Futuretrack 5 Read online

  Twenty minutes to seven. E-level results in fifty minutes. By then, most of us would be Ests for life, not just children of Est families. Cushy careers as archaeologists or astronomers, poets or racing yachtsmen (which I wanted). Gracious old houses. Book-lined studies with real log fires. Obedient, soft-spoken wives who could cook in the style of Provence or Cambodia and play the grand piano without actually fracturing your eardrum. Chinese house servants, real coffee. Children in moderation.

  Some of us, the ones who failed the E-level, would be packed into vans and driven through the Wire and never heard of again.

  Ests bred too fast. Two per family was the rule. But the big-boss families had seven or eight, to prove how big they were. So every year the E-levels weeded us out, like unwanted puppies.

  It was almost a luxury, standing there, letting the breeze cool my sweat, letting the first prickings of terror run up my neck into my well-combed, sweat-soaked hair. But that wasn’t fair—it wasn’t my terror. I knew I’d passed: crosschecked with Alec. Hadn’t dropped any marks at all.

  Roger, standing beside me, had failed. Alec and I had coached him like hell, really burned the midnight oil. But too often he’d smiled, eyes clouded, and said, “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right on the night.”

  It wouldn’t. He was going through the Wire and he knew it. He was still calm; eyes just a little bit too wide as if to drink in enough of the sea, the sunset, and his friends. They had no sea, beyond the Wire. Maybe they couldn’t bear to look at the sunset. Did they make friends?

  I got near the Wire once, when I was four. Our Chinese gardener left the gate unlatched. I’d wondered a long time about that distant gauzy Wire that ran across the hills, cutting them in half. Our side was all trees and cottages, hedges and signposts and ladies on bicycles who sometimes gave me sweets. The grass was very green.

  Beyond the Wire, the grass was grey and empty. A few tall concrete lampposts; grey blocks of buildings peeping over a treeless hill.

  When I finally reached the Wire, I found it was two wires, ten yards apart. The near one just smooth green plastic; the far one tall, black barbed wire with bits of newspaper fluttering like trapped birds.

  Between them, plants grew higher than my head, a jungle of cow parsley and young sycamores. Fascinating new insects buzzed, crawled, and flew. I thought I saw a rabbit. I thought I’d found the Garden of Eden; got lost in an insect-haunted daze, hanging on the Wire and sucking the plastic strands.

  Then I heard a “ping.” Peering through my jungle, I saw a man with no nose.

  He’d had a nose; I could see where it had been. Now he just had two holes to breath through. He’d no eyebrows either. Just purple rings encircling his eyes, making them look tiny and staring. And purple ears, with long gold daggers hanging from them. Bald, except for a long yellow horsetail that sprouted from his head and flowed

  down his back. He wore tight purple trousers and a ragged gold waistcoat that left his shoulders bare and glistening with sweat.

  Did he have some terrible disease? But he seemed happy, whistling monotonously as he cut a hole in the far Wire with long-handled shears.

  I waited for him to come through the hole, so I could see him better. Far off, an electric bell started to ring, but I didn’t know what it meant.

  Finally, he crawled through and stood up in the jungle, waist-high in plants, delighted as me with my Garden of Eden.

  Then he raised his shears like a sword and began hacking the Garden of Eden to pieces, very thoroughly, green plantblood running down his arms.

  “Stop!” I shouted. When he saw me he seemed more pleased than ever. Grinned, showing teeth filed to points, not like mine at all. Began cutting through the second wire, very quickly.

  After that, everything happened so fast. He finished his second hole, crawled through. Beckoned to me, with that pointed grin. Something made me back off. He drew back the arm that held the shears and threw them at me. They winked in the sun. I ducked, just in time. Then he ran at me.

  There was a fizzing. Blue lightning jumped onto his back and he fell down. The lightning sort of burned a black hole in my eyes; everything I looked at had a black hole burned through it.

  Then somebody else came running up, shouting shrilly, dragging me away from the Wire and the man with no nose. I thought it was an older boy at first, but he had a yellowy-brown face and a khaki uniform and a black crash helmet with the vizor pushed up. That was the first time I ever saw a Paramil. The blaster in his holster smelled funny, like when my mother’s food mixer broke down. A zxngy smell.

