City of the Falling Sky (6 page)

That was it. Seckry’s adrenaline fired
through his limbs and he shot up involuntarily.

“
What’s your problem?” he
said loudly, and pushed Snibble away.

Something snapped then. Snibble’s eyes
changed from smarmy malice to pure rage. He launched himself at
Seckry but Conker grabbed his shirt and wrenched him backwards.

“
One more fight and you’re
expelled, Mr Knotting,” said Mrs Dooly in her feeble voice. “The
headmaster has warned me about you.”

Snibble’s eyes stayed locked on Seckry’s for
a moment, but then he turned to Mrs Dooly and he seemed to calm
down.

“
I ain’t fighting, miss. We
were messing.”

In the moment, Snibble must not have realised
that Conker had restrained him because he seemed shocked when he
noticed that Conker’s brick of a hand was still clasped on his
shirt. He smacked it away in disgust.

“
Get off me, you fippin
freak,” he spat.

After that, Seckry was left to carry on
drawing and Snibble didn’t say a word. At the end of the lesson
Snibble left before anyone else.

Tenk showed Seckry his drawings. He hadn’t
bothered doing any still life at all, he had spent the lesson
coming up with logo ideas for his avatar, Basher.

For the rest of the morning Snibble kept to
himself and Seckry’s day went pretty smoothly. He had his first
genetics lesson in which they had a teacher named Mr Gilb, who was
pleasant enough, although stank of alcohol and had a noticeable
sway in his step. Then they had religious education, in which they
were dictated to about Gedin and the coming of Seckraman. Seckry
kept his head down in that one, hoping no one was going to ask him
why his mum had named him the same name as the son of the
Almighty.

When lunchtime came around, Seckry sat in the
canteen with Tenk and Tippian and listened to their conversations
on Friction. He couldn’t believe he had heard so much about this
game and he hadn’t even played it yet. Tenk was itching to take
Seckry to the Friction pods that very night, but his eldest brother
was coming home for a couple of days from university to see his
family. Tenk promised he would show Seckry how to play on the
weekend.

While the boys were chatting away, Seckry
noticed that Snibble was sitting in the far right corner of the
canteen, talking to the chewing gum girl, Tania. She looked angry
and she was shaking her head at him. Seckry tried to read Snibble’s
lips but they were too far away to see.

“
What Mrs Dooly did earlier,
that’s the only way to get him,” Tenk explained, following Seckry’s
line of sight. “The guy’s scared to death of being expelled. Scared
of his parents, I guess. His dad sounds like a right nutter from
what I’ve heard and his mum is in prison for life. No one knows
what she did to get herself there.”

After lunch, Seckry and the rest of his class
had a period of animal care which was run by a woman who lived on
campus named Ms Butterkins. If Seckry hadn’t known any better he
might have mistaken Ms Butterkins for a homeless person who had
wandered in off the streets, since her clothes were ravaged and
tattered and her hair was like a giant, tangled bird’s nest. He
felt slightly intimidated by her at first, since, aside from her
striking appearance, she was also rather unpredictable, and
unnaturally strong. Tenk assured him, however, that Butterkins was
one of the nicest, and most harmless of teachers in the whole of
the school.

The lesson took place in a separate building
known the sanctuary, which was located just outside of the
headmaster’s office and which was home to about fifty different
animals, some very young, which were being kept in incubation tanks
for a period of time, and others older, who had free run of the
place.

During the lesson they learned how to feed
baby mollycobbles, which were little plump things that looked to
Seckry like oversized grubs, and which snapped at a person’s hands
so quickly that you had to be careful not to lose a finger. The
task was a relatively simple one, but was made overly difficult by
the resident bubbit (a knee high bouncy species that Seckry
recognised from the fields around Marne) who kept flying through
the air and swiping the food from pupils’ hands, and, in one case,
knocking over one of the smaller girls before sitting happily on
her chest and licking her face.

