Gotta B Read online

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  Gotta B

  9781742754192

  A Random House book

  Published by Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.randomhouse.com.au

  First published by Random House Australia in 2009

  Copyright © Claire Carmichael 2009

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia.

  Addresses for companies within the Random House Group can be found at www.randomhouse.com.au/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Author: Carmichael, Claire.

  Title: Gotta B / Claire Carmichael.

  ISBN: 978 1 74166 298 6 (pbk.)

  Target Audience: For secondary school age.

  Dewey Number: A823.3

  Cover photograph courtesy Getty Images

  Cover design by Ellie Exarchos

  For Sheila

  CONTENTS

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  IMPRINT PAGE

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ONE

  Tal stifled a yawn. So far Monday at Braidworth High had been typical – interesting one minute, dull the next. Science was promising to be particularly mind-numbing.

  ‘Did you hear?’ said Rick, joining Tal in the corridor. ‘They reckon Carter Renfrew’s coming to the school next week.’

  Tal looked up from texting on his iZod. ‘Who?’

  ‘You know, the scientist guy who says kids are evolving into a new digital race.’

  ‘Oh, that Carter Renfrew,’ said Tal, going back to his texting. ‘There are always rumours about him.’

  ‘Word is, he’s going to ask for volunteers for some new research project.’ Rick grinned. ‘I’ll be first in line. You get paid, and maybe get excused from some classes. Couldn’t be better.’

  Tal’s iZod buzzed: U GUYS HVE GR8 TIME W/PEAS AS IF, he sent back to Petra.

  Beside him, Rick was peering at the little screen of his own iZod and smiling as he tapped in SOOOO BOOORRING.

  Back came a reply from Jennie. B NICE TO VEGGIE.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Rick said as they filed into the science room. ‘Petra and Jennie have all the luck, while we’re stuck with the Cabbage raving on about experiments with peas.’

  ‘If you were into sport,’ Tal pointed out, ‘you could get out of class too.’

  ‘Sport? No way. Not even if I could be a hot super-jock babe magnet like you, Talbot.’

  Tal laughed. ‘This too could be your life. Why not join me for an early morning run tomorrow?’

  Rick’s derisive reply was drowned by the gravel voice of Mr Babbage, the head science teacher. ‘Blair, Lawrence, turn those communicators off, right now, or you’re on detention.’

  Rick sketched a salute. ‘Yes, sir! Quick smart, sir!’

  ‘Watch it, Lawrence,’ Babbage growled, but there was a slight smile on his face.

  Tal glanced at Rick, amused that even someone as gross as the science teacher had a soft spot for his friend. Rick was slightly built, with floppy dark hair and a mischievous smile. But there was a sad, vulnerable side to him that brought out a protective streak in the most unlikely people.

  ‘Just made it,’ David gasped as he skidded to a halt beside them.

  Babbage scowled. ‘Another moment, Segal, and you’d be looking at detention.’ His frown deepened. ‘The other two – Petra and Jennie – where are they?’

  ‘On the basketball team playing Hawthorne High.’

  The teacher grunted. ‘Waste of time.’

  The Five, as they’d been called since kindergarten, were Tal, Rick, Petra, David and Jennie. They’d been grouped together on their first day of primary school, and for some reason hit it off from the beginning. A teacher had jokingly called them the Five, and it had stuck. There was an element of self-mockery to the name now, but their allegiance to each other had endured.

  ‘How’s your grandfather?’ Tal asked Rick as they made their way to their desks. Les Lawrence had had a bad fall from a ladder while cleaning gutters two weeks earlier and was in hospital.

  Suddenly serious, Rick shook his head. ‘Not good. He’s still in a coma.’

  ‘Hurry up,’ Babbage bellowed as the class settled in. ‘We’ll begin our unit on genetics with a revision of Mendel’s experiments with pea plants.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ someone said.

  Tal glanced over at Allyx, who had her blonde head bent, surreptitiously texting while apparently studying the diagram displayed on her desk monitor. Tal looked at her with pleasure. They’d only recently become an item, and he had to admit he was proud to be seen with her.

  Tal’s iZod vibrated in his pocket. He smiled when he read Allyx’s message: DONT 4GET BRAWNBLASTERS 2NITE

  Allyx and Petra had been lucky enough to get into video game design, an elective course so wildly popular that the school had to run a ballot system to select students for the class. Allyx and Petra had been the first team to complete the assignment to create an original video game. BrawnBlasters was to have its world premiere at Petra’s house tonight.

  Tal sent back GR8 QT, then, knowing Allyx would have sent the message to the Five as well, he glanced at Rick and raised his eyebrows.

  Rick mouthed ‘What?’ Tal tapped his iZod.

