Who Runs the World? Read online

  Have you ever had a book dedicated to you?

  No? Nor have I.

  Let’s fix that.

  This book is dedicated to:

  CONTENTS

  THE GLOBAL AGREEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  A BEGINNING

  CHAPTER 1: CONSCIOUSNESS

  CHAPTER 2: MAN

  CHAPTER 3: BOY

  CHAPTER 4: PROTOCOL

  CHAPTER 5: UNICORN

  CHAPTER 6: ALARM

  CHAPTER 7: XY

  CHAPTER 8: GEOGRAPHY

  CHAPTER 9: POO

  CHAPTER 10: CODE OF HONOUR

  A BOY ON PLANET GIRL

  CHAPTER 11: NOT NORMAL

  CHAPTER 12: BOYS DON’T CRY

  CHAPTER 13: SHE-WOLF

  CHAPTER 14: A CHAT

  CHAPTER 15: SANITARY

  CHAPTER 16: THUMP, THUMP, THUMP

  CHAPTER 17: STEW

  CHAPTER 18: GAMES

  CHAPTER 19: SWAMP

  CHAPTER 20: DREAMBIRD

  CHAPTER 21: HARVEST

  A DECISION

  CHAPTER 22: TRADE

  CHAPTER 23: IT IS AGREED

  CHAPTER 24: RIGHT AND WRONG

  CHAPTER 25: THE CHILL

  CHAPTER 26: BRITISH RAIL

  CHAPTER 27: PINK AND BLUE

  CHAPTER 28: ASCENT

  CHAPTER 29: DESCENT

  CHAPTER 30: WORDS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  THE GLOBAL AGREEMENTS

  1. The Earth comes first.

  2. Every child is our child.

  3. We reject all forms of violence.

  4. We will all help each other.

  5. Knowledge must be shared.

  6. We Agree that we need to Agree.

  7. Everyone has the right to be listened to.

  To these Agreements, we are committed.

  Signed on behalf of the people of the former nations of:

