The Gods and their Machines (3 page)

It was quiet in the exam hall and Chamus could not
concentrate
. It had taken a few weeks for the ringing in his ears to disappear completely, but even then he was certain he could still hear something when everything was quiet around him. That had been four months ago. Now, in the summer navigation exam, over the mouse-like scratch of fountain pens and grease pencils, and the leafy rasp of pages being turned, a murmuring tickled at the very edge of his hearing. It was as
if someone at the back of the hall was whispering something intended for him, but was saying it too quietly for him to hear it. Trying to ignore the sound, he turned his attention back to the exam paper:

‘Q.23 – Give the difference, in feet, between the standard nautical mile and the statute mile,’ it read, ‘and state the formulae for converting one to the other.’

Morthrom wandered into his field of vision, reading a newspaper. On the front page was a report on the latest terrorist attack. Chamus found himself trying to see the photograph that accompanied the article and looked down quickly before Morthrom could catch him not paying
attention
to the test. He was normally good with numbers, but he couldn’t remember the lengths of either type of mile. He skipped the question, deciding to go back to it later:

‘Q.24 – Define an isogonal and explain its relevance in instrument flying.’

Isothermal was temperature, what was isogonal?
Magnetic
? He rubbed his eyes. Maybe he should go back to that one too. The sound continued whispering in the back of his head. He had not mentioned it to the doctor who had been examining him since the attack on the hangar. He did not want people to think he was hearing voices. It was bad enough trying to fit into a new class, being the boy no one wanted to talk to. What did you say to someone who had survived an attack that had killed all his friends?

Against the doctor’s advice, he had left the hospital and gone back to the hangar to see the clean-up crews dig out the broken bodies. He blocked the thought of what he had seen there from his mind:

‘Q.25 – Calculate the velocity of an aircraft travelling south at an airspeed of sixty knots against an easterly wind of fifteen knots.’

It had not been the only attack that day. Five different men had walked into five different places: the city hall, a main shopping street, the stock exchange, the central court … crowded, public places, and had dealt out death by means that still baffled the authorities. The results resembled
weapons
created in Altima. Two sirenisers, a poison-gas canister, a flail bomb and an acid grenade. Thirty-two people had died altogether (not including the five suicidal maniacs) and dozens had been injured. But according to witnesses, none of the men had carried any weapons, and every witness had seen nightmarish visions at the moment of detonation. And each had been in the same kind of trance-like state that Chamus had seen for himself. All of the terrorists had died with their victims. People were whispering a new word from the Fringelands:
mortiphas
– the power to summon death from the past.

There had been assassinations before, but nothing like this. A group called the Hadram Cassal had claimed
responsibility
, saying they were acting to end Altima’s domination of the Fringelands, that they were the avenging hands of martyrs from centuries past. As if Altima had not been
pulling
the Fringelands out of one famine, drought, or war after another for years. He gritted his teeth even now to think of their stupidity. He desperately wanted to hurt somebody for what had happened, to make somebody pay. Violent
fantasies
played themselves out in his mind, both shocking and satisfying him.

‘Mr Aranson,’ a sharp voice broke into his thoughts, ‘are we keeping you from something?’

Chamus came to his senses with a start. He was back in the navigation exam. Glancing at the clock he saw that he had only half an hour left, and he had skipped most of the questions. He bowed his head over the exam paper and tried to block out the whispering that babbled persistently just beyond the reach of his ears.

Chamus handed over his half-answered exam sheet when Morthrom clapped his hands to call time, then he picked up his satchel and walked out. Down one end of the corridor, he saw a group of boys crowding around Vel Sillian. Sillian, a tall, dark-haired, athletic-looking lad, had used the commotion at the end of the exam to swipe Morthrom’s newspaper and now everyone wanted a look.

‘The bastards hit the National Library on Whalpot Road,’ Sillian was saying. ‘What kind of sick pigs firebomb a
library
? I’m two years away from the academy, and then my dad’s going to see I get into a front-line unit. I’m going to give them hell when I get out there.’

He saw Chamus coming up the hall.

‘Hey, Cham, bet you’re dying to get out there and lay down some fire! After what they did to your mates, you’re probably ready to strafe the lot of ’em.’

Chamus found all the boys looking expectantly at him, as if waiting for a suitably vengeful reply. He knew he should reel out some jock talk, rant about machine-gunning or rocketing a rebel camp, or something. And he wanted to show how he
felt, but listening to these boys, it just came out sounding like lines from a comic story. He nodded to Sillian and held out his hand for the paper. The taller boy gave it to him and Chamus read the article.

‘The scum are all around us, living here, working here. It could be any one of us next,’ Sillian said as he watched Chamus read. ‘We should just get rid of the lot of ’em, turf ’em out. Let them rot in their own soddin’ country.’

‘Then who would we get to clean our toilets?’ Chamus muttered, and the other boys laughed. He kept reading.

The town of Yered, in Bartokhrin, had been marked as harbouring terrorists and the air force had laid a blanket of flail bombs over it in retaliation for the attack on the library. There were other articles, one discussing the possibility of war, one giving a one-hundred-and-fifty-word summary of the Fringelands’ religion and another about some disease that had broken out in Bartokhrin.

