Faculty of Fire (14 page)

They all turned in my direction. A girl’s clear voice said something that was obviously very nasty and they all laughed at once. Despite myself, I blushed. I’d just noticed that I’d run all the way here in the same gold costume I was wearing the evening before. It was a good suit, I had to admit my aunt had taste, but after I’d slept in it, fallen into a puddle and then had a fight … The poorest pauper in the city would have been ashamed to be seen in it at home, never mind out in public.

I turned away, trying not to blush any more deeply than I already was – if that was physically possibly. Meanwhile, as more and more people arrived, I began to realise that something was obviously wrong. I thought I’d arrived late, but in that case, all the other new pupils were late too.

The sun had apparently already risen. Even if I got the time wrong, the day-star obviously couldn’t make a mistake – dawn had arrived. So just what was going on?

“I don’t know what’s happening here, but I think I’ll get up off the ground anyway,” I decided. I rose to my feet, leaned against the tower and started looking around with an inscrutable (at least, I thought it was) air. The new pupils were pouring in at a positively terrifying rate. And When Chas appeared from behind the gates, I was finally convinced that whatever was wrong was my problem and nobody else’s.

Chas, who had clearly not had enough sleep, waved and came in my direction.

I’d never seen him looking so drowsy in all the time we’d been friends, which was as long as I could remember .

“You’re not looking very cheerful, my friend,” Chas tried to joke, sitting down on ground in the very spot where I’d been sitting a minute earlier.

“Cheerful?” I responded skittishly. “The whole world has just gone crazy right in front of my very eyes, and you say cheerful … But then, you’re not looking so great yourself. To tell the truth, I’ve never seen you look this bad before. Have you ever heard of something called ‘kao’? You drink it, and it instantly makes you feel human again.”

“He’s trying to be funny,” Chas groaned like a martyr. “Have you forgotten that it takes more mags to make one portion of ‘kao’ than you and your fancy musical instruments use in an entire week?”

“Oh come on, not in a week ..,” I croaked, counting up the mags in my mind.

“Yes, yes in a week … Actually I drink kao every morning,” Chas admitted, “but … don’t pretend to be an idiot.”

“I don’t get you,” I said in voice that was suddenly sharp and clear.

“From the first day of training to the last, Craftsmen aren’t allowed to drink any alcoholic or stimulating beverages.”

I nodded without saying anything, trying to remember how much I’d drunk at the banquet.

Strangely enough, I hadn’t seen any alcoholic drinks, let alone drunk any. But in that case, why did I feel so awful … it felt very much like a hangover … Ah yes, there was the champagne at home … but I didn’t know! No one had told me about any prohibitions.

“Aha … So we can confirm that this is the first time in your life you’ve really gone short of sleep?”

Chas gestured wearily with his hand and closed his red, sleepless eyes.

I decided there was one other question worth tormenting my friend with.

“Can you tell me what time it is now?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

“Eh …” said Chas, starting to blink. “Sorry, I think I must have dropped off. Did you ask me something?”

“What time is it?” I asked impatiently.

“Why are you yelling like that?” said Chas, heaving himself up onto his feet. “Can’t you see for yourself? It’s dawn. The sun has gilded the streets of our great city with its golden light … And why am I waxing so lyrical when I’m only half-awake?”

I started thinking for a moment … about ten minutes, in fact. Well, I certainly had something to think about. I was standing in the yard of the Academy just as day was breaking, but I’d been seeing the sun shining over the roofs of the city for a long time. And the daisies were only just opening as well. That was strange, I thought the automatic daisies worked perfectly and always opened with the first rays of the sun, but they had only just opened. And the sun had risen at least twenty minutes ago. Although for some reason it had only risen
for me
. For everyone else it was still rising now.

I shared my misgivings with my still drowsy friend. He was the only one from whom I could expect sympathetic understanding …

“Are you a complete idiot? Go and see a brain-doctor, ask him to add a few more convolutions, that might help.”

“I’m serious!”

“Well, all right,” said Chas, looking me up and down suspiciously. “Hmm … looks like you really did take a tumble into a puddle …”

“Never mind the puddle. I had a fight on the way here too.”

“A fight too?” Chas was astounded. “You really know how to have a good time ...”

“Ah, it’s nothing,” I said breezily. “Every now and then people like me get attacked by certain … excessively envious individuals. It’s nothing unusual. Why don’t you just tell me how to fix this glitch in my head?”

Chas scratched his own head, which was an indication of profound mental activity taking place under his shaggy red mop.

“It’s one of two things: either you gave your head a hard bang, and it needs another good bang to knock the nonsense out … Hey, hey, come on now!”

Chas jumped back sharply when he saw the threatening expression on my face.

“… Or someone’s used magic on you. Hypnosis, in scientific terms,” he concluded.

“Aha,” I exclaimed emphatically.

We looked at each other for a moment.

“Just remind me what hypnosis is, will you, I’ve forgotten,” I said eventually.

“Hypnosis is the influencing of the human brain in order to distort its perception of the surrounding world. This influence is most often exerted through the consumption of various preparations or the direct effect of one mental field on another.”

“Huh?”

“Something you didn’t understand?” Chas enquired smugly.

“Now more slowly, one syllable at a time,” I told him. “Although I’m by no means certain that will do anything to assist my comprehension of the drivel you just spouted. A moment ago you were asleep on your feet. Don’t be such a pain.”

