The Future King: Logres (8 page)

He glanced across to his teacher, who gazed at him with glinting
eyes. ‘Interesting,’ Marvin murmured. ‘And the lion you say is new, but the
alligator isn’t?’

‘That’s right,’ Arthur nodded. ‘I’ve dreamt of that before.’

‘How curious.’

‘I’ve tried looking the meaning up. My grandmother has this old
encyclopaedia on dreams, but what I read hardly makes sense,’ Arthur said,
twisting his thumbs.

‘And what did you read?’

‘Something about hardships, and great strength, but it all seemed to
unravel after that. It’s strange… my dreams keep getting more and more
destructive. I keep dreaming of death.’

Marvin expelled a releasing sigh. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry
about, Arthur. It’s probably just part of growing up, like nosebleeds and
spots.’ He smiled at him kindly. ‘I remember having bad dreams when I was your
age. Not of flaming lions and evil alligators, but they were quite interesting.’

‘But do dreams actually mean anything? Are they important? My
grandmother says they’re just your brain organising memories or recent
experiences—like it’s filing them away in a big archive,’ he recited.

‘Anything’s important, Arthur, if a person believes it is. Were you
at the protest, on Friday? The people there believe change is important, even
though most do not.’

‘No. I heard it got quite violent after the power cuts. Several
people were injured. I saw it on the news.’

‘Typical! Don’t tell me, the news focused on the riot and hardly
mentioned the peaceful protest at all?’ Marvin shook his head. ‘Yes, there
were
a few people taking advantage of
the situation, but that wasn’t part of the protest. Though it
is
a sign that people aren’t happy with their
lot. Not that the government will see it that way, though. I assume you’ve
heard about what they plan to do?’ When Arthur gazed at him blankly, Marvin ploughed
on. ‘The New Nationals were just waiting for something like this to happen.’

‘Waiting for what to happen?’

‘This riot! A riot, any riot: any illegal, dangerous activity to
justify the nation-wide increase to the area where protesting without the
police’s consent is illegal. Do you know what that means? Censored speech for
all. If they don’t like what you decide to protest against, then your freedom
of speech, your
right
becomes illegal
by default.’

‘I thought protests near parliament were only banned on May Day,’
Arthur ventured, disturbed by his teacher’s fanaticism.

‘No,’ snapped Marvin. ‘Every day: all three-hundred-and-sixty-five of
them. All throughout London: right down to Epsom. Soon the rest of the country
will be silenced too.’

Arthur frowned. ‘But surely if people don’t want to promote extremist
ideas, there won’t be a problem.’

‘But what’s extremist? Who decides? Do you decide, Arthur, does the
individual decide? What seems perfectly reasonable to one may seem like madness
to another,’ Marvin imposed, angered. ‘It’ll be Milton and the New Nationals
who decide right from wrong, and one day you may wake up to find that the
beliefs they’ve taken a disliking to just happen to be yours.’

There was a tense silence. For a while both reflected, Arthur feeling
wounded by the harsh reprimand. Eventually he found himself enforced to break
the quiet, but only once he was sure Marvin had calmed down.

‘I thought you said they were protesting the poor excuse for
democracy that parliament is exercising?’

‘Well, they were! A few people that I know, at least.’

‘But the news said—’

‘That they were all yobs? Disillusioned youths? I’m sure it did. I
don’t rely on the news, Arthur. They make half of it up; either that or they
don’t report it,’ Marvin said scornfully. ‘Milton is quite chummy with the head
of UK Broadcasting, so I’m sure that everyone in the country was informed that
they were marching against all that’s good in this world. You can’t believe
everything you hear, you know.’ The clock was bringing the lunch hour to an
end. Soon everyone would be swarming back in to sit through another assembly.
‘Have you fallen out with Bedivere?’ he suddenly asked.

‘What? No.’

Marvin studied him closely. ‘Are you sure? This morning you both
looked put out. You didn’t say a word to him or Gwenhwyfar.’

