City of the Falling Sky (13 page)

The next day, Seckry was back in school. The
swelling around his eye had reduced and the bruising on his legs
was getting better. He saw Snibble not long after arriving, but the
boy said nothing to him. Whatever Vance had said or done to him, it
seemed to be working for the moment. Seckry simply shot him a look
of disgust and carried on with his work.

When the buzzer rang for lunch, Seckry
grabbed a sandwich and hurried to Mr Vance’s office.

“
Seckry, come in,” said
Vance, clearing some papers off a chair for Seckry to sit
on.

“
Hi, sir.”

“
Have you had a good
morning?”

“
It’s been okay. We just
finished a lesson with that Mr Pegglewim. Didn’t manage to get much
done to be honest, though.”

“
Ah. Yes. Mr Pegglewim.
Lovely chap. Deserves to be in a better school really.”

“
Mr Vance,” Seckry said,
unable to keep his curiosity at bay any longer. “What you said
about the leak on the phone yesterday. That it didn’t happen. Is
that true?”

Before Vance said anything in response, he
shut the blinds, closed his door and locked it.

“
I don’t want anyone to
overhear,” he explained quietly. “And yes, Seckry, it’s true. I
visited the power plant. The workers there wouldn’t say anything
about the spill. But before leaving I managed to take a photo of
their records. When I got back and looked at them there was no
mention of the leakage at all. In fact their reports for that day
show that business went pretty much as usual.”

“
So all this power plant
leak stuff is just a big lie to get everyone wearing one of the
white chips?”

“
It would seem so,” Vance
said grimly. “It’s deeply disturbing.”

“
What kind of thing is so
important to find that they’d make something up this big just to
find it?”

Vance breathed out and put his hands behind
his head. “I can’t believe I’m actually contemplating this to be
honest, but . . . the thing that Endrin seem to be looking for is
an element that people wrote about around two thousand years ago.
It was something that scientists were fascinated with. Some spent
their whole lives devoted to studying it. But nowadays it’s never
spoken of. All studies regarding it were dismissed on the
conclusion that the element doesn’t, and never did, actually exist.
Contemporary scientists believe that all that time ago people were
so caught up in superstition and folklore that their minds were
warped and confused. The strange thing is that every other element
the ancient scientists discovered are the same ones that are in our
elemental table now. This . . . mystery element is the only one
we’ve never been able to find.”

“
What’s this mystery element
called?” Seckry asked.

“
Helitonium,” Vance said,
and he seemed to shudder just saying it. “The thing with helitonium
is that it wasn’t regarded as just any element by the Ancient
Klaxions. It was the ruler of all elements. They worshipped it and
they feared it equally.”

Vance turned around and began running his
finger across his shelf of books, which seemed to be populated with
all manner of dusty tomes and ancient encyclopaedias.

“
The great salt lake . . .”
he muttered to himself, and pulled out a thin, worn book with a
frayed leather jacket and about five or six post it notes sticking
out of its pages.

Vance opened the book on his desk in front of
Seckry and flicked through a few pages before reaching one with a
large illustration on it of a lake.

“
This,” Vance explained, “is
the Great Salt Lake of Isperland. Have you heard of it?”

“
Yes,” Seckry said. “I’ve
heard the name, but I don’t know where.” He assumed it must have
been in a geography lesson somewhere along the line.

“
It’s known as the Isperland
Salt Flat now as the lake has dried out, but back in the times of
the Ancient Klax it was a deep lake high in concentration of salt.
What is unique about it is that the Klaxions recorded the lake as
having a giant mass of helitonium hovering above it.”

Vance turned the page and there was another
illustration of the lake, this time with bright green and blue
coloured patterns just above its surface, like glowing, liquid
smoke.

“
Of course, modern
scientific research at the flats has revealed that there could have
been much more practical reasons for the strange clouds above the
lake. Salt conducts electricity, and the high concentration of it
in the water could have caused it to form small thunder clouds in
the air.”

“
Is that what you think it
was?” Seckry asked. “Small thunder clouds?”

Vance closed the book. “I don’t know what it
was that the Klaxions were looking at, but those illustrations
don’t look like thunder clouds to me.”

“
But why was helitonium so
important to them?” Seckry asked.

“
Because . . . helitonium
had the power to manipulate all of the other elements in the
periodic table in ways that no others could. Things that came into
contact with helitonium were changed by it in very unpredictable
ways. There are records of inanimate objects starting to hover off
the ground in the presence of helitonium, fires sparking up on
pieces of fabric that were stone cold, certain plants began growing
rapidly out of the ground, and all other manner of strange things
that defy the laws of physics. There is even one account of a
starving man in contact with helitonium wishing for food so badly
that fruit began appearing out of thin air.”

Vance sat down in his desk chair and began
swivelling slowly from side to side.

“
Do you think it’s real?”
Seckry asked. “Do you believe that helitonium exists?”

Vance was staring into space.

“
I don’t know. But something
is for certain. Endrin believe that it exists. And they’re looking
for anyone that might possess it.”

“
You mean, like in a bottle
or a jar or something?”

“
Yes, maybe. Something like
that. The Klaxions were never able to store helitonium, it was too
volatile, too chaotic. Endrin obviously believe that it can be
stored. Did you hear about the supposed toxins being
cleared?”

Seckry shook his head.

“
Endrin announced this
morning that the toxins have now been successfully contained and
everybody can remove their white chips and dispose of them. It’s
unnerving to think that Endrin have found what they were looking
for so quickly. Now, Seckry, I think it’s time for you to tell me
how on earth you found yourself inside the Endrin
compound.”

Seckry had been dreading it, but he had to
tell Vance, it could be important. He took a deep breath and began
recalling everything; about the job request, the email, and the
worms. He felt sick knowing how much trouble he was in.

