Siberia by Ann Halam Page B

connected with her midriff, then she was gone into the dark. Rain and I looked at each other. We were the weaklings, the ones doomed to think too much.
    “What if they get us by our fingerprints?” whispered Rain.
    “They haven’t got the things they’d need. They’re not trained police. They’re idiots, guarding a lot of half-starved children.
They
don’t care.”
    “Why did we get into this, Sloe? Why did we go to the bad? It’s crazy. It was a privilege to come to school, and we’ve wasted it. Why were we such fools?”
    “It’s not a privilege. You finish your course, then you end up back in the Settlements. Oh, I don’t know. It’s a rotten world, we were desperate.
Go on,
Rain.”
    Rain put out the last candle. “You first.”
    I flung myself through empty space, grabbing ahead of me for that cold metal. I was flying, I was falling, then my hands hit the bar and locked on to it. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear the guards coming. The tramp of their boots was like thunder. I was always scared of that gap; and Rain was more scared than me, but I knew he’d jump now I’d done it. I scrambled down, slipping through several handholds once, and wrenching my weak leg.
    I dropped to the ground.
    “Rain!”
    “I’m right behind you.”
    I could see him moving. He was high up, but he’d made the leap. I thought he was safe so I hobbled and stumbled for cover. I was in the undercroft of the Dogs’ own barracks when they hit the watchtower, surrounding it, flashing their torches, letting off rifles. When they started barking and yelling in triumph, I knew they’d got Rain.
    There was nothing I could do. I sneaked into my dorm again, before they really began hunting for the rest of us. I found out next morning that everyone else had got safely away too. But we’d lost all our stuff, and Rain was in deep, deep trouble.
    A general assembly was called in the great gymnasium hall, with the teachers up onstage. Madam Principal was at her rostrum: her most trusted stooges, the chief wardens, in a half-circle behind her, and all of us Bugs lined up below. Permanents on the left, Termers on the right. She said how shocked and appalled she was that a Bug (she said a junior, of course), a mere child, had been involved in the crime ring that had been uncovered. She said the ringleaders had corrupted his innocence, and deserved no mistaken loyalty from us. Any Bug who gave information would be treated firmly but kindly, and she was sure somebody knew something. . . . I didn’t listen, any more than I’d listened at Midwinter Break, when she was telling us what a wonderful place New Dawn was. I looked at Rain, who was standing on the stage between two guards. His uniform had been taken away, because he was in disgrace. He was wearing a dirt-colored T-shirt and patched, knee-length pants that must have been in his baggage when he first arrived. They were far too small for him.
    Rain didn’t look at anyone. When he was sentenced to thirty-six hours in the Box, his expression didn’t change. When he was told he would be given time to think it over, he went on gazing out over our heads. The guards brought him down, and led him through the gap between our ranks. He was walking on his own, his chin high: but I don’t think he saw us. His eyes were bruises. You could see bruises and weals on his white throat, and his arms too.
    And we kept silent. Rose and I, Amur and Tottie, Ifrahim and Bird and Lavrenty and Miriam, and everyone else who might have spoken. We couldn’t have done anything to save Rain. He was going into the Box whether he talked or not: we knew that. But we could have shared his fate; and we didn’t. We hadn’t had a chance to talk to each other, but we all probably had the same idea. Obviously whoever had tipped off the guards had mentioned no names. Madam Principal was convinced that it must have been seniors who were stealing on such a large scale, and Rain had been just their errand boy. We