Aquila

by Andrew Norriss

  The first shock for the boys as they entered the office was finding Geoff’s parents and Tom’s mother were already there waiting.

  Miss Taylor was sitting behind her desk and in front of her to the right were Mr and Mrs Reynolds. Mrs Baxter was sitting to the left, and between them there were two chairs where Miss Taylor indicated the boys should sit down.

  Behind the desk, Mr Urquart was sitting on one side of the Deputy Headmistress, and on the other sat Miss Stevenson. Her presence alone would have told the boys that this was no ordinary meeting.

  Miss Stevenson was the Special Needs teacher. An ex-Olympic shot-putter, she was in charge of those children who, for whatever reason, could not be taught in normal classes. Miss Taylor liked to have her around on those occasions when she thought physical restraint might be necessary. Her mere size was a very powerful deterrent.

  ‘Well…’ Miss Taylor looked across at the boys as they sat down. ‘It seems you two have had a rather busy week – and you’ve certainly managed to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes, haven’t you?’

  Mrs Reynolds put her hand on Geoff’s knee. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘Tell you what?’ said Geoff, but of course he already knew.

  As if to confirm his fears, Miss Taylor picked up the photocopy of Tom’s exercise book from her desk, and held it up for the boys to see.

  ‘We’ve been reading this rather interesting document,’ she said. ‘It is yours, isn’t it, Tom?’

  Tom could not speak, but he nodded.

  ‘Though I imagine it was a combined effort.’ Miss Taylor shifted her gaze to Geoff. ‘It says here, for instance, that you were the one who worked out how to bring Aquila home, Geoff. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Geoff.

  ‘Quite a clever idea.’ Miss Taylor sniffed. ‘In fact there are several clever ideas in here. I rather admired the way you tackled finding out what the power source might be. You said you liked that one, didn’t you. Miss Stevenson?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ Miss Stevenson nodded vigorously. ‘I thought it was an intelligent piece of thinking, for an eleven-year-old.’

  ‘Intelligent…’ Miss Taylor repeated slowly. ‘Yes, that’s a word that keeps cropping up.’ She picked up a piece of paper from her desk. ‘And we already know that Tom is intelligent. Intelligent enough to come top of the class in this test on knowledge of geology, for instance.’

  Tom noted with one part of his mind that Miss Taylor was holding up his last geography test, but mostly he was wondering why she had not yet launched into a lecture on how irresponsible and dangerous their behaviour had been and how they should hand over Aquila, while she called the police.

  ‘So, we have two boys –’ Miss Taylor carefully pressed her fingers together – ‘who have always come bottom of the class, who hardly ever produce any work, but both of whom are apparently quite intelligent. How would you explain that, Miss Stevenson?’

  ‘Well, I’ve been looking through their records.’ Miss Stevenson opened a file on the desk, and Geoff realized with a shock that she had all his school reports and work records dating back to his primary school. ‘And although we’ve always known that Geoff was dyslexic, I think it’s much more severe than anyone realized. He’s been able to disguise the fact partly because he’s clever, and partly because he’s always had Tom to help him out.’

  ‘I see.’ Miss Taylor nodded. ‘And what about Tom? He can read, so why does he always come bottom as well?’

  ‘I think Tom is the cautious sort of boy, who doesn’t like to be rushed.’ Miss Stevenson seemed to have a file with all his reports as well. ‘He doesn’t like writing things down, mostly because he’s worried about making mistakes. He did all right in that geography test because rocks are the one thing he doesn’t just know about, he knows that he knows.’

  ‘Yes…’ Miss Taylor leant back in her chair. ‘So, we have two intelligent boys, who are doing badly at school, but who we know from this highly imaginative piece of work –’ she tapped the photocopy of Tom’s book – ‘are the sort of children who like to solve problems, to know things, to find things out. And my job is to decide what we need to do about it.’