  He went on dragging me, trying to stop me looking over my shoulder. But I still caught a glimpse of the noseless man. Another Paramil was bending over him, feeling his wrist. When he let the wrist go, the bare arm flopped down in a funny loose way I often tried to imitate, but never could.

  The Paramil bundled me into a high, green, petrol-smelling car with knobbly tires and drove me home, gabbling into his radio all the way. I was unfairly sent to bed. Voices rumbled a long time, downstairs, before the car drove away. My parents both came up to see me. Mother was as white as a sheet. Father had drops of sweat on his top lip that he kept licking off. He said I’d caused terrible trouble. For my parents who’d let me stray; for the security company who ran the Wire; for the Paramils who’d had to “fill in an Unnem.”

  I was bloody-minded, near tears. What was an Unnem? How did you fill one in?

  “Shut up,” shouted my gentle father. “All you need to know is this—if you ever tell anybody what happened, you won’t have a home or a father or a mother. …”

  I never mentioned it to a soul; Paramils have long memories. But at our fifth-year celebration nosh-up, Roger got slewed and told a very similar story. From looks on faces, most of us could have matched it. Everyone knew what happened to Unnems who crossed the Wire, but you didn’t talk about it. Your new Chinese houseboy might be a plainclothes Paramil.

  I was still standing dreaming, on the seawall, like a plastic chimpanzee, and tension was mounting. Some of us would be Unnems within the hour. I must move; mustn’t keep them standing there while panic grew. It wasn’t the doomed like Roger who’d crack, but those who still hoped against hope, rechecked their exam answers ten times a day, were terrified there’d be a hiccup in the Results Computer.

  Like the one two years ago. The kid was rescued by his father, before they could put him through the Wire. They broke out into the Atlantic in their racing yacht… were later said to have drowned in a sudden squall.

  In beautiful Parents’ Day weather…

  Move, Kitson! Do your duty. Follow the ancient— ahem—thirty-year-old tradition of the college. As the Head always said, “Walking is an excellent antidote for anxiety, Kitson!”

  So I traditionally turned to my best friend, Roger. Tried not to imagine him minus nose and eyebrows.

  “Fancy a stroll to the Lookout?”

  He batted his eyebrows up and down, comically. “If you like.”

  I hoped the staff had observed his eyebrow act. They said this waiting was part of the final exam; perhaps at this very moment, they were feeding Roger’s eyebrows into the Results Computer. Half a percent for guts?

  Alec fell in beside us. Then the captains of sailing, squash, lacrosse, athletics, badminton, rugby, and throwing-field-guns-over-obstacles. Then the rest. We strolled slowly up to the seawall toward the Lookout that glowed like an arrowhead against the gathering dark.

  Nothing else to do, except lie on your bed and go mad.

  I kept the pace down, in spite of wanting to walk faster and faster and the pressure building up behind. I’d timed this walk often, the past month. Looking sneakily at my watch, I knew I was getting it right.

  We were silent, mostly; afraid we might speak too loud, or gabble. We steadied our pillbox hats against the stiffening breeze and pretended to enjoy the fabulous evening. The tide was going out, exposing the seaweed. Concentrate on the redness of its smell… White gulls, gliding and hovering,
kept us company, still sunlit against the dusk.

  We turned at ten past seven, bang on time. The pressure behind was terrible now, like an avalanche on my back. Six times I deliberately slowed my pace. Once, they began edging past me, and I thought there was going to be a stampede. But Roger began to murmur our old song:

  “I’ll be an Est For Ests are best Down to their sodding wooly vests. …”

  It steadied us. Just as well. There was a wink of telescopes from the staff-room window…

  We got back with two minutes to go. Across the quad, the Results notice board reflected the red sun in both panes of glass.

  We’d all agreed to stay outside the gate till the pass list was pinned up. Then stroll across. But imperceptibly, like a lava-flow, starting with the most frantic, they began to inch toward the board. Uncanny. They still appeared to be standing, talking, shifting their weight from one leg to another, yet all the time they were drifting away. Faces like chalk, sweat beading out, tongue tips licking lips, Adam’s apples bobbing with compulsive swallowing. The staff were openly leaning out of the staff-room windows now, eager as spectators at a boxing match, making bets who’d crack first.

