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.’The guards were distracted by several protesters who had decided to breach the gates in all the excitement.Their grey bodies flickered with orange light from the burning coach as they climbed.‘Wait here,’ the guards ordered and hurried towards the gates, waving their truncheons.Bernice, Tameka and Emile were left unguarded.The building was only a few metres ahead of them.‘Well, I don’t know about you,’ Bernice said, ‘but I, for one, am rather impressed.’Scott was woken by the sound of someone returning to the dormitory.He was curled up on the single bed, his stomach still tense from the dream.His head still ringing with his own screams.His skin blistering into nothing as the dying red sun flickered and then ignited with white fire.Michael appeared by his side.Scott wondered if he had been crying out in his sleep again.Tameka said that he did.‘How did it go?’ he asked his brother.‘All right.’ Michael shrugged his broad shoulders.‘They got in.Whether they get out again is another matter.’Scott was relieved.He padded out of the room to the bathroom.Michael followed him and stood scrutinizing him while he splashed his face.‘It’s the dream, isn’t it?’ Michael said.Scott nodded.‘Yeah, it’s getting stronger.More real.Do you still get it?’Michael nodded, but didn’t say anything else.Scott dried his face on his shirt.‘The profiteers believe that our dreams are messages to our waking minds.Tameka told me.’Michael frowned.‘Messages from where?’‘From another part of ourselves.From a part of our mind which is shadowed and hidden.’Michael snorted.‘They’re so full of shit.I don’t understand why you’ve involved yourself with them.’‘Are you saying that you want them to leave?’‘Look, Scott, the Sunless are going to find them eventually.It’s just a matter of time.Eventually someone is going to ask them for their papers.If they find out that you’ve helped them, they’ll kill you too.’‘So what should I do, turn them in?’There was silence for a moment, before Michael said, ‘We could just leave.Tonight.Go back to the village.I haven’t seen Leon in years.’ He must have seen the expression on Scott’s face, because his voice trailed away.‘Michael, where are your principles? Do you think they deserve to be killed? Just because their heads have been filled with a load of crap doesn’t mean that they’re not people.’‘They’re profiteers! They’re not supposed to be here.There’s a rule about it.’‘Since when did that bother you?’Silence.‘I don’t want to talk about it any more.I’m going to bed.’But Scott wasn’t prepared to let it go.He followed Michael into the smaller room, watching as his brother sullenly began to undress.Michael was about to pull off his shirt when he became aware of Scott’s eyes on him and suddenly stopped.He climbed selfconsciously into bed still wearing his shirt.‘What?’ Scott frowned.‘Why are you wearing a shirt in bed?’‘No reason,’ Michael snapped.The lie was so obvious even he looked embarrassed about it.‘Take your shirt off.’‘No.’‘Do it.’‘ Do it?’ Michael repeated, a sneer forming across his face.‘Who is the profiteer now?’Scott leapt on to the bed, straddled his brother and began to pull at his shirt.Michael was a much larger man than Scott and would have easily overpowered his brother, but Scott knew his vulnerabilities.He landed a kick on Michael’s injured knee and the large Jeillo collapsed on to the bed grimacing.Scott twisted his brother on to his back and pulled his shirt up.The long feathers which had always grown on Michael’s shoulders had been removed.Scott felt his brother give up his struggle under him.Scott gently caressed the stubble of hollow feather shafts which protruded from his brother’s purple back.‘Did they do this to you?’Michael shook his head, burying his face in a pillow.‘ You did it?’ Scott felt sick.‘Oh, Michael, you’ve clipped your wings?’‘Just leave me alone.’ Michael said and pushed Scott off him.Scott let him go, unable to believe what his brother had done.‘What has happened to you?’‘I’m sick of being different from everybody else.Sick of it!’ He got up, made a grab for his clothes and stalked out of the room.Scott lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.How had the world become so insane? Suddenly he just wanted his nine brothers and sisters around him.He wanted the comfort and protection of his ‘Eight’.He whispered their names, as if that might magically summon them to his side: Leon, Michael, Emma, Yvonne, Nikolas, Melanie, Azaro, lain, Iranda.Eventually he slept.The dream rose to greet him eagerly.For once he welcomed the fire from the dark-red sun, for it overwhelmed the hurt he felt inside.Walking into the party was an uncomfortable homecoming.Suddenly Bernice had stepped into a world she knew all too well.The frugal, uniformed life outside quickly faded in the face of a whirl-wind of colour and music.But it was the excess that reminded her of her own society.After the emptiness of Scott, Michael and Leon’s frugal lives, she was suddenly surrounded by an excess of things.They had emerged into a courtyard, which must have been a central pivot around which the rest of the building was erected.It was wide and high, several storeys up to a covered glass roof.Heavy dance music blared, and costumed dancers spun around a fountain which dominated the centre of the room.There were people everywhere.Dancing, eating and drinking on the ground floor, fanning themselves while spectating from the balconies, which were strewn with exotic flowering vines.The room stank [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]