‘I was working,’ he countered with a dismissive shrug.

‘In silence? You would be the only one in the whole class, save for
Morgan. Is something wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong,’ Arthur insisted, rising to leave. ‘I should
probably go and find him now, actually. I said I’d meet him for assembly.’ He
knew his teacher didn’t believe him, but that didn’t matter. Slinging his
rucksack onto his shoulder as the bell rang, Arthur hurried towards the door.
‘I’ll see you later, Marv.’

He felt his teacher’s eyes on him as he slipped out into the empty
corridor, and they burned into his back until he turned out of sight.

New
National

Arthur kept his head
bent towards the table. The
classroom began to fill with students still buzzing from their lunch hour.
Frowning, he concentrated on the open Politics textbook that he’d taken from
the teacher’s desk. The empty chair beside him loomed for a while, but was then
disturbed as an apologetic Bedivere slunk down to fill his usual seat.

‘Arthur?’ There was a prolonged silence. ‘So you’re just going to
ignore me, then.’

Arthur glanced at Bedivere, and flicked to a new page.

‘I didn’t know, you know.’

He clenched his jaw and kept reading.

‘I had no idea what was going on. I was only told that Gwen wanted to
talk to you, nothing else.’

‘By Emily,’ Arthur pointed out, his voice rigid. ‘Why didn’t you tell
me it was coming from her?’

‘Because! You wouldn’t have listened to me, otherwise.’

‘I wonder why?’ he hissed.

Bedivere opened his mouth to retaliate, but Mr Graham silenced them
all with a great huff as he rose to stand by the chalkboard. Struggling to
conduct the lesson on two feet, their Politics teacher leant heavily on the
edge of his own desk, which groaned under the pressure. The next hour and a
half was spent in a working silence. With the eventual sounding of the bell,
Arthur packed to leave.

‘I’m not lying, you know,’ Bedivere murmured to him, struggling to
match his haste. ‘I swear I didn’t know what she was up to.’

‘Yeah, right.’ Arthur stood up.

‘If I had said anything about Emily, you never would’ve gone to meet
Gwen.’

‘And then the prank wouldn’t have worked, would it?’ He grabbed his
blazer.

‘Prank or not, Gwen
wanted
to meet you.’

‘Emily said so, did she?’

Bedivere huffed. ‘I didn’t
know
it was a trick, Emily just told me to pass on a message. I
thought
I was doing you a favour.’

Arthur kicked his chair under the table and forced his way behind
Bedivere. The other boy scrambled up.

‘It’s not what you think,’ he continued.

‘How do you know what I think? You don’t even know what I saw.’

‘I know exactly what you saw. Gwen told me.’

‘Oh, so you’ve been talking to her about this, have you? I bet you’re
all laughing about it behind my back: you, her, and the Furies.’ He cut through
the room and sped for the door. Bedivere followed.

‘Gwen had nothing to do with it.’

‘Really?’ Arthur snorted. ‘Then why doesn’t she tell me that herself?’

‘Because you practically locked her in there with him, you idiot!’ Bedivere
pushed him in the back, and Arthur caught himself on a desk. There was a loud
exclamation of protest from Mr Graham. ‘I had nothing to do with it!’

‘You know what Emily’s like, so why did you even listen to her? Oh,
wait, I know: because she let you stick your tongue down her throat.’

‘Boys!’ the teacher hollered again. He launched himself upwards but
Bedivere didn’t linger, hid the tears welling in his eyes as he rushed out of
the room. For a moment Mr Graham twitched to go after him, but with a face like
thunder beckoned Arthur over instead. ‘And what, may I ask, was that about?’

‘Nothing,’ Arthur said, surprised by how upset he felt.

‘Nothing?’ Mr Graham echoed.

Arthur shrugged. ‘Just a disagreement.’

