CHAPTER TWO
JACK was dreaming when he got the call. His carriage was waiting for him and the horses were stamping the cobbles, impatient to begin their journey. But, although he knew the coachman would be under oath to deliver him to the Flughof in good time, Jack had no intention of ending his reverie.
It was a special type of dream. The kind only Nectar could bring. Drugs were of course strictly prohibited. There were at least a hundred banned substances – some performance-enhancers, others purely recreational – listed in the school regulations, along with corresponding punishments. But students broke the rules without fear.
Let the driver wait, he allowed the smallest part of his mind to resolve.
The rest of his brain was focussed on the subtle possibilities of imagination. It was here he remembered the smell of antiseptic as his mother cleaned his grazed leg. The pressed flowers she liked to collect were fragile like spider webs. Sober, he could not see her face or hear her voice. But with just the tiniest dose, charged particles fired the correct part of his brain, opening the door to a thousand different memories possibilities and ideas undreamt of. Forgotten daytrips, the little conquests of his childhood that would otherwise remain unaired were suddenly unpacked.
The airphone rang again.
He stared at it – viewing with two brains. On one hand, it was just a normal intercom. The solid brass handset, the solid rubber tubes which would carry the sound to the earpiece. But in his head, there were a hundred of phones, each with different shuttles, a million different conversations.
He picked up the receiver and pulled out the baton-shaped tube, just large enough to sit on his hand. He with drew the note inside, written in the neat and even hand of the school’s master.
Master Jack, your carriage and driver have arrived and are waiting. Please make your way to the entrance.
Hastily, he scribbled out his reply, reversed the pressure and stuffed the note and container back into the tube again.
I will be there when I’m ready. Don’t call again.
The cab was taking him to the air station, across the water to the grey austere city.
Taking him to his father.
He stared around his chambers, at the furniture, his wardrobe, and the chest which carried his belongings. There would be no need to back. His clothes would be sent to him fresh and laundered as usual. All he had to do was board the airship.
He wondered the reason behind his summons. Must he demonstrate how he had ‘improved’ over the last few months?
His confinement in this remote province – with Berlin two hours journey by carriage – was a punishment. It was a ‘reform’ school, where uncontrollable offspring of the wealthy were sent. Despite the weighty rulebook, teachers who crossed the wrong student with a sharp word or attempted too strenuously to curb their excesses would not last long.
For their part, parents did not seek evidence of the bold claims made in the school’s pigskin brochures but simply paid their fees every term.
And thus, it was puzzling that Jack’s father – who in part, recognised and encouraged his son’s impatience with those around him – would summon him purely for a school report. It was another man, whose staunch views had convinced his father to send him to this hell hole. One man, who he hated above all others…
The Nectar had all but worn off as Jack slumped down the staircase of the dormitory, barely returning the bows of his classmates in the corridor. He sloped into the reception where a tall man in a grey suit was waiting for him along with the school principal wearing his usual cloying expression.
“Have you any bags?” The man nodded his head with just the right deference, no more than was required.
“No. I don’t need anything.” He barely nodded back.
But the principal – a jocund man in his sixties – made up for both their reserve, bowing obsequiously towards both. He gushed, “Tell your father that you can return whenever he sees fit. We will make up the work for you when you return.”
Jack said nothing, his tongue felt heavy in his mouth. The man in the suit eyed him unwaveringly.
“We’re running late sir.”
The thin moustache and slick, gelled hair. Jack wondered if the man had been one of those involved in the last incident. His last school had reported him missing. The men had come from nowhere. He had howled as they dragged him through the streets.
But there was no hint of acknowledgement from the man who stood impassively by the doorway. All the men who worked for his father’s company looked alike. The same starched black tails, the same tall hat, the same vacant stare.
Only there was something different to the way he held himself. Jack’s eye drifted down to his left hand. A glog. Not uncommon these days to see people who had lost hands or feet.
Medicine became much more direct and visceral since the Shock. Doctors reverted to simpler, more old-fashioned practises. Better to lose a limb than risk blood poisoning. The glove clog was a common prosthetic. With practise, users could carry out most tasks as well as they could with two good hands.
Outside the carriage was waiting, its steel doors threaded with delicate webs of ebony. It rested on thick treaded tyres, best suited for the frosted roads. Four handsome mares hoofed the tarmac impatiently. Although many of the boys at Jack’s school were rich, few families could afford such luxury. Thoroughbreds of such quality were hard to come by.
Younger boys stood gawping at the imposing creatures as they steamed the cold afternoon. A footman held open the door as Jack stumbled inside. The man looked dull, nowhere as alert as his colleague who greeted him, but was dressed in similar fashion in thick overcoat and wearing rider’s gloves.
There was no conversation, over than a perfunctory question about the air conditioning, as they set off towards the city. It suited Jack as he tried to eke out the remaining effects of the tincture. Staring out of the window, he once again tried to delve into his memories. But the images were fleeting, mere shadows.
