‘Should you be up?’ he asked Abraham. ‘You don’t look well.’
Even Doris exhibited surprise at this remark. Abraham was obviously startled. No one openly expressed concern about other people’s health at the institute. No one except Cadel, that is.
‘I’m fine,’ said Abraham.
‘Your lips are blue.’
‘I told you, I’m fine.’
‘I don’t know why you want to be a vampire,’ said Doris, in her sneering, whining fashion. ‘Do you realise, if you become a vampire, you won’t be able to eat any decent food any more?’
‘Yeah – and you won’t be able to go out,’ added Gazo. ‘I mean, not even in a suit like mine. You’ll be stuck inside all day.’
It was Cadel who first noticed Luther walking down the corridor towards them. Surely, he thought, Luther wasn’t heading their way? Was Alias sick, or delayed? Cadel’s frown alerted his classmates, who turned to look, one by one. By the time Luther joined them, the little group had fallen silent.
Like Abraham, Luther was wearing sunglasses – together with fingerless gloves and a scarf wrapped around his neck. He coughed into his woolly fist before addressing them.
‘Okay,’ he croaked. ‘Everybody inside.’
‘It’s locked,’ Gazo pointed out.
‘Oh. Yeah. Sorry.’
Luther kept sniffing and wiping his nose as he slowly unlocked the door to Lecture Room One. Nobody asked him what he was doing there. Most of those present had cause to be wary of Luther. Even Doris preferred not to speak before being spoken to.
They followed Luther into the room, which seemed very large for such a small class. Luther dragged a wooden chair from behind the door to a central spot in front of the lectern, and collapsed into it. He set down a paper carry-bag.
‘Right,’ he rasped, when everyone was sitting quietly. ‘Let’s talk about disguise.’
Then he took off his glasses and grinned.
A murmur of shock rippled around the room. The man in the chair was not Luther. He didn’t have Luther’s eyes or smile. His teeth were better than Luther’s. His face wasn’t as narrow, or as rigid.
‘Fooled ya!’ he crowed. ‘Lesson one, my friends. I’m Alias. You don’t need to know my real name.’
Gazo laughed. When the others turned to look at him, he shrank back into his seat.
‘What did I do, exactly?’ Alias continued. ‘I put on a grey wig and a pair of shades, is all. That’s right. No make-up, no prosthetics, no false teeth, no lifts in my shoes. Take a good look at me. I’m nowhere near Dr Lasco’s build. All I needed was the slouch and the shuffle – it was a pushover. Why? Because you weren’t expecting anything different.’ He leaned back and linked his hands behind his head. ‘Now, I’m not saying you can all do this,’ he added, his gaze travelling from Kunio to Doris, before finally coming to rest on Cadel. ‘I’ve got the kind of range you can only pull off when you’re a bit on the average side. This little guy here’ – he winked at Cadel – ‘well, this little guy would have his work cut out for him, trying to pull off a Luther Lasco. That doesn’t mean, however, that he can’t be somebody else. Transformation isn’t as hard as you might think, if you’ve got the right attitude. Not to mention a basic grounding from yours truly.’
Gazo raised his hand. But before he could speak, Abraham suddenly toppled onto the floor.
He had fainted.
‘I’ll be looking at make-up, of course,’ Alias went on, just as if nothing had happened. ‘Make-up and wigs can do a lot for anyone. So can clothes, obviously, and padding –’
‘Er . . . Mr Alias, sir?’ Gazo’s hand was still in the air. ‘Um, I fink Abraham’s sick.’
‘Don’t interrupt, Mr Kovacs.’
‘But shouldn’t we take’im to First Aid?’
‘He’ll be all right,’ said Alias dismissively, and began to talk about the Alexander technique of posture awareness.
He was right, as it happened. Soon Abraham began to stir. After about five minutes he sat up.
‘Glad you could join us, Mr Coggins,’ said Alias. ‘So what I’m saying is this. Whether you’re making yourself visible or invisible, the thing about a disguise is that half the time you can hide behind just one prominent feature. A big nose. An awful tie. Even a giant pimple. People will be so busy noticing whatever it is that they won’t pay much attention to the rest of you.’