  Afghanistan

  Albania

  Algeria

  Andorra

  Angola

  Antigua and Barbuda

  Argentina

  Armenia

  Australia

  Austria

  Azerbaijan

  Bahamas

  Bahrain

  Bangladesh

  Barbados

  Belarus

  Belgium

  Belize

  Benin

  Bhutan

  Bolivia

  Bosnia and Herzegovina

  Botswana

  Brazil

  Brunei

  Bulgaria

  Burkina Faso

  Burundi

  Cabo Verde

  Cambodia

  Cameroon

  Canada

  Central African Republic

  Chad

  Chile

  China

  Colombia

  Comoros

  Congo

  Costa Rica

  Côte d’Ivoire

  Croatia

  Cuba

  Cyprus

  Czech Republic

  Denmark

  Djibouti

  Dominica

  Dominican Republic

  Ecuador

  Egypt

  El Salvador

  Equatorial Guinea

  Eritrea

  Estonia

  Ethiopia

  Fiji

  Finland

  France

  Gabon

  Gambia

  Georgia

  Germany

  Ghana

  Greece

  Grenada

  Guatemala

  Guinea

  Guinea-Bissau

  Guyana

  Haiti

  Honduras

  Hungary

  Iceland

  India

  Indonesia

  Iran

  Iraq

  Ireland

  Israel

  Italy

  Jamaica

  Japan

  Jerusalem

  Jordan

  Kazakhstan

  Kenya

  Kiribati

  Korea

  Kosovo

  Kuwait

  Kyrgyzstan

  Laos

  Latvia

  Lebanon

  Lesotho

  Liberia

  Libya

  Liechtenstein

  Lithuania

  Luxembourg

  Macedonia

  Madagascar

  Malawi

  Malaysia

  Maldives

  Mali

  Malta

  Marshall Islands

  Mauritania

  Mauritius

  Mexico

  Micronesia

  Moldova

  Monaco

  Mongolia

  Montenegro

  Morocco

  Mozambique

  Myanmar

  Namibia

  Nauru

  Nepal

  Netherlands

  New Zealand

  Nicaragua

  Niger

  Nigeria

  Norway

  Oman

  Pakistan

  Palau

  Palestine

  Panama

  Papua New Guinea

  Paraguay

  Peru

  Philippines

  Poland

  Portugal

  Qatar

  Romania

  Russia

  Rwanda

  St Kitts and Nevis

  St Lucia

  St Vincent and the Grenadines

  Samoa

  San Marino

  São Tomé and Príncipe

  Saudi Arabia

  Senegal

  Serbia

  Seychelles

  Scotland

  Sierra Leone

  Singapore

  Slovakia

  Slovenia

  Solomon Islands

  Somalia

  South Africa

  South Sudan

  Spain

  Sri Lanka

  Sudan

  Suriname

  Swaziland

  Sweden

  Switzerland

  Syria

  Taiwan

  Tajikistan

  Tanzania

  Thailand

  Tibet

  Timor-Leste

  Togo

  Tonga

  Trinidad and Tobago

  Tunisia

  Turkey

  Turkmenistan

  Tuvalu

  Uganda

  Ukraine

  United Arab Emirates

  United Kingdom

  United States of America

  Uruguay

  Uzbekistan

  Vanuatu

  Venezuela

  Vietnam

  Yemen

  Zambia

  Zimbabwe

  She is riding through the woods on what was once a road. The dotted white line that once separated the comings from the goings is crumbling. The tarmac is slowly being destroyed by tree-roots. The small plants don’t wait for the trees. They are so strong. They sprout up all over, wherever they can. In another few years there won’t be any road left at all.

  Too bad, so sad, bye-bye – that’s what her Granmumma Kate (who refuses to be called Granmumma) says about all the things that once were and are no more. Too bad, so sad, bye-bye.

  The horse, a gentle giant of a Shire horse the Granmummas call My Little Pony (Milpy, for short), pulls a cartload of cider apples: small, hard, bitter things that will be fermented into some fun. The girl has a rucksack stuffed with harvest produce on her back; it is easier to carry it than have to clamber off and on the huge horse just for a
drink of water.

  Her name is River. She is fourteen years old and she is day-dreaming about the exploration of outer space.

  It is an autumn evening.

  Dark is coming soon.

  She is miles from home.

  She feels no fear.

  Why would she? There are no predators. No such thing as ghosts.

  Fear belongs to another time. It lives on only in the memories of others.

  She feels no fear at all.

  Not even when she sees it: the body lying in the middle of the road.

  She feels surprised. The surprise finds its way into her hands and she pulls back on the reins the second she spots it, the body in the road. Then there’s alarm. A jolt of it. She knows right away it isn’t anyone from the village. She’s known them, all of them, her whole life, and this person is not one of them. But the jolt of alarm isn’t about that instant seeing, it’s about whether the person is hurt.

  She slips off the horse and runs to the body.

  And stops.

  It is breathing, this body. A stranger in strange clothes. Under a filthy white T-shirt, an enormous black ‘tick’ shape on it, a flat chest without even the tiniest of breasts rises and falls. One arm has a horrible gash on it, an open, oozing wound on which flies are feasting. Long, skinny-but-muscly legs in skin-tight shiny red leggings end in cloven hooves: weird, rubbery, black shoes with pockets for big toes. She looks back up to the place her gaze skimmed. There is lumpiness in the crotch. And she looks at the face of the stranger: smudged with dirt, beaded with sweat, and hairy – a substantial crop of wispy facial hair, more than any person she has ever seen. And she looks at the throat . . . where there is also lumpiness.

  It snaps into her head: Adam’s apple. That’s what Kate calls that lump in your throat. Because . . . The why of it she can’t exactly remember. Too bad, so sad, bye-bye.

  In the few astonished seconds she spends staring at that body, River imagines the most extraordinary thing: that this is an XY, a person born genetically male.

  But that cannot be. It simply cannot be.

  Seconds of astonishment. Seconds of extraordinary. Then River, who nearly always tries to do the right thing, and not just because that’s what her Mumma would expect, does the right thing: FIRST AID.

