The Fall of Chance (8 page)

“A score of two above your Order,” said Kelly, “Which means you will draw a partner from the Labourers. Please approach Mr Croker’s bench and draw a number from pot nine.”

As Unt watched her slip awkwardly down the far side of the chamber, he was glad it was the girls and not the boys who had this bit to do. Every set of eyes in the place was watching her slight frame, judging her. The girls might be guaranteed to get a partner but they had to parade themselves first.

Tressa paused in front of the bench, staring at the pot as though it contained venomous creatures. “Go ahead, dear,” said Kelly, not unkindly.

She plucked a ball, read its number without speaking and looked at the board.

“Well?” asked Kelly.

“Eighty-seven,” Tressa spoke into the ground but in the echoing chamber, her small voice carried clear enough.

So did the whisper of “Aw, hell!” from three seats down. Kelly frowned deeply but chose not to acknowledge the outburst. Instead, he simply stated, “You have drawn Mr Copper. You may now return to your seat.”

As Tressa shuffled her way back, the general murmur returned. Bull took the opportunity to whisper behind his hand, “Poor Copper: scared of boys, that one.”

As well she might be, thought Unt. Copper was enormous. He was bigger than Bulton and had been assigned to the Labourers for a reason. He could carry a stone block the size of Tressa with his bare hands. It was like she’d been thrown into the arms of a great bear.

Time might tell but it was the kind of pairing that made Unt doubt the wisdom of the system. Regardless, he felt for Tressa right now. She couldn't help but have heard Copper’s reaction. It was a cruel and humiliating beginning to a lifelong sentence.

Not soon enough, the next draw was up and Tressa’s plight was forgotten. Kelly stood up to make his second draw. Again, there was the same over-worked rummaging and then he plucked a ball.

“Twelve: the Artsians!” he proclaimed.

A sinewy girl called Colé
rose from her seat with the grace of a snake. She was confident - eager, even - and Unt was suddenly disappointed this was one girl he definitely wouldn’t get. Colé was a dancer and the Artisans fit her like a glove.

“Miss Colé, I appreciate your enthusiasm but you are not the only lady in your Order. Please adhere to procedure and wait to be called,” said Kelly. Colé’s response was a curtsey and if it was possible to put both scorn and deference into such a move, Colé achieved it.

She didn’t bother to sit back down. It didn’t matter: Croker scratched around for one of only two balls in the and then announced her number anyway.

Smiling with devilish sweetness, she rolled her dice and called out “Eight”. She cocked her head at Kelly, waiting for him to state the obvious.

Looking flustered, Kelly said, “A score of one above your Order. As yours is the highest Order, you will draw from your own. Approach Mr Morley and draw from pot twelve.

Taking the cue, Colé skittered barefoot over the wooden floor like the dancer she was. She plucked the one ball from its pot and without bothering to read it, looked and Kelly and said “Thirteen.”

You have drawn Mr Locke,” Kelly told her, “You may now return to your seat”.

As she slipped back to her bench, Colé threw a wink in direction of one of the rows: Locke likely. He was another dancer so it was a good pairing but there wasn’t a boy in the room who didn’t wish that wink was for them right then.

“Lucky sod,” Bull summed it up with typical bluntness but then his face brightened. “Then again,” he said, “Every girl down narrows the field between me and Crystal.”

Unt let his retort slide as Kelly made his next draw and the Managers came up. There were eight girls in the group, including the ones who’d got the post he wanted. How ironic it would be if he ended up married to one of them.

There was a serious chance of that happening, too. With three Orders separating them, a score of four or less would lead whoever Morley drew to Unt. That was a one-in-six chance: it wasn’t impossible that the next girl drawn would be his.

Unt thought through the possibilities, their names still fresh in his mind after they’d pipped him to his post. They were all solid six or sevens out of ten. There were maybe even a couple of eights in there but none of them got him excited.

