by Oisin McGann
'Mr Goldbloom's in a meeting, he won't be free for some time. And he'll only tell you what I'm telling you. You can't go accusing the military of brainwashing people without some kind of proof. Just think about what that would mean. You were a journalist . . . sort of. You know how this works.'
'I know you printed an inaccurate story about me in a national paper and deliberately misquoted me,' he snarled. 'And I know I'm rich enough to afford some serious lawyers. Tell Goldbloom that and tell him to ring me when he's free.'
The line went dead. Amina sighed and put down the receiver. It was a hollow threat. They hadn't said anything bad enough about him to be sued for libel, but she had to tell Goldbloom anyway. Helena had once said a journalist wasn't doing their job properly if they didn't get sued from time to time, but Amina doubted that this was what she meant.
She was a little hurt by his tone too. She had kind of liked him. Still, you needed a thick skin to work in this business and it didn't develop overnight. Pushing Ivor McMorris out of her mind, she tried to remember what she had been doing before he called.
'Amina! Call for you on line six!' a voice shouted.
'Thanks, I'll take it here!' she replied.
Hopefully it was Ivor calling back to apologize now that he had calmed down a bit. She picked up the phone again and pressed the lighted button.
'Hello?'
'Is this Amina Mir? My name's Chi Sandwith. I do some work for the National News. Maybe you've heard of me?'
Amina rolled her eyes. The National News was a rag full of lowbrow sensationalist stories and celebrity gossip. The last issue she'd seen actually had a blurred picture of a UFO on the front page.
'Sorry, no. I don't read the tabloids.'
'Right, well, I believe in reading a bit of everything and I noticed your article in today's paper: "Lottery Winner Afraid to Spend His Millions".'
'Yes, what about it?' she asked guardedly.
'Well, you mentioned that Mr McMorris was a veteran of Sinnostan and I was wondering if maybe he had more to say. It was a very . . . brief article and I just thought he might want to expand on—'
'I'm sorry, but we don't give out contact details,' Amina said in a clipped tone. 'Thank you for calling.'
She put down the phone before he could say any more. Poor old Ivor. He'd probably get hundreds more pest letters over this, from people eager to offer guidance on how to spend his money. Slouching in the chair, she tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling. She couldn't get hung up on this. The story'd had its shot and now it was time for her to move on. There were too many other things to do.
'Oh, bugger! The coffees!'
She took off out of the chair so fast it spun.
Despite his frustrated anger, Ivor was relieved when he read the article. His threat to Amina had been just bluster and he was regretting it already. He winced as he wondered if she'd taken it personally – a part of him still held out hope of seeing her again. What was it she'd said? 'You were a journalist – sort of '? Smirking, he shook his head. Cheeky cow!
He knew how the system worked and he should never have expected the story to be printed as he told it. Of course they needed proof. But his hands were shaking as he put down the phone and he couldn't tell if it was due to fear or fury.
Maybe this was for the best. He had tried to tell his tale and failed miserably. Perhaps the watchers would leave him alone now. He had been shown to be impotent in their eyes and they could rest easy knowing he was no threat to their operations . . . whatever they were.
He went to each of his windows and looked out onto the street below, but there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary. As ever, he caught fleeting glimpses of people at windows, in doorways and on the street corner, but nothing he could be sure about. Everyone seemed to be just minding their own business.
Letting out a long breath, Ivor went to his fridge and took out some milk. This occasion called for some hot chocolate. He hadn't decided what to do with the rest of his day; do a workout, watch a film or two, surf the web. Maybe he'd pick up one of the books he was halfway through reading.
Then the buzzer on the door's intercom rang.
Ivor glared at it. He wasn't expecting anybody. He continued looking at it until it buzzed again and then he reached out and picked up the handset.
'Yes?'
'Ivor? Hey, partner, it's Ben. Sorry for showin' up out o' the blue like this, but I really needed to talk to you . . . and, uh . . . well, I didn't want to do it over the phone.'
Ivor went to press the button that unlocked the door to the street, but then hesitated.
'You on your own, Ben?'
