Free Borderliners by Peter Høeg Page A

what is
difficult here at the school. Peter says it is like glass tunnels. There is no chance to think for yourself . A laboratory is a place that is shut off, so you have peace and can think and carry out
your experiment."
    She had risen and
started walking back and forth.
    "It is already under way. It is the middle of
a period, we are not where
the plan says we should be, we have stepped out of the
glass

tunnel . The experiment is already under way. Something is
happen ing to us, can you feel it? What is
it? What's happening is that you are starting to become restless, you want to
get back, you can feel time passing. That
feeling is your chance, you can feel your way and
learn something you would otherwise never have seen. Like when I came late on purpose. I stepped out of the
tunnel I was used to walking along, I
saw Biehl, and I noticed something."
    August was sitting bolt upright. He did not say a word,
but his body was
listening.
    "He's scared,
too," she said.
    "Why
me?" said August.
    She was standing over by the other door, beside the
mirror. There was a
lock on it, no one knew where it led. She answered in
all honesty.
    "We have to find out why they took you. There is no
understand ing
it."
    There was no harm intended. She just said exactly what she thought.
    A
sound came over the loudspeaker. I made a sign to the others, then I removed the socks. The sound was very faint,
you could not tell anything from it
except that the channel had been opened.
    I put on the socks. Katarina put back the chairs, quite
soundlessly. Then I went out onto the stairs and looked down.
    They
were on their way up from the third floor. I stepped back inside and closed the door. It was Fredhøj and Flakkedam, you could
identify them by Fredhøj's jacket sleeve and Flakkedam's shirt. It could have been worse, Biehl himself could have been with them.
He only came for serious accidents, like with Axel Fredhøj, or for on-the-spot
expulsions.
    Even so, I thought this was the end, at any rate for
August and me. We had already gone way over the limit.
    There was a knock at the door.
They could just have opened it, but at
Biehl's one always knocked first. High up in the doors to the lower grades there were small panes of glass.
Before the loudspeaker system was installed Biehl used to do his rounds of the
new teachers, peeking in through the
glass to see whether they could control the

pupils . If there was any trouble, he came in. But even then he knocked first.
    Katarina was about to say something, she did not get the
chance. They opened
the door.
    Normally they separated people for a certain length of time—one or two months, for example—but
in our case there were special, exacerbating circumstances.
    We were questioned individually,
and then we were isolated from one another, for an indefinite period. Each of us was assigned to our own
part of the playground. They moved August out of my room and back to the sickroom. We
still sat together in class, though,
because there was no opportunity for conversation during periods.
    It was Fredhøj who examined us.
He told me that he had been requested to present me with my final warning.

 

ONE
    T ime? Soon I must say. But
not yet. It is still too early
    Biehl's podium was wooden, with Greek columns. On it were carved the words "I and my
house will serve the Lord," and, farther down, "Under the shadow of thy wings."
    So, protection and darkness. As a hen
gathers her chicks under her wings. As if to
protect them from birds of prey.
    Above the inscription stood the school crest. The ever-watchful ravens.
    The ravens seemed to be looking down upon the
inscription. As though
they were the birds of prey, gazing down upon the chicks.
    At first you understood neither text nor image. Then
it was ex plained to you and for a while you
thought you understood it.
    Then the thought occurred that
the school seemed to be both the protective hen—God, that is—and the birds of
prey—the ravens; God's messengers;