'Will you two shut up?' the Bludgeon suddenly growled.

'Everyone knows why you're doing this. You're not fooling anybody.'

'Did you hear something, Ni?' Jem trilled. 'It was like a fart, or something.'

'No, I didn't hear anything.'

'You think you're going to suck up to Dr Darkkon by drooling all over his kid,' the Bludgeon snapped. 'But it won't make any difference. It just makes you look stupid.'

'Well, you're the expert when it comes to looking stupid,' Jem sneered. 'I mean, check out the pants, Ni.'

'And the hair.'

'Where'd you get that top, Bludger, did you make it yourself?'

'It's Bludgeon, you s.l.u.ts.'

'Who's bludging? Not me,' said Ni.

'He's saying he bludged it off someone,' said Jem.

'I did not!'

'Okay, okay!' A clear, calm voice cut through the argument. 'Save it for your next court appearance. h.e.l.lo there, am I seeing double? Who are you ladies?'

A large, well-padded, affable-looking man had suddenly appeared in their midst. He was about forty, and balding, but he had a round, smooth, pleasant face with small features and laugh lines. He wore a very elegant dark suit. 'They call me Dr Deal,' he said, taking Ni's hand in his own large, pink one. 'You must be the twins I've heard so much about.'

The sisters rolled their eyes at each other, smirking. Dr Deal straightened. 'So you prefer to keep silent in case you implicate yourselves? Very wise,' he said. Then his roving gaze fastened on Cadel. 'Ah,' he murmured. 'And you must be the boy genius. You don't look much like your father, Cadel. But your face will be your fortune, I would say. Now!' He whipped out a set of keys. 'Let's get this show on the road, shall we? No, my dear,' he added, turning to Doris with a dangerous gleam in his eye. 'Don't even think about it.'

Everyone looked at Doris, who seemed offended.

'What?' she whined, and Dr Deal shook back his sleeve.

'This watch,' he declared, displaying it to the cla.s.s, 'is a gold Rolex. It cost me ten thousand dollars six years ago. I've had it all this time and no one has managed to take it from me. I intend to keep it that way. Those of you who fancy yourselves as expert thieves, take heed a I've put away the best in the business.'

He waited, but there was no reply. So he unlocked the door and pushed it open, allowing the entire cla.s.s to enter Lecture Room One before he did himself. While his students settled into their seats he dumped his briefcase on the lectern and unb.u.t.toned his jacket. Then he folded his arms and addressed them.

'Right,' he said. 'Let's get one thing clear. I'm not here to teach you law a I'm here to teach you loopholes. You're not here to become lawyers. You're here because you can't dodge the law unless you know what it is. You're also here because litigation, believe it or not, can be your friend. This semester, you're going to learn a bit of defensive law; I'll even give you a rundown on police procedures, and Terry will deliver a few lectures on the dangers of forensic science. Next semester, we'll tackle things like torts, and how you can sue your way to a fairly decent living, if you've got the skill and the nerve for it. But now I'm going to kick off with some really nice little case studies to show you how you can use the law to your advantage.

'Let's start with the "Provocation" statute a '

Suddenly, the lights flickered. There was a m.u.f.fled boom. And with a fierce little hiss, the sprinklers on the ceiling began to spray the whole room with water.

Cadel gasped. The water was very cold.

'Oh, for Chrissake,' Dr Deal exclaimed in disgust. He grabbed his briefcase, trying to shield himself with it. 'Come on, everyone, we'll do this in C-block.'

'But a but what's going on?' Abraham Coggins stammered.

'Christ knows. Bomb, probably. Or some idiot pyrogenic.' Dr Deal seemed unconcerned.

'But a '

'Come on, will you? I paid three thousand dollars for this suit! I'm not about to stand here and let it get ruined!'

SIXTEEN.

At lunchtime, Cadel found himself trooping off to the refectory with the rest of first year. He didn't have much choice; no one had provided him with a packed lunch. And because the refectory was almost full, he was forced to sit with his cla.s.smates, who reserved a table near the kitchen door.

Cadel was still damp in places, even after standing under the hand-dryers in the toilets for ten minutes. So he ordered a hot chocolate with his ham and cheese focaccia. The twins shared a salad sandwich. Abraham picked at a sausage roll, and Doris ate her way steadily through a meat pie, chips and vegetables, followed by a large chocolate-chip m.u.f.fin.

Gazo didn't stay to eat. He took a meal back to his bedroom, where he was allowed to take off his headpiece and breathing apparatus.

