‘Don’t ever, ever, make the mistake of thinking I am your friend.’
The instructor, a woman in her mid-twenties, paced up and down in front of Pan’s group. They were inside a large, windowless building close to the foot of the steps leading to the Infirmary. The only illumination came from the double doors, which had been left open to admit a pale curtain of sunlight. Pan stood with her hands behind her back and tried to relax, but a muscle twitched in her right leg. Memories of past physical education classes at her old school drifted through her head. They had rarely worked out well and she had no confidence that this session would be any different.
The instructor was dressed in running shorts and a singlet that showed off stringy, yet powerful, muscles. Her dark hair was swept back from her face, secured in a bun at the back of her head. Her voice was measured and she gazed at the floor as she paced.
‘I understand you’ve paid a high price of admission to be in this School. We all have. But I cannot be your friend if I am to fulfil my duty to the students in my care. And what is that duty? To make you fit for survival in a hostile and unforgiving new world.’ She glanced up and then returned her gaze to the floor. ‘I am your instructor and this class is fitness and survival. You will call me Miss Kingston and you will obey my instructions. There are counsellors here who will listen to your problems, give advice, offer support. If you want warm and fuzzy, go to them. Do not bother me.’
She stopped in the centre of the line and raised her eyes. Slowly, she examined each student in turn, her hands clasped behind her back.
‘I am not interested in your personal problems,’ she continued in the same impersonal tone. ‘I don’t offer advice or support unless it concerns fitness and survival. I doubt you will find my methods pleasant. But you know what? That is something else I’m not interested in.’
‘I think she’s trying to win us over with her charm and humour,’ whispered Nate who was standing next to Pan. She tried hard to suppress a giggle. She didn’t think it would be wise to laugh.
‘You,’ said Miss Kingston, pointing at Nate. ‘Step forward and state your name.’
Nate advanced a pace and snapped rigidly to attention.
‘Nate Mitchell, sir,’ he yelled. ‘Reporting for duty. All present and correct.’ He saluted. This time a few of the group giggled. Miss Kingston nodded a couple of times and resumed her pacing.
‘Mr Mitchell,’ she said. ‘Very amusing, but my name is Miss Kingston and this is not a class for stand-up comedians. Now, this is your first day with me and I understand some of you may have adjustment issues. Get over them. Quickly. The remainder of my class are doing a fitness test, so I could induct you newcomers properly. This is the last time we shall enjoy such a small number. Make the most of it.
‘This is called a school but it is not like any school you have ever attended. Get that straight in your heads, particularly with regards to my classes. I do not give detention. I do not make you stand in a corner. I do not issue reports saying your attitude needs to improve. Nor do I ring your parents so we can all have a cosy chat about your progress. Can you tell me why I don’t do any of those things, Mr Mitchell?’
‘Because, despite your affable nature, you are not my friend?’
‘Correct. But it is also because your parents are dead, Mr Mitchell. And all of those people who might have cared about you out there in the world? They’re dead, too. Here is lesson number one. Commit it to memory. No one gives a shit about you, Mr Mitchell. Least of all me.’
Pan glanced along the line. She felt, rather than saw, Nate’s back stiffen. But she did see Jen smile. This is her kind of class, thought Pan. I can’t see it being my kind of class.
Miss Kingston nodded and stood in front of Nate, her eyes centimetres from his.
‘Good. Lesson number two. You are alive. And if you want to stay that way, then you will toughen up. To die was easy. If you want proof, there are billions of examples out there in the world. To survive where so many failed will take all your strength. Do you understand, Mr Mitchell?’
‘I think I’m making progress, Miss Kingston.’
‘Excellent,’ said Miss Kingston. ‘Just to clarify things further, give me ten push-ups. Now, Mr Mitchell.’
‘Sure thing.’
Nate dropped to the floor and started his push-ups. He clapped his hands in front of his chest after each one and counted. He did twenty.
‘Problems with numeracy, Mr Mitchell? Obey without question. Another ten, if you please.’
