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“Nobody. It’s just guesswork, that’s all.” Alertness shines in her eyes. “Nothing you haven’t already thought of, I’m sure.”
“I see.” His left hand, glowing with a suffused paleness, strokes one of the attaché cases. His bony fingers lilt on the handle, brushing it with fear and disdain. “So you’re just guessing – you could be way off base.”
“Maybe. But I don’t think so.” She pauses. “But what about me? Why am I here?”
The Director raises his eyes to her and scratches his wrist in long, lethargic strokes. His pleasure is easily evident. “You are what we would call Plan B.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Pity that. And to think you’d been doing so well.” The Director sniffs. “Evidently, you’re just like everyone else, always needing me to spell things out for them. An hour ago, I received yet another directive. Concerning both you and him. You are Plan B. In case Plan A – him – fails to pan out, in case he fails to execute, you’re the safety net. Something goes wrong during the Hunt, he fails to deliver or is taken out of the action, you’re there to win the Hunt. You’re the insurance policy, the understudy winner.”
“I don’t think it’ll work.”
“But of course it will!” he says, mild irritation seeping into his voice. “You’re every bit the package he is. Smart – though I’m beginning to have my doubts; verbose – though a little too much, I’m coming to think; and very knowledgeable about hepers. They’ve told me about you, little girl, about all the heper clubs and societies you’ve been involved in over the years. Your heper knowledge will come in handy during post-Hunt interviews and whatnot. And besides, you’re quite the eye candy. You’d look good on camera, in photographs. Your pretty face would grace the covers of instant best sellers quite well. Yes, I can see it now.”
“You need to think about the bigger picture of the Hunt,” Ashley June says, her voice steely.
“I need to think? . . .”
Ashley June is silent: the silence of regret.
“You think you know better than me?” The words pepper her like pellets out of a shotgun, rancid with scorn. “Don’t tell me what I need to think, little girl.”
The Director closes his eyelids, his long eyelashes delicately interlacing. And with that, the temperature in the library, already low, plummets. Beams of moonlight freeze into pillars of transparent grey ice. I shoot a look at her. She knows she’s crossed a line – her skin is even paler than before, and her eyelids are fluttering.
The Director’s eyes draw down to the two attaché cases. He pulls them closer. “One of you’ll need to win the Heper Hunt for this plan to succeed. That’s what you wanted to tell me, isn’t it, little girl? Please. Don’t presume to share with me your pedestrian ideas. Because I already knew that. In order for you to grace the covers of magazines, to appear on talk shows, to be the talk of the town, one of you must win. Because yes, I’m well aware that there’re other hunters, many of whom are not only as desirous to win, but far more capable of doing so.”
He presses a button and the attaché cases open with a snap. He spins them around for us to see inside. A FLUN inside each case. The Director takes one out. “Nobody knows what really happens out there in the Vast during the Hunt, how dirty it can get. For one, the Hunt has never been videotaped: videocameras are too heavy, and besides, cameramen will simply throw the cameras down and join in the Hunt, unable to resist. And nobody really cares how . . . unsportsmanlike things can degenerate. Hunters have been known to . . . well, resort to dirty tricks. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, and the more dog it is, the more interesting it’ll be to read about later. Use these FLUNs on the other hunters. Everyone will think it was just the hepers who shot them. Somewhere in the Vast when you’re far removed from the Institute. One FLUN for each of you, three shots in each. Should be enough, no?”
“And what if we take out all the other hunters?” Ashley June asks. Her voice is quiet but not hesitant. “And it’s only the two of us left? What should we do?”
The Director’s reaction is almost violent. His hands cross together at the wrists, and he scratches deep white lines into the soft give of his wrists, his head snapping back like a sideways pogo stick. “What do I really care?” Beads of delirious light shoot out of his eyes. “What do I really care so long as one of you wins? Oh, you silly girl!” He suddenly stops moving as if remembering something; he looks at both of us sternly. “Only know this: I want a clear winner. It’s always better that way. No ties. The public does not like ambiguity. If it comes down to just the two of you . . . well . . . there can be only one. You will know what to do. Correct?”
Neither Ashley June nor I answer.
And he starts scratching again, long, slow strokes. “I see. I see. I see that I have not made myself clear. That I have not fully conveyed to you just how vested I am in the success of this Hunt. That I have not made clear how important this is to me, how one of you – and only one – must win the Hunt.” He places the tips of his forefingers on each eyebrow, runs them down their thin, soft arches. “Many people think I have a dream job here at the Institute. To be able to work in such proximity to the hepers. Those people are ignorant fools. This place is hell.”
