surplus in the Pending boys’ dormitory. She had completed all her chores, and meticulously made up the new Surplus’s bed with one sheet and one blanket, and had placed a facecloth, toothbrush, soap and tube of toothpaste on top of it, just as Mrs Pincent had asked her to.
As she had sat shivering in the cold bath (Surpluses weren’t allowed hot baths – they weren’t allowed to use any more of the world’s resources than was absolutely necessary), Anna, the Prefect, found her arm gingerly easing its way down the side of the tub, her reward for good behaviour. Anna had known it was wrong, but its hold on her was too strong to resist, and, as she had pulled it out, she could feel herself tremble with excitement. The soft pink between her fingers and the news that there was a new Surplus coming had created surges of adrenaline that zipped around her body, causing her toes to clench and her stomach to leap. A Pending Surplus from the Outside – he’d know what the world was like, he’d be untrained. He’d be . . . Anna had shuddered with anticipation as she’d begun to write. The truth was that she’d had no idea what he’d be like – dangerous and difficult, probably – but she had known that things would be different when he arrived. How could they fail to be?
As these thoughts had rushed around her head, she’d looked at the clock on the wall and noted with a sigh that it was five minutes to twelve. Grange Hall still had clocks in lots of the rooms, even though Surpluses didn’t need to refer to them. They were fixed to the wall, she’d heard Mrs Pincent tell one of the Instructors, and anyway, they reminded Mrs Pincent of a ‘better time’. Anna wasn’t sure whether Mrs Pincent meant a time long ago, or whether it was time itself that was better on a clock, but either way, she loved watching the hands slowly moving around the large, round clock faces and had convinced Mrs Dawson, one of the Instructors, to teach her how to read them, even though she didn’t need to. Surpluses had time embedded in their wrists; Surplus timekeeping was in digital. Embedded Time had been one of the New Ideas for Surpluses, when Surplus Halls were still new. Time wasn’t on a Surplus’s side, Mrs Pincent said. Time was just one of the things that Surpluses didn’t deserve. Legals owned time, but Surpluses were slaves to it, as every piercing bell announcing feeding, morning or bedtime at Grange Hall reminded them.
Embedded Time was one of the only New Ideas that actually took off, Mrs Kean had said once, talking to Mrs Dawson when she didn’t know Anna was listening. New Ideas didn’t tend to surface much any more, she’d said, because everyone was complacent. No one could be bothered to come up with new things because it was too much like hard work. And Mrs Dawson had nodded and said, ‘What a relief,’ and Mrs Kean had looked at her for a moment, as if she wanted to say something, but instead, she just nodded and that was the end of that.
Embedded Time sat under the skin, on the wrist, and every movement the Surplus made kept the mechanism going so that it wasn’t Wasteful or resource intensive. And with time ever-present, the Authorities argued, no Surplus could ever be late, no Surplus could ever leave their chores early. Anna couldn’t remember not having Embedded Time, couldn’t imagine why everyone wouldn’t have it. But Legal people like Instructors didn’t; they wore watches, which did the same thing, only on the outside of the wrist.
Anna had glanced down and confirmed that in spite of the Auth
Quickly getting out of the tub, she had taken a small towel from the rail in front of her and dried herself mechanically, the rough, dry cotton welcome after the cold, soapy water. And right then, she’d heard him arrive. The sounds were muffled and at one point she’d thought she could hear the anguished yelps of an injured dog, but then she’d realised it was probably a gag. They used gags sometimes, if Surpluses were particularly noisy. The driving unions had insisted on it, Mrs Pincent said – their members were getting upset. It was bad enough Surpluses existing, she said, without also causing mayhem and hurting Legal people.
Then Anna had heard something break and, a few seconds after that, a crack and a noise that had sounded like something heavy but soft hitting the floor. Then some more muffled voices, and a minute or so later, silence.
She’d crept out of the bathroom and held her breath for a few minutes, listening for something else – perhaps the sound of the Surplus being taken up the stairs to the Pending boys’ dormitory, but eventually she’d given up. He must have gone to Mrs Pincent’s office, she decided. She’d find out tomorrow, anyway. Right now it was time to go to bed.
But in the morning, when she’d taken a detour to breakfast in order to have a look at the new incumbent and perhaps to introduce herself, she’d found that the new Surplus’s bed hadn’t been slept in after all. The other Pending boys had simply shrugged when she’d asked them about him; Mrs Pincent hadn’t even told them someone new was coming and they certainly weren’t going to trouble themselves over an empty bed. An empty bed meant an extra blanket and no one was going to complain about that.
When there was no sign of him the next day, nor the day after that, Anna had begun to think that they must have taken him to a different Surplus Hall, or maybe to a detention centre; perhaps they’d decided that Pending was too late to arrive at Grange Hall.
But then, a week later, he’d turned up again.
He arrived, dressed in regulation navy overalls, the same overalls that every other Surplus wore – shapeless, sturdy and practical – just when Mr Sargent was telling the story of Longevity for about the fiftieth time. Mr Sargent was their Science and Nature teacher and he never got sick of that story, never tired of telling them about the natural scientists who found a way to cure old age. Before they did that, people used to die. All the time. From horrible diseases. And they looked awful too.
Anna knew the story of Longevity very well and, like Mr Sargent, she never got sick of it either. Longevity was how humans fulfilled the ambitions of Nature. Longevity proved that humans were superior in every way. But with superiority came responsibility, Mr Sargent said. You couldn’t abuse the trust and bounty of Mother Nature.