He dropped to the ground again. When he had finished the series of push-ups, he wasn’t even breathing hard. Pan was fairly sure she couldn’t have managed five. She made a resolution not to annoy the fitness instructor. When Nate sprang to his feet, Miss Kingston flicked a finger, indicating he should get back into line. He winked at Pan as he took his place next to her, his eyes twinkling with amusement. The instructor resumed her pacing.
‘We will start today with basic cardio-vascular work. Spread out in a circle around me, facing inwards. I will take us through some warm-ups and some stretching exercises. Then we will do a two-kilometre run, at the end of which I will make notes on each of you. Time, heart rate, blood pressure. This will provide a baseline to gauge your increasing levels of fitness. Right. Listen up and follow exactly what I do.’
Ten minutes later, Pan found herself jogging around the clearing at the base of the cliff on which the Infirmary was situated. Nate had been right about its unsuitability as a running track. The ground was generally level, but she had to be careful where she put her feet to avoid turning an ankle on one of the scattered rocks or stones. The sky was clear, but there was a bitter wind blowing into her face. Within a minute a stitch developed in her side and her breathing became ragged.
At least she wasn’t as bad as some of the others. Nate was way out in front, of course. He moved with a natural elegance and covered the ground with ease. Jen was second. She didn’t possess Nate’s gift for running, but she was making up for it through sheer determination. Not far behind Jen was Wei-Lin, her lean physique ideal for this kind of exercise. Quite a way back was Sam.
Pan was fifth and losing ground on Sam. Sanjit and Karl were some way behind, but even so, they had lapped Cara, who was barely running at all. Pan hoped Miss Kingston would go easy on her. She didn’t think Cara was resilient enough to cope with much, let alone public ridicule.
Pan concentrated on her breathing. In. Out. In. Out. Soon, her breathing regulated and the stitch eased. She glanced behind her. She had put extra distance between herself and the boys. Pan focused on the inhalation and exhalation of cold air. Before long, she had a rhythm going. It was only on her last lap that the rhythm deserted her. The first four members of the group had finished and were having their pulses checked. Blood pressure monitors were strapped to their arms. Pan lost concentration. Her legs cramped and weariness spread through her body. The last few metres were incredibly painful, and when she made it to the group, she crouched over, hands on knees while her lungs struggled to take in air.
After Miss Kingston had checked and recorded Pan’s pulse and blood pressure, Cara finally struggled over the line. She had given up any pretence of running and even her walking was slow. Miss Kingston said nothing. She simply took the girl’s pulse and attached a blood pressure monitor to her arm. When the last of the records had been written in her notebook, she gestured for everyone to follow her back inside the hut on the perimeter of the clearing.
The students sat in a circle on the cold concrete floor while Miss Kingston resumed her pacing. Does she ever keep still? wondered Pan. An image flashed through her mind of a woman jogging through a city, weaving between pedestrians, a dark V of perspiration staining the front of her T-shirt. Pan shook her head and the image vanished.
No one spoke for a minute, the only sound that of Cara’s laboured breathing.
‘Consider this,’ said Miss Kingston eventually. ‘What if that had been a real-life situation? Say that you, as a group, were running for your lives. From predators of some kind. Or hostile survivors. If one member of your group was lagging far behind, what would you do in that situation? Any ideas?’
Nate rocked back and placed both hands on the floor behind him.
‘You mean should we leave her or should we go back and help her out?’
Miss Kingston shrugged.
‘If you want to put it that way. All I’m asking is that if that had been an emergency, what would have happened to . . .’ she leaned forward and examined the name in her notebook, ‘Miss Cara Smith? Give me your thoughts.’
Jen immediately jumped in. Why am I not surprised? thought Pan.
‘If that had been a life or death situation, then we wouldn’t have had any option. We would have been forced to leave Cara behind. The risks of trying to save her would be too high. It would be a waste. Pointless. Why should we die because someone else is weak? Sorry, Cara, but that’s just common sense.’
Pan tried to clench her mouth shut, but it didn’t work. Instead she turned to Jen. ‘And what about morality?’ she asked. ‘What about doing the right thing? Protecting those who can’t protect themselves. Wouldn’t that be the decent thing to do?’
