Eoin Colfer - The Supernaturalist

CHAPTER 1:

Cosmonaut Hill

SATELLITE CITY,

Northern Hemisphere, soon

SATELLITE City. The City of the Future, proclaimed the billboards. A metropolis

completely controlled by the Myishi 9 Satellite hovering overhead like a floating

man-of-war. An entire city custom-constructed for the third millennium. Everything

the body wanted, and nothing the soul needed. Three hundred square miles of grey

steel and automobiles.

Satellite City. A supercity of twenty-five million souls, each one with a story more

heartbreaking than the last. If it’s happy ever afters you want, stay away from the city

of the future.

Take Cosmo Hill, for example, a nice enough boy who never did anything wrong

in his short existence. Unfortunately this was not enough to guarantee him a happy

life, because Cosmo Hill did not have a sponsor.

And in Satellite City, if you didn’t have a sponsor, and they couldn’t trace your

natural parents through public record DNA files, then you were sent to an orphanage

until you reached adulthood. And by that time you were either dead or the orphanage

had fabricated a criminal record for you so you could be sold to one of the private

labour prisons.

Fourteen years before we take up the thread of this story, baby Cosmo was

discovered swaddled in an insulated Cheery Pizza envelope on Cosmonaut Hill in

Moscowtown. The state police swabbed him for DNA, searched for a match in the

Satellite mainframe and came up blank. Nothing unusual about that, orphans turn up

every day in the city. So the newly christened Cosmo Hill was dipped in a vaccine vat

and sent on a tube to the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys.

Freight class.

Satellite City was not part of any welfare state, so the institutions had to raise

funds any way they could. Clarissa Frayne’s speciality was product testing. Whenever

a new modified food or untested pharmaceutical product was being developed, the

orphanage volunteered its charges as guinea pigs. It made perfect financial sense. The

orphans got fed and cleaned, and the Frayne Institute got paid for the privilege.

Cosmo received his schooling from education software, his teeth were whiter than

white and his hair was lustrous and flake-free, but his insides felt like they were being

scoured with a radioactive wire brush. Eventually Cosmo realized that the orphanage

was slowly killing him. It was time to get out.

There were only three ways out of Clarissa Frayne: adoption, death or escape.

There was zero chance that he’d actually be adopted, not at his age. Truculent

teenagers were not very popular with the childless middle classes. For years, he had

cherished the dream that someone would want him; now it was time to face facts.

Death was much easier to achieve. All he had to do was keep on doing what he

was told, and his body would give up in a matter of years. The average life

expectancy of an institutionalized orphan was fifteen years. Cosmo was fourteen.

That left him with less than twelve months before the statistics said his time was up.

Twelve months to plan for the final option. The only way he was getting out of

Clarissa Frayne alive: escape.

At the Clarissa Frayne Institute for Parentally Challenged Boys, every day was

basically the same. Toil by day, fitful sleep by night. There were no days off, no

juvenile rights. Every day was a work day. The marshals worked the orphans so hard,

that by eight p.m. most of the boys were asleep standing up, dreaming of their beds.

Cosmo Hill was the exception. He spent every moment of his waking life watching

for that one chance. That split second when his freedom would beckon to him from

outside an unlocked door or an unguarded fence. He must be ready to seize that

moment and run with it.

It wasn’t likely that his chance would come on this particular day. And even if it

did, Cosmo didn’t think he would have the energy to run anywhere.

The no-sponsors had spent the afternoon testing a new series of antiperspirants.

Their legs had been shaved and sectioned with rings of tape. The flesh between the

bands was sprayed with five varieties of antiperspirant, and then the boys were set on

treadmills and told to run. Sensors attached to their legs monitored their sweat glands,

determining which spray was most effective. By the end of the day, Cosmo had run

ten kilometres and the pores on his legs were inflamed and scalding. He was almost

glad to be cuffed to a moving partner and begin the long walk back to the dormitory.

Marshal Redwood ushered the boys into the dorm. Redwood resembled a waxed

gorilla, with the exception of a red quiff which he toyed with constantly.