  Rick was frowning at his communicator when Babbage leaned over him. ‘I gather, Mr Lawrence, you’re not finding nineteenth-century genetics to your liking?’

  Without waiting for an answer, Babbage put out a fat, freckled hand for Rick’s iZod. ‘Give it to me.’

  ‘I wasn’t using it,’ Rick protested. ‘Can’t, ’cause it’s not working.’

  ‘Then you won’t be needing it back.’

  ‘But –’

  It was an empty threat. Teachers couldn’t confiscate communication devices because they were so vital to the school’s interactions with students. Mo
st families had stopped bothering with desktop PCs or laptops. Instead they had full-size screens and keyboards that could connect wirelessly to individuals’ communicators. School timetable changes, scheduled excursions, homework, class assignments and health and security alerts were sent electronically to students’ comms – as were notices to parents’ devices on students’ progress.

  Babbage told Rick to collect his iZod at the end of the period, then lumbered to the front, swung around and surveyed the class. He pursed his lips as he looked for a fresh victim, picking a dark, shy girl who was new to the school. ‘Here’s your chance, Felicity, to astound us with your knowledge. Explain how Mendel’s findings uncovered the basics of heredity.’

  ‘Ummm …’

  ‘That’s your response?’ A pause. ‘Well, is it?’

  Felicity blushed brick red.

  Babbage gestured towards her. ‘Behold, ladies and gentlemen: the pinnacle of evolution, Homo sapiens. And all she can say in reply to a simple question is “ummm”.’

  ‘You’ve got it wrong,’ said David’s mocking voice from behind Tal. ‘Felicity’s actually Homo electronicus, the next step in evolution. Sorry to have to tell you, Mr Babbage, but you’re a seriously superseded model.’

  Several people laughed. Babbage narrowed his piggy eyes. ‘Who said that? Segal? Was it you playing the fool again?’

  Tal twisted around to grin at David. He was the class clown, always eager to liven up dull lessons. Whippet-thin, his head a little too large for his body, David sat smiling cheerfully at the teacher.

  ‘Haven’t you read Brains in Flux: Evolution and the Teen Mind?’ David asked. He added helpfully, ‘I can lend you my copy if you like.’

  ‘Segal, your insolence has won you a detention,’ Babbage snapped.

  Not at all put out, David said, ‘Well? Have you read Dr Renfrew’s book? It’s a bestseller.’

  ‘They say Renfrew’s going to be at the school next week,’ someone called out.

  ‘The man’s theory is absolute garbage,’ Babbage declared with a contemptuous snort. ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, Carter Renfrew is a charlatan.’

  He stabbed a thick forefinger at Felicity, who literally shrank back in her seat. ‘Here’s an easy question – what’s a charlatan? Well? Let’s have your definition.’

  Tal hated the way Babbage took pleasure in bullying. He opened his mouth to answer for Felicity, but before he could speak, Allyx said, ‘A charlatan’s a phony. A fake.’

  ‘I didn’t ask your opinion, Allyx.’

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ she said with a demure smile.

  Babbage wasn’t immune to Allyx’s charm. ‘It so happens you’re correct,’ he conceded. ‘Renfrew is a phony and a fake. And to say you kids are evolving into superior beings –’ he sneered – ‘is more than ludicrous – it’s totally absurd. Now to return to a real scientist …’

  Tal looked over at Allyx and rolled his eyes. ‘Save me,’ he whispered.

  Allyx laughed and put up her hand. ‘Mr Babbage, before you go on, could you just briefly explain Dr Renfrew’s theory?’ She gave the teacher her most winning smile. ‘Please? I’d like to know what all the fuss is about.’

  Realising this was an excellent diversionary technique, several students made affirmative noises.

  ‘Please?’ Allyx repeated.

  ‘Oh, very well,’ said Babbage. ‘I suppose it could be useful to get through your thick skulls that this is an example of pop science at its worst. In short, Renfrew’s “theory” is that your generation, having lived immersed in an electronic environment from birth, show structural changes in your brains that indicate you are developing into a new species of humankind. Your children, according to his wild-eyed thesis, will carry these changes in their genes. Anyone who’s studied genetics at all knows it’s hogwash.’

  ‘But we are different,’ David declared, ‘just like Dr Renfrew says. My dad’s clueless about half the applications on his comm. And he can’t even program his new entertainment centre. It’s all way beyond him, but it couldn’t be simpler for me.’

  There was a murmur of agreement. ‘My olds are, like, total dinosaurs,’ announced Maryann Dodd, current queen bee of the school. On cue, Tiffany and Kimba, two members of her clique, giggled appreciatively. Encouraged, Maryann repeated, ‘Total dinosaurs. Like, they should be extinct.’

