LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER THREE – SPECIAL DELIVERY

      “IT’S BEEN THREE days,” Jimmy muttered almost to himself. “If I don’t get outside soon I’ll go mad.” The kitchen was thick with the smells of cooking and Jimmy ripped into a bunch of parsley with bored vehemence. The bandage was gone from his wrist. The cut was hardly visible now – like a smudged line of biro.

      “You know, that happens a lot,” Felix chirped, struggling to hold on to a potato. “People don’t go outside and then they lose their minds, and then they think the rest of the world has been destroyed by aliens or nuclear war or something, and—”

      “You’re holding the peeler upside-down,” Jimmy interrupted.

      “Oh. Oh yeah. I thought it was a bit dodgy. So what was I saying?”

      “The DGSE left three days ago,” Jimmy went on, ignoring Felix’s daydreams. “Don’t you think we should have heard something by now?”

      Felix shrugged and stared at his peeler, scrunching his face into a puzzled ball. “How come Yannick’s mother gets to go into the village,” he asked eventually, “but the rest of us have to stay indoors?”

      “Well, somebody has to bring us food, and all the clothes and stuff.”

      “But won’t she get spotted by imaginary intelligence?”

      “It’s ‘imagery intelligence’,” Jimmy corrected. “From satellites. But she’s always going into the village. It would look more suspicious if she didn’t go.”

      “So I suppose bringing back nine times the amount of groceries, buying every item of clothing from some grimy charity shop and being picked up in the truck by her son – that’s not suspicious at all.” Felix raised his eyebrows so high it looked like they might fly off his head at any moment.

      “You’ve got a point,” admitted Jimmy. “It’s risky, but it’s necessary, isn’t it?”

      Felix shrugged again. “S’pose,” he mumbled. Then he tried juggling with three of the potatoes. He didn’t have much success.

      Jimmy turned his attention back to the cooking. His wrist flicked the knife through a carrot with the skill of a chef but the enthusiasm of an eleven-year-old boy. The heavy metal pans huffed and bubbled with delicious-smelling stews.

      “And why have I done all the cooking?” Jimmy groaned.

      “If you didn’t want to cook,” Felix replied, “you should never have helped out that first night we were here. Then we would never have found out that it’s one of your, you know, skills.”

      Before Jimmy could respond, Georgie bounced in.

      “When’s dinner?” she asked, poking around the various ingredients that lay on the work surfaces.

      “When it’s ready!” snapped Jimmy. He dropped the knife and flung the slices of carrot into a simmering pot. “Where’s Yannick?”

      “Outside. Let him have a break.”

      “Oh, ‘let him have a break’,” Jimmy mocked. “Looks like I’m the one who’ll spend my life cooking now.”

      “What’s the matter with you?”

      Jimmy tried to hold back his anger. “Sorry, Georgie,” he said. “I shouldn’t take it out on you. It’s just that…” he paused mid-sentence to baste a chicken. “I hate this. How come I can cook?”

      “It’s your programming,” Georgie answered as gently as she could.

      “That’s what I told him,” Felix chipped in.

      “But it’s a stupid skill,” Jimmy grumbled. “It’s like whatever dumb idea Dr Higgins had eleven years ago is inside me.” He felt himself becoming more and more worked up, and he couldn’t hold it back. “They don’t know where I am,” he yelled, “and they don’t know what I’m doing, but NJ7 is still controlling me.”

      Helen slipped into the kitchen with concern on her face. “What’s all the noise about?” she asked, picking up a potato from the floor.

      “Jimmy doesn’t want to cook,” Felix announced.

      “That’s OK,” Helen said immediately. “I’ll help and—”

      “No!” Jimmy screamed, “I don’t want to be able to cook and I don’t want to be able to kill.”

      Jimmy’s mother looked across at Georgie, then back at her son. There was one thing they had to discuss, so she forced herself to bring it up. “Look,” she began, “I know this must be confusing for you both. About me and your father, I mean.”

      Jimmy glanced at his sister then dropped his eyes to the floor. Felix shifted uneasily from foot to foot.

      “Er,” he stuttered, “I have to, er, go finish my…” He edged towards the door, “…you know, on that…string.”

      Once Felix had gone, Jimmy found the atmosphere even more stifling.

      “Whatever happens,” his mother continued, “none of this is your fault – either of you. Don’t blame yourselves.”

      Jimmy let the words bounce off him. He knew what his answer was, but he refused to let himself say it. Then his sister said it for him.

      “I don’t blame myself,” she mumbled. “I blame you and Dad.”

      Jimmy didn’t know where to look. His sister’s words had stoked the anger inside him. He noticed his hands were shaking slightly, then saw that his mother’s were too.

      “OK,” sighed Helen, “that’s fine. But we both still love you just as much. And I know you still love your father.”

      “How can you still love someone,” Jimmy flashed back, “when you know what they’re doing is wrong?” He immediately regretted his words, but couldn’t take it back now. His mother said nothing. She had no answer. For a few seconds she stared at Jimmy and Georgie, then she backed out of the kitchen. As she did, the seething liquid in one of the pots bubbled over.

      Helen walked straight into Christopher Viggo, who caught her delicately by the shoulders and looked into her face.

      “What’s going on?” he whispered. Helen made sure the door was shut behind her so that her children couldn’t see.

      “It’s nothing,” she quivered. “Forget it.”

      “Listen,” Viggo rasped, “the kids are just restless. They need to get out of the house – let off some steam.”

      “It’s too dangerous.”

      Viggo looked deep into Helen’s eyes and let out a sigh. “Yannick says the village up the road is pretty small. The risk of NJ7 picking it out is minimal. He says there’s a lake nearby and stables…” He softly lifted Helen’s chin. “Let them have some fun. It could be days before we hear from Stovorsky.”

      “You think I’m being overprotective,” Helen whispered, “but they’re my children.” She held his gaze for a moment then pulled away and hurried upstairs.

      Viggo was about to follow, but there was a pounding on the front door. Jimmy had heard

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