When the bell rang, Seckry felt bile rising
up his throat. They only had one lesson left, and it was
electronics with Cut Throat Cutson.

Seckry and most of the rest of the class were
already seated in room B12 when Snibble strolled in with a
deliberate limp.

“
Who you lookin’ at, Conker?
Give me one more look like that and you know what I’ll do?” Snibble
leaned in and said vehemently, “I’ll send the Rabbit Man
round.”

“
The Rabbit Man?” Seckry
stifled a laugh. “Who’s the Rabbit Man?” he said to Tenk. “Some
kind of giant rabbit?”

But before Tenk could answer, one of the
girls over the other side of the class (Primmy Trotts, if he
remembered her name correctly), stood up furiously and shouted,
“Don’t even joke about that, Snibble, you disgusting pig!”

“
Who says I’m joking?”
Snibble retorted and began strolling over to her, but at that
moment Mrs Cutson opened the door and the class fell
silent.

Snibble’s expression turned to panic and he
jumped into his seat.

Cutson entered carrying a tray and placed it
very carefully on her desk.

“
These, ladies and
gentlemen, are the electronic chips that will be protecting you
from the harmful toxins of the south partition power plant
leak.”

There were a few murmurs in the class.

“
Power plant leak?”
Seckry whispered to Tenk, but Tenk just shrugged his
shoulders.

“
Quiet!” said Cutson,
furiously. “Don’t tell me that none of you watched the news last
night.”

“
I did,” said one girl
feebly. “So did I,” said another, but that seemed to be
it.

“
You’re supposed to be the
brightest prospects in the world here in Skyfall,” Cutson said
disgustedly, “and none of you can even be bothered to keep up with
current affairs. Even when your own lives are in
danger.”

There was another wave of murmuring in the
class, this time full of worry and confusion.

“
Yes, that’s right,” Cutson
said. “All of your lives could be in danger as there was a leak at
one of the city’s largest power plants yesterday evening. The
chemicals that have been released into the air are extremely toxic,
which is why I’m carrying this tray of wonderful cutting edge white
chips, which have been designed to protect us from these very
toxins. Thank Gedin for Endrin.”

“
Endrin?”
Seckry
whispered to Tenk.
“They’re the ones that set up that extraction
site in my village.”

“
We are now going to watch a
video message from the president of Endrin, Mr Kan Darklight,” said
Cutson. She seemed to go red saying his name.

“
He’s such a sleaze,”
blurted one of the girls.

“
Mr Darklight is nothing of
the sort!” said Cutson, abruptly. “He has taken Endrin to a
completely new level. He is a beacon in the name of science. If you
interrupt me like that again, Isabelya, there will be serious
consequences.”

Cutson regained her composure and flicked the
lights off. A projector at the back of the room stuttered into
life.

The man on screen was wearing a suit and tie
with gelled back black hair and a confident, if somewhat sinister,
smile.

“
Hello, pupils of Estergate.
I’m sure you will all have heard about the unfortunate recent
spillage in the south partition power plant, and I’m sure you will
all have your concerns about this. However, here at Endrin we have
been working on technology to protect ourselves from such an event
for a long time, and we are here to protect you too. It is
estimated that the leaked substances will not begin to have an
effect on the human body until around five days after exposure,
however, it is imperative that we administer this protection as
quickly and as efficiently as we can.”

He raised his hand up to his chest, holding a
small white cube between his forefinger and thumb.

“
This, ladies and gentlemen,
is the Endrin white chip. It works by sending out a signal in a
kind of invisible, circular bubble around your body which repels
these toxins. The easiest way to ensure that you are always
protected by the white chip is to wear it around your arm with
these simple arm straps we are supplying.”

He slotted the cube into a holder on a thin,
rubber arm strap and fastened it around his wrist.