‘Now, boys,’ said Redwood, unlocking one pair of cuffs at a time. ‘There’s a game

on tonight that I am very interested in seeing. As a matter of fact, I bet a few dinars on

the outcome. So if you know what’s good for you

Redwood didn’t have to finish his threat. The boys knew that the marshal had a

hundred legal ways of making a no-sponsor’s life miserable. And a thousand illegal

ones.

‘Sleep well, young princes,’ grinned the marshal, keying his code into the dorm

door. ‘Tomorrow, as usual, is a busy day. Jam-packed full of fun.’

The no-sponsors relaxed once Redwood had gone, and the silence of discipline

was replaced by the groans and sobs of boys in pain. Cosmo touched his leg gingerly

where a particularly acidic spray had actually burnt the skin.

‘Five minutes to lights-out,’ said Redwood’s voice over a network of speakers.

‘Climb the ladders, boys.’

Three hundred orphans turned immediately to the dozen or so steel ladders and

began climbing. Nobody wanted to be stranded on the dorm floor once the ladders

were retracted. If the marshals caught a no-sponsor on the ground after lights-out, a

ten-kilometre run would seem like a Sunday stroll compared to the punishment they

would dish out.

Each boy had a section in the dorm, where he ate, slept and passed whatever

leisure time the no-sponsors had. These rooms were actually sections of cardboard

utility pipe that had been sawed into six-foot lengths. The pipes were suspended on a

network of wires almost fifty feet off the ground. Once the pipes were occupied by

orphans, the entire contraption swayed like an ocean liner.

Cosmo climbed quickly, ignoring the pain in his leg muscles. His pipe was near

the top. If the lights went out before he reached it, he could be stranded on the ladder.

Each step brought fresh stabs of pain to his tendons, but he climbed on, pressing

against the boy ahead with his head, feeling the boy behind closing in.

After a few minutes’ feverish climbing, Cosmo reached his level. A narrow

walkway, barely the width of his hand, serviced each pipe. Cosmo slid across

carefully, gripping a rail on the underside of the walkway above him. His pipe was

four columns across. Cosmo swung inside, landing on the foam rubber mattress. Ten

seconds later, the lights went out.

A sick yellow glow lit the interior of each pipe. Dinner. The meal had been thrown

in earlier by a marshal in a cherry picker. The meal-packs had been tested a few years

previously by the no-sponsors for use by soldiers in the field. The trays and water

bottles were luminous and also edible, which meant that the orphans could eat after

lights-out, saving the management a few dinars. The tray was a rough unleavened

crispbread, and the water bottle a semi-rigid gum. The army had discontinued use of

the meal-packs following several lawsuits by soldiers, claiming that the luminous

packs caused internal bleeding. The orphanage bought up the surplus and fed them to

the orphans every single day.

Cosmo ate slowly, not bothering to wonder what was in the meal. Wondering

about it would only add one more worry to his list. He had to believe that he would

escape Clarissa Frayne before the meal-packs could do him any lasting damage.

Cosmo saved the water for last, using most of it to wash down the crispbread tray.

Then he turned the gum bottle inside out, laying it across his head like a flannel.

There must be a better life, he thought glumly. Somewhere, at this very moment,

people were talking openly. Surely people were laughing. Real laughter too, not just

the spiteful kind that so often echoed around the orphanage halls.

Cosmo lay back, feeling the gum bottle’s moisture seeping into his forehead. He

didn’t want to think tonight. He didn’t want to play the parent game, but the sleep that

he had yearned for was proving elusive. His own parents. Who were they? Why had

they abandoned him on Cosmonaut Hill? Maybe he was Russian. It was impossible to

tell from his features. Brown curly hair, brown eyes, light skin freckled brown. He

could be from anywhere.

Why had they abandoned him?

Cosmo transferred the gum bottle to a red strip on his leg. Shut up, he told his

brain. Not tonight. No living in the past. Look to the future.