  Rog and Alec and I didn’t budge. We’d spoil their rotten fun if we died for it. Roger grinned at Alec and me; a grey grin out of hell.

  “Cheer up—you’ve passed. Have a fag.”

  “No, thanks,” said Alec. “I’ll wait till it’s over, now. In another ten seconds, they’ll be late.” Voice calm, but his scalp twitching, making his pillbox tassel bob up and down.

  The college clock chimed, its mechanism audible. The college doors opened. Miss Beswick, college secretary, tweed skirt, twinset, and pearls emerged, long white paper in her hand. Four school sergeants with her. Ex-coppers, huge in white caps. Laughing loudly, loving it all.

  “Stand back, lads. Only a routine notice.”

  “Mind the lady. We’ll need her next year.”

  Last year, things had got out of hand. Miss Beswick had been on crutches till September. She unlocked the notice board, with maddening, trembling slowness.

  On the fringes, Bairstow fainted.

  They left him lying.

  The glass doors swung open, winking hugely red. Miss Beswick pulled out four drawing pins, put three between her pale, prim lips. Was she being slow on purpose?

  The sergeants, red-faced and straining, had linked arms to protect her. One drawing pin went home, two, three, four. The notice board winked redly shut. She relocked it precisely and the sergeants got her away by main force. Just in time. One sergeant was doubled up with pain, another nursing his wrist, as civilisation collapsed into a heaving, straining, rugby scrum.

  Pillbox hats falling in showers, crunching underfoot. A blazer ripped, in the savage panting, struggling silence. Then, with a crash and squeal, the glass of the notice board broke. I hoped it wasn’t somebody’s face; people had lost eyes. I’d suggested to the Head a perspex notice board, padded with sorbo-rubber. But tradition said glass, replaced every year.

  We looked up at the staff leaning out, open-mouthed, drooling.

  “Revolting,” said Alec.

  “Pigs at a feeding trough,” said Roger; but his big fists were clenched white.

  No news emerged. People who knew their results couldn’t get out for those pushing behind. Then Fatty Jobling crawled out through the forest of legs, bent spectacles hanging around his jaw and one ear bleeding. He raised his arms, eyes still shut, still on his knees.

  “I’ve passed, I’ve passed.” Then he burst into tears.

  Other battered figures crawled out. But, in the main ruck, kicking and punching. The notice board, wrenched from its moorings, reared up, wobbled, then dropped down out of sight. Splintering of cracking wood.

  “Oh, my ribs, my ribs.”

  Feeling our eyes on him, Fatty stood up, recovered his glasses, pulled the rags of his blazer round him, and staggered across. He embraced Alec.

  “You’ve passed. You’re top!”

  Alec freed himself with a fastidious shrug; but color was flooding back into his face. “Any other results?” he asked casually. Only he could ask.

  Fatty’s eyes skated over Rog and me, dropped. “I only noticed you, because you’re top.” Liar; he couldn’t get away fast enough. We stared at each other, helpless. Till the end, we’d hoped for Rog.

  “Go on, off to the flagpole then,” said Rog savagely to Alec. It was tradition that those who passed stood by the flagpole. Those who failed waited outside the gate.

  Alec opened his mouth three times to say something, then walked away.

  “Seeya,” said Rog abruptly. Walked out through the gate, stood staring across the Solent.

  “You might have waited,” I shouted. “I might have failed too.”

  “Pigs might fly,” he shouted without turning. “Better go and see, hadn’t you?”

  The scrum was thinning rapidly. Lads passed me, heads down, not looking, going to join Rog. Others clustered round the flagpole, jumping up and down and shouting. Then silent suddenly, as they remembered the gate group.

  The pass list flapped out through the broken, bloodied glass. I bent to read it, sick for Rog. Ran my eye down the list, peeved I wasn’t top.

  My eyes ran further and further. Panic gripped my guts. My name wasn’t above the pass line. I checked again. A third time. It was insane…

  My eye dived gingerly below the pass line. Deeper and deeper, through kids I could’ve eaten for breakfast, three at a time.

