Impossible Dreamers

Chapter 22 (twil-dak): The parade

On the day of the parade, Tyro sat on his throne in a sort of box, on a stand high in the air, with crowds of citizens below. The crowds stood in neat lines, arranged in rows and blocks according to height. Tyro smiled at the orderly display, and Sleech whispered something in his ear which made him smile even more. To the people below he was an awesome figure in the distance, with his enormous shiny silver helmet, and magnificent silver cloak. Magnificent, but actually quite boring. He wore no decoration on his clothing at all, apart from a large letter 'T' in black on the front of his helmet. The effect was to make this small man appear very, very big.

The day was very hot, and the people watching in their rows were suffering. Sleech and Tyro had a good, shady place to sit, but even so, Sleech was annoyed with the weather. They would have to get the scientists to do something about making it cooler when they decided to. Or hotter if that was what Tyro wanted. Bartyronis should have control over such things.

Down below, at each end of each row of citizens there was an overseer, who stood watching for any unauthorised behaviour – whispering to a neighbour, or looking around in an undisciplined way, or even trying to fan their face with a hand. At one point a young man coughed noisily, then quickly covered his mouth with his hand. The overseer's machine-like hand pointed at him and he left the row. Two Guardians took him away, silently. The people on either side shuffled to fill the gap.

Moving around the crowd were two large vehicles powered by electric engines. At the top of each of these vehicles could be seen a snake-like tube, with what looked like an eye at the end. The 'snake' moved around at head height, pointing to each person in the crowd in turn. Everyone knew what was inside these machines. Thought-scanners. Occasionally the snake would stop and fix its attention on one section of the crowd, and a red light at the top of the vehicle would come on. Then, Guardians would come and pull away three or four people in the area at which the snake was pointing. The people would all shake their heads, each pointing at another. Maybe some of these people would be seen again. More likely none of them would.

People tried hard not to think about these things. They tried not to think about anything, but it was very difficult to keep one's mind completely blank. There were some tricks that people tried, to stop thinking about anything that might be dangerous, but nobody knew how effective they were. Counting was the most popular strategy. Some people tried doing complicated sums in their heads. But there was always the danger that an official would ask you a question, and instead of answering you would give the answer to the sum that you were thinking about. That would show that you were trying not to think about something, which meant that you had something to hide. So that was dangerous.

Music started playing from speaking boxes all around the square, and the Guardians at each end of each row pointed up into the air, signalling that the crowd should look up. People gasped, as above their heads, they saw strangely shaped birds. Birds without wings. Birds wearing uniforms. Flying Guardians.

Nobody had ever seen anything like this before. Flying machines had been around for some time, but they were big and clumsy. Some of them had fans on the front and the top. The newer ones had no fans, but they still needed to be very big. So how were people able to move through the air without any sort of machines? It was clear that the scientists of Bartyronis were even cleverer than anybody had thought before. Or was it Tyro himself who made these new machines? He seemed to have invented everything.

A few people with very good eyesight noticed that the Guardians were wearing bracelets, decorated with intricate and quite beautiful patterns. This was unusual for Bartyronis. First because they were male. Men, and especially Guardian men, never wore any sort of unnecessary decoration on their bodies. And secondly because whatever people did wear had to be hard and shiny. Why would anyone spend time and effort tracing complicated patterns on something that you didn't need to wear anyway? It was a puzzle, but those who noticed regretted having done so, and tried to put it out of their minds.

The Guardians were clearly trying to fly in a straight line, but they were having some difficulty keeping in the strict formation that they were attempting. Every now and then one of them would veer off to the left or the right, unable to control their flight effectively. It seemed as if their natural inclination was to fly in curved lines, and it took enormous effort to keep going straight. So occasionally one of the Guardians would leave the formation and start off in an elegant arc, only returning to the group after travelling going in a big circle. It was actually quite beautiful to watch, and people gasped when they saw it. But every time this happened, a frown came over Tyro's face, and he turned and said something to Sleech, jabbing his finger in the air in the direction of the flying Guardians.

Then the marching began. Thousands of Bartyronian Guardians marched past Tyro's vantage point, carrying the latest, most lethal weapons. The speaking boxes blared out the anthem Tyro the Great, and everybody started to sing.

As the singing finished, the voices of the crowd were drowned out by the deafening sound of the flying machines, arriving from the east. The machines were magnificent and terrifying; dark shadows against the bright sky. They travelled rapidly in the direction of the Grabble mountains, and when the noise of the machines died away, Tyro was seen to leave his box. The Guardians at the end of each row shouted an order, and in turn each row left the square in silence. The whole crowd went back to their work.

Tyro was, mostly, very pleased with his parade.