Morley called and it was a girl called Chylla who was up. She was probably the looker of the group and Unt watched with interest but she rolled a six. That bagged her the only male Educator and that meant that any girl from the Functionaries now had a one-in-thirty-six chance of drawing from the Medics.

And then, as if on cue, Delanda was called.

“Hold me,” Bull gripped Unt’s hand.

Unt snapped it away sharpish. “Delanda’s gonna crush you,” he whispered.

Bull might have been laughing but Unt felt a hint of genuine concern as Delanda pushed herself to her feet. Manly hands cast her dice and a second later she called out, “Three.”

A Manager. She’d got herself a Manager. For the first time all day, Unt was glad he’d never got the post he wanted. Delanda went and made her draw and got a Housing Manager. So, he’d have been all right in the end but it drove one thing home: the right job wasn’t everything.

A whole host of girls came and went in quick order but in spite of the odds, Kelly didn’t draw out for the Medics. Two successive girls drew from the male Medics and that got Bull’s attention but neither went to him in the end.

Shortly after, the last girl from the Managers Order was called. She rolled for the same Order and the boy she rolled was Kroos, the boy who’d won the other management post. Her name was Amber, she was pretty and she would have been Unt’s.

He watched her as she went back to her seat. She was smiling when she caught him looking and he couldn’t tell what she thought. He was thinking she would have done nicely.

Bull nudged his elbow, “I’m telling you, man, it’s gonna be me and Crystal.”

And it seemed he would be right. The very next ball drawn was for the Medics. With baited breath, the pair of them watched Morley draw out the name.

“Sixty-two,” he called. Not Crystal. Her number, twenty-four, was set in Unt’s mind. Sixty-two was Xlandra, as Morley now stated.

At his summons, a girl with silvery-blonde hair in a plain silver dress stood up. She was a beautiful girl but serious. Unt knew she was smart and had scored high in academic subjects. She knew she was good-looking but seemed to hold her looks in scant regard, like they were simply her due. Xlandra tended to be everyone’s second-thought after Crystal and she wasn’t a bad second-best.

In the half-minute it took between her being called and her roll, Unt wondered if he could live with her. Did her looks compensate for the attitude? But then she rolled for her own group and it no longer mattered to him. Bull, on the other hand, was suddenly leaning forward and watched her all the way to Morley’s counter. Any hopes he had were soon dashed as she drew the last Medic who wasn’t Bull. A flicker of a wintry smile on her face suggested she was pleased with the outcome.

“Never mind: fish in the sea,” Bull exhaled loudly.

But there was only one fish Unt was thinking of right now. Crystal’s number had finally been called out.

Unt rechecked his figures. Anything less than seven would bring her into Unt’s range and he was the only candidate who would then apply. Fifteen rolls out of thirty six belonged to him. He had a better chance than any single boy left and almost as good as the lot of them combined. But it still left twenty-one shots at her falling to someone else and six of those belonged to Bull. Maybe he’d been right all along.

From three rows deep, behind his right shoulder, Unt watched her stand. It was the first time Unt had ever seen her looking nervous. She was wearing a dress of peach, dotted with bright red flower buds. She was the dawn of summer but her face was uncertain.

She looked at the board, making her own calculations. Unt supposed that events this morning had given her the need to reassess things. She’d have come into today expecting Rob to have Unt’s post and the path to him laid open. Now, Rob was a long shot but still in the running somewhere. Doubtless she was working out that she needed to roll eleven.

Did Unt feel guilty at hoping she failed? Yes, but those weren’t the rules. She and Rob may have thought things were their entitlement but life didn’t always work that way. The system gave everyone the chance of every opportunity and Unt knew whatever the outcome, it wasn’t his doing.

Today had already seen the highs and lows of the system in operation and it was nobody’s design. Not an hour before, Unt had been looking a life of disappointment square in the face and if he’d ended up stuck there, that would be no-one’s fault too. So yes, Unt felt guilty but he also felt a kind of moral right to his selfishness.

