City of the Falling Sky (3 page)

“
Are you heading for the
electronics quarter?”

“
Yep. Come on, come on, come
on, come on, come on!”

“
Mrs Cutson’s class?” Seckry
asked.

“
Yep. Come on, come on, come
on, come, on, come on!”

The boy gripped his own head and shouted,
“For the love of Gedin, get your pneumatic butt up here!”

“
Don’t worry, I’m gonna be
late too,” Seckry said, to console him slightly.

The boy looked at his watch with a pained
expression and squeezed his one eye shut.

“
Tick,
” he said
dramatically, and let his arms slump to his side. “That’s it,” he
sighed. “Doesn’t matter if you’re one hour late or one minute late.
If you’re late for Cutson’s then you’re gonna pay.”

He looked at Seckry as though he’d only just
noticed him.

“
Did you say you were
looking for Cutson’s class too?”

“
Yeah, it’s my first day at
Estergate.”

“
Your first day at Estergate
and you got Cutson for your first lesson? Bad luck, man. Well, at
least you’ll get meeting her over and done with early on. I had to
wait a day and a half before my first electronics lesson and man,
did it come as a shock.”

“
Is she really that
bad?”

The boy nodded grimly.

There was a pleasant electronic
bing
and the metal doors slid open with ease.

“
After you,” said the boy,
and Seckry stepped inside.

The pneumatic pod was a giant, curved, glass
cylinder which was facing diagonally downwards and was filled with
twelve rows of seats.

Seckry looked all around him. Outside of the
pod he could see the inner circle of the school.

“
Wow, there’s a garden in
the centre,” he said.

“
The Central Plaza? Yeah,
nice place to have a packed lunch if the weather’s good. Gotta be
quick though, the benches fill up within five minutes of the lunch
bell ringing.”

As the pod began descending, their natural
light disappeared and was replaced by the warm orange glow of
circular light spheres that were implanted into the walls around
them.

“
So what’s your name?” said
the boy, slumping into one of the seats and putting his feet up on
the chair in front.

“
Seckry,” Seckry
said.

“
Nice to meet you. Name’s
Tenk Binko.”

“
Why are you late?” Seckry
asked.

“
I had to hand in some
overdue genetics homework and then got caught up chatting to some
friends in the year above for too long,” Tenk explained.

“
What do you think Cutson
will do to us for being late?”

Tenk sighed. “Well, it all depends on whether
the old hag’s pet gimmypug is eating his lifferleaf again or not.
If he’s still on that bloody hunger strike she’s gonna be livid.
Otherwise she’ll just be her usual miserable self.”

“
Gimmypug? What’s
that?”

“
You never heard of a
gimmypug? Where you from, man?”

“
Marne. Just
south.”

“
Really? Never met anyone
from down there. You don’t have gimmypugs there?”

“
No, never heard of them,”
Seckry said, feeling more and more clueless by the
minute.

“
Well, the city started
importing them from either Cavaria or Gotland a few years ago,
can’t remember which. You haven’t missed out on anything. The
little fat things just sit around all day and make these weird
burping noises. If you ask me, the reason they’re so miserable is
because they’ve been shipped over and stuck in these cages. They’re
supposed to be running wild in the fields. Cutson calls hers
Peanut, but I call him Pugface. Hasn’t been eating properly for two
weeks now. I reckon he’s hoping she’ll take him to the vets, then
he’s gonna make a run for it. If I was him, I’d do the same. Must
be like living hell having to sit in that cage looking at Cutson’s
ugly mug all day.” Tenk suddenly started laughing. “Oh man, we
think
we’re
in trouble, but my mate Tippian, he ain’t even
gonna make it to the lesson at all. He’s been chatting to this girl
online for a few weeks and last night he was up until about four in
the morning messaging away. He wants me to tell Cutson he’s ill.
The guy’s gonna get slaughtered.”

The pneumatic pod came to a controlled stop
and the doors slid open with a hiss. Beyond was a corridor that
smelled of chemicals and was flickering from a loosely wired tube
light.