Abraham managed to return to his seat, but only just. He looked very ill. In fact he looked so ill that he was distracting, and Alias finally told him to get out. (‘I don’t want you throwing up in here, Mr Coggins.’) Everyone watched in silence as Abraham shuffled out of the room – everyone except Cadel. He sat staring at the floor until he heard the sound of a door slam.
When the class finished, he and Gazo went to look for Abraham’s car, which they found in the car park.
‘So he’s still on campus,’ Cadel observed.
‘I don’t fink he goes anywhere else much,’ said Gazo. ‘Not any more. That car’s here most of the time. Even at night.’
They both stared at the beat-up old Ford. ‘Well, I have to go,’ Cadel said at last, abruptly. ‘I’ve got work to do.’
‘Could he be in First Aid? Should we have a look?’
‘I told you. I’m busy.’
‘Have you got a class?’
‘I’m busy!’ Cadel snapped. In fact, he was planning to spend the rest of the afternoon in Hardware Heaven. All at once he couldn’t cope with his classmates any more. First the twins, now Abraham. He wanted to block them out of his mind. He wanted to concentrate on his work. (His work was the important thing.) ‘I’ll see you later.’
He started to walk away, heading back towards the seminary building. Gazo called after him, straining through his transmission filter.
‘Cadel!’ he cried. ‘Wait! Our homework for Alias – how we afta show up in disguise? For his next class?’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, do you know what your disguise will be?’
‘No.’
‘What am I gunna do? How can I do anyfink, in me bloody suit?’
‘Wear a moustache,’ Cadel replied, before ducking through the seminary doors. Once he’d passed the scanners he made his way up to Hardware Heaven – hurriedly, as a mouse might run to its hole. He wanted to hide. He wanted to escape. As long as he was in Hardware Heaven, he could forget about the rest of the institute, which was getting on his nerves.
But when he reached his computer and sat down, he discovered that the keyboard was speckled with drops of a thick, dark, tacky substance.
Looking up, he saw that it had leaked through the ceiling. From the labs on the next floor.
It was blood, of course. He recognised it instantly.
TWENTY-TWO
Cadel stood in his bathroom that night, looking at himself in the mirror.
His hair was plastered down with Vaseline and darkened with comb-through ‘party colour’. He had padded his waist with scarves and shoved gobs of Blu-Tack behind his ears, to make them stick out more. He had even applied fake tan, having stolen a bottle from Mrs Piggott’s cosmetics drawer.
The more he did to himself, the more ridiculous he looked.
‘This isn’t a disguise,’ he muttered. ‘It’s a carnival costume.’
His assignment was simple: to come along to the Wednesday morning disguise class as somebody else. Alias intended to grade and comment on every student’s effort. Cadel could just imagination what Alias would say about this attempt. ‘Pathetic,’ he would sneer. Or perhaps, ‘I’m in no mood for jokes, Mr Darkkon.’
With a sigh, Cadel removed the Blu-Tack, which was hurting his ears. Slowly he unrolled the scarves and wiped off the tan. He didn’t know what to do. Alias had talked a lot about posture, presence and focal points, but Cadel couldn’t see how any of it would work, without expensive wigs and make-up and coloured contact lenses. Not in his case, anyway. Even when his distinctive blue eyes were shielded by sunglasses, and his hai
r was slicked back like an otter’s pelt, he still looked like Cadel Piggott pretending to be cool.
‘Cadel!’ It was Mrs Piggott. ‘Where are you?’
‘I’m in here!’ Cadel cried. The sunglasses belonged to Lanna. He took them off quickly, and stuck them in a drawer.
‘What are you doing?’ Lanna demanded.
‘Uh – just having a shower!’ Cadel knew that he would have to remove all the rubbish in his hair or face a barrage of questions. So he turned on the shower and began to pull off his clothes.
‘Phone for you, Cadel!’
‘Tell them I’ll call back!’
The hot water pelted down, filling the room with steam. When Cadel stepped into the torrent, he watched the water that was swirling around his feet turn black with hair-colour. So much for his first attempt at disguise.
He racked his brain for a solution. ‘Keep it simple,’ Alias had said. ‘Don’t go Hollywood on me. Like I told you – half the secret is attitude.’