‘A “disagreement”?’ Purpling, Mr Graham shook his head. ‘How dare you
disrupt my class? The two of you were behaving like animals. Animals!’ Angrily,
he flicked through the papers on his desk. ‘I should call the principal. You’re
lucky I haven’t. As it is, I have something I want to discuss with you. It’s
about your latest paper.’ He drew a breath, and suddenly his demeanour was
suspiciously sweet. ‘You seem to have misunderstood the question. I asked you
to outline George Milton’s party policy and how he became Prime Minister.’ He
waved Arthur’s work at him. It was covered in red graffiti.

‘But that’s what I did,’ Arthur objected.

‘No, you can’t have done. There’s not one reference to the article I
asked you to read from your textbook. Where are your approved sources? The
content is wrong. And where on
earth
did you find all these references?’

‘Archives,’ frowned Arthur. ‘Independent journals… Why? What’s wrong
with them?’

‘Nothing’s
wrong
with them
as such, they’re just… not
correct
.
You didn’t find any of them in the library here, surely?’

Arthur shook his head. Scowling, Mr Graham examined the essay.
‘Claims such as this… you say that George Milton has exclusive access, along
with his favoured followers, to rare luxuries such as red meat, wine and
chocolate, but that argument cannot be true. Everyone knows that George Milton
is a simple man, with a simple diet. And here, for example, you say, “
the authenticity of Milton’s success in
previous elections has been widely debated since it became apparent that
Milton’s party, New National, is suspected to have enlisted votes from those
imprisoned, and several voters unfortunately deceased.
” Is that what it
says in your textbook? That the Prime Minister is a fraud?’

‘No,’ Arthur replied stiffly.

‘Here, even! Ah yes, my favourite part. You go on to say that in
relation to previous governments, Milton’s
regime
is dangerously close to mirroring a dictatorship, even comparing it to
Ingsoc
from Orwell’s
1984
… “
a party that has long since used threats of national security to
exterminate the liberties of its people in return for their perceived safety.
”
If I didn’t know any better, Arthur, I’d say you were in severe danger of sounding
like a separatist. Not to mention the issue of where you found a copy of
1984
and why on earth you’ve read it.’

Arthur felt a moment of inward panic. ‘My grandfather read it to me
before it was banned,’ he lied, fervently hoping Mr Graham wouldn’t ask to see
what was in his bag.

‘And what about the rest of this nonsense?’ he asked, suddenly livid.
‘Where on earth did it all come from?’ Again the paper was flapped around, its
stapled pages cackling.

‘I thought it would be beneficial to do some external research.’

‘Beneficial?’ snorted Mr Graham, his jowls flapping. ‘The school
could get into trouble for this, don’t you realise? If this had been an exam?
All our funding, gone!’

‘But other teachers encourage us to read outside the textbooks,’
Arthur reasoned, ‘to find alternative truths.’

‘I don’t care about the truth, I just care what’s in the syllabus!’
Mr Graham snapped, standing with a jolt. The desk creaked under his podgy
hands. ‘And so should the other teachers! Who’s been telling you otherwise?’

The sudden change in tone caused Arthur to bolt up. He stared back
into Mr Graham’s receding eyes, his own distant.

‘No? Not going to share? Fine!’ A crisp rip sounded as his chubby
fingers tore apart the paper, pieces falling to the desk as he shredded it
again and again. ‘You are to rewrite this paper in the
correct
fashion for tomorrow afternoon. If you do not, I will be
sending you to the principal’s office to be punished for your knowledge, use,
and reference of a banned book and for your questionable research into sources
supportive of such ludicrous ideas. Do you understand?’

Arthur nodded, quelling his rising anger.

‘Oh, and
some
thought to my
job security would be appreciated before you pull another stunt like this. I
shouldn’t have to expect it from you, Arthur.’

Arthur nodded, and when that failed to satisfy his purple-faced teacher
he cleared his throat. ‘Yes sir.’

‘Go on; get out of my sight. I don’t want to see you again until
you’ve redone it, you hear me?’

Arthur hurried out of the classroom into an empty corridor. The voice
of Mr Graham followed him down the hall.