  A faint suspicion was growing in Tom’s mind. It seemed almost impossible and yet…

  ‘Because the one thing we do know’. Miss Taylor continued, ‘is that the present system is not working. At the moment, you’re not learning anything at all. So my colleagues and I have worked out a new timetable, which I think you’ll find gives you more of what you need.’

  She picked up two timetable forms, and passed them to the boys. His mother, Tom noticed, already had one.

  ‘We’ll go through them in detail in just a moment, but first I’d like to point out that most of the lessons will be just the two of you with a single member of staff, and with a particular emphasis on the basic skills of reading and writing. This will also be true of the extra lessons –’

  ‘Extra lessons?’ Geoff had been staring at his timetable. ‘You’re giving us extra lessons?’

  ‘That’s the idea, yes.’ Miss Taylor looked at Geoff. ‘There’s a great deal to catch up on, you know, and without the extra hours…’

  ‘This is the punishment, is it?’

  Miss Taylor frowned.

  ‘It’s not a punishment.’ Mrs Reynolds turned to her son. ‘It’s to help you.’

  Geoff stared at his mother and then at the Deputy

  Headmistress, utterly baffled. Then he looked across to Tom, and the answer came to them both, like a thunderclap.

  They didn ‘t know!

  Miss Taylor had it all written down in front of her… and she didn’t know. None of them knew.

  It was like the man who had found them outside the sweet shop. He had actually seen them sitting in Aquila, and had presumed that it was some sort of toy. Miss Taylor and the others had read everything Tom had written in the exercise book, but they all thought it was a story. It had never even occurred to them that what was described there might be real.

  ‘I hope you realize Miss Taylor’s gone to a lot of trouble to work all this out for you.’ Mrs Baxter was talking to Tom. ‘I think the least you two boys can do is say thank you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Tom, and Geoff joined in as well. ‘Thank you, miss. Thanks very much.’

  And even a hardened veteran teacher like Miss Taylor was touched by the note of heartfelt, genuine gratitude in their voices.

  Tom and Geoff ate their sandwiches at lunchtime, sitting in Aquila, thirty metres in the air, alongside the top of the church tower. The parish church of St Mary’s stood at one of the high points of the town, and its tower had the most wonderful view across Stavely, though at the moment neither of the boys was paying it any particular attention.

  ‘I still can’t get over it,’ said Tom. ‘I mean, we were so lucky!’

  He was feeding bits of his sandwich to a dazed-looking pigeon on Aquila’s hull. One of the hazards of flying something invisible was that occasionally birds bumped into you. Tom was hoping that the pigeon had only been stunned and that it would shortly recover.

  Geoff was staring at the timetable that Miss Taylor had given him, a deep frown on his face. The relief he had felt at the realization that they had not, after all, lost Aquila, had been slowly replaced in the hours that followed by a numb realization that what he had lost was most of his free time.

  According to the timetable, he and Tom would soon be having lessons at lunchtimes, after school, and even at weekends. And these would be real lessons. With only the two of them in the class, there would be no sitting at the back trying to look stupid and letting someone else answer all the questions. They would have to work.

  ‘It might be all right.’ Tom knew what his friend was thinking. ‘You never know, it might even help.’

  ‘Help?’ Geoff had vivid memories of the last time someone had tried to give him extra lessons in reading. He had been seven, and the process had consisted mostly of long periods of angry s
houting. It was not an experience he wanted to repeat.

  ‘Well, I still think we’ve been very lucky,’ said Tom. He watched as the pigeon staggered to its feet and started walking in little circles round the hull. ‘I mean, we’ve still got Aquila.’

  ‘But nowhere to keep it any more.’ Geoff was not normally a gloomy boy, but the new timetable had got him badly unnerved. ‘Not that it matters much. With all these lessons, we won’t have to time to fly anywhere anyway.’ He threw down the timetable in disgust. ‘I vote we go back and tell them they’ve made a mistake. Tell them they’ve got it all wrong.’

  ‘You think that’d make Miss Taylor change it all?’

  ‘Maybe not Miss Taylor,’ said Geoff. ‘But if we talked to Mr Urquart…’ He paused. ‘Look, if I go will you come with me? I think it ought to be both of us.’

