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There is a click as her thumb pushes down on the button. A sharp, clear beam shoots out of the FLUN. Arms raised before our eyes, we’re all blinded by the flash. Except me, of course. I see the beam hit Gaunt Man on his chest. His arms fly to block it, but already there is black smoke shooting out of his chest. He falls to the ground as if toppled by a sledgehammer, his body writhing in pain. His mouth is wide open, but no sound emits. He turns to the side, his tongue thick and dry and protruding out of his mouth; a sludge of yellow vomit pours out.
Frilly Dress releases the button. “Oh, stop being such a drama queen,” she says as she floats by him and out.
We’re ushered out of the lecture hall and taken on another tour of the facilities, more empty classrooms and laboratories. After our face-to-face encounter with a live heper yesterday, looking at heper teeth and anatomical heper diagrams fails to arouse any excitement. The only area remotely interesting is the kitchen. Gaunt Man rejoins us there, having been given clearance from the doctors, looking even more bitter than usual. The chefs are busy in the kitchen preparing for dinner, carving up huge chunks of cow hide. The group stays around the main prep table, where the sight and scent of bloody meat draws them. Except Ashley June, who has meandered to a side table where an apprentice chef is at work. I walk over.
“Now that,” I say, salivating at the fried potatoes and noodles, “is absolutely disgusting.”
The apprentice chef, a small man with beady eyes, ignores me. He scoops out the food and slaps it into a large plastic container. He opens the door to an oven behind him, tosses in the container, and slams it shut. He pushes a button and walks away. “Heper food,” he murmurs. After taking a quick look around to make sure no one except Ashley June is watching, I open the oven door. Except it’s not an oven. The container’s gone: down a long narrow tunnel, on a conveyor belt, into darkness.
Footsteps approach the group from behind. With a military cadence. It’s a staffer, his face chiselled and serious. “Your presence is requested,” he barks, his sharp chin pointing at Ashley June. “Immediately.”
“What is this about?” she asks.
He ignores her question, turns to me. “And you too. Come with me now.” He pivots around and walks out, not bothering to look back.
Something is off; I sense it as we follow the staffer outside and along the brick path towards the library. His pace is more than just brisk and urgent; there is fear propelling his boots forward. No one speaks.
Walking through the front doors and into the library feels like walking into the lion’s den.
Inside, the first thing I sense are bodies. Lots of them, perhaps two dozen, staffers and sentries standing just inside the foyer. All of them are wearing shades, all off to the side, standing stiffly at attention.
Don’t swivel your eyes back and forth. Don’t.
Nobody moves. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness slowly, taking long, sustained breaths. It’s cold inside.
Nothing good is going to come out of this. The only silver lining: they don’t know yet. That I’m a heper. If they knew, I wouldn’t still be standing here. They’d have pounced on me the second I entered.
I hear his voice before I see him.
“I trust you have found these accommodations to your satisfaction?” the Director says in a tempered tone. He is standing in the centre of the room, just off the side of a table, the right side of his face lit by a mercuric lamp, his left side blanketed in blackness. His lithe figure, cutting an inconspicuous line in the room, possesses the thinness of a slashing razor. As he speaks, even the books on the shelves seem to tilt slightly away from him.
“Yes, they have been wonderful. Thank you.”
His head arcs upward as if following a flock of birds hastily taking flight. “We worried about the size of the sleep-holds. They weren’t custom-fit for you. We apologise for that.”
“They were a coincidentally good fit.”
“Were they now?”
“Yes.”
He gazes casually at me with seeming disinterest, but beneath his stare a keen coldness lingers. Without warning, his feet suddenly lift off the ground as he leaps towards the ceiling. His body spins upward, his feet a half second later locking into the sleep-holds, the very sleep-holds I have never used. Minutely, his body sways languorously, like the pendulum of an ancient grandfather clock. His eyes, upside down, are still locked coolly on mine.
“Amazing how different the world is from this position, when everything is turned on its head. Do you find that to be true?”
“Yes. I do,” I answer.
“Makes you see things from a different perspective. And that’s why I’m upside down, looking at you now.”
“Sir?”
“Because I’m trying to see you in a different light. Trying to see what’s so special about you. Trying to see why the Palace is singling you out, giving you the royal treatment. Because I just don’t see anything about you that’s distinguishing.” He closes his eyes, luxuriating in a long, drawn-out blink.
“Royal treatment, sir?”
“Ah, playing dumb, I see.”
I don’t say anything.
“Take a look around,” he whispers, “at this whole wide library that is yours alone. It’s even bigger than my chambers! And you tell me the Palace is not giving you the royal treatment.” He descends slowly from the sleep-holds and lands unnervingly close to me, an arm’s length away.
I fight the urge to step back.
“You know, just a few minutes ago, I received yet another directive from the Palace. Concerning you. Again.” He pauses, a glint in his eyes. “There are very few things in life that leave me at a loss. But this kind of attention from the Palace for someone as bland and insignificant as you . . . well, quite frankly, it’s left me flummoxed.”
“I confess I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Another directive, sir?”
“No confessions, please.” He takes a step back to a nearby desk, his finger trailing along the back of a chair. He pulls it out, sits down. And that’s when I notice the two attaché cases. On the table, reflecting the faint gleam of the mercuric lights. They stand straight up like everyone else in the room, at attention. But with an ominous air.
“If there’s one thing I disdain, it’s being kept in the dark. It’s a cold stiff arm of disrespect. And the Palace has been doing this repetitively over the past few weeks. To me. Random directives arriving on my desk daily, without explanation or rationale, last minute twists and turns regarding the Hunt. Fortunately, my bright intellect helps me see the method to all the madness of these directives.” His lips downturn. “Except when it comes to you.”
Standing off to my
right, Ashley June hasn’t moved. Her arms hang still by her sides, her face lost in the dark shadows.
“I’ve done my research on you. Apparently, you’re quite an intellectual standout at school, not nearly as dumb as you’ve been pretending to be here. Quite the brains, so they say. A natural, despite your only moderately above par grades. How did the report put it? Ah, yes, that yours was a stupendous and prodigious intelligence not fully tapped. That’s the intel on you, anyway.” He pauses. “Could that be what garners all this attention, favouritism? Your so-called intelligence?” he says, staring condescendingly at me with the naked disdain of someone feeling threatened. “Tell me: what do you think this Hunt is about?”
He’s testing me. Sizing me up. “Hunting hep—”
“And don’t say ‘hunting hepers’. Because it’s never been about hunting or hepers or hunting hepers. So don’t use any of those words separately or in combination.”
“It’s all about the Ruler,” I answer, strangely emboldened.
His eyes snap to mine, but there is no menace in them. “Ah, the lad might have a mind, after all. Expound, then, if you will.”
I pause. “I’d rather not, I think.”
His head snaps back. “You’d rather so, I should think.”
After a pause, I speak, in as even-keeled a voice as I can muster. “The Ruler knows that his popularity rating has been sagging recently. This is unfair because he is a truly dynamic leader, the best this land has ever known in all its storied and glorious past. But our Ruler is not so much interested in his popularity numbers as he is in the happiness of his people. And nothing else brings as much communal bliss and sense of societal camaraderie as a Heper Hunt. It is to that end that he plans and executes the Heper Hunt with such adroit skill. Of course, it is merely incidental that – as history bears out – nothing will help his numbers as much as a Heper Hunt.”
“Bingo,” the Director whispers, his eyes closing in ecstasy. “My, my, my. The boy wonder surprises after all.” He scratches his wrist. “But that was an easy question. The warm-up.”