Fat drops of rain began to fall, running off the highway into the ditches. Through the thickened plexiglass, the song of the weather was muted. The road was quiet. The stream of carts carrying goods into Berlin had eased to trickle, their carriage easily outpaced the electric floats carrying milk, cheeses, or vegetables from nearby farms and hamlets.
Most goods were carried by train these days. The lines had been among the first to be re-electrified. No point taking the road these days if you were in a hurry, unless you had a strong animal. Nevertheless, those old enough to remember how things used to be would complain about the manure.
The old air station was a lifeless monument on the outskirts of the capital. It had since been replaced by the Flughof in the centre of the city. Of course, Jack was too young to have experienced the old ‘jet’ planes. Had they still been around, the journey to Edinburgh would have been just over an hour.
He caught his first glimpse of the red-lit towers of the city. At least airships could land and takeoff from the centre of the city. No need for a concrete strip to take off when you could just float into the sky.
Rain was falling harder. They were leaving the countryside, coming into the town. Soon they would be inside the city itself. People on the streets scattered for shelter, cyclists wearing thick plastic hoods sped through surface water. The slow, silent electric floats in the far lane trudged by. They were good for personal transport use in the city – but only a fool would try and take them further.
Bakeries and meat shops were still open, serving workers on their way home. People queued in a calm and collected manner. Bars were crowded with clerks distracted from their homeward journey. Vendors sat in their cubicles in front of towers of yellow newsprint. The orderliness of life continued to surprise him.
Even the water cultists, cotton robes drenched and faces aimed skywards in contorted ecstasy, appeared more sedate than those back home.
/> A row of red lights faced them as they approached the airfield, but the driver swerved sharply around the floats and carriages – none as elegant as his – and turned into a side road. Two policemen were on guard. He could see from their insignia they were one of the many affiliates to UisgeCorp. Spotting the carriage’s security markings, the men bowed briskly, quickly waving them on.
Halting the horse on the concourse, the carriage doors were open. The slick haired man gestured for him to hurry.
Now Jack was sober, there was something jarringly familiar about the attendant’s rock-like features.
The man moved swiftly and efficiently, his feet instantly connecting with the floor, his ready poise as he held the door. He had been a Butler. Perhaps he had lost his hand in action.
Jack was not I. His father’s company took on many of this sort. Their top people needed to feel safe and so did their families. The attendant fiddled with his wooden glove clog, while he waited impatiently. Rousing himself uneasily, Jack felt the last vestiges of the drug leave his system.
The driver took the horses to be fed as they walked though the terminal. Jack passed his bracelet over the reader. It would be a few minutes before his identity, flight details, and seat to be confirmed.
“Boarding in half an hour, sir. Please make your way through to the lounge.”
“I will need to accompany him.” Said the man, holding up the bracelet attached just below his bad hand.
As he went to touch the reading plate, the wooden fingers accidentally caught against the check-in desk almost jerking the prosthetic from its socket. Jack caught a glint of metal underneath.
As the man hurriedly reattached the glog, Jack tried to collect his thoughts. He stumbled down the corridor towards the nearest doorway.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Bathroom,” he mumbled.
“Go once you’ve passed the security check.”
“I need to go now.”
“I will need to get you, if you take longer than two minutes.”
Once inside, Jack had no other thought than escape.
He looked around. But there was no other doorway to take only the mirrors on the walls. Puffed and swollen cheeks and eyes wild with fear, but still looking younger than his sixteen years.
He started as the toilet flushed in the furthest cubicle.
A portly man with braces, a bushman’s coat and broad-brimmed hat emerged. He nodded his ruddy face at Jack, the style of bow one gives to younger relatives. Without even thinking what he would say, Jack opened his mouth and began to make his desperate plea.
Time passed.
Curse the boy! The attendant was growing anxious. The ship would soon be leaving its launch. The boy most probably still incoherent from whatever he had taken. He would have to march him onto the plane.
Storming into the bathroom, the pale man yanked open the first cubicle. Empty.
The second, third, fourth, fifth. Nothing.
The sixth? The round frame of a portly traveller. His hand over his mouth, and his body shaking violently. Finally he let forth an explosion of laughter as he looked into the grey suit’s hard expression. It took a few seconds longer to register that he was squeezed into the teenager’s leather coat.
By this time, Jack was already throwing off the oversized oilskins. The smell of flight gas was overwhelming as he left the concourse. It was unusual for his requests to be rejected by teachers, peers or his father’s lackeys.
In any case, the traveller was surprisingly happy to indulge him, happy to play along with the seeming practical joke. A fleeting shadow of concern passed through his mind. What would his one-handed guardian do when he discovered the German wearing his charge’s jacket?
Leaving the concourse, Jack headed towards the lights and the city, running until the sound of the airship could no longer be heard. He shuddered as he remembered the wooden hand and the horror underneath.
He had seen the needles in his dreams.