‘Oh, here we go again, Miss Bleeding Heart,’ replied Jen. ‘Stuff decent, okay? We’re not about decent anymore. We’re about survival. Morality doesn’t play any part.’
Pan opened her mouth to argue again, but Miss Kingston held up her hand.
‘You have both expressed the problem very well. And the options. This is something you need to consider in our new world. Are we “moral” as . . .’ She glanced at her notebook again. ‘. . . Miss Pandora Jones expresses it? Or are we survivalists, as Miss Jennifer Maxwell would have it? Let’s put it even more brutally, at the risk of offending Miss Jones’s moral sensibilities. If Miss Smith proves to be too weak, should we actually sacrifice her to ensure that those who are strong have the best possible chance of survival?’
‘Can we stop talking about her like she isn’t here?’ said Pan. ‘She’s not a “problem” or a hypothetical situation. Her name is Cara and she is a person with feelings.’
‘And you think that matters?’ said Miss Kingston.
Jen leaped in. ‘What you don’t get, Pandora, is that the world has changed. You didn’t get it in the Prof’s class either. Maybe in the past we would worry about hurting someone’s feelings. Maybe we could afford to help those who couldn’t help themselves. But now, we’re fighting for survival. If we are not tough then we probably won’t survive at all. Is that worth it, do you think? We all die, humanity becomes extinct, but at least we didn’t hurt anyone’s feelings?’
A burst of animated conversation broke out. Wei-Lin, Sam and Karl seemed to be arguing among themselves and their words merged into each other.
‘. . . can’t believe that you would . . .’
‘Karl, that is a typically male thing to say. What about . . .’
‘Hey, I’m not sexist, it’s just . . .’
‘Soon as anyone says they’re not sexist, you know they are . . .’
‘Guys, you’re missing the point . . .’
Cara and Sanjit, as always, said nothing and simply stared at the floor. Eventually Miss Kingston raised a hand for quiet. In the ensuing silence she paced again.
‘Mr Mitchell,’ she said. ‘You have been very quiet. Anything to add to this debate?’
‘I think it’s . . . complicated,’ he said.
‘Meaning?’
He sat forward and clasped his hands around his knees. Everyone waited. When he spoke, others listened. He is a natural, thought Pan. He leads.
‘We appear to have a moral versus pragmatic divide here.’ He looked around the other students and thought for a moment. It was clear that he read incomprehension in quite a few faces. ‘What I mean is, at the extremes of the argument Pan believes morality is all-important, while Jen prioritises what is useful, what is practical. I’m suggesting that it is foolish to believe it has to be one or the other, that we are forced to make a choice, as if there is no alternative. I don’t believe that.’
‘Excellent, Mr Mitchell,’ said Miss Kingston. ‘I am sure you will score highly in the philosophy component of the curriculum. I’ll pass on my recommendations to Professor Goldberg. But I am here to teach you about fitness and survival. So make a point, rather than showing off your cleverness. That doesn’t have any practical importance in this class.’
‘Okay,’ said Nate. He took no offence at the instructor’s words. ‘Let’s say we go the Jen option. Cara dies. The weak link has gone. We, the strong, run off and come to a place where there are a number of possible escape routes. But we don’t know which is the best. Because it turns out we are good at running, but don’t have much between our ears. It also turns out that Cara is a brilliant navigator and just happens to be a lousy runner. She would know how to escape, but she is dead. So by letting her die, we’ve decreased our own chances of survival. What do you reckon, Jen?’
Jen frowned, but she had no chance to respond. Miss Kingston clapped her hands together.
‘I think that is an excellent place to leave our discussion. Think this through before we meet again. You see, not only do I administer physical torture to make you fit, but I also have to rid your minds of excess fat. Being fit is not the only factor involved in survival. I imagine most dinosaurs were very fit, but that didn’t help them any.’
She glanced at her watch.
‘We have forty-five minutes of the class left. This will be spent clearing rocks from our running track. Pile them up outside the perimeter. Let’s move like we have a purpose, people.’