Before Longevity, people died from things called cancer, heart disease and Aids. They also got something called disability, sometimes, which meant that something went wrong and couldn’t be fixed. Like if someone lost a leg in an accident or something, they had to spend the rest of their life in a chair with wheels on it because they couldn’t make new legs back then. Renewal didn’t exist and brain exercises weren’t invented yet, and everyone died by the time they were seventy, apart from a few lucky people, but they weren’t really that lucky; they were tired all the time and couldn’t hear properly so they might as well have been dead, really.
Then the natural scientists discovered Renewal, where you could get new, fresh, cells to replace old ones and they mended the rest of your cells too. First they cured cancer. Then they cured heart disease. It took them quite a bit longer to cure Aids, but eventually they cured that too, although it needed more cells.
And then a natural scientist called Dr Fern discovered something else. He found out that Renewal worked against old age too. He took some of the drugs himself to see what happened, and he stopped getting older, just like that. Only he didn’t tell anyone about it for a while. And when he did, the Authorities (which used to be called the government) made it illegal to take the drugs if you didn’t have Aids or cancer, because they were worried about things called pensions and people being a Burden on the State.
Dr Fern died eventually because he wasn’t allowed to take the drugs any more, but a few years later, the Authorities realised that with Longevity, people wouldn’t have to stop working. If people didn’t get old, and they didn’t get ill, the government would save lots of money. By then Longevity drugs were being taken by people anyway, only they were doing it illegally. There were lots of people saying that Longevity drugs should be legalised, and so in 2030 the Prime Minister commissioned a trial. And when he realised that there were no side effects and that people could now live for ever, he decided that this was a breakthrough, and the biggest drug companies in England got together to start producing Longevity drugs for everyone.
That’s when dying stopped, first in Europe, America and China and then, gradually, everywhere else. Some countries were late adopters because the drugs were expensive, but then terrorists started to attack England because they wouldn’t give everyone the drugs and soon after that the price got lower so everyone could have them.
‘And what do you think happened, then?’ Mr Sargent always asked, his beady eyes searching out someone in the classroom who would encapsulate the fundamental flaw in the programme.
More times than not, Anna would put up her hand.
‘There were too many people,’ she would say seriously. ‘If no one dies and people have more children, there’s nowhere for everyone to go.’
‘Exactly,’ Mr Sargent would say. And then he would tell them about the Declaration, which was introduced in 2065, and which said that people could only have one baby. If they tried to have another, it would be terminated.
Then, a few years after that, they realised that one baby was still too many. So in 2080 the new Declaration said that no one could have any children at all, unless they Opted Out of Longevity completely. Every country had to sign the Declaration and Surplus Police, or Catchers, as they began to be called, were responsible for tracking down anyone who broke it.
Opting Out meant that you were allowed to have a child. ‘One child per Opt Out’ or ‘A life for a life’, as the Declaration put it. But that meant you would get ill and then die, so Opting Out wasn’t very popular.
People who Opted Out were regarded with suspicion, Mr Sargent told them. Who would die just to have a child, when you didn’t even know if the child would be any good? Of course, there were some selfish, criminal people who didn’t Opt Out and still had children to suck up the world’s natural resources and ruin things for the Legal people . . . but they all knew about that, didn’t they? That was why Grange Hall existed – to give the Surpluses that resulted from such criminality a purpose; to help them learn their responsibilities and to train them to provide a useful service to Legals. Surpluses weren’t allowed Longevity drugs either. ‘Why prolong the agony?’ Mr Sargent said.
And that was the point at which Peter arrived. The door opened, Mrs Pincent walked in, and Peter followed. Anna didn’t know he was called Peter then; when she first saw him walk through the door into the Science and Nature lab, she only knew that this, finally, was the Pending Surplus. That he hadn’t been taken somewhere else, after all.
Everyone was looking at him, sneakily. Without letting anyone see that she, too, was shooting little looks at him, Anna noted that he was tall and gangly and had very pale skin that had some dark marks on it that could have been bruises but could equally have been dirt. It was his eyes that really stood out. They were brown, which wasn’t particularly interesting, but they were different from the other Surplus’s eyes. They darted around the room, stared, then flickered away, before darting around again like they were looking for someth
‘Sit there,’ Mrs Pincent instructed him, pointing to an empty desk. ‘Next to Anna.’
Anna tried to look straight ahead as he walked towards her, but her eyes were drawn to him, and as she looked at him she felt her heart begin to beat loudly in her chest. He was staring right at her, like he wasn’t scared of anything, like he didn’t Know His Place at all.
And as soon as Mrs Pincent left, having made it clear that no one was to pay the new Surplus any special attention, he leant over to her, like it was perfectly OK to talk to someone in the middle of a training session.
‘You’re Anna Covey, aren’t you?’ he said, so softly Anna thought she might have imagined it. ‘I know your parents.’
Chapter Three
The new Surplus, Anna decided almost immediately, was going to have trouble fitting in and Learning His Place. And if he thought that it was funny or clever to tell lies and to talk about people’s parents as if they weren’t selfish criminals, then he would learn soon enough that those kinds of things led to Solitary or a beating.
She had ignored him completely after his inappropriate comments about her parents, which had made her both irritable and uncomfortable. But whenever she turned a corner, he seemed to be there, looking at her with those challenging eyes and making her feel awkward, even though he was the new one and if anyone should be feeling awkward it was him.