“
Follow me,” Tenk
said.

“
Brace yourself,” Tenk said
miserably, and he slowly opened the door to B12.

Seckry was imagining the room to be silent,
and for him and Tenk to have to explain themselves in front of this
dreaded Mrs Cutson, but to his surprise, and Tenk’s, the class was
alive with chatter.

“
She’s not here . . .” Tenk
said in disbelief. He turned around to Seckry and grabbed him
excitedly. “She’s not here! We’re not in trouble!”

“
Who is not here?
”
came a sharp voice from the corridor that cut through the commotion
like a guillotine.

Tenk’s eyes widened. “Quick!”

Tenk and Seckry shot across the room and
landed in a couple of seats towards the back, and everyone else
flung themselves into their own seats. A mid-flight paper aeroplane
hovered dangerously close to Cutson’s desk before someone grabbed
it and stuffed it into their pocket.

Through the door came a frail looking middle
aged woman with a skewed grin, holding a cage by its handle with a
plump, furry creature inside which must have been her gimmypug.

She eyed each pupil individually before
plonking the gimmypug in front of her and sitting at her desk.
Seckry thought that her eyes lingered for slightly longer on him
than the others.

“
I see we have one missing,”
she said, and her voice was thin and cold. “Mr Tippian Furst. Has
he decided that education was finally beyond him and left to work
in a . . .
shop
all his life?”

“
He’s really ill, miss,”
Tenk said. “Last night he was vomiting everywhere. He’s really
sick.” He leaned closer to Seckry and whispered,
“Lovesick, that
is.”

Mrs Cutson stared at Tenk with that lopsided
grin still on her face. It looked very unnatural, as if her skin
were being pulled into some awkward position. She eventually turned
around without saying anything, and on the whiteboard she wrote
‘The Importance of Transistors in Electronic Circuits.’

“
Copy the board,” she
demanded in a stern tone. She began scribbling at an incredibly
fast speed in miniature writing.

“
I hate copying from a
board. I switch off completely,”
Seckry whispered to
Tenk.

“
Me too.”

Nevertheless, Seckry began noting down, his
writing becoming scruffier and scruffier as he struggled to keep up
with Mrs Cutson’s furious notation. It wasn’t long, however, before
Tenk was tapping on Seckry’s arm and pointing towards his bag under
the desk.

“
Have
you got your
avatar with you?
” Tenk whispered.

“
My what?
” Seckry
whispered back.

“
Your
avatar.
”

Seckry frowned. He had heard the word avatar
before; it was the name given to digital versions of people in 3D
chat rooms and online forums, but he had no idea how he was
supposed to be carrying one on him.

The boy blinked very slowly. “
You know
about Friction, surely?
”

Seckry had nothing to go on. He shrugged his
shoulders.

“
Wow. Have you been
living in a cave all your life? Friction is like . . . the biggest
thing ever. In Skyfall at least. Don’t they have Friction in
Marne?
”

“
No, what is it?
”
Seckry asked.

“
It’s a game. But it’s
not just any game. It’s the best game ever. And I’m pretty much the
best player in the whole city. Well . . . maybe not the whole city.
But definitely the best player in my district. Although Lessana
wouldn’t agree with that. But screw Lessana.
”

“
Who’s
Lessana?
”

“
Lessana’s like, the
original player of Friction. No one’s ever beaten her in a direct
duel but people don’t take into account the team
battles.
”

Seckry was aware that he had lost track of
Mrs Cutson’s lecture, but this game sounded much more
interesting.

The boy looked up at Mrs Cutson, who had her
cardigan-covered back facing the class, then quickly whipped out a
small, flat object from his bag. It was the size of a paperback
book, but thinner, with a couple of buttons at the bottom and an
LCD screen.