There had been a score of suicide attacks since the first wave, and they were all starting to read alike. The assassins had become known as ‘the Haunted’, because it was said that they carried death with them. They were rumoured to have superhuman strength and endurance, and supernatural senses. But even with reports of such menacing powers, most people still considered them as merely madmen and fanatics. Chamus was surprised at how normal it had all become. As if walking into a library and unleashing the force of an acid grenade was the kind of thing that was expected from Fringelanders. People had stopped being shocked at what men could do to themselves, and to other people, because it happened all the time. Fringelanders had their
terrorists and it was Altima’s duty to wipe them out. Wipe them out like rats. How else could you deal with madmen who killed for no reason? He found himself gritting his teeth again and realised he was crumpling the paper in his clenched fists. Looking up at the other boys, he saw
something
in their eyes as they stared at him – not the frustration he felt, or sympathy for the people who had lost someone that day. They were gazing at him as if his tightly bunched fists were his initiation into some kind of gang. He handed back the paper and walked around to the corridor that led to the assembly yard.

As he walked down past the bank of metal lockers, he saw that one was standing open. It was his locker. He hurried up to it and looked inside. Somebody had rifled through his things. He searched through them and was surprised to find that nothing was missing. The most valuable items, such as his navigation instruments and log-book, were still there, along with the swing records he had borrowed from Roddins. The flimsy metal door had been prised open, probably with a crowbar or something similar, and yet the thief had not taken a thing. And then he realised that there was something missing – one of the photographs that had been stuck to the inside of the door. He frowned. Why would anyone steal a photo and leave all the valuable stuff? Maybe it had just fallen off the door as they searched the locker and then got swept up or kicked away. He turned and checked the floor around him, but there was no sign of it. Chamus shook his head and cleared out the locker,
squeezing
most of his things into his already bulging schoolbag and tucking the records under his arm.

The caretaker’s office was near the entrance to the
building
, so he was passing it on his way out. He would tell Shamiel about the locker if he saw him. Not that he wanted to; the gnarled old grouch from Bartokhrin took every bit of vandalism in the school personally and even the other Fringelanders who worked under him feared him. His roars could regularly be heard up and down the corridors of the school buildings. But it was better to get it over with now, then face questions later. The service window was closed when he reached the main hall. Shamiel was probably off working in some other part of the school, but Chamus decided to knock anyway. There was no answer, so he tried the door. It opened and he peered in. The head caretaker was sitting at his desk, its surface cluttered with an
assortment
of keys, fixtures, electrical bits and pieces, and papers stained with tea rings. He had one hand up to his face and was so intent on a piece of paper in the other hand, that he had not even noticed Chamus look in. With a tentative tap, Chamus got his attention and he was taken aback to see tears on the cantankerous Fringelander’s face.

‘What do you want, boy?’ Shamiel asked, his voice
rasping
, but lacking its normal growl.

‘Someone’s broken into my locker, Mr Shamiel. They’ve damaged the door and the lock.’

He braced himself for the tirade: how it was probably his fault and didn’t Shamiel have enough to do around here without boys not looking after their lockers and why did nobody have respect for this school anymore … but it didn’t come. The caretaker just nodded and turned back to the letter in his hand.

‘I’ll sort it tomorrow,’ he said quietly.

‘Mr Shamiel? Are you alright?’

Chamus could see the paper from where he was standing; it was a telegram. He couldn’t read most of it, but he
recognised
the word ‘Yered’. He had seen it somewhere before, but could not place where. Then he remembered, the town in the Fringelands that had been bombed. Had Shamiel known someone there?

‘I’ll sort it tomorrow,’ the old caretaker repeated and gave him a baleful look.

Chamus nodded and closed the door.

‘What are you hanging about for, Aranson?’ a familiar voice asked from behind him.

He turned around, standing wearily to attention.

‘Someone broke into my locker, Mr Morthrom. I was reporting it to Mr Shamiel, sir.’

‘I see.’

‘Mr Shamiel looks upset, sir,’ Chamus added softly. ‘Is he alright?’

Part of him was sympathetic, but the vindictive side of him wanted to hear if the old goat had received some bad news.

‘How should I know?’ the teacher replied. ‘Mr Shamiel’s problems are his own business.’

He took Chamus’s arm and led him away from the door.

‘You’d do well not to concern yourself with the likes of him,’ Morthrom muttered. ‘The only reason the whole lot of ’em haven’t been fired since these attacks started is because he’s been here longer than the bloody building has. Steer clear of them.’

‘But he has nothing to do with the terrorists, does he, sir? I
mean, the police held him for a week after the hangar was hit and they didn’t find anything on him. And he only got out because the headmaster insisted–’

‘They’re not stupid, you know, boy. You can see that, you know what I mean, you’ve suffered at their hands. They’ve got an animal cunning. They cover their tracks well. Some of the other teachers and I have already begun taking measures to see he and the others are removed. They’re watching us, while they clean our windows and mop our floors. You’ve got to keep your eyes open, boy, because one day they’re going to try and overturn this great country, and we must be prepared.’ He looked around as they walked outside. ‘We’ve made it too easy for them. Given them the same rights as a normal person, let them get educated in our schools. We’ll be letting them
vote
soon, for God’s sake. You wait and see!’

He turned and put his hands on Chamus’s shoulders.

‘I know what you’re thinking, boy. You’re thinking, “this old sod’s lost it”. But what I’m telling you is the hard truth. I’m not a bigot, I’m a reasonable man, but I’m not afraid to speak the truth, unpopular though it may be. Look at the way they put some kind of curse on their assassins, some ungodly power from the dead! Black magic, devil worship, that’s what they believe in, that’s what’s important to them. And they’re jealous of what we have, but they’re still just too damned primitive to achieve it themselves, so they don’t see why we should have it either. That’s what it comes down to, boy. We’re victims, victims of envy.’

Chamus pulled the strap of his satchel onto his shoulder, so Morthrom had to move his hand.