“If you don’t like the answer, you shouldn’t asked,” said Chas, offended.

“Okay, let’s stick to the question of what can be the cause of such a weird condition.”

Chas scratched the back of his head: “Most likely someone spiked something you drank.”

“Now you’re talking like a normal human being,” I exclaimed with sincere enthusiasm.

Meanwhile, the sun had risen completely over the horizon. Everyone who was seeing off friends was asked to leave the yard, and the gates of the Academy slowly closed behind the last pupil to arrive.

“Adepts!” the mechanical voice rumbled. “I might even say, students,” it continued with an odd chuckle, “you will now proceed to your floors, where you will be allocated rooms, given a new set of clothes and acquainted with the schedule of classes. Each faculty has its own classrooms and they are located on different floors to avoid any misunderstandings during your studies.”

I must admit, I had no idea what kind of misunderstandings could arise between the faculties, but somehow I realised that the division into faculties was very important. And there must be some reason why we were given rooms on separate floors.

“And now would you please proceed into the Academy building, where your guides are waiting for you …” – there was another odd mechanical chuckle, “… as they say, abandon hope all who enter here.”

Scene 7

After walking through the familiar monotonous corridors with the strange lighting, we reached a teleport hall. This was a different hall, not the one from which I had travelled to Romius’s study. That room had only a few teleports, but there were about thirty of them in here!

The entire crowd of about two hundred people was divided into several slowly moving streams, each of which ended at a teleport.

“What was it that voice said about clothes?” I asked Chas in a quiet voice.

He grinned spitefully from ear to ear.

“That’s just another of your head glitches, I expect.”

One of the Craftsmen immediately hissed at him: “Young man, stop chattering.”

Chas shut up, but he couldn’t keep quiet for long.

“From what I know, we’ll be living on the same floor,” he whispered to me. “So we should try to get rooms close to each other.”

I must say, Chas’s eyes were blazing ecstatically all the way to the teleports, and that gave his face a kind of childish and stupid look. I didn’t think I’d ever seen my oldest friend look that way before.

“Yes, we should,” I agreed. Then I suddenly remembered what Nick had told me and asked. “By the way, what are atoms?”

“Atoms? Er … well, they’re these little things that the things we’re made of are made of.”

This explanation took my breath away for a moment.

“Well … they’re obviously something very small,” I concluded.

“You can’t even imagine how small,” Chas confirmed, turning away from me. “Look, Liz’s little friends have gone through a different teleport, so we won’t see them again.”

“Why won’t we?” I asked in surprise.

“Well, think about it,” said Chas, scratching his head thoughtfully. “All the different elements have different teachers and they live on different levels. Where are we going to meet them?”

“You know,” I said, scratching my head too, “I somehow have the idea there’s more to life in the Academy than classes and dumb-ass sitting around in your room.”

Chas swore.

“Yes, I was just fantasising, I suppose. I don’t really know anything about what life’s like inside the Academy. But let’s hope that strange voice was exaggerating when it talked about being slaves and all the rest of it.”

I suddenly realised Chas wasn’t listening to me. “Hello-o!”

I slapped my friend on the shoulder, but he still didn’t take any notice of me.

“Will you look at that! I’ve never seen a real teleport working before,” he murmured, gazing spellbound at the people disappearing into the teleports.

I glanced at the teleports: okay, so the people who stood on the round platforms disappeared, okay, so the way they disappeared was beautiful. Not all at once, but from the top down up. As if some cosmic eraser worked its way down from the top of the head to the heels and the person was rubbed out.

“I wonder what principle they work on?” Chas said, but I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or himself. “Lots of people think it’s a matter of copying you or splitting you up into atoms.”

“That’s all nonsense,” I replied automatically. “I was told those rumours are well wide of the truth.”

“Who told you that?”

“Er … er …” I said, feverishly running through all the possible answers I could give, but I couldn’t come up with anything better, so I told the truth. “It was one of the senior pupils that I happen to know.”

“And when did you manage to get to know people like that?” Chas rumbled. “And even more interesting – why didn’t you bother to introduce me to them?”

I was just about to promise Chas quite sincerely that I would introduce him to all the pupils from senior classes that I had ever seen, but just in the nick of time our turn came to stand on the round surface of the teleport.

“I’ll talk to you about this again,” Chas promised as he stepped onto the low platform.

The moment my friend disappeared, a slim, supple figure flitted past me.

“Pardon me, young man, may I go ahead of you?” the girl asked, flashing her fangs flirtatiously, and stepped into the teleport.

I stood there for a while, batting my eyelids in amazement and trying to understand why Alice needed to go through in front of me. Then I realised that Chas and I had been at the end of the queue. In fact, only a moment earlier there hadn’t been anyone behind us at all. I was the last person in the queue!

I looked round anxiously and came nose to nose with the Craftsman who had shown us to the teleport hall.

“Did you see a girl in a black robe?”

“A girl?” I asked, knowing perfectly well who he had in mind, but without the slightest idea of what he wanted Alice for. “I don’t think so, I’m the last in the queue, and my friend was in front of me. Ask the pupils at the other teleports,” I said, vaguely waving a hand in the direction of the waiting crowd.

The Craftsman nodded and walked to the next teleport, but he gave me one last glance to make sure he would remember my face. I got the feeling I’d have to answer for my little lie.

I quickly stepped into the teleport, hoping to be transported out of reach of all my problems.