The Chrysalid Conspiracy (5 page)

This was the first time she’d seen him close up, and looking at his face and thinking of her new friend’s sense of humour, wondered if she should throw herself through the stained glass window and get it over with.

Professor Melkins had a long, thin face. A very long, thin face. His mouth was much too low and too wide, which gave him floppy cheeks and caused his face to appear pear-shaped. He had eyes that were too close together, too high and with large bags under them. Curly grey hair billowed out from above his ears, with a shiny bald area at the summit.

His voice was deep but thin, more like a low whine. He spoke slowly and was extremely articulate, pronouncing every letter of every word with a well-practised accuracy, which reminded the listener of subliminal fingernails and a blackboard!

Looking down at the two folders on his desk he raised his head but it seemed to stay at the same height, his neck pushing back into his gown while his shoulders remained in the same position. Amelia was terrified. Surely Rayn would figure out his nickname before long?

The headmaster looked up at Amelia, opened her folder and spoke. “Amelia Jayne Jaxson. Are you sure there’s a ‘y’ in Jayne?” Before she could answer, he muttered “No matter, no matter. Your academic record is quite impressive, quite impressive indeed. I hope it’s all above board and honest?” Amelia said nothing, beginning to understand why he was so disliked. “And you, a new girl I see.” He turned to his secretary who was standing to one side of his desk. “Miss Collins, somebody has spelt this girl’s name wrong. Would you see to it please?”

“Yes, Headmaster,” she replied, her face denied that her tolerance levels were at maximum.

“And are these the two girls who…”

“Yes Headmaster.” Miss Collins repeated, hurriedly. “I’ll speak to them later.” She said as she frowned at him.

“Well then,” he continued, “your education assessments are very impressive, so what am I going to do with you?” Amelia’s stomach turned over. “It would seem that you, Miss Jaxson, have avoided a career of disciplinary indifference, if this report is to be believed. And you, Miss?” He thumbed through Rayn’s folder. “Whatever. It’s your first day I gather, so it may be that you are unaware of our strict code of conduct. I will forgive this indiscretion at this time. What have you to say for yourselves?” he asked.

Amelia glanced at Rayn and knew she had to act quickly; Rayn was getting there.
Any minute now,
she thought and jumped to her feet. “We’re so sorry, Headmaster. It was a simple fit of the girlie giggles. We momentarily lost control, it won’t happen again, we promise.” Having won the day, she didn’t need to plead. She just needed to get Rayn out of there, and fast! She made a move toward the door.

Professor Melkins stood up. He was very tall and his head hung low in his chest as he picked up his mortarboard.

No!
Amelia silently screamed.
Don’t put it on, please!
Too late. The professor flicked some invisible dust from that pretentious emblem of academic success, and adjusted it over his bald forehead.
Ah well,
thought Amelia.
We nearly made it!
Rayn finally exploded. Theodore Melkins stood there with his long face, the black tassel hanging over his forehead and Rayn screamed “EEYORE!”

Before she could finish the word, Amelia hit her in the back, hard. Rayn gasped in pain but, before the hysterics got her, she was grabbed by the hair and swung screaming towards the door, which was being held open by Miss Collins.

Amelia let go of Rayn’s hair, put her foot in the middle of her back and shoved. The poor girl’s feet left the floor as she flew past the secretary. The speed with which Rayn changed the enforced flight into a shoulder roll to finish upright, facing them and ready for retaliation impressed Amelia, and she prayed that nobody noticed. The secretary; stone faced and looking as if she witnessed scenes like this every day, followed the girl out and quietly closed the door.

Turning to the professor, Amelia presented her sweetest face and spoke. “Sorry about that, professor. She’s caught a cold from these wet clothes. I had to get her out fast in case she sneezed on you again.” It was pretty inane but it was the best she could think of.

“Yes…I…well…er…yes, thank you. Take her to the nurse, will you, please. That’s all. Dismissed,” he responded as he left by his private door into his quarters.

