by Mark Lingane
The lunch bell rang and, before the last sheet of paper fluttered to the floor, the hall was empty. They slumped on a bench in the courtyard and nibbled on sandwiches provided by Mrs. Wasp. Isaac shaded his eyes to watch the other boys brooding around the area, trying to out-cool each other. Sebastian was leaning against the wall of the building with his eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of the sun.
“Yesterday, how did you know that stuff about chances of finding the battery?” Isaac said. “Were you good at school?”
“What do you mean good?”
“Did you do well in tests? Get good grades?”
“Tests? Grades? We didn’t have tests. The teacher turned up and said stuff. Some kids listened, some didn’t. I liked to draw animals. We had some old lady who came in on the first Tuesday afternoon of each month and taught drawing. I liked that. She didn’t like my drawings, though. She wanted us to draw flowers and old naked ladies. I wanted to draw dragons.”
“So you had no tests at all, where they asked you heaps of questions then told you how many you got wrong at the end?”
Sebastian shook his head. “What would that achieve?”
“That’s what I’ve always asked. Your parents go crazy if you get a lot wrong, but I keep trying to tell them that you don’t need to do a lot of tests if you work in a forge.”
“Is that what you want to do?”
“Nah. It’s what my dad wanted me to do. It’s what he did. It’s what his dad did. For generations back. But it’s noisy, dirty and stinking hot. Thankfully, my mom, Viki, spoke to him, told him there’d be more money with a tesla in the family. I reckon she just didn’t want to wash another set of dirty clothes.” Isaac snorted and pointed to a man walking across the far side of the yard. “Hey, check out the funny-looking guy.”
Sebastian gave Isaac a light punch. “That’s Nikola, you turkey.”
He waved frantically, catching Nikola’s attention. Nikola slowed, then changed direction. He strode up to the boys and smiled. His hair had been swept back, tied back in a ponytail, and his brittle blue eyes shone with a deep intensity.
“Nikola, it’s so great to see you.”
“How’s life with the teslas going?”
“To be honest, I’m not having a very good time. Are you sure I should be here?”
“Yes.”
“But, well, I’m not sure I fit it. I don’t look like them. They’re not even interested in the stuff they should be interested in, which is interesting. It seems like an ordinary school. If tesla school’s different, why do the other kids act the same as kids in ordinary schools? And the building is a bit grim. Almost like a prison.”
“It’s the old training facility for our elite guards.”
“Not a prison for the criminally insane?” Isaac asked.
“And what’s so special about Gavin that he gets the stupid special attention? To me, he doesn’t look any good at all. He’s just some guy with whooshy hair.”
Nikola distractedly scratched his neck. “Yes, Gavin.” He quietly sighed, his frustration visible. “Always with the freaking hair.”
He stood for a few moments looking like he was going to say something. In the end, he ran his hand over his chin and shook his head. “Tell you what. Give it to the end of the day, and if you still feel the same, come and see me. I have an idea.”
Nikola cast a suspicious glance at Isaac. “Criminally insane indeed. What’s your name?”
“Isaac, sir. Isaac Crowner.”
“Not a troublemaker, are you, Crowner?”
“No, Nikola, sir.”
“Hmm. I’m watching you.” He pointed to his eyes with his first two fingers, then at the young boy. “I’m going to talk to Oliver.” He turned and strode away, disappearing into the building.
Sebastian kicked his feet mindlessly against the ground. “Forget this, I’m going for a change of scenery.”
Sebastian headed out through the main gates and down the street. The school building occupied the rest of the street up to the intersection. The roadway was small, but busy enough that he could watch the people go by. He wandered to the intersection and leaned against a streetlight. The sun was glaring, so he closed his eyes and listened to snippets of conversation from the passersby. He tuned into a conversation between two familiar voices. It appeared to be coming from above him.
“… but you can’t ignore everyone else. He hasn’t proven himself under pressure. He’s only theory. And I’m not one hundred percent convinced of your calculations.”
“I believe the math is good. You’ll see when the time is right. Until then he needs to be nourished.”
“They all need to be nourished. Not just him.”
“They’ll get their chance when the time’s right. If you want them all nourished at the same time, then I must have some assistance.”
“Speaking of nourishing, how’s he going?”
“He has attitude.”
“Involve him in something. Give me data. Today. I’m not sure this is the right place, but I can’t make any decisions without data. I’m getting pressure to produce results from Trade. If we don’t have something soon, you’ll be out of a job.”
Sebastian heard a horse and overburdened cart trundle past, a great old mare dragging the day’s produce to the markets. By the sounds and smell, the horse was carting pigs. He didn’t think much of pigs, and he was sure they didn’t think much of him. Back home, his neighbor killed one a month for food, and he usually had to help out. Another farming responsibility his mother gave him that ended with him knee-deep in blood and dead bodies.
Someone scuffed on the cobbles next to him. He opened his eyes and Isaac leaped out in front of him wearing a flat cap.
“Where’d you get that from?”
“I’m a man about town, I am.” He tapped the side of his nose. “I keeps me eyes open and wits about me.”
“Why are you talking funny? If you’re about to burst into song I’m leaving.”