  My name wasn’t below the pass line either. I went on reading, above, below, above, below. Nothing. A computer hiccup. I’d have somebody’s guts for garters…

  Then I saw at the bottom: “Kitson unclassified. Report to Headmaster at nine.”

  It was hard not to walk round in circles. It was hard not to scream. I was nothing. I had nowhere to stand. Nobody had ever been unclassified before.

  The group round the flagpole stared at me, baffled; then wouldn’t look at me at all. Neither would the group outside the gate. The two groups shouted jokes and rude remarks to each other, but the flow soon dried up, and they turned their backs on each other.

  Silence again. It was unbearable to be alone.

  For a fleeting bitter second I even wanted to join the mob outside the gate.

  But the Unnem van was mercifully quick; they don’t hang about. It pulled up, grey and battered, heavy mesh over its windows. It looked like people had been throwing bricks at it all its life. A Paramil opened the rear doors and silently threw out some bales of blue cloth. Silently, the new Unnems stripped off torn blazers and dropped them in the road. We’d all been trained to get changed quickly. Within two minutes they were wearing faded thin denims, heavy-studded unpolished black boots.

  The Paramil gestured with his blaster. They got aboard silently, without looking back. The van did a U-turn across the discarded blazers and drove off. I couldn’t see through the heavy mesh if they waved or not. Then there was only their clothes in the road, looking like a bloodless massacre.

  Once the van had gone, the new Ests cheered up quickly—like after a funeral. The teachers came out and started slapping them on the back. The new Ests began calling the teachers by their Christian names, telling them what bloody awful teachers they’d been and what they’d hated most about their lessons. The teachers took it jolly well, laughing loudly and heartily. Quite a party, except when they caught sight of me. Then they stopped laughing, like I was a blockage in the drains, or a rain cloud on sports day. Finally, they turned their backs and kept them turned.

  Then the Head bustled up and led them off, tattered and bloody, for celebration champagne. Later, when they’d washed the glass splinters out of their hair, they’d be going to a dance at the Ladies’ College. Now Ests were truly Est, courtship rituals could begin. Staff would not be patrolling the shrubberies.

  Trouble was, to get to the Head’s house, they had to pass me. The Head swept past, marble-blue eyes tilted well above my head, looking
at the last of the sunset. Like newly born goslings following a gander, nearly all the new Ests did exactly the same. I wanted to laugh,

  they looked so smug and pseud. A few still looked me in the eye, twisting mouths or raising eyebrows to show how upset they were. Only Alec looked really miserable. I was left alone to wander. A blackbird sang from the shrubbery, not caring what I was. The corner flags for next season’s rugby threw long shadows as they fluttered. Far above, Concorde flew its monthly ceremonial flight. It flew high enough to leave a vapour trail, and I wondered which of its hundred fully trained Est pilots was actually getting a chance to fly it.

  Chapter 3

  I entered the college lobby, prompt on nine. Shaking with rage, jumping at shadows.

  Footsteps. Angry, sharp, limping footsteps coming up the parquet corridor. Major Arnold, deputy head. Limping from a wound he got in Northern Ireland, before the first psychopters finished off the IRA. Thin, upright, dark moustache, white streaks in his Brylcreamed hair. He had his hair cut weekly, short-back-and-sides, so the skin showed through pale, in contrast with his sunburned face. Very fit for his age; played squash. Even climbed the masts with us, chewing his moustache savagely with sweat running down his face. It cost him.

  A bitter man. Full of rage held down to heel like a snarling dog. Whether it was caused by the pain of his leg or something else, we never knew. We adored him, because when you asked him embarrassing questions, he always gave you straight answers. He might think for minutes on end, head bowed, till you thought he’d gone to sleep. Then he’d look up and give you the truth, like water spurting from a boiling kettle.

  “No, Kitson, the Battle of Belfast wasn’t a famous victory. The IRA stood no chance… nowhere left to hide, once the psychopters located them. We had fifty times their firepower. We stood well back and took no chances. We had two men slightly injured.”

  He was angry now. “Kitson! Come!” He started back up the corridor. Clumsy and skidding with fear, I fell in behind.