by Heide Goody
The headteacher gave her a small, economical smile.
“He is one of our students. Year seven.”
“Is he here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Why would I not be sure?” said the headteacher. “Do you have evidence to suggest otherwise, Nina?”
“No, she does not,” said Vivian swiftly.
“But you would like me to check nonetheless?”
“That would be lovely,” said Nina.
“Then we shall do the tour.” A bell rang out. “The end of lunch. Everyone has fed and is back in lessons. This way.”
Pink and silver mandalas of light battered at Rod’s vision.
He blinked, tried to turn, and found himself in a tunnel. Not a concrete blast-proof tunnel beneath Birmingham but a far older tunnel, far away in time and distance. To be precise, 4th May 2005, somewhere on one side or the other of the Iraq-Syria border, one week and twenty miles away from the bloody battle of Al-Qa’im.
Rod crouched on the tunnel floor, his fingertips inch-deep in cold white sand.
(It’s not real, shouted a tiny voice deep inside Rod but he ignored it.)
He took a personal inventory. Weapon-wise, he had the MP5 submachine gun, the Browning pistol, two flash-bang grenades, a mini-claymore mine and a knife. He’d lost the 60mm anti-tank mortar. God, he wished he still had that.
He had two clips for the Browning but only one for the MP5. He’d used up most of his rounds on those men, those creatures. He sniffed as he recalled the recent firefight. They hadn’t been men. Their heads were like toads’ heads and their knees were in the wrong places. They hadn’t been men.
The LION thermal imaging scope hadn’t even picked them up in the dark.
“Cold-blooded,” he said.
Equipment-wise, he had a water bottle, rations, a survival pack, a torch, the thermal imager, PVS-7 night vision goggles, the UHF radio, the GPS receiver and the map which had lied to him and said there shouldn’t have been anything within ten miles of this place except sand and rocks and dead insurgents.
One of the toad-men’s rags had had the red triangle of the Iraqi Republican Guard on its shoulder.
“Messed up,” said Rod.
The tunnel sloped downwards away from the echoing pool chamber in which he’d fought the toad-men and left eight of them dead. Moving down wasn’t necessarily a good thing but moving away was.
Rod readied the MP5 and crept onward. The walls of the tunnel were a mixture of rough and smooth, as though sections had been replaced, piecemeal, over the ages. Chunks of sandstone, occasional pieces of black granite (carved with silver sigils that seemed to writhe when Rod wasn’t looking directly at them), even lumps of modern cinderblock, hacked down to fit into place.
Twenty yards further on, the narrow corridor opened out into a much larger space. Its walls, rising up into darkness, were all of the ancient black stone. It was a perfectly round room with at least four corners. Rod tried not to think about that.
At the centre of the room was a pedestal and on it sat a shallow bronze bowl, a double-headed serpent forming both its lip and the handles at each side. In the centre of the bowl sat a red jewel, the size of a plum, the colour of blood (or cranberry juice, thought Rod. You could’ve said cranberry juice) and expertly but irregularly carved into the shape of some stylised beast, crouched, poised.
Three thoughts immediately occurred to Rod.
The first thought was that the red jewel would be the answer to all his problems, a genie’s lamp, a wish machine, a limitless credit card. He knew this as a simple and irrefutable truth that required no explanation.
The second thought was this whole situation was as dodgy as a seven quid note. From the business with the toad-men to the mad architecture of this temple-like sanctum, it was a rum to-do and no mistake. Fubar.
The third thought was the clincher. Rod had seen that bit at the beginning of Raiders of The Lost Ark and he knew what happened when you took ancient gubbins off the big pedestal. He’d also seen that bit at the end and didn’t want his face melted by something from beyond the dawn of time.
“No thanks, mate,” he told the blood-coloured (no, cranberry-coloured) jewel.