'Sure, man.'
'Sorry, you know how it is. Come on up.'
Ivor pressed the button and put down the handset. His hands were steady now, but his nerves were even more on edge than before. The timing was just a little too weird. Had Ben seen the article yet? There was a knock on his front door and Ivor checked through the spy-hole before opening it. Ben was alone, as he'd said. That didn't do much to set Ivor's mind at ease. He opened the door and ushered his old colleague inside.
Ben Considine had been Ivor's cameraman in Tarpan, seconded from the US army. Back then, he had been a real ladies' man, with his sun-bleached blond hair, his tanned, roguish good looks and his macho Texan drawl. He could find the humour in any situation and had been Ivor's guide to the nightlife in Kurjong's backstreets. But that was all before the bombing. He was a different man now.
Ben rarely went out without some kind of hat on to conceal the burn scars up the left side of his neck and head, which had left that side of his scalp bald. After numerous operations on the left side of his face, his flesh looked misshapen and the shape of his stubble was all wrong because the skin-grafts had been taken from his thighs. He had been standing closer to the bomb when it went off, framing Ivor in the shot of the street.
He had always dreamed of being a cameraman in Hollywood and would joke about how he'd make a great movie star himself. Ivor had admired him for the way he could hold his nerve and keep the camera steady in any situation. Now, Ben rarely did any camera work and when he did, it was always in a studio, never out on the street. He couldn't stand the way people stared.
'What's up?' Ivor asked.
'Just needed to talk,' Ben replied, making himself comfortable on the couch. 'Not many people I can talk to about . . . y'know, this stuff. Got any beer?'
Ivor fetched a couple of beers from the fridge. It was early yet, but he wasn't one for obeying conventions. He sat down opposite the couch and handed the bottle over. Neither of them used glasses.
'Been havin' a lot o' problems lately,' Ben told him. 'Hallucinations, paranoia, and some absolutely mindbendin' nightmares.'
Ivor nodded. They'd talked about this before.
'Still no roulette wheels, I'm sorry to say,' Ben added, giving him a distorted version of the ol' charmer's smile. 'A lot o' tiled corridors and faces in surgical masks . . . watchin' the lights whisk by overhead. Kept seeing these coloured flares that made me want to blow chunks. The hallucinations were new, though . . . and they were the freakiest – there's nothin' that screws with your brain like seein' spaced-out crap in broad daylight.'
'Like what?' Ivor asked.
'Well, first I just kept thinkin' people were watchin' me,' Ben said. 'Guys with no faces, y'know? Like you used to talk about? I'd look around and they'd just be disappearin' round a corner, or liftin' a newspaper up in front of 'em. But then I got to seein' worse things too.
'The first dead body I saw lyin' on a path in the park, I thought it was real. It was this pudgy guy in a shirt and trousers lyin' there with no visible wounds. Just dead. Couldn't understand why all these folks kept walkin' past him . . . even steppin' over the dude without reactin' to him at all. I actually went over to check his pulse and that was when I discovered he was a Sinner – one of the corpses we'd filmed in Tarpan. I turned him over and screamed and then I was lookin' down at an empty bit of pav
ement and people all around me were starin' at me like the nut-job I was.
'After that, I started seein' other corpses that I'd filmed in war zones, walkin' past me in the street – still torn up with their wounds, but walkin' round lively as you please, like they were just wearin' special-effects make-up or something. I learned not to react to them eventually, but you can just imagine how I was feelin'.'
'What about the smudge-faced guys?' Ivor pressed him. 'D'you see them much?'
'Hell, yeah!' Ben guffawed, some of his old spirit showing through his scarred face as he nearly sprayed beer everywhere. 'It got so everybody I looked at had this blurred face that I couldn't see. Like havin' a lump o' Vaseline smeared on your camera lens. Felt like the whole goddamned world was goin' blank on me. Even the pizza delivery guy just had these eyes starin' out of this flesh-coloured smudge – and he's like a buddy, he's round so often!