  This got a laugh. Maryann looked around, pleased with herself.

  Maryann was tiny, with a pretty doll’s face, pale blue eyes, and very long brown hair she wore loose so she could toss it around in a move Tal reckoned she’d practised a thousand times. She could be charming, but behind her smile was a cruel streak that had made Maryann and her clique rightly feared. If they took a set against someone, they’d make that person’s life a misery.

  Tal suspected that Maryann was behind the recent spate of vicious cyber attacks on teachers and students at the school. Even the principal, Mr Constanza, had been mercilessly sent up in a video posted to VidYou, where he was portrayed as a bumbling idiot who had no idea what was going on under his nose.

  Tal thought she was pure poison and did his best to avoid her, even though she acted as though they’d been close since early childhood. He was cynical enough to put this down to his own position in the school. Maryann wouldn’t have bothered to give him the time of day if he hadn’t been good at sport, and therefore popular.

  There were a few people Maryann favoured. She’d always had a soft spot for Rick, though Tal had no idea why, since Rick mostly ignored her.

  ‘Back to work!’ snarled Babbage, breaking into the buzz of conversation about parents’ technical shortcomings. ‘You’ve got better things to do than discuss a ridiculous theory peddled by a man who is a virtual nonentity in the scientific world.’

  ‘But Dr Renfrew’s famous,’ a student remarked.

  ‘And you’re not,’ someone sniggered.

  Fury turned Babbage’s heavy features brick red. ‘Who said that?’ Unable to locate the culprit, he snapped, ‘I’ll be setting extra homework for the lot of you …’

  Finally the siren signalled the end of the period. In a few moments, almost everyone in the room seemed to be instant messaging on their communicators.

  Rick went to the front to collect his iZod. Tal watched his friend walk slowly back to them, peering down at the little device in his hand, his face creased with worry.

  ‘I’ve run an auto-diagnostic,’ Rick said, ‘and there’s nothing wrong – it just won’t work for me.’

  ‘No biggie,’ said Allyx. ‘Why don’t you get a new one and have it keyed to your bio constants?’

  Rick ran a hand through his hair until it stood up in dark spikes. ‘Easy for you to say, but it’s not just my comm. At home this morning I couldn’t send tweets, or get through to MySpace or Facebook. I tried using Thelma’s old PC. She’s a bit clueless with computers, so she registered me as a co-user. No luck. I still couldn’t connect.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything before?’ Allyx asked.

  ‘I thought it would be fixed, like it always is, and that it just happened to be taking longer than usual.’

  Tal could see from Allyx’s expression that she too realised Rick’s situation could be much more serious than just the failure of his iZod. One device might fail, but if Rick couldn’t connect through a PC either, it was possible his identity had dropped out of Commdat, the government’s master communication database. Convicted criminals and designated enemies of the state had their names deregistered, but it was almost unheard of for an ordinary person to become a disconnect for more than a few moments.

  ‘Don’t worry, Rick, probably just some glitch,’ Allyx said supportively.

  Rick remained unconvinced. They all knew that outages were rectified almost immediately and that multiple redundant circuits existed to ensure there was no interruption to anyone’s access to the vast electronic sea that enveloped the world.

  ‘Maybe the problem started with Farront, and not Commdat,’ Tal sai
d.

  Farront International was one of the so-called Big Three – the three huge companies providing the majority of the world’s communications. Each company had developed a state-of-the-art communications device used by the majority of their customers: Farront the iZod, Tacitcomm the Cascader, and Brownbolt the BeauBrute.

  ‘Give it another try,’ Allyx suggested. ‘Commdat’s probably got your service up and running again.’

  It was no use Allyx or Tal trying to get Rick’s iZod to work. A biometric security system keyed devices such as personal communicators to an individual, so borrowing or stealing such items had become pointless. Using unique biological constants, including fingerprints, retinal markings and facial heat patterns, Rick’s iZod was programmed to recognise him as the registered user, locking out anyone else.

  His fingers danced over the input screen, but it remained obstinately blank. ‘There’s power and it’s receiving a signal, but it’s dead to me,’ he said despairingly.

  David, on his way to his next class, stopped to say with a grin, ‘Any chance you’ve been made a disconnect on purpose? Maybe you have some secret life we know nothing about.’

  Allyx shot David a cold look. ‘That is so not funny. Don’t even joke about being disconnected.’

  David, who rarely took anything seriously, clapped Rick on the shoulder. ‘Baaaad news, dude. You know you’ve just gotta be connected.’

  TWO

  The bus transporting the basketball team drew up at the front gate of Braidworth High just as the last bell signalled the end of the school day. Petra and Jennie met up with Tal and David as they came trooping out of class.