And then, as in a dream, he instantly knew that something bad was about to happen to him. A creature was going to appear behind him. Its name was Azhur-Banipal. It would reach out to him with black, cloth-bound arms and compel him to take the stone, to make the world his own for a time…
Rod whirled with the MP5 but the creature wasn’t there.
Of course, it wasn’t. It would appear behind him. Whichever way he turned, it would be behind him, reaching out for him.
Rod was suddenly terrified. He had faced fear before. Army training and the SAS training that had come later had taken that fear and channelled it into something else. But he had never destroyed his fears. They were still there. And Rod was terrified.
(This isn’t real, screamed the tiny voice inside him. It’s a memory. A dream.)
He turned again, torch light swinging, his breath quickening.
Something brushed his cheek. He whirled, his hand going to his face in surprise.
The stink of rotten prawns filled his nostrils. Prawns? They were hundreds of miles from the coast.
Azhur-Banipal reached out to take hold of him.
Prawns? Seriously? In the Syrian Desert?
(Wake up!)
Rod blinked. He was on his back, staring up at the strip lights hanging from the canteen ceiling and at the hypnotic pink-silver eyes of a Dinh’r. He felt the grip of his Glock 21 in the palm of his hand.
“Cheeky bugger,” he said and shot the creature three times. One shot for each eye and one for where any sensible entity would keep its brain.
“Thatcher Academy was, until 2010, the Tythe Barn Lane secondary school, a failing local authority school which turned non-work-ready and non-aspirational eleven-year-old humans into non-work-ready and non-aspirational sixteen-year-old humans,” said Cook-Mammonson, the headteacher, as they walked across the empty playground. “And then, thanks to your government and the sponsorship of Mammon-Mammonson Investments, the Thatcher Academy was born, a self-governing non-profit charitable trust that uses private-sector best practice to further Mammonite integration with and supplanting of human society.”
“Supplanting?” said Nina.
“Yes, Nina,” said the headteacher. “It is a word that means to supersede and replace. Tell me, Nina, did you make best use of your school years?”
Vivian, who knew full well that Nina’s school qualifications amounted to GCSEs in English and PE and a failed A-level in Digital Media (Photography), watched a little bit of class-envy and social discomfort play across her young colleague’s face. Vivian took no pleasure in it but felt that a little humility would do Nina some good.
“I was the lead in the school production of Grease,” said Nina. “And I sold cigarettes to all the sixth formers. My cousin Hari had a supply from his dad’s shop.”
“Yes. But what I meant was – Sorry, excuse me a moment. You! You! Stop there!”
This last was bellowed at surprising volume at a uniformed Mammonite lad emerging from a set of double doors across the way.
“You! Why are you out of lesson?” said the headteacher, drawing a smooth round pebble from her jacket pocket.
“Toilet, miss,” said the boy.
The headteacher nodded and then hurled her pebble with impressive accuracy. It clouted the lad on the side of the head and tumbled him over into a flower bed.
“Attend to your toilet on your own time!” she shouted and then turned back to Nina, clearly indifferent to the lifeless lad in the borders.
“Is he dead?” said Nina.
“If he has a weak bladder and a thin skull then it was a kindness.” She seemed to taste this last word as she spoke it, as though it was an entirely alien concept. She continued on, leading them round the building and alongside the rear playing
fields where a school army cadet unit was undergoing weapons training. “Your qualifications, Nina. Straight A stars? Perhaps one or two As?”
“No,” said Nina.
“That’s disappointing, particularly from someone of your ethnic background. Such things might be expected from our Afro-Caribbean friends –”
“Woah,” said Nina. “Time out on the rampant racism.”
“It’s not racism if it’s true, Nina,” said the headteacher. “I would not be so rash as to suggest that the academic weakness of black children is hardwired in their genes or specific cultural modalities but the statistics nonetheless bear out certain truths.”
“You do not have any human pupils here at present, do you?” said Vivian.
“Does that have any bearing on your investigation, Mrs Grey?”