His face turns graven, darkness shadowing over him. “A successful Hunt would give me a chance to leave this place,” he whispers. “This purgatory where heaven is only a glass wall away; but that glass is as thick as a thousand universes laid side by side. You can only take it for so long, to be tantalised with the sight and smell of hepers, yet to be deprived of it at every turn. It is its own type of hell, to be so teasingly close yet so impossibly far. To get away from this faux heaven . . . and be promoted to work where heaven is real – the Ruler’s Palace. To finally be promoted to Minister of Science.”
Another long pause pregnant with angst. “Have you ever . . . no, of course you haven’t. But I was there for a day. The Ruler’s Palace. When I was officially appointed to this position. There, in all its glory and grandeur. The reality surpassed even the loftiest of my expectations. Towering sphinxes of hyenas and jackals, slippery-smooth marble edifices, the endless, elegant retinue of cupbearers, scribes, harpists, pages, message runners, court soothers, guardsmen, the silky-robed harem of virgins. But that was not even the best of it. Have you any idea what that might be?”
I do not say anything.
“You might think it is the elegant pools lined with waterfalls, or the grottoes, or the symphonic hall with the petal-cupped mercuric chandelier. But no, you would be wrong. Or the aquarium filled with oysters and clams and squid and octopus that you can simply pluck out like a dandelion and devour. But you would be wrong again. Or the paintings, or the royal stable with rows of regal stallions as far as the naked eye can take you. But again, you would be wrong.”
He lifts his index finger weighed down by a heavy emerald-cut inset ring. Immediately, the staffers and sentries about-turn and walk out.
When the front doors close, he wets his lips and continues. “It’s the food. The most exotic yet fattiest of meats, the choicest and bloodiest parts to sink your teeth into even as the animal’s heart pumps. Pump-pump, pump-pump, just like that, as you chew on its liver and kidney and brain. Of dogs, of cats. And that’s just the appetiser. After that, the main course.” Out of the dark, I hear his lips quiver wetly. “Heper meat,” he hisses.
I stare blankly, a horror dawning on me. Don’t widen your eyes, my father’s voice bellows, don’t widen your eyes!
“Suppose I tell you there’s a secret stash,” he whispers. “That somewhere on the Palace grounds is a top-secret heper farm. Just supposing, of course. Because everyone knows that the last hepers on the face of the planet are in that Dome outside. But now, suppose that heper farm is underground, kept from view, spanning the whole length and width of the Palace gr
ounds. Just supposing, of course. How many hepers? you might be asking. Who can say? But during the one night I stayed there, I could hear their howls and cries at night. Sounded like there were dozens, possibly hundreds.” He strokes his cheek. “Perhaps – just supposing – enough to provide the Ruler a heper meal for the rest of his life. Just supposing, of course.”
He looks at us in turn. “So now you know, yes? I am firmly committed to this Hunt’s success. Meaning one of you – and only one! – will come out the winner. You do not want to know the consequences of failure.” He stands up. “Trust me on this one. So you will give me this. One of you will win. That is all. I have made myself clear.” He brushes by me and exits the room. The door closes behind him.
I let out my breath, and it’s a long time before I inhale again.
Afterwards, Ashley June is sent back to her room to be measured. A team of tailors – sombre with hangdog faces – later arrives at the library to take my measurements for the tuxedo, their voices hushed in the airy library. It’s a stressful experience for me, especially when the tailors lean in a little too close for comfort. I see their nostrils flaring; one of them even shoots me a curious look. I shoot him down quickly enough, but he gives me another odd look as the team packs up and leaves.
I head outside, wanting to be in open space. The last few hours have been intensely stressful. And it’s a beautiful night, perfect for calming my nerves. The sky is sprinkled with pretty sparkles of starlight; the crescent moon hovers high, layering the snow-capped eastern mountains with a film of crusted silver. Soft gusts of air sigh across the plains, lifting the tension from my shoulders.
I hear footsteps behind me, the soft kick of sand.
It’s Ashley June, walking towards me, her eyes tentatively on mine. When our eyes meet, her eyes fall shyly. She’s wearing a new outfit: a black satin camisole, hung low and tight. Her long pale arms glide down her sides, shimmering under the moonlight, slippery marble columns. The sand shifts and swirls under me, dizzying me, disorienting me.
