called, ‘Spinther, wind up that wheel, would you, there’s a good boy. The rest of you, take your time, nice and orderly.’
The pseudonaiad struck the glass again, and the climbers’ pace speeded up.
CraAAAck
‘Let me up! Let me up!’ Varro pushed by Torbidda and pulled a girl off the ladder. Torbidda helped her up, all the while keeping his eye on the box.
The pseudonaiad again flowed over the glass, studying the crack, judging what it needed. A few drips fell from the crack and wriggled on the floor like worms. It reeled back again.
KRAAK
The glass shattered and the children screamed as the water came rushing through the fracture and hit the ground. It reformed quickly, orientated itself on its human quarries and threw itself at the ladder, narrowly missing a boy who pulled his foot away with a yelp. Torbidda and the girl were stranded in the pit with this monster. Above, Varro checked the control board and shouted ‘Keep turning, Spinther! Needs a little more.’
Varro ran to the side of the pit. The class were watching the pair stranded below with interest. No one offered to help.
‘Shock it!’ cried Torbidda.
‘It’s not charged yet. You!’ Varro pulled Four out the circle. ‘Help Spinther turn it.’ He pushed him towards Leto. He looked back down and shouted, ‘Keep moving, Cadets! Don’t let it corner you.’
‘What are you doing?’ said Leto as Four pulled against him on the wheel, making it impossible to turn.
‘Sixty’s going to get a bath after all!’
The male Fusus twin was circling. Leto didn’t have time to argue – and anyway, it would be pointless. He let the Fuscus boy get behind him, then let go of the wheel, which yanked Four off his feet as it spun wildly in the direction Four had been pulling. Leto elbowed the Fuscus boy in the nose, then reached out with one hand to brace the wheel before turning back to Four, who was still sprawled flat. He stomped hard on Four’s stomach then he returned to the wheel and started winding desperately.
The girl, terrified, clung to Torbidda as the pseudonaiad reared up. If he did nothing, they would drown together. He needed more time.
He elbowed her in the face and dived aside as the water stampeded, enveloping the stunned girl as Torbidda ran to the other side of the Confession Box. He slammed the door behind him, but there was no lock – why would there be? As he clung onto the handle, the girl dropped lifelessly out of the pillar of water, which collapsed into a wave and crashed against the glass.
Torbidda felt it pulling against the other side. He couldn’t hold it much longer. He screamed into the head set, ‘Help!’
The door was wrestled open, Torbidda screamed and the water filled the compartment.
Then there was pain, and blue light—
When he awoke, the last of the lifeless water was going down the drain, once more subject to gravity. Varro was looking down at him with an expression of wonder, and Leto with one of concern.
Torbidda noticed his bloody lip. ‘You fought for me, Spinther? Idiota.’
‘Don’t take it to heart,’ said Leto. ‘I didn’t have time to think it through.’
‘Oh, what a mess,’ said Varro, regarding the girl’s body. She was dead, with no wound but the bloody nose Torbidda had given her. ‘I don’t suppose anyone knows her name?’
‘I know her number,’ Torbidda said. ‘It was Eighteen.’
CHAPTER 6
Every workstation had a fresh subject, hyperventilating and struggling against their bonds, ready for dissection.
‘Sixty! Big day! Excited?’
Torbidda responded dutifully, ‘Very, sir.’ Varro’s attentive-ness, stemming from guilt, no doubt, had rapidly become annoying. Torbidda was worried that it would mark him as a Naturalist partisan.
Varro shuffled to the top of cave. ‘Now, pace yourself. You’ve just one subject each. You need to keep it fresh until noon, which is, let’s see’ – he glanced at a water-clock – ‘three hours. You’ll be surprised how much punishment a subject can bear if you avoid the major organs.’
They’d had weeks of lectures and cadaver butchery, and this was their first real dissection. Varro, shaken by the Confession Box accident, had brought in those second-years specialising in Anatomy to assist. The monitor tutted as she walked past Torbidda’s station. ‘Call that secure? You won’t learn much wrestling the subject for the scalpel.’
She re-fastened the straps and then looked at him, appraising his fresh black eye. ‘Why don’t you fight back?’
Torbidda carefully laid out his tools. ‘He’s not that much trouble.’
‘You should make eye-contact when you lie.