  # 1: She checks for hazards. Nothing dangerous lying about – not even a sun-basking adder – and the power lines that followed this road hang broken and long dead, so no threat of electrocution. There is only a bad stink in the air – from diarrhoea and vomit spattered nearby.

  # 2: She checks for consciousness:

  ‘WAKE UP!’ she yells, clapping her hands. ‘WAKE UP!’

  A single puffy eyelid rises. A bloodshot eyeball rolls. A pupil pinpricks against the pretty red and gold of dappled autumn light, focuses and –

  A BEGINNING

  CHAPTER 1

  CONSCIOUSNESS

  The hand is across my mouth before I can even scream, the other arm wrapped tight around me and my brain is exploding – instantly – with shock and horror and fear and anger and confusion CONFUSION CONFUSION because who would just ATTACK another person and –

  ‘Who’s with you? Huh?!’

  The voice! Growling and sick and deep and broken and stinking.

  MAN

  MEN

  MURDER

  GUNS

  WAR

  KILL

  Every strange and scary thing I’ve ever half heard said about XYs comes bursting into my head, but it cannot be. It cannot be.

  ‘Don’t make me hurt you, junior!’ vile breath threatens.

  The grip tightens. The grip HURTS.

  WHY would this person be doing this?!

  WHY WOULD ANY PERSON DO THIS?!

  So maybe this person is crazy, so maybe this person has taken drugs, so maybe whatever sickness this person has got is causing this madness –

  ‘STOP IT!’ My cry muffled wordless by a stinking, sweaty palm.

  ‘Shuddup!’

  I get shaken. I get squeezed. It HURTS. So who cares who this is and why? So NO WAY. So I kick. Kick, kick, kick. Boot against shin. Boot against shin. I get another shake and squeeze, then dragged back so fast my boots can’t get to sh ins, but I stamp down hard on a cloven hoof and the stinking breath lets out a growl that ends in a moan of pain.

  ‘DON’T–MAKE–ME–HURT–YOU.’

  Who would say a thing like that?!

  I plant another kick back hard. SHIN!

  There is a roar of pain. And words that roar louder:

  ‘Stop-or-I-swear-to-God-I’ll-kill-you.’

  I go limp. It’s not that no one swears ‘to God’ – some of the Granmummas still do. It’s that no one, no one . . . Who would threaten to KILL a person?

  ‘You on your own?’

  The grip releases just a little – and I feel it: I feel how weak this person really is. One glance down at the bicep on the arm of the hand that’s pinned across my face tells me this body is used to hard work – but sickness trembles in those gripping arms.

  ‘Are ya? Well, are ya?!’

  I nod my head. My ribs hurt. My face hurts. My mouth is dry with fear and shock – but my eyes and nose? They’re running. With anger. I feel angry.

  The strange, sick, nasty mad person hesitates . . . then releases me.

  I wipe the trail of tears and snot from my face.

  ‘I do a mile in six-point-eight. I press sixty.’

  I have no idea what this means. I have no idea how to respond.

  ‘So don’t you bother trying to run, and you should def-initely not bother trying to fight me. You will lose.’

  The creature wipes my snot off the back of its hand, looking up and down the forest road. Then it looks at me. ‘Wait a second – have you got a transmitter in?! Your tag –’

  It lurches forward, grabbing my upper arms and squeezing them about.

  ‘What – did they stick it in your leg? They did that to me once –’

  ‘Get off me!’ I pull away as it grabs at my thighs.

  ‘Shut up! God – you little screecher! No wonder you’re not tagged – you ain’t even on T-jabs, are you? How old are you, kid? Hey! You’re OK now! OK?’

  The mad question settles it. This person is an unknown kind of person. A person who hurts and scares and then asks how you are. A person I must get away from. I nod at it, sniffing hard.

  ‘Then quit with the blubbing, kid.’

  No one, not even Granmumma Kate, would tell another person to stop crying. Anyone who doesn’t know that is definitely an unknown kind of person. Maybe not even a person at all.

