Impossible Dreamers

Chapter 11 (gell): A new direction

Pritch yawned. He had been awake a long time. Such a very long time. He looked around at his room. He was lucky to have this extra room. He remembered the room he and his family used to live in, with its big glass wall. Everything he did could be seen by people outside. At least here he had a bit of privacy.

Most people had to live in just one room like that, with a glass wall, whether they had a family or not. And here he was, with an extra room to work in. The family had been moved here when he began working on this project. Of course, the main, big room also had one glass wall, so most of the time everybody could see what he was doing, but he enjoyed his time alone here.

Pritch felt sorry for people who had to squeeze into one room, and afraid that if he didn't get further with this project soon, he and his whole family would be back in the same sort of place. Once again they would never really be on their own, alone with their thoughts. Although really, nobody in Great Bartyronis could be entirely alone with their thoughts. Because of the thought scanner. The thought scanner could reach into the mind of anyone that Tyro or Sleech decided to check up on. Including Pritch. Were they scanning his thoughts even now? At one time Pritch would have thought he was safe, but since his meeting with Sleech he wasn't so sure.

When Pritch first moved in, he was so proud of this space, with its charts on the walls, and its pictures of mountains, its large desk and its big, comfortable sofa. And, of course, the big picture of Tyro. Actually, he wasn't so keen on that. Everyone had a picture of Tyro on the wall. One in each room, if they were lucky enough or important enough to have more than one room. Pritch had put the picture on the wall behind him, so he didn't have to look at it. It was in this room that Pritch had his ideas. His dreams.

Those ideas, those dreams, were taken to the workshop, and then an army of people who knew about cogs and screws and strangely shaped bits of metal would make them into a reality. If they could be made into a reality.

Pritch looked at the scribbled notes and numbers and drawings on the pad in front of him. As he looked they seemed to swim in front of his eyes like strange fish at the bottom of a deep, deep sea. He lifted a cup of hot liquid to his lips and looked around. Through the window he could see the sun beginning to rise, the edge of it just showing above the black band of smoke. The smoke from the Grabble mountains, which he now thought of as his greatest enemy. He looked down again at his papers and books, plans and sketches, bits of machinery and bits of junk. He pulled a sheet from under a pile of different-shaped pieces of metal, and looked hard at it. He turned it round, and looked at it again. Whichever way he looked, it didn't make sense.

It was just impossible. He would never be able to make the machine that Sleech wanted. There were things that really couldn't be done, no matter how much these powerful people wanted them done. He should have said that to Sleech. He was going to say it, but fear had frozen the words in his throat. And it was fear that brought about that sudden itchiness in his ear. Such an embarrassing habit, but he didn't notice himself doing it until it was too late.

Would it have made any difference if Pritch had spoken out? Yes, it probably would have. If Pritch had told Sleech the truth – that this plan just couldn't be carried out – then that would have been the end of him. At least, he supposed it would have been the end. Who could say what would have happened? People disappeared every now and then, but nobody knew where they went. Standing up to Sleech might be a way of finding out where those people went, but his fear was stronger than his curiosity. So he sat here, faced with an impossible challenge, since the alternative was not to be thought about.

The worst thing was that, actually, this work was something that Pritch loved. Normally, he enjoyed challenges – the more difficult, the better. But it was one thing to try to solve a problem because it interested you, or because the solution would bring people some sort of benefit, and quite another thing to be forced to solve a problem just to please Tyro. Why did they want to cross the Grabble Mountains anyway? Why this sudden need to fly a load of people and lots of machinery through that thick, choking smoke? Was it really just a birthday present for Tyro? Or was there something else going on?