  Tom did not reply. His pigeon had just walked off the edge of Aquila and was dropping to the ground like a stone.

  ‘Tom? Look, I need your help on this one. Are you going to come with me?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

  Tom smiled. To his relief, just before it hit the ground, the pigeon had started to fly.

  It was gone five o’clock before the boys emerged from the library and their first session of supervised homework, but they found Mr Urquart still in his classroom, preparing a map of Portugal for the next day’s lessons.

  ‘Hi, how’s it going?’ he asked, cheerfully.

  ‘Well, the thing is,’ said Tom, ‘we think there may have been a misunderstanding.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ said Geoff. ‘Completely wrong.’

  Mr Urquart put down his pen and looked at the boys. ‘Wrong about what?’

  ‘This extra work you’re giving us. You seem to think it’s what we wanted. And we don’t,’ said Geoff. ‘We don’t want it at all.’

  ‘Ah…’ Mr Urquart looked thoughtfully at the boys. ‘But that’s not quite what you’ve been saying, is it?’

  ‘We haven’t been saying anything,’ said Geoff. ‘We haven’t said anything to anyone.’

  ‘That’s why we sit at the back of the class,’ explained Tom. ‘So we don’t have to speak to people.’

  ‘And we don’t want to learn,’ said Geoff. ‘We’re quite happy not learning anything.’

  ‘Now that’s not true, is it?’ Mr Urquart leant back in his chair. ‘I mean, in the last week, you have both asked to visit an archaeological dig, you’ve been taking all sorts of books out of the library, you’ve been doing maths, you’ve been teaching yourselves Latin… Now, why would you be doing all that, if you weren’t the sort of boys who wanted to learn, eh?’

  Geoff opened his mouth to reply… and then closed it again.

  ‘We want it to go back to how it was,’ he said, stubbornly. ‘We never wanted things to change.’

  ‘But things are always changing.’ Mr Urquart pushed his chair back from the desk. ‘Nothing stays the same. It can’t. You take Tom here. It’s obvious that one day he’s going to be some sort of geologist, but he can’t do that without passing exams, and he’ll have to start working for them sometime.’

  He looked at Geoff. ‘And there’s yourself. Your parents told us this morning that you were very keen on flying. If you’re going to be pilot or anything it’s going to be important to be able to read, isn’t it? To study maps. To know where you’re going. To be able to understand the flight plan.’

  Geoff stared at him for several seconds, and it was Tom who eventually broke the silence.

  ‘You… you think I could be a geologist?’

  ‘I think you can both be whatever you want, if you put your minds to it.’ Mr Urquart stood up and walked over to the window. ‘Look, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy, but there are only two things you need to succeed in almost anything. One is the determination to do it, and the other is the right sort of help. Take your mother.’ Mr Urquart looked across at Tom. ‘She’s a very good example. She doesn’t leave the house for three years, and then one day she makes a decision. She’s had enough. So she goes to the people who know how to help and whoompf! Next thing we know she’s coming into school every other day and talking about buying a car. It’s the same as you had written on the front of your book. “A man can fly anywhere, if he rides on the back of an eagle.” ’

  Tom frowned. ‘You think that’s what it meant?’

  ‘It’s a proverb,’ said Mr Urquart. ‘From one of Aesop’s fables. You know the story?’

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘The birds were having a competition one day to see who could fly the highest. Of course, everyone thought the eagle would win because he was the strongest, and had the biggest wings, and sure enough, when they all flew up into the sky, the eagle flew faster and higher than anyone else. But then, just when he had gone as far as he could, the sparrow, who had been sitting on his back, took off and flew higher still.

  ‘That’s how you get to do what you want in life. You decide where you want to go, and you find yourself an eagle.’ Mr Urquart turned and stared out of the window. ‘Eagles come in many forms, but they all have one thing in common. They carry you to the places you couldn’t get to on your own. Sometimes to places you never even thought possible.’