Someone knocked gently on the pipe above. It was Ziplock Murphy. The network

was opening up. Cosmo answered the knock with one of his own, then pulled back his

mattress signalling Fence in the pipe below. The no-sponsors had developed a system

of communication that allowed them to converse without angering the marshals.

Clarissa Frayne discouraged actual face-to-face communication between the boys on

the grounds that friendships might develop. And friendships could lead to unity,

maybe even revolt.

Cosmo dug his nails into a seam in the cardboard pipe and pulled out two small

tubes. Both had been fashioned from mashed gum bottle and crispbread, then baked

on a window sill. Cosmo screwed one into a small hole in the base of his pipe, and the

other into a hole overhead.

Ziplock’s voice wafted through from above. ‘Hey, Cosmo. How are your legs?’

‘Burning,’ grunted Cosmo. ‘I put my gum bottle on one, but it’s not helping.’

‘I tried that too,’ said Fence from below. ‘Anti-perspirants. This is nearly as bad as

the time they had us testing those Creeper slugs. I was throwing up for a week.’

Comments and suggestions snuck through the holes from all over the pipe

construct. The fact that the pipes were all touching, along with the acoustics of the

hall, meant that voices travelled amazing distances through the network. Cosmo could

hear no-sponsors whispering a hundred metres away.

‘What does the Chemist say?’ asked Cosmo. ‘About our legs?’

The Chemist was the orphanage name for a boy three columns across. He loved to

watch medical programmes on TV and was the closest the no-sponsors had to a

consultant.

Word came back in under a minute. ‘The Chemist says spit on your hands and rub

it in. The spit has some kind of salve in it. Don’t lick your fingers though, or the

antiperspirant will make you sicker than those Creeper slugs.’

The sound of boys spitting echoed through the hall. The entire lattice of pipes

shook with their efforts. Cosmo followed the Chemist’s advice, then lay back, letting

a hundred different conversations wash over him. Sometimes he would join in, or at

least listen to one of Ziplock’s yarns. But tonight all he could think about was that

moment when freedom would beckon to him. And being ready when it arrived.

Cosmo’s chance at freedom came the very next day during a routine transfer. Forty

no-sponsors, Cosmo among them, had just spent the day at a music company

watching proposed TV spots for computer-generated pop groups, followed by a sixty-

kilobyte questionnaire. Which sim-singer did you prefer? Which sim-performer was

cool? Cool? Even the company’s computers were out of touch. Kids rarely said

‘cool’ any more. Cosmo barely read the questions before ticking a box with his dig

pen. He preferred music made by real people to pixel-generated pop. But nobody

complained. A day watching music videos was infinitely preferable to more chemical

tests.

Frayne marshals loaded the no-sponsors into a truck after the session. The vehicle

must have been a hundred years old, with actual rubber tyres instead of plastic treads.

Cosmo was paired with Ziplock Murphy as a cuff partner. Ziplock was OK, except

that he talked too much. This was how he had earned his orphanage name. Once the

Irish boy had talked too much to the wrong person and got the ziplock from a food

baggie super-glued over his mouth. It took weeks for the blisters to heal. Not only did

Ziplock not learn his lesson, but now he had something else to talk about.

‘They don’t call it superglue for nothing,’ Ziplock said animatedly, as one of the

marshals threaded the cuffs through the restraining ring on the seat. ‘Medics use that

stuff in war zones to seal up the wounded. They pour it straight on to the wounds.’

Cosmo nodded without much enthusiasm. Ziplock seemed to forget that he had

told this story about a million times, maybe because Cosmo was the only one who

even pretended to listen while he talked.

‘They had to use boiling water to get the bag off my face,’ continued Ziplock. ‘I

didn’t feel anything, in case you’re worried. One of the marshals shot my entire head

full of anaesthetic first. They could have been banging six-inch nails into my skull

and I wouldn’t have minded.’

Cosmo rubbed the flesh beneath the cuffs. All the no-sponsors had a ring of red

flesh around their wrists. A mark of shame.

‘You ever try breathing only through your nose for an entire day? I panicked a few

times, I’ll admit it.’