Attitude. Confidence. But could a swagger in your step really add a few centimetres to your height?
He was still stumped when he emerged from the bathroom, and approached Mrs Piggott. She was sitting at the dining-room table with about five hundred fabric samples strewn all around her.
‘Who called?’ Cadel wanted to know.
‘Hmmm?’
‘Who was on the phone? You said someone called me.’
‘Oh.’ Lanna dragged her gaze from the swatch of silk in her hand. ‘Oh, yes. They didn’t leave a number.’
‘Who was it, though?’
‘They didn’t leave a name.’
‘Did they say they’d call back?’
But Lanna’s attention had wandered. She was staring at a price list and didn’t bother to reply. Cadel trudged into his bedroom, where he banged out a message for Kay-Lee. Sometimes I wish I looked different, he wrote. Do you ever wish that? Sometimes it’s like my outside doesn’t match my inside. In Cadel’s opinion, his outside had never matched his inside. If he had been tall and elderly, like Thaddeus, he might have been getting the kind of respect that he deserved, all these years. As it was, people took one look at him and dismissed him. They thought he was of no consequence.
It occurred to Cadel that, if he ever did learn to disguise himself, his life might improve dramatically.
‘Cadel!’
He groaned. Lanna must have snapped out of her trance-like state.
‘What?’ he yelled.
‘Come here, please!’
‘Why?’
‘I’m in my bathroom!’
Cadel winced. He knew what was coming. When he slouched into the Piggotts’ en suite, he found it still damp from his recent shower. He also found Lanna standing on the rumpled bathmat, her hands on her hips.
‘Cadel,’ she said, ‘you know I don’t mind you using this bathroom. I realise you like the jacuzzi in here. But I’ve told you before to clean up after yourself. I don’t want to find your dirty clothes on the floor, young man. I don’t want to find the lid of the shampoo open.’
‘Sorry,’ Cadel muttered.
‘And what’s this?’ Lanna pointed to a smear of fake tan that Cadel had missed. He hadn’t wiped it off the marble benchtop. ‘What have you been doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Is that my foundation, Cadel?’
‘No.’ Cadel put on his innocent look. ‘What’s foundation?’
The lines on Lanna’s brow deepened. ‘Have you been using my make-up?’ she pressed.
‘No!’ Cadel tried to sound insulted. ‘Make-up’s for girls!’
And then the phone rang.
They heard it quite clearly, because there was a wall-mounted phone in every bathroom. Lanna only had to stretch out her arm to reach the one nearest them.
‘Yes?’ she said. ‘Oh yes. Hang on.’ She presented the cordless receiver to Cadel. ‘It’s for you.’
Cadel wondered who could be calling him on the household number. He had his own mobile, after all.
‘Hello?’ he said, with a wary glance at Mrs Piggott.
No one answered. But he could hear breathing at the other end of the line.
‘Hello,’ he repeated.
‘I know it was you.’
The voice was raspy. Cadel couldn’t even tell if it was male or female. But he thought he heard a sob.
‘Who is this?’ he demanded.
‘You bastard! How could you?’
There was a click, followed by the dial tone.
Cadel stared at the receiver.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lanna asked.
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘Who was it?’
Cadel shrugged.
‘One of your friends?’
‘I don’t think so.’ Cadel was reviewing all the possibilities. He assumed that the call had had something to do with the Axis Institute, and wondered uneasily if one of the crazier students had decided that he was responsible for a bad mark, or a successful piece of sabotage.
He hoped not.
‘So you haven’t been playing with my make-up? Cadel? Do you know how much cosmetics cost, by any chance?’ Mrs Piggott was saying. ‘If you’ve touched my lip-gloss there’ll be hell to pay.’
It couldn’t have been a dissatisfied customer from Partner Post, Cadel decided. Not one of his clients even knew that he existed, thanks to the way he’d shuttled his messages through a series of remailers. Could it have been some sort of test? Something that Luther had set up, or Maestro Max? Hmm.
‘Cadel? Are you listening to me?’
‘I didn’t touch your stupid stuff!’ he cried, suddenly irritated beyond endurance. ‘Why should I?’