The corridor was empty. Amelia slammed the office door shut behind her and ran, her wet shoes squelching at every step. She burst through the heavy fire doors at the far end into the intersecting corridor. To her left, another ghastly stained glass window, and to her right another long, empty corridor. The doors and open stairwells leading off made her feel, just for a moment, as if she were back in the tree of her nightmares.

“Rayn!” she almost screamed in panic.

“Here.” The voice came from behind her. Back down the corridor from where she’d just fled she noticed a door to the left. Slightly ajar, it revealed a small utility room adjoining the Headmaster’s office. Rayn was sitting on a chair looking miserable while Miss Collins was pouring tea into three bone china cups on the wooden draining board next to an old Victorian sink. “Amelia,” Rayn demanded, “why didn’t you warn me that he was the spitting image of…oh…” Her voice tailed in confusion.

As Amelia sank down beside her Miss Collins asked, as if nothing unusual had happened. “Sugar, anyone?” Rayn, realising her error, tried to stutter an apology. Miss Collins handed out the tea with a smile. “Drink this and then we’ll get you down to the infirmary to dry off,” she said. Both girls sipped their sweet tea gratefully.

“Miss Collins, we…” Amelia was cut short by the look Miss Collins gave them over her glasses. It was based on many years of experience and she used it to gain control of any given situation. There was silence. Both young girls were totally subdued. They sat with their hot tea in their cold hands, more terrified than they had been at any time since assembly.

“Professor Melkins is, I’ll concede, rather odd-looking and that his manner lacks a certain charm,” continued Miss Collins as she sipped her tea. “That’s better,” she murmured to herself. “But it would have been polite of you to have shown a little more respect.”

Rayn cringed, but said nothing. Miss Collins looked directly at her and carried on. “In your defence, as this is your first exposure to the professor at close range, I’m surprised you lasted as long as you did, taking into account your age and immaturity.” She moved across the room but remained standing. Amelia noticed with surprise how graceful her movements were.

“Perhaps things would have worked out better if I’d remembered to misplace his mortar board. Oh well, what’s done is done.” She was thinking aloud rather than speaking directly to the girls. “Fortunately,” she added, “the Professor is completely unaware of the name or the existence of his, er, doppelgänger.”

Amelia felt a strange feeling. It wasn’t the cold, damp clothing or the hot tea. She just had the feeling that something wasn’t quite right but she didn’t know what. “However,” continued Miss Collins, interrupting Amelia’s thoughts, “having read your files and listened to your conversation in the corridor, I realise I am dealing with two exceptional young intellects.” She paused for a moment. “No! Don’t look surprised. You both know exactly what I mean. You two will certainly lift our grades this year and well you know it.”

Amelia was suddenly aware that here was someone who would make a formidable enemy. Shrewd and intelligent she was someone who was really in control, and would use all of her available resources in the fight to protect her domain. Her sense of uneasiness grew as she listened to this compelling woman.

“So,” Miss Collins continued, “I want you to know that the professor is one of the kindest and most intelligent men I have ever met. He is a brilliant anthropologist and has spent many years travelling the world living with remote tribes. He’s written several books on the subject and was once considered to be the world’s foremost authority on social evolution.”

“What happened?” asked Rayn, anticipating the ‘fall’.

“In his last book,” replied the school secretary, “he put forward a hypothesis that human history goes back a lot further than our known history and he proposed that within one specific species of human there are ancient rituals and ceremonies going back at least forty thousand years, and were not based on religion but in fact were a very advanced understanding of natural medical science. He claimed to have discovered early evidence of amputations, organ transplants and even heart surgery at a time when we were supposed to have still been hairy spear throwing hunter-gatherers. This knowledge was so advanced it affected human evolution, and we are only just beginning to rediscover some of these secrets. He then found skeletal fragments and teeth which dated less than a thousand years later, which suggested this particular sub-group had no apparent diseases and had doubled their life span. I must admit, I don’t know much about it, but his comparisons of prehistoric artefacts and skeletal remains do seem to point to a possibility.”

Amelia sat back for a moment. She was still listening, but a corner of her mind was nagging for attention.
This doesn’t make sense,
it told her,
why would a couple of kids, up on the ‘carpet’, be getting a full-on explanation on what makes the headmaster tick from this woman who had a fierce reputation of protecting him from his own failings?
She was absolutely certain that nobody else had had the ‘privilege’ of this little lecture. She was sure to have heard about it otherwise. What was going on?