Pan felt tired, but she forced herself to get to her feet. Nate, of course, sprang up.
‘Not you, Mr Mitchell,’ said Miss Kingston. ‘A word in your ear, if you please.’
~~~
Pan’s muscles ached and she regretted having chosen rock-clearing as her physical activity that morning. Now here she was doing the same thing. She stopped and wiped at her forehead with a sleeve. At least it kept her warm.
Wei-Lin had stopped as well. ‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hi.’
‘I wonder if you could do me a favour,’ said Wei-Lin.
‘Sure. If I can.’
‘I’ve lost my watch,’ said Wei-Lin. ‘I mean, I had it on at lunch and I’m fairly sure it was still on my wrist when we came to fitness class, but . . .’ She brought her arm up, displaying a watch-less wrist, as if for some reason Pan might doubt her word. ‘Now it’s gone.’
Pan noticed that the other members of the group had also stopped work and were watching her. Even without a gift of premonition, it wasn’t difficult to work out what was going on.
‘And I remember you saying,’ Wei-Lin continued, ‘that you were able to find things. So I was wondering . . .’
‘This is a set-up, isn’t it?’ said Pan.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes you do,’ said Pan, but she smiled anyway. ‘It’s a test. You’ve planted your watch somewhere, just to see if I can find it. You must be as bored by rock-shifting as I am, Wei-Lin.’
Wei-Lin’s eyes widened. ‘How did you know that?’ she said. ‘Can you read minds?’
Pan laughed and gestured towards the onlookers. ‘Get real, Wei-Lin,’ she said.
‘Okay, okay. But will you try?’
‘It doesn’t always work, you know. And I’m not comfortable setting myself up for failure just to provide everyone with a laugh.’
‘We won’t laugh. Honest.’
‘Jen will,’ Pan pointed out. Wei-Lin glanced over to the group.
‘Okay. Jen will,’ she admitted. ‘But come on, Pan. It’s a way of passing the time and some of us are curious, you know? As you just said, anything’s better than carrying more bloody rocks. Please?’
Pan sighed. On the one hand, she didn’t want to use her talent – if it was a talent and she was far from certain about that – for a cheap trick. On the other hand, it would be a distraction from the rocks. Pan wasn’t convinced there weren’t more of the damn things littering the track than there had been when they’d started.
‘Give me your hand,’ said Pan.
Wei-Lin held her arm out and Pan grasped her by the wrist and closed her eyes.
‘What are you doing?’ Wei-Lin asked.
‘Sometimes it helps,’ replied Pan. ‘If I touch the person who’s lost something, I can occasionally locate stuff quicker.’
‘How does that work?’ Wei-Lin was almost whispering.
Pan laughed. ‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘To be honest, I’m not certain it works at all. Maybe I just get lucky. Though, after this build up, I dare say I’ll have no clue where you’ve planted that watch and you can all have a good giggle. In fact, in some ways I hope that happens. Just so you don’t all think I’m weird or something.’
‘We won’t,’ said Wei-Lin.
Pan let go of her wrist. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it a go. But please don’t stand around staring at me.’
‘Doesn’t it work if you’re being stared at?’
‘It’s not that. I just don’t like being stared at.’
Pan closed her eyes again. It was true she had done this a number of times, and probably four times out of five she’d had success. It was also true she had no idea how it worked. All she knew was that if she cleared her mind and let her intuition have free rein, then she might get some sense of where the missing item might be. It was like that game she’d played as a kid, where someone would tell her whether she was ‘hot’ or ‘cold’, the closer or further away she got from a hidden item. In the case of her intuition, of course, there was no external voice guiding her, but something whispering within. She walked at random, back towards the hut where Nate was still presumably talking to Miss Kingston, but then she stopped. That was not the direction. It felt cold. She turned in a circle, but no particular direction seemed better than any other. She walked towards the cliff at the far end of the running track, but that also didn’t feel right, so she abruptly turned left. Almost immediately, that felt warmer.