‘Because you can’t keep your nose out of anything, that’s why!’ Lanna snapped. She had pulled the bottle of fake tan out of the cosmetics drawer. ‘Look at this! Look! It’s almost empty!’ ‘Buy yourself a new one, then!’ Cadel retorted. ‘I’ll pay for it, just get off my back!’
‘Cadel, what on earth –’
‘I was trying to cover up my pimples, all right? Are you satisfied?’
As Cadel had expected, this excuse completely threw Mrs Piggott. She seemed to deflate, like a balloon.
‘Oh,’ she said faintly.
‘Can I go, now?’
‘Yes, of course. But – there are creams, Cadel. Did you realise that? Special things you can get –’
‘I know,’ he said, and made his escape. Lanna didn’t follow him. She was good at nagging, but not so good at comforting. It embarrassed her.
He’d counted on that.
Upon reaching his bedroom, he checked his email, to see if it contained any eerie or threatening messages. It didn’t. So he spent the next few hours trying to trace the source of the mysterious call, hacking into phone company networks and databases.
When at last he came up with a name, it merely puzzled him.
Parsons. Matthew Eric Parsons. Who on earth was that? Nobody Cadel knew.
Unless he was somehow connected to the girl at Crampton College – what was her name? Heather Parsons? The location was certainly right.
If Heather Parsons was Cadel’s nuisance caller, then she had to be calling about her Higher School Certificate marks. She had failed her exams, like everyone else in Cadel’s year. Surely she couldn’t have worked out that he was responsible? Possibly she was acting on instinct; there couldn’t have been a proper investigation.
Still, it was a worry.
Fretting over this unforseen development, Cadel checked his Partner Post email. He found a note from Kay-Lee. Dear Stormer, she had written, don’t get me started on appearances. Just don’t get me started. As far as I’m concerned, we’ll be a lot better off when we’ve evolved into disembodied brains floating in tanks. Have you seen that movie, The Man with Two Brains? I’d like to be one of the brains in that movie. Bodies are just a waste of space. You have to feed them and clean them and take them to the dentist, and for what? So that they’ll let you down, again and
again.
What I feel is this: Heaven, when we get there, will be Heavenly because we’ll all have left our bodies behind. But you’re not a girl, Stormer, so maybe you don’t really understand what I’m talking about.
There was more. A lot more. But Cadel didn’t read it until some time later, because as his eye alighted on the world ‘girl’, he was suddenly visited by the most brilliant idea.
Girls. Make-up. Lip gloss.
Of course!
TWENTY-THREE
‘Cadel? Is that you?’
It was Abraham who first recognised Cadel. Having decided to disguise himself as a Buddhist monk, Abraham had shaved off what remained of his hair, got rid of his goatee, and somehow located a set of orange and purple robes. Cadel was very impressed by Abraham’s effort. Kunio, too, had done a pretty good job. He wore a beard, a moustache, horn-rimmed spectacles, a dark suit and a bowler hat; he carried a briefcase in his right hand and a rolled umbrella in his left. He looked like a business executive.
Poor Gazo, of course, hadn’t been able to do much with his suit. Behind the fogged mask of his headpiece, his skin was a curious, unconvincing chestnut colour. (Cadel suspected that he was trying to impersonate someone from India or Pakistan.) As for Doris, she was a pathetic sight. She had plastered her face with make-up, donned a corn-coloured wig, and squeezed herself into some very tight, very revealing clothes. Anywhere else, her appearance would have been greeted by howls of laughter.
No one waiting by the door of Lecture Room One, however, dared to comment on Doris’s outfit. They were far too intimidated. Abraham was also rather ill. And Kunio, for his part, was so fascinated by Cadel’s disguise that he didn’t appear to notice Doris at all. He kept walking round and round Cadel like a tourist inspecting a famous statue.
Gazo too was impressed. ‘You look great, Cadel,’ he gasped. ‘Wow! You look just like a girl!’
‘But would you have recognised me?’ Cadel asked. ‘That’s the important thing.’
‘I dunno.’ Gazo cocked his head to one side. ‘You look the same but not the same.’
‘Like your own twin sister,’ said Abraham hoarsely, and he began to cough. Doris snorted.