“Professional curiosity only.”
“We have some human employees,” said the headteacher, waving a hand towards a bent-backed cleaner who was collecting litter by a wall and would soon need to decide whether to tidy up or work round the pebble-struck boy. “But, no, we had a couple of children start with us last year. We tried to discourage them but the parents, enamoured by our results, were insistent.”
“And where are they now?”
“They couldn’t keep up with our rigorous standards. Excellence in everything, all of the time. That’s our motto.”
“I thought it was Equal opportunities for all,” said Vivian.
“Yes, but we had to change that after some people, including the aforementioned humans, thought that meant we should treat everyone equally rather than allow everyone an equal amount of opportunity in which to succeed.” She looked at Nina. “It’s about giving everyone an equal start in life’s race, not giving a medal to everyone who crosses the finishing line.”
The headteacher stopped to admire the army cadets as they took up firing positions before a row of mannequin targets.
“Live ammunition,” noted Vivian.
“We don’t pretend here,” said the headteacher proudly. “We asked to be part of the latest army cadet initiative in schools but have expanded in creative ways. We have a fully stocked armoury in the sports hall. The true purpose of education is to show progress, to put a numerical figure to a person and say, ‘This person is better than that one.’ How can we instil British values such as fortitude and personal endeavour if we do not have the failures of the rabble to learn from?”
The mannequins twitched and danced under semi-automatic rifle fire. Recoiling, one raised an arm as though to protest before it was riddled with further bullets.
“How can there be social mobility, if there are no bodies to climb over?” said the headteacher.
Rod wriggled out from under the dead Dinh’r. It was bulky but not heavy. Its body was as soft and light as marshmallow. Its skin tingled unpleasantly to the touch like glass wool. Rod got up and checked on Morag and BT engineer Colin, who were laid out on the floor nearby.
Colin grunted and spasmed like a dreaming dog. Morag blinked slowly and stared at nothing.
“You okay?” said Rod.
She looked at him and said dreamily, “I put the shotgun in her mouth and – boom – killed the bitch.”
“Of course, you did, lass,” said Rod, taking her hand in his and tapping it. “And now it’s time to wake up.”
Morag took a sudden deep breath, blinked once more and then said, in a far more normal voice, “Where’s the Dinh’r?”
“Killed it.”
“Good. Damned thing gorging itself on our adn-bhul nightmares.”
She sat up. Colin whimpered.
“They can’t cancel Downton Abbey,” he sobbed in his trance. “What’ll we watch on Sunday nights?”
“Obviously, some nightmares are more nutritionally filling than others,” said Morag.
“You don’t know that,” said Rod. “Maybe he really loved that show.”
Nina looked on as the headteacher’s mobile rang and, with a gesture of apology, she took the call.
She spoke very little and listened intently and, as she did, her expression hardened increment by increment. She ended the call.
“You lied to me, Mrs Grey,” she said and there was a world of subtext in her voice.
“I do not lie,” said Vivian.
“She doesn’t,” Nina chipped in. “I once asked her what she thought of my new haircut.”
“You told me you were conducting a missing persons enquiry. You did not say you had found a body.”
“We haven’t,” said Nina. “We found body parts. Who knows if that’s half a person or six?”
“Nor did you tell me where you had found these… parts.”
“Is that significant?” asked Vivian.
Vivian had a wonderful poker face, one of the perks of being a 24/7 resting-bitch-face old moo.
“I’m afraid I need to speak to our chair of governors,” said the headteacher.
“Is that who that was?” said Vivian. “Perhaps I ought to join you.”
“To explain yourself,” said the headteacher.
“To further our mutual understanding.”
Cook-Mammonson inclined her head slightly. “And Nina here can go and check that Croesus Smith-Mammonson is alive and well.”
Out on the field, the army cadets were cutting the heavy mannequins down from their posts.
“It’s room G4 in that building there, Nina,” said the headteacher. “But do feel free to wander as much as you like. Explore.”