He couldn’t see Crystal roll so he watched her eyes instead. He heard one die settle while the other continued to roll. He saw a flash of something there - hope? A six or a five, then. If it was a six, that was a chance for Rob and no chance for Unt: the lowest she’d get was a seven which was no good to him. Her total had to be less than seven. If her first die was five, a one would do him but only a one.

The calculations flashed through Unt’s head with a speed that came from years of working the odds. The second die could only have been in motion seconds more than the first but time just stretched and there was plenty to spare for worry to set in.

The die stopped. Crystal’s eyes were downcast on her score. It could have been in relief or despair. Her lovely lips were parted as though a cord of air was ready to pluck the breath from her mouth.

“Six,” she said.

Six? That was enough! She was his! Unt’s mind swung up to the rafters and then a heartbeat later came crashing down. He needed her to look up. He needed to look her in the eye and see she didn’t find this too horrible.

But she didn’t look up. She just remained there, looking at the dice as Kelly declared, “You have rolled one below your Order, which means you will draw from the Order of Councillors. Proceed to Mr Morley’s counter and draw from bowl two.”

It sounded to Unt like Kelly was pronouncing sentence and so it looked on Crystal’s face. As she approached the bench her eyes were locked at the same angle, as though she were still seeing the dice before her. It was the shuffling march of the condemned.

Fate’s sake, was he really that much of a disappointment? He knew he wasn’t what she’d hoped for but surely he wasn’t that bad? She wasn’t the only one who’d been let down today and after Unt had got the Councillor post she’d surely have expected that this was on the cards.

Her beauty didn’t make her any more special. Her intelligence didn’t make her any more special. Her kindness didn’t make her more special. She was a queen brought low and he pitied her but he was also angry that she’d reacted like this. He wasn’t ugly, he wasn’t a brute and he wasn’t a dim-wit. She could have done a lot worse but she bore it like a millstone.

Crystal reached the bench and took the solitary ball from Unt’s bowl. She read the number: Unt’s number.

“You have drawn Mr Unt,” Kelly told her, “You may return to your seat.”

“You lucky bastard,” said Bull, “You lucky, lucky bastard.”

*              *              *              *

It was strange to watch the draw continue and not really care about it. The last round had kept him hanging on almost to the end but now, as far as he cared, everything was settled. All he had to do was reflect.

When Crystal had gone back to her seat he’d hoped at some point she would look at him, maybe give him a sign that she didn’t find him too bad. But the only thing that she would look at was Rob, a pleading look for help.

Unt could appreciate how Tressa felt, the humiliation of public rejection. “She won’t look at me,” he whispered to Bull.

Bull shrugged. “Who cares? You get to look at her and that’s the point.

“I’d kind of like my wife to like me back,” said Unt.

Bull gave him a stony look, “Don’t worry, mate, she’ll come round. You might be miserable and pig-ugly to boot, but you’re a decent bloke and she’ll come round in the end.”

“Could we have silence, please?” Kelly spoke to the room but looked at Bull.

Bull kept his tongue for almost a minute before he launched back in with a furious whisper. “Look, she might be all into Rob right now but it’s just a teenage crush. Look at all the couples around town and all their happy families. Don’t think they never had eyes for someone else. They got what they got and learned to live with it. Just give her time.”

Kelly fixed Bull with another stare and he shut up but he’d already said his piece. The words had had an impact upon Unt and he felt hope inside him. Bull was right; this was the wrong time to worry about it. Crystal would need time to learn to like him but he had years to win her over. As the draw rolled on, he began to feel good about himself.

He felt even better when Bull’s name was drawn. He’d been so caught up in himself that he’d forgotten about his friend. From out of the blue, he was pulled by an Educator called Min. It didn’t seem the likeliest of matches and this girl had never featured in one of Bull’s boastful projections but right now he was looking like the cat with the cream.