The Galaxy Game (6 page)

‘Five is a two-seventy. If you try to do it as a ninety, you’re guaranteed a fall. Watch closely.’ Wallrunning means knowing which approaches will work and which ones will dump you in the bodycatcher. It’s not just surfaces and angles.

Rafi did it, but it was a struggle. Was he tired already? ‘Only two more levels. You could do them later.’

‘No,’ he panted. ‘Might as well try to finish.’

The last two were another two-seventy and a tricky one that could be a ninety or a two-seventy, depending on your orientation. Rafi fell trying to reach the last level, which I thought was a very good effort. I told him so as he writhed feebly in the grip of the bodycatcher below. He was too worn out to curse me, which I appreciated, especially since the coach was walking towards the Wall again and might have heard it.

‘Not bad,’ said he, offering a hand to pull Rafi vertical.

I bounced down the Wall, graceful as a mountain goat, in the time it took the coach to get Rafi’s limbs untangled and his brain to understand which way was up.

‘When do you want him ready?’ I asked.

‘No more than a day or two. Make sure he can handle each level, then turn him over to us.’ His grin went wicked. ‘I can use a booby. These boys are getting complacent.’

*

Weekdays were exhausting, with the full crush of resident and daily students passing through the corridors. Serendipity did not join them. Most of the older children came to the Lyceum already registered in a standard curriculum administered via slate or handheld. Students learned as they pleased, at their own pace and in their own environment. The Lyceum staff did not have classes; some teachers sent their lessons directly to slates, others occasionally held demonstrations for the finer points of practical work, and for the subjects which required hands-on experience they took apprentices and assigned them to their workshops.

Serendipity went to a few of the demonstrations. She would often slip in quietly after the start of the session, take a seat at the back and avoid contact that way. Fortunately, the others from her country were better at mingling, which meant that her antisocial leanings were taken as a personal quirk rather than typical Uplander behaviour.

In spite of her irregular schedule, Ntenman always knew where to find her.

‘I need your help,’ he said, sitting beside her.

She glanced nervously at the lecturer, afraid that he could hear them. ‘Shh, Ntenman. Not now.’

‘Come, you don’t need this subject and I need you to help me now,’ he insisted.

The complete absence of his usual slight deference towards her made her pay attention. She took up her slate and followed him quietly out. ‘What is it?’ she asked, pausing in the corridor near a window.

‘I need your clearance. Ageday number eighteen is only good for certain kinds of information. I want to find out about Moo’s father.’ He extended his handheld to her, much to her surprise. She rested her own slate on the broad brick windowsill and took it carefully.

‘I’m nineteen. My clearance can’t be much better than yours,’ she admitted.

‘Yes, and no. You’re not registered as a student and a minor, so you have a few more freedoms.’

She entered her ID on his handheld, but instead of giving it back to him, she held on as he tried to take it. ‘What next?’

He tugged hopefully, but she kept her grip firm. His face became distressed. ‘You don’t want to see this.’

‘I do. Is this how you get into the Lyceum staff records? Have you used that to your benefit?’

‘I look. I don’t tamper.’

‘Then we’ll look together,’ she declared, positioning the handheld at a good viewing angle for both of them.

He surrendered quickly. The corridor would soon become busy again. ‘Abowen, that’s a patronymic. His father’s name is most likely Owen or Owain, and his homestead is in Montserrat. The nearest Central Court would have been at Ophir.’

He spoke the names in, nudged a few commands with his finger and shook his head. ‘Let me try something else.’

She let him mutter and poke around with the shreds of names and family history Rafi had told him. At one point he gave her a sly smile. ‘Marvellous access you’ve got – not only an adult, but a taxpayer!’

‘My time here is paid research on behalf of my community,’ she explained, mildly surprised that he had not known. His fingers suddenly tensed on the handheld. ‘What is it?’

‘A minute,’ he mumbled. His eyes scanned rapidly and his thumb tapped past a few pages too quickly for her to read them.

‘This is it,’ he said at last, very sombre in tone and expression.

Ioan Adafydd ex-Montserrat

That was the name. There were some other words in the charge sheet, serious words.

