Free The Seventh Tide by Joan Lennon Page B

another. Sometimes Jay loved all that. She would pretend she was part of the important grown-up world of commuting and being anonymous and purposeful in a crowd. She would stare out through the distorting curve of the tube walls at people passing and shops and lights coming on in the Housing Sectors. Sometimes she did it for hours, just in a daze, and would come to herself in an empty pod at the Inverness station, maybe, or even the suburbs at Ullapool.
    But not today.
    Today the Tube was just irritating. Jay got out at the next station and wandered along, looking in at the shops. She caught a glimpse of herself in a window and slowed down.
    As a fifteenth birthday present to herself, Jay had gone to the hairdresser’s. She’d opted for a velvety black cap of hair, a bit like the fur of a wet otter. It hadn’t been cheap, but she knew she had a nice-shaped head and sexy ears – she didn’t need to disguise them underelaborate curls and padding. Not like some people she could name.
    ‘If you’ve got it, flaunt it!’ the hairdresser said, and Jay had been happy to believe him.
    Heads had been in style for a while now. It was legs before that. Irritatingly, long legs went out of vogue just as she had a growth spurt and got some. They still tripped her up sporadically and she didn’t always remember to duck going through doorways. And even when she wasn’t falling over herself, she had a tendency to fiddle with things, and almost invariably break them, which drove her parents to distraction.
    ‘She’ll grow out of it,’ they said to each other through gritted teeth. ‘I’m sure she will.’
    ‘Ooops – sorry!’ said Jay. She’d stopped paying attention and bumped a young woman’s arm as she passed. Fortunately, the woman just grinned at her.
    ‘You should wake up before you come out!’ she laughed.
    That was lucky ! thought Jay. The rules on respecting personal space were pretty strict. Either the woman was better at remembering what it was like to be fifteen than most adults were, or else she must have just patched. Jay suddenly saw two Guardians standing by one of the shops. They were turning their heads away, their blank-faced masks scanning another part of the promenade. Clearly they had only just stopped watching her…
    Jay felt cold sweat break out on her skin.
    Everybody knew that Guardians were just people. They were recruited from O-class Sectors at a little younger than Jay was now, trained up in segregated installations that no one who wasn’t a Guardian ever sawthe inside of, and then assigned, always away from their home city. But still, just people – people who all looked exactly the same… It was the masks that really spooked Jay. They were designed so that the wearers were protected from attacks on any of their senses – sight, hearing, smell, even touch and taste. Nothing got through the mask membrane that shouldn’t. It covered their skulls completely, leaving the place where their faces would be blank and featureless. The masks protected them, but it also made them all look alike… not quite human.
    You couldn’t tell them apart by their voices either – an integral microphone in the mask turned tenor, baritone and bass into one horrible breathy rasp. It was as if the Guardian behind the voice was only just in control of it. Jay remembered a classmate complaining once, ‘You’d think with all that technology, they’d be able to get the voice right!’ But she knew it was no mistake. It was the perfect voice, straight from nightmare.
    Suddenly Jay didn’t want to be there any more either. She didn’t want to ride the Tube or shop or meet up with friends or go to a cafe or check out the new entertainment centre or any of it. She certainly didn’t want to go home and revise.
    Up top ! she thought to herself. That’s what I’ll do…
    She set off through the crowds, doing her best not to be noticeable or bang into anyone. Up a few levels, over to another section of the Tube,