Читать книгу The Wind Singer - William Nicholson - Страница 12

5

A warning from the Chief Examiner

The summons came early, while they were still at breakfast. The doorbell rang, and there outside was a messenger from the College of Examiners. The Chief Examiner wished to see Hanno Hath at once, together with his daughter Kestrel.

Hanno rose to his feet.

‘Come on, Kess. Let’s get it over with.’

Kestrel stayed at the table, her expression showing stubborn resistance.

‘We don’t have to go.’

‘If we don’t, they’ll send marshals to fetch us.’

Kestrel stood up slowly, staring with extreme hostility at the messenger.

‘Do what you like to me,’ she said. ‘I don’t care.’

‘Me?’ said the messenger, aggrieved. ‘What’s it got to do with me? All I do is carry messages. You think anyone ever explains them to me?’

‘You don’t have to do it.’

‘Oh, don’t I? We live in Grey District, we do. You try sharing a toilet with six families. You try living with a sick wife and two thumping great lads in one room. Oh no, I’ll do my job all right, and more, and one fine day, they’ll move us up to Maroon, and that’ll do me nicely, thank you very much.’

Maslo Inch was waiting in his spacious office, sitting at his broad desk. He rose to his full imposing height as Hanno and Kestrel entered, and to their surprise, greeted them with a smile, in his high grand way. Coming out from behind the fortress desk, he shook their hands, and invited them to sit down with him in the circle of high grand chairs.

‘Your father and I used to play together when we were your age,’ he told Kestrel. ‘We sat together in class, too, for a while. Remember, Hanno?’

‘Yes,’ said Hanno. ‘I remember.’

He remembered how Maslo Inch had been so much bigger than the rest of them, and had made them kneel before him. But he said nothing about that. He just wanted to get the interview over with as soon as possible. Maslo Inch’s white clothes were so very white that it was hard to look at him for long; that, and his smile.

‘I’m going to tell you something that may surprise you,’ the Chief Examiner said to Kestrel. ‘Your father used to be cleverer than me at school.’

‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ said Kestrel.

‘Doesn’t it?’ said Maslo Inch evenly. ‘Then why am I Chief Examiner of Aramanth, while your father is a subdistrict librarian?’

‘Because he doesn’t like exams,’ said Kestrel. ‘He likes books.’

Hanno Hath saw a shadow of irritation pass across the Chief Examiner’s face.

‘We know this is about what happened yesterday,’ he said quietly. ‘Say what you have to say.’

‘Ah, yes. Yesterday.’ The smile turned to hold Hanno in its steady shine. ‘Your daughter gave us quite a performance. We’ll come to that in due course.’

Hanno Hath looked back at the smooth face of the Chief Examiner, and saw there in those gleaming eyes a deep well of hatred. Why? he thought. This powerful man has nothing to fear from me. Why does he hate me so?

Maslo Inch rose to his feet.

‘Follow me, please. Both of you.’

He set off without a backward glance, and Hanno Hath and Kestrel followed behind, hand in hand. The Chief Examiner led them down a long empty corridor, lined on both sides with columns of gold-painted names. This was such a commonplace sight in Aramanth that neither father nor daughter looked twice at them. Anyone who achieved anything noteworthy was named on some wall somewhere, and this practice had been going on for so long that virtually no public wall was spared.

The corridor linked the College of Examiners to the Imperial Palace, and emerged into a courtyard at the heart of the palace, where a grey-clothed warden was sweeping the pathways. Maslo Inch began what was clearly a rehearsed speech.

‘Kestrel,’ he said, ‘I want you to listen to what I say to you today, and look at what I show you today, and remember it for the rest of your life.’

Kestrel said nothing. She watched the warden’s broom: swish, swish, swish.

‘I’ve been making enquiries about you,’ said the Chief Examiner. ‘I’m told that at school yesterday morning you placed yourself at the bottom of the class.’

‘What if I did?’ She was watching the warden. His eyes looked down as he worked, and his face looked vacant.

What is he thinking? Bo would know.

‘And that you said to your class teacher, What more can you do to me?’

‘What if I did?’

Why does he go on sweeping? There’s nothing to sweep.

‘You then went on to indulge in a childish tantrum in a public place.’

‘What if I did?’

‘You know of course that your own rating affects your family rating.’

‘What if it does?’

Swish, swish, swish, goes the broom.

‘That is what we are about to find out.’

He came to a stop before a door in a stone wall. The door was heavy, and closed with a big iron latch. He put his hand on the latch, and turned to Kestrel once more.

‘What more can you do to me? An interesting question, but the wrong one. You should ask, What more can I do to myself, and to those I love?’

He heaved on the iron latch, and pushed the heavy door open. Inside, a dank stone tunnel sloped downwards into the gloom.

