Chapter Two
“NEAN SCUM – you don’t belong here!”
Elliot dropped his keys and looked round, startled, by the shout from a boy opposite him. He followed the teenager’s stare and saw two Neans further down the corridor, recognisable by the distinctive heavy brow ridges that hung over their deep-set eyes. They were shorter than Sapiens males too and had lower foreheads. This was the first year they were allowed to attend Sapiens schools, colleges and universities in Britain, something that had caused endless angry comments in his home.
He caught the gaze of one of the Neans, brown eyes full of fire and danger. Elliot’s breath caught. The Nean teenager glared at him and then looked away, getting his door unlocked.
The two boys had rooms next to each other a few doors down from his and, as he surreptitiously watched them, Elliot thought they were probably related, both sharing wavy blond hair and square faces. They wore brightly coloured clothes and make-up, along with necklaces, rings and bracelets that made them stand out even more.
“You belong in cages, not studying with us!” It was the same boy, still shouting out insults and Elliot saw one of the Neans – not the one who’d looked at him just now – wince and hunch over.
Elliot turned towards the Sapiens kid. “That’s enough.”
“What’s wrong with you?” the teenager snarled.
He tried to present a reasoned argument as his mother had taught him. “We’re all here together, so why not try to get along?”
“It’s because of idiots like you that they aren’t slaves any more.”
“Good,” he said and the boy gaped at him, then glowered and marched into his room, slamming the door behind him.
The Neans were gone too so Elliot bent down and grabbed his keys off the floor, unlocking his door. It was still only midday, the drive here from his home just having taken a couple of hours. He opened the door and froze, eyes taking in the ugliest room he’d ever beheld. The curtains were orange with brown and cream flowers and the large wardrobe, chest of drawers and bed were in a heavy, dark wood that made the room feel cramped before it even had any of Elliot’s belongings in it. He could buy new curtains but the rest he would just have to live with. It would be good for him to not have everything around him perfect; most people didn’t. He put the two suitcases he had brought in on the bed and went back out to get the rest of his things.
It took another ten minutes to get everything inside, where the bags, boxes and other items used up every bit of floor space and covered every surface. He had no idea how he’d get everything to fit – he hadn’t expected the room to be so small or he would have tried to pack less, although it felt as if he’d left too much behind already. This would be his home for three years, after all.
He had registered when he got his room keys, everything going smoothly despite his and his mother’s worries, and the knowledge that he was now an official student at Harroton University felt good.
Deciding to ignore the chaos in his room for an hour, he drove back to the campus and got a notebook and pen out of his briefcase, drawing a rough map as he walked around. There would be a talk by the Vice Chancellor tomorrow and, the day after that, his classes would begin. He needed to be prepared.
The campus looked older but more attractive than their halls of residence, built with cream stone, and inside everything was fairly modern. The lecture theatres were all locked up but, for the sake of the students who’d got here early, a lot of the other rooms were open. The library was laid out over two floors and there was a computer room off it where students could type up their assignments and access the internet. There were a few other students wandering about and, when he said hello to them, they returned the greeting cheerfully.
He then drove to the shops he’d seen on the way here, buying groceries since there was a shared kitchen for the boys on his floor of the halls of residence. The girls, given the floor above, had their own kitchen and bathroom. Elliot’s parents had suggested he go out to restaurants for meals every day and he’d smiled and nodded while making plans to cook for himself and use the student canteens. He would need to be able to cook later in life so he may as well learn now and he wanted to spend time with the other students.
As he left the store he saw two teenage Nean girls walking towards him, a group of Sapiens boys behind them shouting crude sexual comments and racist insults. The girls were staring at the ground, red-faced and clearly unnerved. They ducked into the shop Elliot had just left and the boys headed away, probably to find another Nean to harass. The laws that had set Neans free didn’t seem to do anything to protect them, although they would have been in far more danger if his mother had got her way and they had remained slaves. He didn’t understand how she could hate Neans so much that she wanted them to have the most wretched lives imaginable.
He got back to the ugly Victorian Halls of Residence and took his bag of food to the kitchen. A boy was there and, as he looked round, Elliot recognised him from earlier as the other Nean; the one who hadn’t glared at him. He was around 5”4’ with broad shoulders encased in a red and orange T-shirt, tatty jeans and sneakers. He was wearing eyeliner, eyeshadow and a pale lipstick that looked good on him in a strange way to Elliot who’d never seen a boy wearing full make-up before, only a few Goth kids wearing eyeliner or black nail varnish.
“Hello,” Elliot said, trying not to stare. He had only spoken to Neans a handful of times since they became free but, after all the insults he had heard today, he wanted to make it clear he wasn’t like the people who might harass them. “I saw you when I was moving in.”