“Anyway,” Miss Collins was still talking. “His conclusion was that the evolution was far too rapid in geological terms and he joined the ‘Alien Visitation’ school of thought. This didn’t go down well with the ‘Establishment’ but the real killer was his insistence that a complete understanding of the natural world was the key to their success. In his latest book he proposed that our dependence on synthetic substances were detrimental and we should re-examine our philosophy with a view to a change of direction.”

She smiled at this point; pleased and relieved she had their attention. “Unfortunately,” she continued. “The academic world made a meal of him. It ruined his career and his credibility as an anthropologist. He was ridiculed by the pharmaceutical industry and they refused to accept even the possibility, considering it a science-fiction hoax.”

Miss Collins took their mugs and placed them in the chipped and battered sink. During the pause, Amelia felt the sorrow but couldn’t detect any change in the secretary’s manner.

She looked at the woman’s face and their eyes met, then quite unexpectedly, and for no reason she could imagine, she became very interested in the Professor’s book.

“Excuse me, Miss Collins,” she said cautiously. “Is his book still available?”

Before she replied, Miss Collins held her gaze steady as if, Amelia felt, she was trying to hide some hidden response; Relief? Excitement? Anticipation?

Amelia sat very still wondering if her brain had come off its gimbles.
What is the matter with you?
she asked herself. S
top all this nonsense,
but heard herself saying, “I’d like to read it. It sounds fascinating,”

“No one has ever asked us that before,” replied Miss Collins, “but then I don’t suppose many people have heard of it. No one seems interested in the prospect of our version of history being wrong, and those few who do have been forced to the periphery of the debate and labelled as cranks. Yes, I think we can find you one. I’m sure there’s one in the school library. We’ll need you to look after it, though.”

Amelia was quick to sense a feeling of relief emanating from this imposing woman, and also the subtle change from ‘I’ and ‘He’, to ‘US’ and ‘We’, and she wondered how long the two of them had been a ‘plural’.

“It’s rather heavy literature, you know.” Miss Collins continued with a warnng. “He’s not a story teller, unfortunately.” Miss Collins smiled and added, “But I’m sure you can manage.”

Rayn had been sitting quietly during this time, her mind a confused mixture of embarrassment, pity and guilt.
Poor old Eeyore,
she thought. “Excuse me, Miss Collins,” Rayn spoke up. “Did the professor really believe that spacemen came down and taught these people advanced medicine? If so what happened to them?”

Miss Collins looked at Rayn and her shoulders seemed to slump a little. “That was the main question asked at the time. Sadly, he had no answers and was ill equipped to defend himself. He tried to explain that it was just a theory, but to no avail. His opposition became quite ruthless in their condemnation.” Both girls were surprised at the bitterness that had crept into the secretary’s voice, but they remained quiet so as not to antagonise her any further.

***

As they squelched down the corridor and through the puddle which had finally reached the pew, Amelia’s mind was spinning like an out of control tumble-dyer.
What the devil was that all about?
Her common sense told her that of all the pupils in their year she and Rayn were probably the only ones who would have any interest or understanding of the secretary’s subject matter.
Was the ‘little chat’ contrived for their benefit? And what had the headmaster meant when he’d asked ‘are these the girls who
…
?

Miss Collins, on the other hand, had her own problems. She stood in the empty office leaning back against the door, her whole body trembling.
Is this it at last?
She thought to herself.
Could she really be the one after all these years?
And then she made a dive for the Headmaster’s hidden stress reliever, courtesy of Smirnoff.

“Hi Mum, I’m home,” Amelia called as she entered the shop. “This is Rayn.”

“Yes dear,” said Amelia’s mother Lucy, who had her back to the door, “And being neither a farmer nor a duck I wish it would ease up.”

“No Mum, this is Rayn, with a ‘y’.”

Lucy turned her chair and saw the bright-eyed girl with masses of flame red hair. Both girls were wet, bedraggled and very windswept.