“Calm down, me ol’ chum. Ain’t nothing a little five finger discount as peruvicated.”
“That’s not even a word.”
“Fit the ‘at, fit the h’accent. Might join me up the drama club.”
“I’m warning you.”
“Welcome to me brave new world, cheer-what-ho. Oi, but gum, won’t this place what be unhygienic and a bit excessive on the putridity.” He flapped his hands across his nose before noticing he’d stepped into a recent deposit from the old mare. “Yikes,” he cried, as his feet skipped and jumped around the steaming mess.
Sebastian rolled his eyes and stood. He paused as his senses spiked.
“Gavin’s coming.”
“Where?” Isaac peered down the street while scraping the sole of his shoe on a grating.
“He’s just around the corner.”
Several seconds later, Gavin appeared. A couple of older boys were with him, and from their appearance, their dirty and torn clothes, Sebastian knew they weren’t from the tesla school.
“How did you do that?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Are you sure you couldn’t sense him?”
“No,” replied Isaac, his face a mask of suspicion. “Maybe it was just luck that you detected him, like a two-in-three chance or something.”
They followed Gavin and his friends around the corner and back to the front of the school. Gavin hadn’t recognized the younger boys, and all three were laughing among themselves, dragging their feet, cigarettes hanging out the side of mouths. They gathered in a circle in front of the school gates and huddled together to furtively discuss something, keeping an eye out for any potential eavesdroppers. They ended with a bizarre handshake before splitting up. Gavin slipped through the gate into the school grounds, accompanied by a loud clang and the scraping of metal. The non-tesla elder boys strolled away and the street became empty.
“They’ve shut the gate,” said Isaac. “We’re going to be in real trouble if we can’t get in.”
They ran up to the gate an
d looked in through the grating. They could hear the bell ringing.
Isaac put his arm through the grating and desperately flailed for the bolt securing the gate shut. “I can’t reach it,” he cried.
“Step back; I’ll have a go.”
“You’re shorter than me, so your arms are shorter than mine. If I can’t reach it, there’s no way you can.”
“Ah, but I know the secret of stretching.”
“What?”
Sebastian did some limbering-up exercises and stretched out his arms, then shook his hands. He reached in and fell hopelessly short. He waggled his fingers. “Am I close?”
The gap was several inches. “No,” Isaac replied.
Sebastian rested his arm then tried again. Isaac was amazed to see Sebastian’s fingertip graze the end of the bolt. Sebastian withdrew his arm and gave it a shake. He put his arm back through the grating.
“I don’t know why, but I always manage to get it on the third go.” He closed his eyes and reached as far as he could. His fingertips wrapped around the end of the bolt. He teased it until he could grasp it cleanly, then opened it. “See. It’s all in the stretching.”
Isaac didn’t tell him it wasn’t the stretching that brought the end of the bolt into his fingertips. It was freaky. He had seen the bolt move, as if pulled by an invisible string, or drawn out by a magnet.
16
THE BOYS HURRIED up the stairs and into the classroom. Gavin had just claimed his seat of choice toward the rear of the room, with a clear view out the window into the washing rooms across the street. Isaac spotted a single chair to the right, by the door, and threw himself into it. Oliver was writing some impossibly long equation on the board. Isaac did his best to look like he had been sitting in his seat for hours. Sebastian was about to sit when Oliver turned.
“Ah, Sebastian, just in time for an experiment,” Oliver said, as Sebastian frantically searched for a seat. “Please, come to the front.”
Sebastian sighed. This wasn’t going to end well. He slowly made his way through the sniggering boys to the front.
“No need to hurry,” said Oliver, through an alligator smile.
“I wasn’t intending to,” Sebastian whispered under his breath.
He stood straight in front of Oliver, daring him to do his worst, but secretly hoping to be given a caution and told to sit and be quiet for the rest of the lesson.
Oliver waved his hand over the three familiar containers from the previous morning’s experiment. “Tell me, which of these containers holds the battery?”
“I can’t tell you which one.”
“There’s no shame in being unable to sense these things straightaway. Have a guess. You have a one-in-three chance of being correct, unless you’re not ready to be a tesla, of course.”
“No, I can’t tell you which one because it isn’t in any of them. You’ve got it in …” he closed his eyes and breathed in and felt his head drop. He opened his eyes to see what he was looking at. “It’s in your right pocket.”
“Did you see me place … turn around and face the back of the class. Close your eyes. You, boy, make sure he doesn’t open them, okay?”
A boy sitting at the front desk rolled his eyes. Sebastian turned and faced the rear wall. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander. The sounds of things being moved came from behind him.
In the darkness, the images were sketched out, and he could vaguely recognize the shapes of the teslas. Isaac sitting at the back, a feeble signal, washed out and undefined. A brighter one to the rear of the room, Gavin. In comparison to Isaac, Gavin appeared like a ghost, drifting in a spectral breeze.
Commotion continued around him finally ending with screech of wood on tiles. Oliver coughed somewhat breathlessly. “You can turn now.”
Sebastian spun on the spot and opened his eyes. The sudden glare of the light made him squint.
“Now, which one is it in?” Oliver said.
