Free Futuretrack 5 by Robert Westall Page A

over and over. Then at the bottom, the words “Kill, kill, kill” scrawled right over Scott-Astbury’s name.
    I was very aware that I was running away. I’d never meet Scott-Astbury where I was going. The hair rose on the back of my neck; I waited for Idris’s ballooning rage to hit me.
    But no rage came. Either Idris had gone, wherever he was going. Or he no longer minded. Perhaps he was past such things now.
    The empty bus bounded on through the night.
    The entrance to razzle land didn’t match up to the nods and winks in our dining hall. Extra-high Wire; guard post with Paramils, leashed Alsatian and gas-thrower pointing inward. Techs had been known to return to that gate prematurely, in a hurry and with unwelcome company.
    Otherwise, an endless vista of council blocks marched away downhill into the drizzly night. The pale blue nicker of the Box came through every uncurtained window. Unnems only had one TV program, black and white, so every block of windows jumped and flickered simultaneously, like a huge and boring light show.
    I gave the Paramils a casual flourish of Sellers’s razzle pass, my thumb half over his photograph. They hardly looked. They were only bothered who came out of that gate, not who went in. They’d examine Sellers’s pass a sight more thoroughly coming back; except I wasn’t coming back. My heart gave two enormous thumps, and I felt alive for the first time since Idris’s heart stopped. Not that there was much to feel alive about. Just boring light shows descending the hill, dank grass and wet roads between.
    At first, grass and roads were thick with half-bricks. But halfway down I met a line of machines coming up. Litter-eaters, big as cars, moving low to the ground in caterpillar tracks, silently cramming paper, tins, and bricks into gaping mouths with crablike claws. Their armoured sides were dented and charred.
    I chose two further apart than the others, to walk between. They sensed me, for they paused in their eating, turning slightly inward. Then they sensed I was too tall to be litter or too alive; it was enough to snap their electrical relays over and send them on their way. Too close for comfort; their battered metal hides were electrified to knock out vandals. Suppose one of their relays had been defective? Would my electrocuted body count as litter? To be stuffed in with the bricks and cans and regurgitated straight into the heat-exchange furnace in the morning?
    I was halfway down before I saw where I was heading. The totally cleared area behind the litter-eaters had fallen away. Tomorrow’s litter was building up, though I’d seen no one. I was heading for a noise that came and went, as I twisted through the council blocks, like the beating of a huge heart; for a pink flashing in the sky, punctuated with yellow and blue.
    It was against this flashing light I saw my first Unnem, his footsteps already muffled by the giant heartbeat. Luckily, he was walking away from me. I overtook him, studying him carefully. Male; no female could be so ugly. Shoulders hunched; head thrust forward like a tortoise, shining, cropped as a cannonball. Arms never still, joggling and waving like a bird that cannot fly. Knees bent, and outward-turned feet scraping and flopping and quarrelling with the ground.
    Something warned me to mimic him; that he wasn’t an odd freak. I practiced humping my shoulders and dragging my feet; I couldn’t face the ridiculous arm movements. When I was about five yards behind, he stopped and turned.
    “What yer following me fer?” Voice ugly and forced as the body. Quick as lightning, I mimicked, “What yer walking in front of me fer?”
    “I’ll smash yer.” The creature raised a fist holding something.
    “Try it.” I walked straight at him; he was smaller than me.
    “Lob off, lobo!” But his challenge was over; he crabbed sideways out of range and I passed at my new ridiculous gait.
    Ten yards on, something made me look back. In time to see a brick coming