Chapter Thirty-Three
WHEN THEY hadn’t seen any sign of Nolan by the end of lunchtime the next day, Lila approached one of his friends. “Is Nolan on campus today? I have a book I borrowed that I want to give back to him.”
The boy gave her a suspicious look and it struck Elliot that Lila hadn’t been the best person to pretend to know Nolan since, with her distinctive Gothic appearance and piercings, she was unlikely to be forgotten by anyone who met her and the boy probably knew all Nolan’s friends. “No,” he said shortly. “He’s gone home for a few days.”
He walked away and Lila turned towards the others. “So much for that. I guess, we’ll have to wait until he returns.”
Excitement drained from the day by the words, Elliot nodded and glanced round. Barve had sat with the group again today, subdued but not ignoring Elliot, which was a start. Farlden and Lila still weren’t kissing or being affectionate and Elliot wanted to believe that he had been wrong about them dating, but he wasn’t certain.
Now that Elliot understood his own feelings, he realised he’d felt more than friendship for Farlden from the start, their relationship too explosive to ever just be platonic to him. However, he had no idea if Farlden felt anything like that for him. Farlden didn’t glare at him or yell at him as much as he used to, but that was hardly a declaration of love.
“You don’t think it could be some kind of split personality thing, do you?” Callie asked as, with nothing better to do now, they sat down again.
“A thing that turns Nolan into a different person with a different face and his own Facebook page?” Elliot queried.
“Perhaps not.” She got a bottle of water out of her bag, took a sip and then put it back again. “Are you going to any parties at the weekend?”
“I’m staying with friends in London for a rock concert,” Lila said.
Elliot glanced at Fal, who didn’t react or say that he was joining her. He tentatively said, “I heard that there’s a big fireworks display on Saturday at one of the playgrounds. Do the rest of you want to go to that together and, Lila, if you’re back by then you could join us?”
“If my head can take it, I’ll meet you there,” she said. “Just let me know where it’ll be.”
The others said they would go with him, even Barve, so, mood buoyed by the thought of spending time with Farlden in a relaxed setting, Elliot said, “I’ll find out the location.” The evening might even give him a chance to get a better idea of Farlden’s feelings for him, although there was still the problem of what Lila meant to him and not wanting to further hurt Barve.
Their plans settled, those of them who had lectures headed off to them and he and Callie walked to the library.
“Has Lila said anything to you about Farlden?” he asked as they passed groups of students and he dodged to one side to avoid walking into someone.
“What about him?”
“Well, Barve said that they went to a concert together. He made it sound like a date. I just wondered if they were seeing each other.”
They entered the library and so Callie spoke more quietly. “I got the impression there was a boy she was seeing in London, but I could be wrong. Do you want me to ask her?”
“No. I was just curious.”
She gave him a sceptical look, which made him feel guilty even though he didn’t think he’d done anything wrong, but she didn’t say anything else about it. They split up to find the books they needed to work from.
* * *
It was less of a shock when Dervyl appeared in his room from out of nowhere that evening than it had been the last two times. Elliot put his notepad and pen down on the bed beside him. “Hello,” he said.
She nodded to him in a regal way. “I thought that you would have more questions for me now that you’ve had time to think about how the world is different from how you imagined.”
He got up and moved the clothes he had put out to wear in the morning off the room’s only chair, laying them over the end of the bed as he asked her to sit down. When she did so, he asked, “Would you tell me about your people. You said before that you once lived on this planet alongside Sapiens and Neans but moved to a different dimension.”
“Yes. My people are thinkers, not warriors. We couldn’t have survived alongside Sapiens. We are a type of humans like your species and the Nean race, but our minds have evolved, whereas your two species are much the same as they were all those hundreds of thousands of years ago.”
“We’ve evolved too,” Elliot disagreed. “We’ve invented lots of things. Science has helped us understand the world better. We’ve cured diseases.”
“You’ve used your brains to solve problems,” she said. “You did that when you were hunter-gatherers dressed in animal skins. When have Sapiens ever learnt from their mistakes? Have you found a way to end war? No. Have your people stopped torturing and raping? No. Do you understand what Death is or how Time works? Do you have any actual knowledge of what your lives represent within the universe?”
He pulled a face, wanting to say she was wrong but unable to. His own race didn’t sound particularly impressive in those terms. “Some people kill and hurt others, but most don’t.”
“No. Most people procreate. It continues your species but it isn’t evolution. Every creature does that.”
“So you’re more evolved and enlightened?” he asked, this idea hardly endearing him to her. Was this how Neans felt when Sapiens behaved as if they were superior to them?
“I don’t want to anger you. I just need you to look objectively at your people and see where they could have done better, over and over again, and didn’t. You will be one of the people deciding what happens to three human races.”
“Why me?” He had never thought to ask the question before.
“Because you have magic.”
There was more to her answer than he understood, he was certain. “Barve suggested that my magic came from you – from Izient DNA. That would make me no more important than every Izient and anyone else who possesses magic.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t explain that until you choose a side.”
“I haven’t told anyone about you or revealed anything you’ve said to any Sapiens. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“No.”
Then, once more, it felt as if they had come to a dead end, with no way for her to trust him or vice versa.