Green Boy by Susan Cooper

fanatics, do you understand that? Fanatics. Their only aim is destruction, of all the glories of our civilization. We have vanquished every major disease, we have found ways to feed and house every being on this planet, we have learned to resist the changes in climate as they come. Human kind has finally achieved control of life on Pangaia. But the fanatics of the Underground can see none of this. They fight their Greenwar to bring down the global government and substitute anarchy. They’re mad, of course. But very dangerous.”
    He stood up again, and put his hands under Lou’s arms to lift him gently down from the chair. Then he took a little box out of his pocket and pressed a switch on it. It buzzed softly.
    â€œAnd they brought you from your distant island for some dark connected purpose,” he said. “Related I think to an ancient festival that used to take place a few days from now, on August first. Ignorant superstition, like all their talk. They have been threatening doom for that date over the webwork, threatening a sacrifice. The end of our world, and the beginning of another. Mad. Unless this law and that law are changed, they are threatening, they will do such things. . . .”
    He looked at Nora in a helpless kind of way. “Canyou believe I am trying to explain this to a pair of children?” he said.
    â€œWhy not?” she said. “One of them is . . . unusual.”
    Lou was trotting round the room again, gazing up at the pictures. He reached out once more to touch the jeweled hummingbird, but paused at the last moment, and drew back his hand.
    Sir gripped my shoulder, hard. I glanced up and saw the black eyes staring down at me, still fierce. He said, “Your brother has a talent that they need, and might kill for. Be warned, work with the Government, and we will keep you both safe.”
    Before I could give that the smallest thought, the door opened and several people came hurrying in, men and women, all in the same sleek dark red uniform as Nora. Sir looked at one of them, a small thin man with sharp eyes and a completely bald head. “I want these two taken to Central, to be examined by Dr. Owen and Dr. Karminsky,” he said. “They will have been informed. Keep them there overnight, and then bring them back here.”
    He looked me in the eye again. “Don’t worry,” he said.
    The small bald man nodded at me encouragingly, but it didn’t stop me worrying. I didn’t like the idea of being “kept safe” by the Government one bit. The whole group of police took us outside.
    We never saw Sir again.
    Along gleaming corridors they took us, past more of those war-filled screens, and then into a wide elevatorwith metal walls. I saw Lou’s eyes widen as the doors of the elevator swung silently together, and he felt the pressure of the rising floor under his feet. It was his first time in an elevator. He’s never been to Nassau, he’s never left our island, and though he’s seen life in the rest of the world on television, there’s a lot he hasn’t seen or done.
    In the Otherworld there was a lot that I hadn’t seen or done either. The elevator doors hissed open and we were out on the top of the building, at the edge of a wide flat roof, with the airport’s crisscrossing lines of lights spread all round us and a thick brown haze above, merging into darkness. You could see a star here or there in the sky, but very few, and none that I could recognize. We both know the stars, Lou and I; it’s one of the things Grand’s hot on. He says anyone who lives among islands and boats should know how to navigate by the stars. Looking at the darkness, I wondered suddenly whether it was night in our own world, whether Grand and Grammie would be frantic because we weren’t back home. Somehow I didn’t think so. Time in the Otherworld didn’t match the way time passed at home.
    The air filled with noise;