In the cab, the pilot was up linking the truck to the navigation section of the

Satellite. But there had been trouble with the Satellite lately. Too many add-ons the

TV brainers said. Myishi 9 was simply getting too heavy for its engines to support

such a low orbit. There was even talk of some companies’ aerials snapping off and

burning up.

‘What’s the delay?’ shouted Marshal Redwood. The bulky redhead had bad breath

today and a worse attitude. Too many beers the night before. His pendulous belly

spoke of too many beers almost every night.

‘If I’m late again tonight, Agnes swears she’s moving to her sister’s.’

‘It’s the Satellite,’ shouted the pilot. ‘I can’t get a line.’

‘Well make a line, or my boot is going to make a line to your butt.’

Ziplock sniggered just loud enough for Redwood to hear.

‘You think I’m joking, Francis,’ shouted the man, cuffing Ziplock on the ear. ‘You

think I wouldn’t do it?’

‘No, sir. You’d do it OK. You’ve got that look in your eyes. It isn’t smart to mess

with a man who’s got that look.’

Redwood lifted Ziplock’s chin until their eyes met.

‘You know something, Francis? That’s the first clever thing I’ve ever heard you

say. It isn’t smart to mess with me, because I do whatever I please. The only reason I

don’t get rid of a dozen of you freaks every day is the paperwork. I hate paperwork.’

Ziplock should have left it there, but he couldn’t. His big mouth wouldn’t let him.

‘I heard that about you, sir.’

Redwood tugged harder on the chin, cranking it up a few more notches.

"What’s that, Francis? What did you hear?’

Cosmo tugged on the cuff chain. A warning. Redwood was not a man to push over

the edge. Even the psycho kids were afraid of Redwood. There were stories about

him. No-sponsors had gone missing.

But Ziplock couldn’t stop. The words were spewing out of him like agitated bees

from a hive.

‘I heard you don’t like the paperwork, on account of some of the words have more

than three letters.’

The sentence was followed by a high-pitched giggle. More hysteria than humour.

Cosmo realized that Ziplock was headed for the psycho ward, if he lived that long.

Redwood transferred his fingers to Ziplock’s throat, squeezing casually. ‘Morons

like you never get it. Being a smart mouth doesn’t win you any prizes in this city, it

_just gets you hurt, or worse.’

The Satellite saved Ziplock’s neck, beaming down a transportation plan before

Redwood could tighten his fingers another notch. The truck lurched from its spot in

the parking bay, rolling on to the main highway. A guiding rod extended from below

the chassis, slotting into a corresponding groove in the highway.

‘We’re locked in,’ called the pilot. ‘Ten minutes to the Institute.’

Redwood released Ziplock’s neck.

‘You’ve got the luck of the Irish, Francis. I’m too happy to inflict pain on you

now. But later, when I’m in a foul mood, you can count on it.’

Ziplock drew a greedy breath. He knew from experience that soon his windpipe

would shrink to the diameter of a straw and he would whistle when he spoke.

‘Keep a lid on it, Ziplock,’ hissed Cosmo, watching the marshal continue down the

aisle. ‘Redwood is crazy. We’re not real people to him.’

Ziplock nodded, rubbing his tender throat.

‘I can’t help it,’ he rasped, tears in his eyes. ‘The junk just comes out of my mouth.

This life just drives me crazy.’

Cosmo knew that feeling well. It visited him most nights as he lay in his pipe

listening to the cries around him.

‘You must feel it too, Cosmo? You think anybody is going to adopt a borderline

psycho kid, or a moody teenager like yourself?’

Cosmo looked away. He knew that neither of them fitted the likely adoptee profile,

but Ziplock had always managed to pretend that today was the day his new parents

would show up. Denying that dream meant that Ziplock was teetering on the brink of

crack-up.

Cosmo rested his forehead against the window, watching the city beyond the glass.

They were in the projects now, flashing past grey apartment blocks. Pig-iron

buildings, which was why the locals referred to Satellite City as the Big Pig. Not that

the material was actually pig iron. It was a super-strong, steel-based polymer that was

supposed to stay cool in summer and warm in winter, but managed to do exactly the

opposite.

