Harry said.
Lost, Jazz thought. Can it really be this easy?
****
Hattie led her to the loos. There was a narrow opening in the end wall of the tunnel, the same place
Cadge had gone to switch on the rest of the lights. The walls were bare brick fes-tooned with cables and
spiderwebs, the concrete floor damp from several leaks that looked decades old. As they walked past a
room off to the right, Jazz felt a draft that could only have come from a vent to the world above. Light from
the corridor shone into the room just enough for her to see several clothes-lines hung with drying laundry
and an ironing board.
Hattie noticed her looking and laughed softly. "What, didn't think a bunch of tunnel rats would want
clean clothes?"
"No," Jazz said, not wanting to offend. Then she shrugged. "The iron surprises me, though."
"Mr. F. likes things neat and tidy," Hattie said. "A bit of cleanup makes it easier to go unnoticed up
above."
The passageway went on another dozen feet before opening into a large round room. Jazz knew this
place had been built as a bomb shelter but still found the chamber re-markable this far underground. At its
center stood three roughly plumbed basins. On one end were two curtained shower stalls, and on the other
there were four toilet cubi-cles. The room smelled faintly of piss and shit and, underly-ing that, the stench of
old bleach.
"Best we can offer," Hattie said. "'Spect you're used to bidets and people handing you the toilet roll."
"No," Jazz said. "Not at all." She went into one of the cubicles and peed, not minding for a second
that the girl was still standing outside.
"Sorry about your..." Hattie said, unable to continue the sentence.
Jazz could not reply. She looked at the floor between her feet, reaching for small talk. "Is Hattie your
real name?" she asked at last.
"No. But I like hats, so Hattie it is. What's your name?"
"Jazz." She realized that none of them had asked her this until now, and that was strange. Surely a
name was the first thing anyone asked?
"Ha! You like music?"
"I do, but it is my real name."
"Right," Hattie said, and Jazz could hear the smile in her voice. "Well, it's strange enough to keep, I
guess."
Jazz finished and flushed the loo. A trap vented into a flowing sewer, then slammed shut again.
"You'll want to use the spray," Hattie said, and Jazz noticed the cans on a shelf above her. She
sprayed the air around her, trying to screw her nose up against the stench.
"That is fucking foul," she said.
"Hey," Hattie said, "Harry meant it. We don't swear down here." The admonishment seemed strange
coming from a girl her own age.
"So who are you all?" Jazz asked, stepping from the cu-bicle and going to wash her hands. The water
wouldn't get hot, and she shivered as she thought how cold the showers must be in the winter.
"We're the United Kingdom."
Jazz stared at the girl, waiting for the teasing smile. But none came.
"Come on," Hattie said. "I'll let Harry tell you himself."
Chapter Four
all the world
"Gather round, my pets. Time to have a chat with our little wandering note, our Jazz girl. Leave off
the dinner prep just now, Stevie, and come to circle."
The boy looked up from perusing the contents of the tribe's many refrigerators. He must have been
eighteen or so, tall but slender with muscles like whipcords. He wouldn't be very strong, but he'd be quick
as the devil. His black hair hung straight to his shoulders, and his eyes were a coppery brown. Jazz couldn't
help taking a second glance at him, and a third, and when he noticed, she turned her eyes away.
Now that she'd calmed down a bit and the panic of her urgent bladder had passed, Jazz took a closer
look at the nine runaway urchins who made up Harry's United Kingdom. Hattie and Faith seemed like
opposites: Hattie a bit odd and wild but happy enough, and Faith with grim blue-steel eyes and suspicion
deep as a knife wound.
The boys seemed to lack any real leader aside from Harry, unless the silent Stevie filled that role.
The youngest among them was twelve-year-old Gob, but Jazz couldn't be sure if the nickname came from
his lurking in the tunnels like some hobgoblin or from the fact that he never seemed to stop nattering, even
to breathe, unless Harry hushed him.
Cadge had a bit of the peacock in him. The prize pupil, he obviously fancied himself a miniature
Harry, even mim-icking the man's body language, that particular quality that bespoke an earlier life as a
gentleman. Just a few minutes watching him scramble about
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