Clive was the last of their group to sit down, having spent some minutes, after collecting his plate of chips, in conversation with the gum-chewing, blank-faced woman behind the cash register.

'It was a pyro,' he informed his cla.s.smates, when he joined them. 'She self-combusted, up in the labs. That's why the sprinklers went off.'

'Gross,' said Ni, making a face, and Abraham remarked: 'It wouldn't have been a bomb. They have regular bomb sweeps.'

'Who says?' Clive queried aggressively. Abraham sighed.

'Didn't you read your handbook?' he said. 'It tells you right at the front. In capital letters.'

'Perhaps he can't read,' said Jem. Clive stopped chewing, and fixed her with a venomous look.

'You better watch your back, sweetheart,' he hissed, spraying the table with fragments of chewed potato, 'or you'll find a knife in it.'

'Oh, yeah. Like you could smuggle a knife into this place,' Jem taunted. 'I don't think so, Bludger.'

'I'm not the Bludgeon any more.'

'What?'

'I'm not the Bludgeon any more. I'm calling myself the Scourge.'

'The Scourge?' Jem echoed.

'Yuk!' cried her twin. 'That's disgusting.'

Clive was taken aback. 'What do you mean?' he spluttered. 'There's nothing disgusting about it.' 'The scourge!' Ni shrilled. 'That's a disease!' 'It is not!' 'Is so! It's some horrible skin thing a isn't it? Jem? It's sores and things, isn't it? Lots of pus.'

'It isn't,' Clive protested. 'It's a weapon.'

'It's a whip,' said Abraham, wearily. 'It's another word for a whip. Also for an agent of punishment, or destruction.' 'There! You see?' Clive was triumphant. 'The Scourge. That's my new name.' 'Well I think it sounds revolting,' said Jem. 'It sounds like something you'd clean out of your nose.'

'Like gunge,' Ni agreed. 'Or Scrooge. I think I'll call him Scrooge. You can tell he's mean. I bet he won't even give me one of his chips.'

'Buy your own b.l.o.o.d.y chips,' Clive growled, shielding his plate.

'And get fat? No thank you.'

'What's your real name, anyway?' Abraham suddenly asked Clive. He had pushed aside his sausage roll; it was almost untouched. 'Why can't you use your real name, for G.o.d's sake?'

Cadel blinked, before remembering that no one else in the cla.s.s had access to the kind of background information available to himself and Thaddeus Roth.

Clive scowled at this point. 'I'm not telling you my real name,' he spat.

'Why not?' said Abraham. 'What is it, Ivor Bigb.u.m or something?'

The twins squealed with laughter. Clive turned red. He lunged for Abraham, who jerked back and fell off his chair. The twins nearly fell off their own chairs, they were laughing so hard.

'Shut your face!' Clive roared. 'There's nothing wrong with my name! But I'm not stupid enough to use it, not professionally! Jesus, don't you know anything?' He glared around the table as Abraham staggered to his feet and picked up his chair. 'Most of the staff here have an alias.'

'One of the staff members is an Alias,' Abraham muttered, but Clive ignored him.

'If you lot have any sense, you'll pick a new name,' Clive went on. 'Like me. The Scourge isn't just a name a it's a way of life. It sums up what I am.'

'Which is?' Jem wanted to know, and Clive bared his teeth at her.

'h.e.l.l on wheels,' he rejoined, brusquely.

'h.e.l.l On Wheels.' She c.o.c.ked her head, savouring the term. 'H.O.W. How. Maybe I'll call you How. No a Howie.'

'I'm the Scourge.'

'Seriously, pet, I wouldn't use that one. It sounds too icky. It sounds like "scrounge". Why don't you use something else?' Jem pulled at her bottom lip, concentrating fiercely. 'What about . . . let's see . . .'

'Big Dog?' Ni suggested.

'No a the Terminator!' Jem cried.

'It's been done, stupid,' her sister pointed out.

'The Decimator, then. What about the Decimator?'

They both giggled, but Clive seemed struck by the name. 'The Decimator,' he repeated, pensively. 'The Decimator...'

'It's you!' Jem exclaimed. 'It's so you, you big hunk!'

More giggling. Abraham cast his eyes to heaven. Kunio blinked, uncomprehending, and Doris munched away, looking glum.

Cadel cleared his throat.

'Um...' he began, and hesitated. All eyes turned in his direction. 'What?' barked Clive. 'Well, I just thought you ought to know . . .' Cadel took a deep breath. 'The proper definition of "decimate" is to kill one in ten. I don't know if that's what you're intending to do,' he said, glancing at Clive.