'Then, last week, I got a call from my pop. I got the webcam and everythin' set up for him, y'know? And there I was lookin' at his face on the monitor and I couldn't recognize a goddamned thing about him. My own father. That was when I went back to see Higgins.'
Ben knocked back the last of his beer. Ivor went to get him another without being asked.
'Higgins said I was repressin' a whole load of stuff and I had to work it out o'my system. I swear to Christ, every goddamned shrink you ever talk to tells you that. He put me through some o' that regressive hypnotherapy . . . you know, where they put you in this trance and take you back to the past? Ever done that?'
Ivor nodded.
'Didn't turn up much,' he said quietly. 'It was all pretty confused. And Higgins said it can be as much fantasy as reality. It's useful, but you can't really trust the results.'
'Yeah, well, he said that to me too,' Ben snorted. 'Still did it though. Probably charges the army extra for it. Anyway, he puts me under and probably has me talkin' about every time I'd jerked off when I was a kid, or cheated on a girl, and then I come out of it and he's smiling at me.'
'Yeah? How come?' Ivor asked.
'Reckons he's got me figured out. See, the Scalps guys? They're all the people I blame for my injuries. Not that the actual folks I see are to blame . . . it's more like . . . I need a conspiracy to explain why I was hurt. I can't accept that it was just dumb luck I was standing there when the bomb went off; it doesn't satisfy my sense o' outrage. You know, like . . . sometimes this crap just happens to you and that's life. So my mind has kind o' spun together this ring of conspirators who hurt me as part o' their master plan and now they're watchin' me 'cos they're afraid I'm gonna come back at 'em. It helps my subconscious make sense o'my injuries. Sort o' like believin' in God 'cos it gives us comfort, knowin' we're not just arbitrary sparks of momentary existence – if you get my drift.
'But he said the biggest thing I had to work out was the fact that I blamed one person above all the others. He said if I dealt with that, the other stuff would start slidin' into place.'
'So who was the culprit, then?' Ivor chuckled.
'Oh, that was you, buddy.' Ben nodded at him.
'But I didn't plant the bomb,' Ivor said, taken aback. 'Why would you blame me?'
'Hell, man! It doesn't have to make sense! It's just my mind lookin' for someone to hold responsible, that's all. You were there and you were callin' the shots, so I blamed you. Don't take it all personal! So I'm just here to say that I know I'm a screwed-up basket case with wild delusions of persecution, but I'm dealin' with it. And I needed to tell you that I've spent the last few months blamin' you for all this, even though I know it ain't true.'
'Right. Well . . . thanks for your honesty,' Ivor muttered. 'Ben?'
'Yup?'
'Did . . . did anyone . . . suggest that you come round here and tell me all this?'
'Yeah – Higgins.'
'No. I mean . . . I mean anyone from the top brass.'
'Ivor,' Ben sighed, leaning forward and putting the half-empty beer bottle on the coffee table. 'We both know you're goin' through the same crap. You just haven't been as honest with yourself yet. You've got yourself holed up in this poky little dump, con-vincin' yourself that "they" are out to get ya 'cos . . . 'cos you're on the point of findin' out what they did to you. But there is no "they" – at least, not outside of your head. You gotta deal with your demons, partner.'
Ivor gazed out of the window, lost in thought. Ben still hadn't mentioned the article. Maybe it was just coincidence that he'd called by hours after it had hit the streets. But there was no way to be sure. Ivor yearned for a time when he hadn't been so suspicious, so fearful. He knew he was being paranoid.
Yeah, he thought, but am I being paranoid enough?
21
Thated school. Every teenager thinks they hate school, but for the most part this isn't true. They dislike the early mornings, the rigid routine, having to sit still in regimented classrooms, struggling through tough or boring classes, enduring the overbearing discipline and any number of other things. But for most kids it is also a place that gives structure to their lives; while they treat it with open contempt, it is a place where they can meet up, play sports, flaunt the latest street-gear (as far as uniforms allow), pick up new slang, gossip and flirt and check each other out. It is a place where a boy can learn how to fight and eventually how not to fight, and where a girl can begin learning how to wrap boys around her little finger. It is an arena for proving themselves to their peers and it gives them tolerant authorities to rebel against so that they can define their individuality without fear of extended imprisonment or physical injury.
