Doctor Who_ Warchild - Andrew Cartmel [54]
‘Sorry about that,’ she said, sitting down opposite Pangbourne’s desk again. The small office smelled of cigarette smoke and there was a big glass ash-tray on the principal’s desk with a fine residue of ash in it.
‘No problem,’ said Pangbourne. He was reading a hard copy of Ricky’s school records.
‘This is a special school, Mrs McIlveen, for special children.’ Pangbourne looked up at her with sceptical, pale blue eyes. ‘Specially bright children. Geniuses and prodigies.
Specially difficult children. The discipline problems.’
He smiled at Justine. ‘Why do you want your son to come here?’
Justine took a deep breath. Pangbourne was clearly a decent, intelligent, compassionate man.
She was going to have to lie to him.
Outside Ricky sat waiting on the bench.
He sighed.
The corridor was empty in both directions. His initial relief at being in a quiet part of the school had been replaced by boredom.
He hadn’t brought a book with him. There was nothing around to read, not even a poster on the wall. Nothing except for a small plaque displaying the rules for operating the fire-extinguisher. Ricky had already memorized these.
Ricky wished something would happen.
His mother seemed to have been talking to Mr Pangbourne forever. He sighed again. He could hear kids in the playground outside. Occasionally an unseen door would open around the corner and he would hear the clatter of lunch trays in the canteen.
Ricky wanted something to happen.
Ricky decided he’d make something happen.
Justine nodded at the papers on the principal’s desk. ‘My son is a discipline problem. You can see that there.’
‘Sure, I can see that he’s changed school more often than a lot of my kids change their underwear, if you’ll excuse a down-toearth parallel.’ He looked at Ricky’s attendance record. ‘But I don’t think that’s the full story.’
He pressed a button on his desk and after a moment a skinny teenage boy came into the office.
‘This is Clement,’ said the principal. The skinny kid nodded shyly at Justine. ‘Clement is our resident computer wizard.’ Pangbourne got up so the kid could sit at his desk.
Clement hunched forward over the computer and began typing swiftly, obviously uncomfortable about sitting in the principal’s chair. Pangbourne smiled at Justine. ‘I got him to do a little digging for us.’
‘Digging?’ said Justine, her heart sinking.
‘Into your son’s background.’
The skinny kid got up from the computer and hurried out from behind the desk. Pangbourne returned to his chair, frowning as he studied the screen. He looked at Justine. ‘It seems that your son just can’t stay in a school. Yet there’s nothing wrong with his scholastic record. His grades are excellent and, what’s far stranger, there’s no official record of any disciplinary offences, at least not on any data-base we can get into. Whatever this boy’s problem is, it looks like no one wants to talk about it.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t have a problem,’ said Justine.
‘We’ve all got problems,’ said Mr Pangbourne.
In the corridor outside Ricky was looking at the floor between his feet. At first he watched the toes of his running-shoes, which were moving in small slow orbits of boredom.
But then he began to concentrate on the smooth grey floor below his feet. The floor was concrete with some kind of glossy plastic paint on it. The colour was mostly grey but there were specks of red, black and white in it.
Ricky sat and concentrated on the colours of the floor.
After a while the specks of red and white and black began to float against the background like planets floating in a strange grey void. A weird galaxy in some distant dimension. He could almost hear the strange music of these alien spheres.
Ricky relaxed and slowly closed his eyes. He was almost ready.
He sat unmoving on the bench with his eyes shut, listening to the sounds of the school all around him.
Every institution has its own identity, detectable in many ways. The sound of a building full of people develops its own distinctive signature. The subdued depressed mutter