‘And don’t forget! Rewrite it for tomorrow!’

The streets felt empty, sparsely populated with residents sitting purposelessly
on front doorsteps and lingering on street corners. Lower Logres was the
lesser-funded part of town; littered, tired, and rarely ventured into by people
who did not live there. Its separation from the bustle of the ever-constant
centre was absolute, which existed as a tidy labyrinth of chain stores and big
businesses. Arthur turned his head against the wind as a cloud of grit rolled
along the un-swept street. Water was short, and cleaning was only possible
after heavy bouts of rain.

The residents were grey, with grime worked into their browned clothes
and dirt rubbed deep into their skin. The dust got everywhere, and Arthur
washed it off every night with gratitude that he could. When their water had
been cut off he had collected rainwater when it came, filling up bottles from
the water fountains at school. This had meant he could wash at least, but less
often; and every day he had arrived at Logres with the self-consciousness of someone
aware of their own odour.

The kiosk was one of the few smaller establishments left open. Whenever
he had the time Arthur took advantage of the cut-price meals left over from the
previous day, and purchased two pre-packaged lunches, not yet stale. Sometimes
he brought food that he had prepared at home, but it seemed wrong to deplete
the supplies that had to last him and his grandmother the week. He missed days,
of course, and the guilt for skipping a drop was usually heavy in his mind.
This was his cost, his responsibility, and now that he had started he didn’t
think he could stop.

He selected something large, cold rice with lumps of meat that
promised to be chicken, and a hefty sandwich. Protein was good. He always chose
the meals with the highest calorie count. Arthur went to the checkout with a
feeling of guilt, snatching a chocolate bar as he waited in line. The till
beeped, the cash machine pinged. He handed over two hours’ wages and got just
over half back. Wrapping the bag into a tight bundle, he tucked it under his
arm and ducked outside.

The sky seemed heavy. Posters were layered like cards along the
peeling walls of the houses running parallel to the road, some messages
long-concealed, some reappearing under newer sentences that had been half torn
down. A few were community notices, a couple were slogans, but most were New
National speak, the words of which jumped out at him in angry letters as he
hurried by.

Smile and the world smiles with you
, read one.
A happy worker is a
happy person
, read another.
You have
the things in life you deserve
, proclaimed the next. And,
Would you know if your neighbour is housing
illegals?

The occasional police officer frequented the main road that led to
the clock tower, but running into one at this hour was rare, and Arthur was
fairly confident he would not get stopped. He fished for the chocolate bar he
had bought himself and ate it absently, stuffing the empty wrapper back into
the bag when he was done.

There was a quiet park two streets away. Opposite it ran a small road
with second-hand charity shops and bookies. At the end of this road by a
disused bus stop was a bin, open-topped and skirted with iron grating. The
movement was so rehearsed that he needn’t think to do it. As he passed the bin
he dropped in the whole carrier bag with the food, and then nipped across the
road to cut through the park.

Giving aid to the homeless was an offence, he knew: particularly as
many of them were illegals. He didn’t know if the older woman who scavenged
through the bins in this area was an immigrant, only that so far she had
avoided arrest, evading the ever-constant risk of being moved out of the area.

He couldn’t help himself. Quickly he stole a glance over his shoulder
as he threatened to turn out of sight. The particularly grimy woman half-vanished
into the bin to fish out what he had dropped, and then hurried off into a side
street, trusting that she had been given something good.

The next morning arrived with a sky the colour of dull lead. September
was slipping by with cold winds and the promise of heavy rain, forcing students
to don thick, navy jumpers beneath their summer blazers. Arthur, escaping the
sudden drop in temperature, was sitting in Marvin’s classroom. With Bedivere
now avoiding him completely, he was using his newfound unpopularity as an opportunity
to churn out Mr Graham’s mindless essay. The traditional glowing praise of
Britain’s prosperity as a conclusion allowed his mind to tend to other
thoughts: his destroyed relationships, his unwelcome solitude and worries over
the price of heating his grandmother’s house.