Pan left the running track and continued twenty or thirty metres into an area that was essentially a jumble of stones, possibly the result of a fall from the cliff that towered above her. The direction still felt right, but then she had an urge to change direction once more. She didn’t question it, but simply obeyed. It would probably have been better if she had been able to close her eyes and follow some kind of mental path, but the terrain here was too rough to take the risk. She certainly didn’t want to stumble over a rock, twist an ankle and make a clown of herself for the watching group.
Definitely hotter here, she thought. But not burning. Once again, Pan stopped and took her bearings. To her right, this time. Further away from the watching students. The rational part of her mind thought this was an unlikely location. Wei-Lin must have taken some time to find a good hiding place, but surely Pan would have seen her if she had come all this way out? Wasn’t it more logical that she would have found a site closer to the running track? But all she could do was follow her feelings, and her feelings told her she was getting close.
It took another five minutes to pin down a specific location. It was strange. She had never felt so confident before, not when she had found lost keys or mobile phones in the past. Maybe her recent experiences had honed her skills. Or maybe there were fewer distractions. She’d think through the implications later. Pan moved a rock, but it wasn’t there, so she moved the one next to it. The hard earth beneath had been scraped away. Pan dug her fingers into the dirt, felt a thin strap and pulled out the watch. Even at a considerable distance she heard applause from the members of her group. Is it better to succeed and, in particular, thwart Jen’s perception of me, Pan thought, or will this only mark me out as a freak? It was too late to worry about that.
Wei-Lin was impressed and excited when Pan handed the watch over.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘There is no way you could have found that by chance. I mean, I hid it really carefully. Jeez, Pan.’
‘Or maybe she saw you hiding it,’ said Jen. She stood a few metres away, her hands on her hips. ‘Wouldn’t be too hard, then.’
‘She didn’t,’ said Wei-Lin. ‘I was watching. She didn’t even look in my direction.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Jen. ‘Like you could have been watching her all the time. You had to take your eyes away at some point to hide the watch in the first place.’
‘Maybe that’s it,’ said Pan. ‘Just a trick, right Jen? Or Wei-Lin and I are in it together.’
Jen didn’t take her eyes from Pan’s.
‘She said it.’
There was silence. Wei-Lin glanced from Pan to Jen and back again. A momentary break in the cloud cover caused the sun to wash over them. Somewhere, far off, a bird shrieked.
Then Nate appeared from the hut and jogged towards them. Everyone turned to wait for his arrival. They are turning from confrontation, thought Pan, and that’s okay with me.
‘Hey,’ said Nate as he slowed and stopped before them. ‘What’s this guys? A time-out?’ He looked around the running track and gave a theatrical sigh. ‘Woeful progress, guys, if you don’t mind me saying so. Really woeful.’
‘What did Miss Kingston want with you?’ asked Jen. ‘Did she rip you a new one?’
Nate grinned.
‘Nah. She’s a pussy cat. Actually, if you really want to know, she persuaded me to team up with her for my elective. The skill training.’ He winked. ‘But if you want my opinion, I think that’s just a ruse. The woman is hot for me and who can blame her?’
‘So what’s the skill?’ asked Karl? ‘Sexual magnetism?’
‘Well, she said she detected leadership skills in me, but I reckon you’re right, Karl, old buddy.’ His grin broadened. ‘It radiates from me, doesn’t it? I give it less than a day before she tries to jump my bones.’
Jen snorted and turned away. The rest laughed. Even Sanjit laughed. Cara gave a thin smile, and that too was progress. Maybe we can bond as a group, thought Pan. If I can just mend this rift with Jen.
Nate looked from face to face.
‘So what’s going on here?’
Wei-Lin explained how Pan had found her watch. Nate whistled.
‘Thanks a bunch, guys. As soon as my back is turned, freaky shit happens and I miss it. Couldn’t you have waited until I got back?’ He turned to Pan and spread his arms. ‘I want to see this. Will you do it again for me?’
‘There is something you’ve misplaced, Nate,’ said Pan, ‘but I’m afraid there’s no chance I’ll be able to find it.’
‘Oh, yeah? And what might that be?’
‘Your sexual magnetism.’
This time, even Cara laughed.