‘I am taking you to see the salt caves. This is a privilege, of a kind. Very few of our citizens see the salt caves, for a reason that will soon become evident.’

They followed him down the tunnel, their footsteps echoing from the arched roof. The sides of the tunnel, Kestrel now saw, were cut out of a white rock that glistened in the dim light: salt. She knew from her history that Aramanth had been built on salt. The Manth people, a wandering tribe in search of a homeland, had found traces of the mineral, and had settled there to mine it. The traces became seams, the seams became caverns, as they tunnelled into a huge subterranean treasure-house. Salt had made the Manth people rich, and with their wealth they had built their city.

‘Have you ever asked yourself what became of the salt caves?’ said Maslo Inch, as they descended the long curving tunnel. ‘When all the salt had been extracted, there was left only a great space. A great nothingness. A void. What use, do you think, is a void?’

Now they could hear the sound of slow-moving water, a low deep gurgle. And on the dank air they could smell an acrid gassy smell.

‘For a hundred years we took from the ground what we wanted most. And for another hundred years, we have poured back into the ground what we want least.’

The sloping tunnel suddenly opened into a wide underground chamber, an indistinct and shadowy space loud with the sounds of moving water, as if a thousand streams here disgorged into a subterranean sea. The smell was unmistakable now: pungent and nauseating.

Maslo Inch led them to a long railing. Beyond the railing, some way below, lay a vast slow-swirling lake of dark mud, which here and there bubbled up in ponderous burps, like a gigantic simmering cauldron. The walls of the chamber above this lake glistened and shone, as if with sweat. They were pierced at intervals by great iron pipes, and out of these pipes issued grey water, sometimes at a trickle, sometimes at a gush.

‘Drains,’ said the Chief Examiner. ‘Sewers. Not beautiful, but necessary.’

Instinctively, both Kestrel and her father raised their hands to cover their noses against the stench.

‘You think, young lady, that if you do as you please, and make no effort at school, you and your family will go down from Orange to Maroon. You think you don’t mind that. Perhaps you will go down again, from Maroon to Grey. You think you don’t mind that, either. Grey District isn’t pretty, or comfortable, but it’s the bottom, and at least they’ll leave you alone there. That’s what you think, isn’t it? The worst that can happen is we’ll go all the way down to Grey.’

‘No,’ said Kestrel, though this was exactly what she thought.

‘No? You think it could be worse?’

Kestrel said nothing.

‘You’re quite right. It could be far, far worse. After all, Grey District, poor as it is, is still part of Aramanth. But there is a world below Aramanth.’

Kestrel stared out over the murky surface of the lake. It stretched far into the distance, further than she could see. And far, far away she seemed to glimpse a glow, a pool of light, like the light that sometimes breaks through clouds on to distant hills. She fixed her gaze on this distant glow, and the stinking lake appeared to her to be almost beautiful.

‘You’re looking at the Underlake, a lake of decomposing matter that’s bigger than all Aramanth. There are islands in the lake, islands of mud. Do you see?’

They followed his pointing finger, and could just make out, far away across the slithering grey-brown surface of the lake, a group of low mounds. As they watched, they caught a movement near the mounds, and staring, half-incredulous, saw what looked like a distant figure pass over the mud, and sink abruptly out of sight. Now, their eyes attuned to the gloom, they began to spot other figures, all as uniformly dark as the mud over which they crept, slipping silently in and out of the shadows.

‘Do people live down here?’ asked Hanno.

‘They do. Many thousands. Men, women, children. Primitive, degraded people, little better than animals.’

He invited them to step closer to the railing. Directly ahead, through a gate in the rails, there projected a narrow jetty. Tethered to its timbers some twenty feet below were several long flat-bottomed barges, half-filled with refuse of every kind.

‘They live on what we throw away. They live in rubbish, and they live on rubbish.’ He turned to Kestrel. ‘You asked, What more can you do to me? Here’s your answer. Why do we strive harder? Why do we reach higher? Because we don’t want to live like this.’

Kestrel shrugged. ‘I don’t care,’ she said.

The Chief Examiner watched her closely.

‘You don’t care?’ he said slowly.

‘No.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Then don’t.’

‘Prove you don’t care.’

He opened the gate in the railing and held it wide, inviting her to pass through. Kestrel looked out along the slick boards.

‘Go on. Walk right to the end. If you really don’t care.’

Kestrel took one step on to the narrow jetty, and stopped. In truth, she was frightened of the Underlake, but she was bursting inside with angry pride, and would have done anything to wipe that smooth smile from the Chief Examiner’s face. So she took another step.

‘That’s enough, Kess,’ said her father. And to the Chief Examiner, ‘You’ve made your point, Maslo. Leave her to me.’