Coercion. Kidnap. Rape. Illegal influence
.

The final word was also striking.

Terminated
.

‘They executed him?’ She knew enough to know that these were not capital crimes, not unless his influence had been such that they felt he could not be controlled.

‘No, that means the ID has been terminated,’ Ntenman clarified, much to her relief. ‘Wherever he is now, they’ve given him a new ID. He’s untraceable, unless you want to submit a formal request.’

‘Me? You were the one who wanted to search.’ She tapped her access closed with nervy but useless speed – if they kept track of who accessed the records, her ID had been logged long before she started reading.

Ntenman was too lost in his own thoughts to care when she shut down the handheld. ‘So that’s our little Rafi’s father. What a charming brute. No wonder they’ve given him the cap. I remember a boy in my second year . . . lovely, shy person till they capped him. Then he started setting his bed-sheets on fire.’

‘With his mind?’

‘Of course. His uncle had been a pyromaniac . . .’

She was listening and believing, but a tremor at the corner of his mouth brought the charade to an end. He laughed as she hit his arm in exasperation.

‘Your fault for shutting me out of your mind so completely,’ he told her. ‘But, in seriousness’ – and once more he accomplished that abrupt change of character from folly to sobriety – ‘Moo said the cap’s giving him nightmares. He won’t talk to me about it, but he might talk to you.’

She stared at him. ‘If his nightmares are about rape and kidnapping, I don’t think I
want
him to talk to me.’

He tilted his head and looked at her pleadingly. She had seen him do that so many times before, but this was the first time he was doing it to ask a favour for someone else.

‘Of course. If he talks, I’ll listen,’ she agreed.

*

The first practice session with the team was unnerving. The coach meant what he said. The other players were given a strategy to execute, but Rafi’s job was to blunder through it and force them to make adjustments. In spite of Ntenman’s drills, that meant he did a lot of falling, and strictly speaking, three falls meant a four-minute period off the Wall. It took five falls before the coach took pity on his shaking limbs and dazed expression and whistled him off for a short rest.

He tottered away to the usual penalty area . . . but someone was already there, a woman sitting in the shade behind the Wall. It was the worst place for viewing the players, but the best for seeing the movement of the grav-bands in two-dimensional trails of shimmering colour cast on the backscreen. He could not tell if that was what she had been doing, because now, instead of looking at the screen, she was glaring at him. He felt he should apologise for the ugly play she had witnessed, but before he could open his mouth she stood up and beckoned to him.

He blinked, looked around to see if anyone else was watching and then approached her. She was strangely tall, even to a half-grown adolescent like himself. Most of her curly brown hair was carelessly tied back with a length of red cord into a short puff at the back of her head and the remaining flyaway ends were kept flat against her head with metal clips. As he came closer, he realised that the glare was not for him but for the borrowed grav-bands on his wrists. She took his hands and made a click of dissatisfaction.

‘I—’ Apologies for his substandard gear, his poor form and his utter newness at anything like real game practice all crowded together and made his tongue stumble into silence.

She ignored his noises and let fall one of his hands long enough to pull a clip from her hair. Using its flat end as a lever, she prised open the grav-band connector and adjusted the fit closer to his sweating skin. He felt a slight buzz. She shook her head, frowned and jabbed the clip in with greater force. The buzz increased and he had a moment to feel scared, but then it faded to a subtler vibration that barely crossed the threshold of sensation. The other grav-band was given a similar treatment. He raised his hands and studied them.

‘Thanks—’

He got no further. She shushed him, sealing his mouth with three fingers placed emphatically over his still-moving lips. His blood beat hot in the tips of his ears, but she was looking elsewhere, gauging the movement of the shadows on the screen and listening to the sounds of the game. Her hand slowly fell from his mouth as she concentrated. He kept obediently quiet and watched her.