“Yeah, I heard you tell that boy to stop hassling us. I’m Barve.” The Nean’s smile was warm and a touch shy and he had a working-class Essex accent.
Elliot introduced himself, just as the second Nean from earlier came in. He wore less make-up than the smaller boy but dark brown eyeliner made his deep-set eyes more intense and he had a streak of green in his wavy blond hair. The brow ridges gave him a permanent frown but it was the fierce look in his eyes that suggested trouble.
“This is my brother, Farlden,” Barve said.
The other boy looked no happier than he had before and made no move to greet Elliot. “We’ll come back later.” He gestured towards the door and Barve frowned at him.
“I was going to make ham sandwiches for lunch,” Elliot said, emptying his groceries onto one of the counters. “You’re both welcome to share them.”
He got out the loaf of bread, ignoring the glaring session between the brothers.
“We’re vegetarians,” Farlden said shortly, still standing by the door in a manner that made it plain he wanted to leave.
“I have plenty of salad and eggs, if you want to make egg mayonnaise,” Elliot commented. He realised how arrogant he’d been to assume the Neans would be grateful to meet a Sapiens who was willing to be friendly towards them. Probably, though, Farlden had good reason to be wary, so Elliot tried not to take his hostility personally.
Barve opened one of the cupboards and got out a couple of transparent containers. “We’ve got oatcakes and biscuits we made at home yesterday.”
“That’s great.” Elliot smiled at him. “Perhaps you can help me figure out how to cook some of this stuff. I can manage an omelette or fried eggs and that’s about it.”
“Yeah, I’d be glad to.” Barve got to work boiling the eggs and, not speaking to either of them, Farlden made a rice salad and chopped up vegetables with an efficiency that impressed Elliot.
When everything was ready, they sat down around the table which had one leg shorter than the others, so it wobbled whenever one of them touched it. Watching the Neans, Elliot wondered how they felt about being here surrounded by Sapiens. How did they feel to be living with the people who had kept them enslaved for centuries?
He finished eating a piece of sandwich before asking, “What are you two studying?”
“History of Art,” Barve said.
“English and Art.” Farlden spoke through a mouthful of food and didn’t look at Elliot.
“I’m taking English too,” he said. “My family wants me to do some kind of business or politics degree, but it’s not what I’m interested in. I’m not exactly sure what I’ll do as a career but at least I have three years to work it out. Do you both want to be artists?”
“That would be great,” Barve said, “but we’ll probably end up as potters or carpenters like a lot of our family.”
“You have other siblings?”
“No, just hundreds of cousins, uncles and aunts who all want to know everything we do and then tell us what we should be doing instead.”
“Only about thirty,” Farlden corrected him, still focusing on his food in a pointed fashion.
“That’s still a lot,” Elliot said.
“It’s a Nean thing,” Barve told him. “A bit like the historical clan ruling system from Scottish history. Families stick together in a little community.”
Elliot tried to picture this and realised he knew nothing about how Neans thought, felt or lived. Since slavery ended, the two species largely kept away from each other, or at least they had in the wealthy Surrey town where he’d grown up.
“Nean life is private,” Farlden said to Barve with another frown and, seriously, did he ever smile?
Barve rolled his eyes. “We can’t attend here for three years without getting to know other students or them getting to know us. The whole point of being here is to have new experiences.”
Farlden said something in a language Elliot had never heard of, making strange guttural sounds amid the unknown words, and Elliot listened intently and asked, “Is that a Nean language?”
“Yeah,” Barve said.
“I didn’t even know Neans had their own language.”
“We’ve got a few, written as well as oral.”
“Barve, shut up,” Farlden snapped, scraping his chair on the lino floor as he got up and stalked out.
“Spirits,” Barve muttered and grimaced. “Sorry about him. He’s not trying to be rude but you don’t know what our lives are normally like and this is really different. It’s just a big change.”
“You mean, being away from your family?”
Barve made a sweeping gesture. “Everything. A lot of Neans think we’re betraying them by coming here and studying alongside Sapiens.”
“But that’s crazy.” Elliot frowned. “Surely the whole point of Neans no longer being slaves is that you should be able to do whatever you want?”
“That’s what I think. I mean, Nean people held demos and went on marches and sent thousands of letters to Parliament to get us the chance to have a better education and start getting other rights.”
“And Farlden doesn’t want to be here?”
“No, he does. It’s not that.” Barve struggled for words, face contorted and then he shook his head. “Sorry, it’s impossible to explain.”
“Are your families afraid that you’ll get hurt because of Sapiens prejudice? The university wouldn’t let that happen.”
Barve nodded but in a blank way that suggested he either didn’t believe they were safe or that Elliot’s assumption had been wrong and that Elliot didn’t have a clue what this was really about.