Vance listened intently and didn’t interrupt
once. When Seckry had finished, Vance took a breath himself as
though he had been holding it in.

“
I know you’re expecting me
to raise my voice at you, Seckry, but you can relax, I’m not going
to.”

Seckry gulped.

“
Aren’t you
angry?”

Vance leaned back in his chair.

“
Seckry . . . to be honest,
you remind me of myself when I was your age. I could sit here and
scorn you for being idiotic . . . but the truth is . . . when I was
your age I did a very similar thing. It was wrong. I knew it was
wrong at the time, but if I could go back and change things I
wouldn’t, because I would never have learned the lessons it taught
me. We all make mistakes and we all learn from them.” Vance laughed
briefly. “Do you think I’m too understanding?” he said, a slight
smile in the corner of his mouth. “I’ll never make a good parent,
will I?”

Seckry let himself smile a little.

“
There is something very
important to discuss here, though,” Vance said, his expression
losing its humour. “Did Endrin see you?”

“
I don’t know . . .” Seckry
said. “Floodlights came on all around us but we jumped into the
manhole pretty quickly. We hid for a while nearby, but nobody came
looking.”

“
Let’s hope that they saw
nothing. Tresspassing on private property in Skyfall can be
punishable by a prison sentence. You’re fifteen years old which
means that you wouldn’t be sent to the juvenile detention centre in
the north, you’d end up in Skyfall City Penitentiary.”

Seckry almost felt like crying. Going to
prison would kill him.

Vance grabbed his shoulder and squeezed
it.

“
Hey, in any other situation
that’d be the case. But not for this. I’ll make sure you don’t go
to prison, you hear me?”

Seckry nodded.

“
Sir, what do you think
someone wanted those worms for anyway?”

“
I don’t know, Seckry,”
Vance said honestly. “It’s something I will be looking into very
acutely over the next few days. Rintide worm, you say they were?
They’re a very rare species, the rintide. Very valuable. They may
have been at Endrin simply for the purpose of breeding for monetary
gain . . . but something tells me that they were using them for
more than that.”

“
Do you think the girl I
found . . . do you think it’s all connected, that she’s some part
of this helitonium thing?”

“
It’s very possible, yes.
I’d like to speak with her soon.”

At that moment the bell rang and it was time
for Seckry’s last but one lesson of the day, psychoanalysis with
Professor Frudenberg.

Before leaving, Seckry thanked Vance and
helped him reopen all of the blinds.

“
Try not to get into any
more trouble,” Vance said with a small hint of sarcasm. “First a
fight, then a break in . . .”

Psychoanalysis went smoothly that day. It was
Seckry’s third lesson so far and he began to realise that he was
enjoying it. Come to think of it, he was enjoying his lessons of
planetary science, ecology, and typography too. The worst thing
about his day was what he knew was coming next; electronics with
Cutson once more. He knew that electronics was one of the most
important subjects in the city, but he was sure he had had more
lessons with Mrs Cutson than any other teacher.

The lesson began by Cutson dictating to them
all about the regulations of circuitry in the city and how they
were the most refined and well researched regulations in the world.
Then she got them all to copy nine pages out of a textbook into
their work journals.

It was during his ninth page of arduous and
painfully mind numbing copying that Seckry heard a patter of hollow
footsteps echoing in the corridor that became louder and louder. A
sense of dread washed over him but he didn’t know why. He could
hear the muffled voice of the headmaster, fast and nervous.

There were a few murmurs from the class and
everyone seemed to be looking towards the classroom door, though
Cutson sliced through the noise with a sharp, “Silence!”

Then the door opened, and Gobbledee stepped
in.

“
I b-believe it’s this class
you’re looking for,” he stammered.

Two men in white uniforms entered the room
slowly.

Cutson leaped out of her chair and nearly
knocked over her desk. She frantically tidied a few papers and
began straightening her skirt.

“
Oh my, do come in, do come
in,” she said, flustered. She pushed past the headmaster. “How can
I help you today, gentlemen?”

But the two men had no interest in Cutson,
they were both staring calmly at Seckry. Seckry’s heart began
pounding. Both men had a badge embroidered on the left side of
their uniforms.

Endrin Corp.

Cutson kept pushing her permed hair in an
attempt to make it look better, but all it was doing was springing
back into place.

“
Mr Sevenstars,” one of the
men said, in a sickly tone that made Seckry feel like retching.
“We’d like you to come for a chat.”

Mrs Cutson followed their gaze and as her
eyes met Seckry’s she mouthed the word ‘
you’
with silent
contempt.

Seckry was frozen to his chair.

“
Don’t just sit there, boy!
How rude of you!” Cutson shouted, her face red with nervousness and
fury.

“
We only wish to talk with
you, Mr Sevenstars. If you would just like to come with
us.”

Seckry stood up and followed the men into the
corridor, much to the excited speculation of the rest of the
class.

Mr Gobbledde gave Seckry a curious and
slightly concerned look of confusion as he passed him.

“
Please, follow us,” the
same employee said, and then thanked the headmaster.

Seckry’s mind was racing. What could he do?
He had nowhere to run. He was just going to have to act oblivious.
He was going to have to force himself to believe that he hadn’t
done anything wrong.

As they walked along the corridor, Mr Vance
burst out of a set of doors behind them.

“
Seckry!”

Out of adjacent corridors, two more Endrin
employees appeared and grabbed Vance, holding him in place.

“
Seckry, you’ll be alright,
okay?” Vance called. “You’ve done nothing.”

Seckry nodded at him.

When they reached the entrance the men
ushered Seckry into the back of a four by four car with tinted
windows and drove away slowly.