  ‘Name’s Mason,’ the creature says, holding out a hand.

  Courtesy dictates a hand held out is a hand to be shaken, that the cheek of the person holding out that hand is to be kissed. I take the hand, and – swallowing revulsion with my own snot – lean in to kiss.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?!’ it says, shoving me away.

  It. That’s what this is. No human being I have ever met would behave like this.

  ‘Where did you ’scape from anyway? You weren’t Hellbound, was you? Come on! What Unit you from? What d’you call yourself? I’m not gonna tell anyone, am I? Who’d I tell?! Why’d I tell?! How long you been out for? You don’t look that sick – did you get proper sick yet? Where’d you get that horse from? . . . I mean, that is an actual horse, right?’

  I . . . nod. I have to get away from it. I have to think. I have to stay calm – and keep it calm, that’s what I decide – because something in its ranting, in its questions asked with no wait for an answer, reminds me of my own Granmumma, whose temper can feed like a fire on any sort of disagreement.

  ‘An actual horse . . . I thought they’d be smaller . . .’ it says – almost to itself, contemplating in amazement. ‘How’d you even steal that?!’

  I just smile, politely. The smile feels wonky on my face.

  ‘God’s sake . . .’ It grins at me. ‘How are you alive, li’l thief? Hah.
How’d you manage it? You’re a walkin’ freakin’ miracle, ain’t you? You got anything to eat and drink in that bag, have you? You got water?’ It holds out its filthy paw, its hand making ‘Gimme!’ baby grabs in the air. ‘Come on now, little brother. Don’t hold out on me.’

  Little brother. Brother . . . I slide the rucksack from my shoulders and it snatches it. ‘Siddown, bro,’ it tells me.

  Bro? I crumple to the ground where I stand. It plonks itself down too – close; grabbing-distance close.

  ‘See now, we gotta share and share alike, ain’t we?’ it says, ripping open the rucksack. ‘Us ’scaped ones, that’s what we gotta do. We’re brothers in the face of death now, brothers in the face of death . . . Oh . . . do NOT tell me you’ve been eating this stuff,’ it says, holding up a bunch of freshly dug carrots. ‘KID! This is goddamn filthy jungle poison, that’s what. You eat this stuff, you’re dead in two seconds, not ten – get me?!’

  It shakes the carrots in my face, then flings them aside. Soil still on them, but Milpy doesn’t care . . . comes plodding up to munch, cart trundling behind – and the creature jumps back to its hoof feet. It looks around, then it darts to grab a branch – a poor choice, so rotten-looking it’ll probably crumble immediately, but still . . . Milpy, munching . . . no one hits her, not even Lenny. She just gets shouted at. She doesn’t often listen. I have no idea what Milpy would do if someone struck her – only that she would NOT like it.

  ‘No!’ I can’t help myself. ‘She won’t hurt you!’

  The creature eyes the huge power of Milpy, chomping.

  ‘She’s just hungry!’

  ‘That so?’ it says, watching Milpy crunch.

  Painful seconds tick.

  ‘That’s a she horse?’ it asks.

  I nod, and watch the creature watch Milpy – Milpy watching it right back: her nostrils flared, scenting, her ears unable to decide between laying back cross (because – really! – what is this nonsense on the way home?!) and pricked, twitching, listening (strange it, strange smell, general strangeness) . . . Still: fresh carrots?! Too good!

  ‘What’s that you got in that wagon anyway?’ it asks, pointing at the cart.

  ‘. . . Apples?’

  It picks up an apple. It examines the apple. It bites it. It spits it out.

  ‘Brother, these ain’t apples!’ it says, shaking its head at me, wiping its mouth. A convincingly human look of disgust and pity on its face.

  With watchful eyes on Milpy, it sits back down. Places that branch down on the road – and I can see, for sure, that it is rotten. Orange and white fungus all over it; woodlice tumbling out, escaping from its broken ends. I’ve been hit by kisses harder than that.

  It rummages again, trying the next compartment in the rucksack. Pulls out a cloth-wrapped package, unwraps it.

  ‘And what is this?’ it asks.