It was easy to see now that his eyes had grown accustomed to the relative dimness. She was not Terran, not close, not even a bit. Her limbs were long for her body, her eyes large and dark; her hair was like fluff near her temples and ears . . . no, not like his sister’s hair, strongly springy and every-which-way, but light, downy and stirring in the breeze like the plumage of a half-fledged chick. There was a hint of speckling in the brown, bird-like again, as was the tilt of her head as she focused. Pale lines etched a faint, swirling pattern over the dark brown of her cheek, continuing under her ear and straight down the side of her neck, right to the edge of her tunic’s collar and likely beyond. He wondered if it was art or more. He suspected more. After all, she was Ntshune, full Ntshune, a rarity in the urban belt and a near-impossibility outside it.

‘How—’

The sharp note of the whistle cut him off and his muscles tensed in instant reaction, ready to return to the game. She gave him a nod and a quick glance to his grav-bands. He nodded in turn, now unsure if she spoke Standard and far too shy to attempt his Simplified Ntshune, and pelted off back to the Wall.

His short rest and the better fit of the grav-bands brought some improvement, but not enough to save him from himself. He ran three levels: one a basic run, one turning and one falling. On the fourth level, his foot faltered and he lost first his balance and then his grip to land once more in the bodycatcher below. He had lasted three minutes. It was humiliating. He lingered for a while, flat on his back staring up at the other players carrying out their training drills, and knew for a certainty that he would never, never be able to play with enough skill to deserve decent gear and time on a professionally equipped Wall. The boys who made the Dailies had been running proper Walls from the time they were old enough to play and mimic their older relatives and listen to their coaching.

He rolled out of the bodycatcher and slouched despondently behind the screen again without waiting for the whistle. She was still there, sitting in the shadows, intent on the game and only sparing him a brief sympathetic look. She now held a bowl of small, hard-shelled spheres. She cracked them with the pressure of finger and thumb, occasionally prised the more stubborn ones apart with the edge of a single shell, and bit into the tough, wrinkled brown core with slow enjoyment. She took time to open them, more time to savour them. He stared at her hands and mouth, forgetting to be polite or shy.

‘Are those perrenuts?’

The movement of her jaw stopped as she considered, then she swallowed and smiled. The smile had some mischief in it, but no unkindness. She split a fresh shell and held out the centre. When he reached for it, she pulled back from his hand with a small frown and brought it near his lips instead with a commanding little flourish. He obediently opened his mouth and let her place it on his tongue. He had heard tales, but . . .

‘Perrenuts are quite an experience.’

Her voice was low in pitch and volume but with such a mellow resonance that she could have stood in the centre of the Lyceum’s largest auditorium and reached the farthest seats with a murmur.

‘There’s the initial rush of stimulant, which produces a sensation of euphoria, but pay attention to what happens after.’

Rafi understood halfway through her sentence. Eating the nut was enjoyable, but immediately he found himself glancing at the remainder in the bowl and yearning for another taste.

‘The true bliss is not in the flavour but in the anticipation and the wait.’ She fed him another nut, which he accepted eagerly. It was true. The taste of the second perrenut actually flattened the rising exhilaration, but the memory of the taste and the likelihood of getting a third made his mouth water.

‘Some people use perrenuts to test their willpower.’ She held out another and looked intently at him. He closed his mouth tightly and waited, straining so hard not to blink under her stare that his eyes began to tear-up. She appeared to count to an arbitrary number, and then smiled and looked away. Picking two more perrenuts out of the bowl, she pressed all three into his hand. ‘Take them home. Three in a row gives a good thrill.’

He closed his fist over the small gift and answered drily, ‘Thanks. I’ll share them with my friends.’

She smiled at that, but anything that might have been said was lost when the coach blew his whistle. Rafi automatically started running to the Wall before he realised he had forgotten to say goodbye, but when he looked back her eyes were already fixed once more on the swirling patterns of the screen.

*

Master Silyan limped briskly towards the sound of breaking furniture and yelling boys. It was far too early in the morning for such energy, but not entirely surprising as the weekend had almost arrived. Two bodies were on the ground in a grim lock that pointed their limbs in painful and unexpected directions and a cheering audience surrounded them. He banged the door hard with one of Galia’s heavy canes, brought specially for the purpose, and was gratified to see the elements of the audience scatter to their beds and the antagonistic human knot unwind itself with reluctant obedience and shuffle back to corners.