“
This, here . . .
” he
pressed a touch sensitive circle on the device, “
is Basher, my
avatar.
”

A digital creature appeared on screen, and
waved at the two boys. It was a blue ogre, with big, muscular arms,
a small head with a few missing teeth, and most notably, a pair of
pink fluffy slippers on his feet.

“
He’s in ‘recreational
mode’ right now,
” Tenk said. “
Those blummin’ slippers . . .
the programmers must have had a right laugh when they were making
him. But when he’s in ‘action mode’ they disappear.
”

The creature was beaming at them like an
escaped inmate, his teeth (what little there was of them) dripping
with saliva. It reminded Seckry of his distant aunt
Pennypinkle.

“
I’m saving up for a new
creature,
” Tenk muttered, covering the screen with his hand
momentarily so the beast couldn’t see him.

“
So how do you play
Friction?
” Seckry asked. “
Does Basher . . . bash other
people’s creatures up?
”

“
Man . . .
” Tenk
shook his head. “
I can’t believe there are people out there that
don’t know anything about Friction. I’ve got a lot to teach you.
But we can’t do it here, I’ll take you to a booth one
day.
”

Seckry and Tenk had both been staring at
Basher under the desk, and neither of them had noticed Mrs Cutson’s
shaky form appear in front of them.

“
Gentlemen,” she
said.

Seckry jumped in his seat and his pencil
nearly went flying out of his hand.

Mrs Cutson waited in silence for them to
regain their composure.

“
Intrigued by the wonders of
technology, are we?” She looked at Seckry with that faint, false
smile. She had seen the avatar.

“
Wonderful isn’t it? To come
from nothing, to . . . this. A few years ago we wouldn’t have
allowed someone like yourself to live here. Some would have called
you an outlander, a farm boy.”

So she knew who he was and that he had come
from Marne, even though she hadn’t bothered to introduce herself to
him. But what was she getting at?

“
Of course, now we have the
Outsider Initiative. We welcome . . .
people like
you
.”

She sputtered the words ‘people like you’ as
if she was about to choke on her own bile.

It was then that Mrs Cutson’s absurd smile
fell comfortably into what seemed like its natural position – a
lopsided grimace, her bottom lip poking out like some bulbous blood
sack on a hanging piece of ham.

“
You’re a fool to think you
can come into our city and have the
audacity
to be rude to a
teacher on your first day.” Her watery eyes narrowed into bloodshot
slits. “And with all the financial help our government gives
you.”

Seckry began to feel adrenaline firing around
his body. Financial help? It was the city that had forced his mum
to move here. If the Endrin Corporation had just left Marne alone
they wouldn’t have had to leave. He felt like standing up and
walking out, but his mum would’ve killed him if he had. So instead,
he hung his head down and hoped she’d just carry on with the
lesson, releasing his anger by squeezing his pencil underneath the
desk so hard that it snapped.

When the lesson had finished, Seckry could
barely remember what had been said. His mind had been racing. He
had never been spoken to like that by a teacher back in Marne. He
had never felt so unwanted and embarrassed in his life.

“
That was way out of order,
that was,” Tenk said, as they rode the pneumatic pod back up to the
ground floor. “She doesn’t even know you, and she goes off like
that, saying about how you should be grateful and all.” He was
shaking his head.

“
Are there many people in
the city who don’t like outsiders moving in?” Seckry asked
miserably.

“
Not really, it’s just this
cow. Besides, you’re practically city folk anyway. You can almost
see Marne from the top floor window of the library, for Gedin’s
sake! What would she be like if someone crossed the Phary Ocean to
enrol here? She’d have a heart attack.”

The canteen was one of the numerous separate
buildings to the right of the school that was linked to it via a
transparent corridor. As they arrived, Seckry stopped in awe and
all his thoughts of Mrs Cutson vanished.

The canteen was unlike anything Seckry had
ever seen in his life. The most notable thing about the place was
that a huge conveyer belt was snaking its way around the building,
and was filled with plates of food, all of them covered with
translucent domes. Seckry watched the food going past him and was
sure he spotted something moving in one of them.