The truck shuddered violently. Something had rear-ended them.

Redwood was thrown to the floor’s plastic planks.

‘Hey, what’s going on up there?’

Cosmo raised himself to the cuff’s limits, straining to see. The pilot was on his

feet, repeatedly punching his code into the uplink unit.

‘The Satellite. We lost our link!’

No link! That meant they were out here on an overcrowded highway with no

pattern to follow. Minnows in a sea of hammerheads. They were struck again,

sideswiped this time. Cosmo glimpsed a delivery minivan careering off the highway,

bumper mangled.

Redwood struggled to his feet.

‘Go to manual, you cretin. Use the steering wheel.’

The pilot paled. Steering wheels were only used in rural zones or for illegal drag

racing in the Booshka region. More than likely he had never wrestled with a steering

wheel in his life. The choice was taken away from the unfortunate man when a

revolving advertisement drone hit them head-on, crushing the cab like a concertina.

The pilot was lost in a haze of glass and wiring.

The impact was tremendous, lifting the truck from its groove, flipping it on to its

side. Cosmo and Ziplock dangled from their chairs, saved by the restraining cuffs.

Redwood and the other marshals were scattered like so many leaves in a storm.

Cosmo could not tell how many times other vehicles collided with the truck. After

a time the impacts blended together like the final notes of a frenetic drum solo. Huge

dents appeared in the panelling accompanied by resonating thunderclaps. Every

window smashed, raining crystal rainbows.

Cosmo hung on; what else could he do? Beside him, Ziplock’s hysterical laughter

was almost as piercing as the shards of glass.

‘Oh man, this is it!’ shouted the Irish boy.

The truck revolved a half-turn, slewing off the highway in a cascade of sparks.

Chunks of tarmacadam collapsed beneath the onslaught, leaving a thirty-metre trench

in the vehicle’s wake. They eventually came to rest after smashing through the

window of The Dragon’s Beard Chinese Restaurant. The spicy odours of ginger and

soya sauce mingled with the smells of machine oil and blood.

Cosmo put one foot on a window sill, taking the strain off his arms.

‘Ziplock! Francis, are you OK?’

‘Yeah, still here.’ The boy sounded disappointed.

Throughout the bus, no-sponsors were groaning and yelling for help. Some were

injured, a few were worse. The marshals were generally out for the count. Either that

or staring at whichever limb was pointing the wrong way. Redwood gingerly touched

a swelling nose.

‘I think it’s broken,’ he moaned. ‘Agnes is gonna love this.’

‘Oh well,’ said Ziplock, dangling above Redwood’s frame. ‘Every cloud has a

silver lining.’

Redwood froze, crouching on all fours like a pit bull. A fat drop of blood slipped

from one nostril, falling through an empty window frame.

‘What did you say?’ The marshal spoke slowly, making sure every word came out

right.

Cosmo swung his foot across, catching his cuff partner in the ribs.

‘Shut up, Ziplock. What happens to you, happens to me!’

‘OK! OK! I didn’t say anything, Marshal. Nothing at all.’

But it was too late. An invisible line had been crossed. In the midst of all the

chaos, Redwood retreated into himself. When he came back out, he was an altogether

more dangerous individual.

‘The way I see it ..." he said, standing slowly to face the dangling boys. He ran a

pocket comb through his precious red locks. ‘... is that your cuff ring snapped, and

you tried to escape.’

In spite of his quick mouth, Ziplock was a bit slow to catch on. ‘What are you

talking about, Mr Redwood? There’s nothing wrong with our cuff ring. Look!’ He

tugged the cuff to demonstrate.

‘I ordered you to stop, but you wouldn’t listen.’ Redwood sighed dramatically, his

nose whistling slightly. ‘I had no choice but to shrink-wrap you.’

Shrink-wrap was security-speak for the cellophane virus slugs that the marshals

loaded their gas-powered rods with. Once the slug impacted on a solid object, the

virus was released and coated the target with a restrictive coat of cellophane. The

cellophane was porous enough to allow shallow breathing, but had been known to

squeeze so tightly that it cracked ribs. Cosmo had been shrink-wrapped once before.