Sebastian looked straight ahead. He breathed in and blinked. He turned his head to the right and up. “Behind that green book. Up on the shelf.”
By the end of the lesson Oliver had calmed and nearly returned to his usual color. For most of the lesson he had been bright red, and had stuttered and stammered, fumbled and cursed. In the end, Gavin had performed some minor feats of amazement and Oliver had established that normality had returned to the universe. As the boys were leaving he was almost jovial again.
Sebastian inquired after Melanie, and Oliver gave instructions on how to get to his residence. So he found himself sitting beside Melanie atop the tall apartment building in the center of the city, their legs dangling from a ledge three stories up, watching the sun descend to the horizon with Old Benjamin towering above them. She didn’t look happy.
“What happened with you?” he asked.
“They made me go to the doctor’s. They did all kinds of tests and felt sorry for me.”
“Are you still sick?”
“I won’t ever be cured. That’s what the doctors back home said. They tried to tell me that here too, but they couldn’t. They ummed and ahhed among themselves, huddled in some secret circle, then said they had to go save someone else.”
“But you look better to me now than when we first met.”
“Could be the excitement boiling my blood.” She laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“They even looked at blood transfusions, but the only person who had been compatible was my—wasn’t anyone.” She clutched at the pendant hanging around her neck, then glanced over to Sebastian, who was still staring out at the horizon. “No one.”
“That’s sad. Wouldn’t it be funny if you were the only person who got well by being around me?”
“No, it wouldn’t. I’d rather die than be forced to hang around a ten-year-old, again.”
“I’m thirteen, and that’s not a very nice thing to say,” he said, dejected.
She sighed. “Sorry,” she said grudgingly. “It’s been a long day, and the tests make me feel bad, emotional. I sometimes forget there are other people in the world.” She took a sip from her glass. It contained a green liquid. “What about you?” she said in a happier tone.
“I went to school.”
“Hah! Loser.”
“No offense, but I’d rather be in school, even if it was totally stupid. There’s one guy I’m sure you would totally hate. He’s about your age and is the most annoying person I’ve ever met. His name is Gavin.”
“Has he got whooshy hair?” She took another sip.
“Oh, totally. It’s like the whooshiest ever.”
They both laughed. She gave him a light hug and a smile. “Death to whooshy hair,” she whispered. Her voice was dry and harsh. She took another sip of her drink.
“What’s with the drink?” he asked.
“Uh, doctor’s orders. Even out here. Anyway, at least it’s something new. They never gave me anything like this back home. Maybe they’re more educated out here.”
They watched the sun setting over the distant mountains.
“Well, it wasn’t the worst day ever. At least no scary monsters attacked us,” she said.
“You know, I think I preferred that. You know where you are with a big scary monster.”
“Today, Sebastian, I totally agree with you.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and spend more time running away from them together. We were a pretty good team.”
Life was a lot simpler when all you had to do was run.
“I’ve known you for four days,” she said, “and you’ve changed everything. I wonder what’ll happen tomorrow. This is the first time in a long time that I’ve looked forward to the sun rising on a new day. How about you?”
“Not much. School sucks; it’s totally boring. I’m in a dorm with a bunch of farting kids and Gavin. Is your place any better?”
“It’s totally lush. It’s my own space. Apart from the cave, I’ve always had to share a room. This is good. It makes me feel free. I asked i
f I could paint the walls black, but the old grump said no.”
“You know,” Sebastian started, “today …”
“Yeah?”
“Something odd happened in the school. I had to close my eyes at one point and it was like I could still see the outlines of the kids in the class. But like they were ghosts. In fact, everything in the room was like that, just a faded outline of everything. I think it’s got something to do with detecting magnetism, but no one else could seem to do it. Well, not Isaac. Or Gavin. And those two seem to be at either end of the ability spectrum.”
“Never heard of anything like that. Could be handy if you lose something. You could see it behind whatever it was hidden behind.”
The door behind them opened and Oliver walked out onto the roof terrace. In the fading light it was hard to tell if he was happy or not. He walked up to the youngsters and gave them a smile.
“It’s good to see you two finally having a chance to relax. Melanie, the doctors would like to see you again tomorrow morning, at first light. They say don’t go to the toilet before the test. It will be best if you can, er, hold on.”
Sebastian and Melanie awkwardly glanced at each other.
He continued. “Sebastian, I’ve spoken with Nikola, and we’re in agreement that maybe the tesla school isn’t the best place for you. He has a plan for you to go elsewhere. You need to go to his office now.”
“Hah, you got kicked out of school after two days,” Melanie said. “Even I lasted longer than that.”
He lowered his eyes a little sadly.
“Don’t worry.” She nudged him with her shoulder. “It makes you pretty cool.”
He smiled back at her.
“Not smart. But cool.”
“Ah, Sebastian. Have a seat.” Nikola indicated a chair in front of his desk.
Nikola’s office was on the third story of the Potenza tower. The stairs were narrow and tricky, and Sebastian had fallen up them twice. He was amazed by the books that numbered in the thousands and appeared nearly as old as the shelves. The spines were cracking and faded, some already peeling and illegible. A desk constructed from the same dark wood took up the center of the room.