  In the playground below he could see Miss Taylor striding off towards the car park. There was something in the way she walked, with her head darting from side to side, that reminded him for a moment of a large predatory bird.

  ‘They don’t always have feathers and wings,’ he said. ‘Some of them even look like schoolteachers.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When Geoff emerged from Miss Stevenson’s house, it was with a strange feeling of content. Partly it was knowing that his two-hour Saturday morning session with the Special Needs teacher was over and that the rest of the weekend was his to do with as he liked, but it was something deeper as well.

  There was, when Geoff considered it, a lot to be content about. In the three weeks since the meeting with Miss Taylor, they had found somewhere safe to keep Aquila, they had flown it the length and breadth of the country, and that afternoon they were planning to take it on their first flight across the Atlantic. It was only going to be a test run, a quick trip to New York and home again, but Geoff was rather looking forward to it.

  He walked to the end of the road and turned left along the path that would lead him up to the old water tower. It had proved a very satisfactory hiding place. Built at the start of the century to provide water for the rows of terraced houses being constructed at the bottom of the hill, it was about fifty metres high, made of brick, and had been derelict for nearly thirty years.

  The door and windows at the bottom were boarded up and surrounded with barbed wire, but at the top the boys had found just what they wanted. They had been able to fly in – the windows had neither frames nor glass – to a room that was large, dry, out of sight from anyone on the ground, and totally inaccessible.

  There was, of course, the problem of how the boys were to get up and down themselves. If they left Aquila at the top of the tower, they would still need to be able to get down to go home, and they would need to be able to get back up again when they wanted to retrieve it.

  The solution had been surprisingly simple. Going through the lights on the dash, asking Aquila to explain what each of them was for, they had come across one described as the ‘PRE-SET SPATIAL CO-ORDINATE REGISTER FOR AUTOMATIC RETURN’.

  What it meant was that Aquila was able to fly on its own. It did not need to have anyone at the controls. It did not even matter if there was anyone inside. At the instructed speed, and in perfect safety, it could fly to whatever destination it had been given.

  The Roman centurion had known about it. They had found several of his settings still in Aquila’s memory, and it made Tom shudder to realize that if Geoff had pressed a different button that first day in the garage, they could have found themselves flying to a small town in central Bulgaria.

&nb
sp; They had given Aquila instructions that would make it fly to the top of the tower and back to the ground again, on a pre-arranged signal. Aquila could recognize signals in several thousand languages and as many frequencies, but the boys had settled in the end on using a dog whistle. Pitched to a level beyond the human ear, they had decided it would attract less attention.

  The feeling of contentment stayed with Geoff as the path narrowed and he climbed through the wood. At the top, standing at the base of the tower, he blew three short blasts and two long on the whistle he took from his pocket. A moment later, he reached down to his right, felt Aquila’s hull beside him and climbed in.

  Aquila was programmed to arrive, invisible, to the right of whoever had blown the whistle, so it was wise to be careful where you were standing. The machine was very literal, and Tom had once blown the whistle while he was standing next to a tree. The stump was still there, and the trunk lay at the bottom of the hill, where it had fallen. The two parts had been cleanly separated in a way that still puzzled the man from the council who had been called out to investigate.

  Sitting in Aquila, Geoff asked, ‘Is Tom up there?’

  ‘YES.’ The letters flashed up in front of him, and beside them was a small line drawing, like a cartoon, of a boy sitting at a desk.

  ‘He’s working?’

  ‘HE IS DOING HIS HOMEWORK.’

  There was another drawing of Tom writing in an exercise book.

  Aquila often used pictures when answering Geoff’s questions, and it always used the simplest, shortest words. He had explained to it, very early on, that his reading was limited and asked it to speak, rather than writing words in the air.

  Aquila, unfortunately, could not oblige. It could communicate in most of the known languages of the galaxy, but its vocal generator had been destroyed by an Yrrillian photon blast 6,000 years before. The mechanism had been situated somewhere in the discoloured twisted fin at the back, that the boys had noticed the first day they had found it.