The way she said it, it sounded like some ancient Chinese curse.
Nina went to the indicated building while Vivian and the headteacher headed back to the admin offices. The corridors were pristine, empty and silent. There was none of the shouting, lesson skiving or casual graffiti that Nina recalled from her own school. She peered through the window of the nearest classroom door, half expecting to see children strapped to chairs, wire speculums holding their eyes open as they were forcibly indoctrinated. But, no, the young people in this room, a chemistry lab, seemed to be fully enjoying their practical lesson, playing with strange earths and white metals over Bunsen burners. Apart from the lack of safety goggles and the sooty blast patterns on some of the walls, it could have been any school classroom.
Nina moved on to room G4 and peered in. Thirty children, not more than twelve years old, sat in a neat grid of desks before an electronic whiteboard. Nina knocked and entered, flashing her ID at the Mammonite teacher.
“Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just having a look round.”
The teacher returned to her class. Each student had a thick book on their desk, some of them open, some closed, and beside that a tablet, all open to the same app.
“So, how should an individual respond to a social problem such as homelessness?” she asked. “Mansa?”
“They shouldn’t,” said the boy. “The homeless should be ignored.”
On the board, next to a lesson title of ‘Individualism v Collectivism in The Fountainhead’ there was a list of names, all with decimal scores between one and ten next to them. Mansa Mason-Mammonson’s crept up a fraction. Croesus Smith-Mammonson, wherever he was in the room, had a healthy six point eight.
“Ignored entirely?” said the teacher. “Cassius?”
“Our charity should be limited to good wishes, miss.”
“Good wishes?” said the teacher distastefully.
“We do not know if that hobo might one day turn their life around and become a success, someone of note.”
“They’re already a failure,” said a pig-tailed girl snidely.
“Yang, do not call out.”
The girl fixed her teacher with a stare straight out of psycho street.
“Are you sure you want to tell me what to do, miss? Your approval rating is dangerously low as it is.”
The teacher glanced nervously at the board and then at Nina. Nina noticed that above the students’ names was ‘Miss Carter-Mammonson’ and a score of one point nine. The girl, Yang
, tapped on her tablet as did several students around her and the score dipped to one point eight.
“I might only be a supply teacher but this is my classroom,” began the teacher.
“Do you own it?” said the girl. “Is your name on it?”
“There are rules.”
“Do you want to show me these rules?”
“You… You shouldn’t speak out of turn.”
“But it was my turn,” said the girl. “Can you prove otherwise? Do you have evidence? You don’t. But do you know what I have?” She pulled out a mobile. “I’ve got the chair of governors on speed dial. Would you like me to call him?”
The teacher, in her distress looking even less like a human than most Mammonites, murmured something to herself and then bowed her head.
“My apologies, Yang. It was your turn to speak.”
Yang and her cronies tapped at their tablets. The teacher’s score went down a further notch.
“Weak,” said Yang.
The teacher looked at her, broken.
“The homeless, by the act of becoming homeless, have already shown themselves to be weak,” said Yang. “They have failed.”
“What about second chances?” said Nina.
Yang gave her a furious glare.
“Everyone gets one chance,” said the girl. “And this is it.”
“I’ll remember that,” said Nina.
“Miss,” said Yang, not taking her eyes off Nina, “who is this person?”
“I’m from the consular mission,” said Nina. “Just come to check that everything is okay. Which one of you is Croesus?”
A dark-haired youth looked sharply at her. “What do you want with me?” There was a note of worry in his voice, not of actual concern but of social embarrassment.
“Nothing,” said Nina. “I just wanted to check that you were here. You don’t happen to own a brown leather satchel?”
There were some laughs in the classroom and, among the general giggles were some very knowing laughs.
“Does perhaps someone else own a brown leather satchel?” she suggested.
“We don’t have to answer your questions,” said a boy with tiny ears.