It can also, on occasion, provide some education.
But Tariq despised school. As Martin Mir had been moved from one post to another, so his children had moved schools to follow him. It had been OK for Amina; she was pretty, outgoing and vivacious and life was easy for girls like that. Tariq had been moody long before he became a teenager and he was slow to make friends. Apart from English, he spoke German and some Arabic, but he could rarely find anyone he considered worth speaking to. He had a few friends at this school, but mostly they were fellow victims and he didn't actually like them very much. Darren, his best mate, was in the year above him and they only saw each other at break times.
Even though he always left home on time, Tariq tried to get to school as late as he could. The less time Noble and his mates had to hassle him the better. He was just in time to get to Geography, the first class of the day, walking in through the double front doors of the building, past the office and the labs and the canteen and on down the glass-walled corridor towards the classroom in the next block.
Students milled around in the corridor, some trying to look as if they had somewhere to go, others looking like they didn't care where they went, as long as it wasn't lessons.
The usual sick feeling weighed in the pit of his stomach. His face was tense, his teeth clenched together. Alan Noble and his mates didn't bully Tariq. Bullying was what happened to kids – it was an insufficient word for the torment Tariq suffered on a daily basis. He would never have believed the power of humiliation; he had always been an outsider in school, but this place seemed to thrive on the misery of anyone who didn't fit in. He understood there had to be bullies in every school, but why did everyone else have to laugh?
He reached the classroom just as they were going in.
'Well timed, Tarmac!' Noble called out, much to the amusement of his sidekicks. 'Whass wrong, you forget where Geography was?'
That got another few chortles and one of the others repeated the line as a sign of appreciation. Tariq ignored them and joined the back of the group as they trailed into class. 'Tarmac'. Noble had called him that once because of his spots. When they laughed, he'd warned Tariq that the name would stick. 'Stick – like Tarmac. Geddit?' That had them in stitches . . . And so the nickname had stuck. Tariq flinched at the memory; it wasn't like Noble didn't have spots of his own. They hadn't noticed Tariq's eyeliner, but it was only a matter of time. He'd done it deliberately
. The more they slagged him off, the more he was determined they could all go to hell.
There was some pushing as they pressed through the door and Noble took the chance to dig his knee into Tariq's thigh. Tariq suppressed a grimace but Noble heard him grunt in pain and that was enough. He looked up towards the board but Ms Maijani, the Geography teacher, had seen nothing.
The students were surprised to see a man standing beside the teacher. He was wearing an olive drab army uniform. Tariq noted that although there were medal ribbons on his chest, the man wore no insignia to show his unit or regiment. He was like a picture from a recruitment poster; his face was lean and tanned, his brown hair was cut tight to his skull and he looked impressively fit.
'Now then, take your seats please,' Ms Maijani said in her heavy South African accent. 'Quietly!'
Once they were all seated, she gestured to the man beside her. There was a reluctance in her manner, as if she was less than pleased to be introducing him, but her voice had that fake enthusiasm that any good teacher could summon at a moment's notice:
'This,' she said brightly, 'is Lieutenant Scott. He will be taking you for Geography today. Our school has been lucky enough' – she laced the word with sickly-sweet emphasis – 'to have been chosen to test-run a new project, in conjunction with the Military in Schools Scheme. You will remember it was one of the changes brought in by the Drawbridge Act. I'll leave it to the lieutenant to fill you in.'
She graciously stepped aside and sat down in her swivel chair with a face like frostbite. It was clear she was not happy about surrendering her territory to some jumped-up squaddie.
Scott took the floor with a smile that immediately won him the approval of half the girls in the class. Melissa Denning whispered that he could fill her in any time. Her friends had to cover their mouths to contain their laughter.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' Scott began, clasping his hands. 'As you know the army was originally asked to get involved in schools to help with issues of discipline, but we always felt that we needed a more integrated role in education. After all, I can't just get you all to hit the floor and give me twenty press-ups, can I?'