“
We don’t know how long it
will take for these chemicals to neutralise completely so you will
all have to wear your white chips until further notice. As students
of the XL-Ent curriculum, we, at Endrin, are giving you the first
opportunity to have access to the white chips and we are also
providing you with complete diagrams of the inner workings of the
chip for you to study.

“
Your teacher will now
provide each and every one of you with a chip. Thank you for
listening.”

The screen faded to white and some text
appeared on screen:

Endrin: Proud to be ethical.

As soon as the lights clicked back on, the
class erupted into nervous whispers once more.

“
Quiet!” Cutson said
viciously. “If there are any questions then you will put your hands
up and wait to be asked.
Yes
, Miss Turntop?”

“
Miss,” said one of the
girls, anxiously. “What about Peanut? Will he be safe from the
toxins?”

“
Peanut will be fine,”
Cutson said impatiently. “Endrin have informed me that the
chemicals pose no threat to animals. Only humans. Now, I’m going to
hand a white chip to each and every one of you, and you will attach
it around your arm immediately. Understood?”

There was a murmur of, “Yes, miss,’ and a few
nods.

When Seckry received his chip he strapped it
around his left wrist.

“
Now what we are all going
to do is unclip the face of our chips so that we can see the
circuitry inside. Then we’re going to draw a diagram of the inner
workings into our workbooks.

“
Not copying again,”
Tenk complained under his breath.
“This’ll take us hours. Look
at the thing. It’s like something from outer space.”

As they all lethargically reproduced the
diagram which Cutson had projected onto the whiteboard, Cutson
explained the nature of each connection. As Seckry was listening,
he found himself seeing patterns and shapes in the circuitry on the
tiny chip on his wrist. Over in the top left hand corner was a kind
of bear figure, right in the centre there was a sort of star, and
when he tilted it, there was a tiny distorted face just at the
bottom. He looked up at the projection to see the shapes on a
larger screen. But something wasn’t right. The face had only one
eye. Its left eye was missing.

He did a few double takes to check he wasn’t
mistaken. But sure enough, a circular dot of some sort was missing
from the diagram.

At that moment another teacher came into the
classroom, a man holding a white chip of his own. He gestured an
‘excuse me,’ to Cutson, and he pointed to a stack of files at the
back of the room before heading down there and flicking through
them.

Cutson didn’t look at all pleased to have her
lesson interrupted.

Seckry wondered if he should point out the
mistake on the diagram. He knew it would probably infuriate Cutson
but he was itching to say something. He shocked himself when he
realised he was raising his hand slowly.

Cutson’s gaze fell upon his and she froze,
glaring at him.

“
I think the diagram is
missing something,” Seckry said.

When she continued to stare at him like a
stone statue, Seckry thought it was best to elaborate.

“
In the corner on the bottom
left, there’s a little dot missing. Just down there where it looks
like a . . . face.”

Mrs Cutson sighed impatiently. “Would you
like to stand up here and give your own lecture, Seckraman? I
assure you that Endrin would never allow–”

“
Mrs Cutson,” said the
teacher at the back of the room, and his deep voice stamped out
Cutson’s whine immediately. “Forgive my interrupting,” he said,
“but this young man has a very sharp eye. He is absolutely correct.
The diagram that Endrin have provided us with is inaccurate, and is
the reason I am locating their contact details right now.” He
turned to the class. “I will be in touch with Endrin tonight to get
us all replacement copies. Well done for spotting that.” He glanced
at Seckry and gave a nod before leaving.

Cutson looked like she’d just received a
slap. Her face was bright red, her thick veins pulsating under her
loose fitting skin.

For the rest of the lesson she remained
silent, leaving the pupils to copy into their workbooks. Seckry
couldn’t help but gleam inside. That teacher had put Cutson right
in her place.

When the class ended, Seckry and Tenk began
packing up their bags, but there was one thing that Seckry couldn’t
get out of his mind.

“
What was all that about a
rabbit man earlier?” Seckry asked. “Primmy seemed really upset
about it. Is the Rabbit Man some kind of–”