CHAPTER 23
Eldred was terrified. The coach taking the children to the nuclear power station had stopped at the motorway services and there was an adventure playground there. All the children were pleading to be allowed to spend time there. Eldred was silently, mentally pleading for the request to be refused so that not one minute would be wasted. He focused his attention on Mr Johnson, teacher of the top form, and willed him to recognize that half an hour spent playing would mean half an hour less to spend at the power station, learning about nuclear energy.
Mr Johnson looked at his watch. 'Ten minutes,’ he conceded, 'then everybody back on the coach. And those who haven't been to the toilet yet, go now.’
Eldred trailed around while the other children played. Impatience gnawed away at his soul. He clenched and unclenched his hands, feverish with anxiety. What if there was a traffic jam on the motorway? What if they arrived at the nuclear power station and were turned away because they were too late?
He didn't want to be like this and didn't understand why he was. He saw children several years older than himself happily hanging upside down from the climbing frame, scratching their armpits and making monkey noises, and wished he could be like them.
He was certain they didn't lie awake at nights worrying about what would happen if the presently available sources of power ran out, or if there were no more monkeys and no more jungles and no more leafy canopies to freshen the world's air. They thought about these things when they were taught about them in class but the concepts remained no more than interesting ideas. Other children, Eldred reflected, didn't seem to experience the terrible weight of responsibility that he felt about the world. It didn't occupy all their waking thoughts and their dreams and prevent them from playing and enjoying life. He wondered, not for the first time, if there was something wrong with him.
Back on the coach, with the other children alternately grumbling about having to leave the playground and boasting about the athletic feats they could have achieved if they had had only five more minutes on the top bar, Eldred felt relieved. His relief lasted twenty minutes before questions started crowding into his mind, questions he would not be allowed to ask. Mrs Garcia was not supervising this trip but she had threatened him that she would find out from Mr Johnson and Mr Singh if Eldred drew any attention to himself, and he would be banned from going on any more school trips ... 'Ever', she said.
While the older children threw hails of crisps at one another, fought to prise the personal stereo headphones from each other's ears, and stamped on each other's sandwiches, all unchecked, Eldred plotted his tactics.
Quietly, he rose from his seat and went to sit beside a child who was by himself. After a few minutes’ casual exchange of words, he got up again and moved to an unoccupied seat beside another child. When he had done this several times, he returned to his own place and waited.
At the last stopping place before they reached the power station complex, Mr Singh called for everyone's attention. 'As we told you in the briefing session before this trip,’ he said, 'there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions of the staff. Past experience has shown us that you children can waste the whole of a trip asking lots of foolish questions about things that have already been answered in the talk, if only you were listening. So, as we explained to you, I am going to make a list of the main points you want to know, so that the power station representative can include these in the talk and not be bombarded with individual questions from you which would take up the time needed on the tour.’
A boy put his hand up. 'How will we know what to ask about when we haven't seen anything yet?’
'You have been learning in class about nuclear power for four weeks now,’ said Mr Singh, 'and I hope you've been thinking about it, Garth, enough to give you some idea of what you still need to know.’
One of Eldred's classmates raised her hand. 'We haven't been learning about it,’ she said.
'I meant the top form pupils,’ said Mr Singh. 'You little ones haven't, no. You will do, later on, so just observe for today. I can answer your more basic questions myself this evening at the hostel, so don't waste time with them while we're at the power station.’
Eldred drew a deep breath. He scanned the faces and backs of heads of the top form children he had spoken to earlier. Had he been successful in implanting in their minds his own curiosity and the questions he so burningly wanted to ask? The children had not been able to answer them. Now they had heard them, would they want those questions answered? Would they present them as their own desire to learn?
One after another, the children raised their hands and asked their questions. Other children did the same. Some of the questions were foolish ('Will we see any nuclear bombs going off?’ 'Are there any spaceships there?’) while others were simple enough to be answered on the spot. The rest got written down on the list. Eldred sat back and relaxed.
'Will we be issued with radiation suits while we're there?’ asked a red-haired boy who had spent ten minutes in conversation with Eldred. 'And will we get to see the reprocessing plant?’
'There's no need for suits,’ said Mr Singh, still scribbling down the last question designed by Eldred and delivered by a solemn girl in a skirt two sizes too big, to allow for growth. 'We won't be going into any of the actual areas where the work is going on.’
There were roars of disappointment. Eldred felt his heart sink to the very depths of his being. Tears filled his eyes. He dug his fingernails hard into the palms of his hands. He wanted to scream and yell, to beat his breast till it bled, to lie down and die. He sat, white-faced and mute, while the others protested.
'What are we going to see, then?’ shouted a boy in the seat behind Eldred. 'We could have stayed at the adventure playground.’
Mr Singh grew flustered. Mr Johnson stood up beside him and flapped his hands and shushed, for moral support.
'We are going to visit the information centre,’ shouted Mr Singh above the noise. 'We will have a talk which is very interesting and you can ask questions, and there will be a presentation and a fascinating exhibition for you to walk round, and then we will have a coach tour around the site. I assure you that it is very enjoyable and informative.’
The children quietened down, some mollified by these promises and some dissatisfied. 'What a con,’ grumbled the boy behind Eldred. 'Better than being at school, though, eh?’ said his friend, and the boy agreed. 'S'pose so.’
Only Eldred remained filled with black despair. He wished he had never come on this trip. He wished he had never been born into this world, where the promise of fresh experience and learning always, inevitably, turned into a sour denial of his deep need to know. He felt like one of the starving children he had seen on the News, dying for lack of nourishment that would take away the pain, waiting for a relief plane that was always reported to be arriving and never came.
At the same time, he felt ashamed. Wasn't he fortunate, compared with those wide-eyed, despairing waifs, to be healthy and well-fed, educated and cared for with average competence? He had no right to feel the way he did.
He turned his head to the window and wept.
Genius Page 23