‘We’ve left your children to you for too long, Hanno.’ He spoke evenly as always, but now there was an undertone of sharp displeasure. ‘Children follow the example given by their parents. There’s something broken inside you, my friend. There’s no fight in you any more. No will to succeed.’

Kestrel heard this, and went cold inside with fury. At once, she started to walk briskly down the jetty. She looked straight ahead, fixing her gaze on the place where the far-off light streamed down on to the dark surface of the lake, and put one foot in front of the other, and walked.

‘Kess! Come back!’ called her father.

He started after her, but Maslo Inch seized his arm with one hand, and held him in a grip of iron.

‘Let her go,’ he said. ‘She has to learn.’

With his other hand, he operated a long lever by the jetty gate, and there came a hissing gurgling sound, as the posts supporting the far end of the jetty began to sink into the lake. The jetty sloped downwards, becoming a ramp tilting ever more steeply down into the mud. Kestrel gave a cry of alarm, and turned and tried to run back up the boards, but they were coated with slime, and she couldn’t get a grip. She started to slither backwards.

‘Papa!’ she cried. ‘Help me!’

Hanno lunged towards her, pulling furiously in the Chief Examiner’s hold, but he could not free himself.

‘Let me go! What are you doing to her? Are you insane?’

Maslo Inch’s eyes were locked on to Kestrel, as she tried in vain to stop her downward slide.

‘Slipping, slipping, slipping,’ he cried. ‘Well, Kestrel, do you care now?’

‘Papa! Help me!’

‘Get her out! She’ll drown!’

‘Do you care now? Will you try harder now? Tell me! I want to hear!’

‘Papa!’ Kestrel screamed as she slithered off the end of the sloping jetty, and into the lake. Her feet hit the brown water, and with an awful sucking sound they disappeared into liquid mud.

‘I’m sinking!’

‘Tell me you care!’ called out Maslo Inch, his hand gripping Hanno’s arm so tight his fingers had gone white. ‘I want to hear!’

‘You’re mad!’ said Hanno. ‘You’ve gone mad!’

In desperation, he swung his free arm, and struck the Chief Examiner hard across the face.

Maslo Inch turned on him, and suddenly he lost all his self-control. He shook Hanno like a doll.

‘Don’t you dare touch me!’ he screamed. ‘You worm! You dribble! You maggot! You failure! You fail your exams, you fail your family, you fail your country!’

At the same time, Kestrel realised she wasn’t sinking any more. Somewhere beneath the surface there was hard ground, and she had only sunk to her knees. So she took hold of the sides of the narrow jetty with both hands, and began to claw her way back up. She didn’t call out any more. She just fixed her eyes on the Chief Examiner and willed herself up the slope.

Maslo Inch was too absorbed in screaming at her father to notice.

‘What use are you? You’re a nothing! You do nothing, you make no effort, you expect others to do it all for you, all you do is read your useless books! You’re a parasite! You’re a germ! You infect everyone round you with your sick lazy failure! You disgust me!’

Kestrel reached the top of the jetty, took a deep breath, and with a yell of blood-curdling fury, threw herself on the Chief Examiner’s back.

‘Pocksicker!’

She locked her arms round his neck and her legs round his waist and squeezed with all her might, to make him let go of her father.

‘Sagahog! Pooa-pooa-pooa-banga-pompaprune! Pock-sicking udderbug!’

The Chief Examiner, taken by surprise, released Hanno Hath’s arm and turned about to pull Kestrel off him. But whichever way he swung, she was always behind him, her wiry little arms throttling him, her muddy feet kicking at his ribs.

The tussle was short but intense. During it, much of the mud on Kestrel’s legs was wiped on to the Chief Examiner’s clothing. When at last he got a grip on her and tore her off, she let go, and he threw her farther than he intended. At once she sprang to her feet and ran.

He made no attempt to chase her. He was too shocked at the sight of his muddy clothes.

‘My whites!’ he said. ‘The little witch!’

Kestrel was gone, streaking away as fast as she could, up the tunnel towards the distant door.

Maslo Inch brushed himself down, and pulled back the lever that raised the jetty to its former position. Then he turned to Hanno Hath.

‘Well, old friend,’ he said, icily calm. ‘What do you have to say to that?’

‘You shouldn’t have done that to her.’

‘Is that all?’

Hanno Hath was silent. He would not apologise for his daughter’s behaviour, but nor was it wise to say what he really felt, which was that he was intensely proud of her. So he kept a neutral expression on his face, and looked with inner satisfaction at the mudstains on the Chief Examiner’s once-pure robes.

‘I now see,’ said Maslo Inch quietly, ‘that we have a far more serious problem with the girl than I had realised.’