He had spent a week in a body-cast as a result.

Cosmo elbowed Ziplock aside.

‘Marshal Redwood, sir. Francis didn’t mean anything. He’s just an idiot. I’ll teach

him, sir. Let me take care of it. You get that nose fixed up.’

Redwood patted Cosmo’s cheek. ‘It’s a pity, Hill, because I always liked you. You

don’t stand up for yourself. But unfortunately, all wars have collateral damage.’

The marshal reached over, inserting his swipe card into the cuff ring. The boys

dropped two metres, crumpling on to the carpet of glass.

Redwood drew his rod, checking the chamber.

‘I’m a reasonable man,’ he said. ‘You’ve got twenty seconds.’

Cosmo shook the glass from his clothes, dragging Ziplock to his feet. This was it.

His chance had come. Live or die.

‘Why don’t you give us thirty seconds?’

Redwood laughed. ‘Now why would I do that?’

Cosmo grabbed the marshal’s nose, twisting almost ninety degrees.

‘That’s why.’

Redwood’s eyes filled with tears and he collapsed, writhing in the broken glass.

‘Let’s go,’ said Cosmo, grabbing Ziplock by the elbow. ‘We have thirty seconds.’

Ziplock stood his ground. ‘I want to spend my half a minute watching Redwood

squirm.’

Cosmo ran towards the rear window, dragging the Irish boy behind him.

‘Use your imagination. I prefer to live.’

They climbed through the broken window, into the restaurant. Diners were

hugging the walls, in case the truck decided to lurch another metre. In a few more

seconds the city police would arrive and all avenues of escape would be shut off. The

searchlights from TV birds were already poking through the decimated front wall.

Ziplock grabbed a couple of duck pancakes from a stunned diner’s plate. The no-

sponsors had heard of freshly prepared food, but never actually tasted any before.

Ziplock stuffed one into his own mouth, offering the other to his cuff partner.

Cosmo was not stupid enough to refuse food, no matter what the circumstances. Who

knew when they would get to eat again, if indeed they ever did. This could be the

condemned boys’ last meal.

He bit into the pancake and the tangy sauce saturated his tongue. For a boy raised

on pre-packaged developmental food, it was an almost religious experience. But he

could not pause to enjoy it. Sirens were already cutting through the engine hiss.

Cosmo ran towards the rear of the restaurant, dragging Ziplock behind him. A

waiter blocked their path. He wore a striped jumpsuit, and his hair was exceptionally

shiny even by product-tester standards.

‘Hey,’ he said vaguely, not sure if he wanted to get involved. The boys skipped

around the man before he could make up his mind.

A back door led to a narrow stairway, winding out of sight. Possibly to freedom,

possibly to a single-room dead end. There was no time for conscious decision.

Redwood would be coming soon. If he was not already on his way. They took the

stairs, squeezed together shoulder to shoulder.

‘We’re never going to make it,’ panted Ziplock, plum sauce dribbling down his

chin. ‘I hope he doesn’t get us before I finish this pancake.’

Cosmo increased the pace, the cuff digging into his wrist.

‘We will make it. We will.’

The boys rounded a corner straight into a luxurious studio apartment. A man’s face

peered out from beneath a large double bed.

‘The earthquake?’ the man squeaked. ‘Is it over?’

‘Not yet,’ replied Ziplock. ‘The big shock is on the way.’

‘Heaven help us all,’ said the man, retreating behind the fringe of a chintz

bedcover.

Ziplock giggled. ‘Let’s go before he realizes that his reporters are runaway no-

sponsors.’

The apartment was decorated in the opulent style of ancient China. Suits of battle

armour stood in each corner and jade dragons lined the shelving. The main room had

several windows, but most were decorative plasma; only one led to Satellite City.

Cosmo popped the clip, pulling open the triple-glazed, react-to-light pane.

Ziplock stuck his face into the outside air.

Eoin Colfer - The Supernaturalist

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