There was a brief silence.

'Oh,' said Clive. 'Well that's no good, then.'

'You'll have to think of something else,' Jem observed, and rose to depart. Her sister did likewise. Abraham, who had also finished, lurched to his feet and leaned across to clap Cadel on the shoulder. 'Nice to know there's someone else here with brains,' he said. Abraham didn't linger, though; in fact within sixty seconds Cadel was alone at the table, except for Doris, who sat at the far end slurping down a cup of tea.

She exuded an air of quiet menace. Not wishing to talk to her, Cadel soon got up, and hurried away to attend his first Infiltration cla.s.s.

This cla.s.s was the one that interested him the most. He was eager to talk to Dr Vee again a eager to judge the depth and range of his teacher's expertise. It was really because of the Virus that he had decided to enrol at the Axis Inst.i.tute. Embezzlement didn't interest him; he was only doing it to please Thaddeus. Forgery would be fun, and Law would be useful, but since Cadel didn't particularly care for his fellow students, he wouldn't be enjoying either course as much as Thaddeus probably hoped. Clive and Gazo were frankly dumb. The twins were tricky. Doris was frightening. Naturally, Cadel understood that his father had plans for him a plans that for some reason required a stint at the Axis Inst.i.tute. Well, that was all right. Cadel didn't mind, as long as he had his Infiltration cla.s.ses to keep him happy.

When he reached Hardware Heaven, however, he discovered that the Virus was not there.

'He comes and goes,' explained one of the students who had already arrived. He was a sloppy-looking person, about eighteen or nineteen, with a long, bristly jaw, s.h.a.ggy brown hair falling into his eyes, and grubby clothes that seemed to be in the process of sliding off him. He introduced himself as 'Sark, like in Cutty', and the young man near him as Com. Com was pudgy and wore gla.s.ses. His black, shiny hair was cut in a straight line all around his head, just above ear level. He didn't look at Cadel, or speak to him.

'Com's not really human,' Sark explained. 'I think he's forgotten how to talk. He relates best to computers, don't you, Com?'

No response. 'He spends most of his time here,' Sark added, flicking a paper clip at the oblivious Com. It bounced off his shoulder. 'Um a have I got the right time?' Cadel queried. 'I thought I had a cla.s.s at two.'

'Oh, we don't worry much about cla.s.ses around this place.' Sark was folded up in his wobbly typist's chair, his feet propped against the edge of his desktop. He wore grimy, ragged sneakers, one of them tied with a thin piece of cable. 'When the Virus shows up, we generally discuss a few things. Otherwise we just plug away at our own stuff.'

'But a '

'My personal goal is to create a super-hacker,' Sark went on. 'A program that will do all my hacking for me.'

Com clicked his tongue. For an instant, Cadel thought that the noise had come from Com's hardware.

'Shut up, Com,' said Sark. 'n.o.body knows what Com's doing. He's lost the power to explain things in human terms.'

'But what am I supposed to do?' Cadel demanded. 'Just sit here or what?'

Sark shrugged. His long limbs suddenly rearranged themselves as he dragged his feet off the desk. 'You can have a look at your computer,' he suggested.

'Which computer?'

'That one.' Sark waved his hand. 'Over there.'

Cadel followed Sark's directions. He stopped in front of a rather elderly piece of equipment, which, Cadel knew, had very little to spare in the way of gigabytes.

'Oh,' he said.

'You've got a network card in there, needless to say a most of Axis is linked up. Plus we have our own high-capacity backbone. An OC-48 line. Could be worse. Oh, and there's a supercomputer. In the back room. But you can only use it under supervision. And if you're wondering why it looks like a tank, the whole thing's shielded against Red Signal leaks, you know?' Sark seemed to be losing interest in Cadel; his attention was once more focused on his computer. 'There's no sprinkler system in this room either, by the way. Just halon gas outlets. And it's on a different switch, too. The Virus insisted, because there's so much combustion on this campus a it's like a G.o.dd.a.m.n blow furnace, sometimes. That's why we didn't get soaked, early on. In case you were wondering.'

Cadel wasn't wondering. Not about the sprinklers, anyway. He was wondering why his computer didn't boot up when he turned it on.

After carefully checking the mains socket, the power lead and the keyboard cable, all of which seemed to be fine, he began to punch in a few basic commands. Then he became aware of a muted snicker.