Fractions Read Free

burned. The guy in question appeared shortly afterwards: tall, black and handsome. He seemed wide awake without benefit of a tab, unobtrusively helpful to Sonya. His name was Jerome and he was from Ghana.
    After breakfast Janis went into her bedroom and started throwing clothes from her wardrobe on to the bed. She selected a pleated white blouse, then hesitated with a long skirt in one hand and a pair of slate calf-length culottes in the other.
    â€˜Sonya,’ she called, interrupting the others’ murmuring chat, ‘you using the car today?’
    Sonya was. On your bike, Janis. So, culottes. She eyed the outfit. Dress to impress and all that, but it still wasn’t quite sharp enough. She sighed.
    â€˜Sorry to bother you, Sonya,’ she said wearily. ‘Can you help me into my stays?’
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    â€˜You can breathe in now,’ Sonya said. She fastened the cord. ‘You’ll knock them out.’
    â€˜If I don’t expire myself…Hey, what’s the matter?’
    Sonya’s hand went to her mouth, came away again.
    â€˜Oh, Janis, you’ll kill me. I totally forgot. You’re seeing some committee today, yeah?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜I just remembered. Last night, at the disco. There was some fighting.’
    â€˜At the disco?’
    â€˜No, I mean there was an attack. On a lab somewhere. We heard shots, an explosion—’
    â€˜Oh shit !’ Janis tightened her belt viciously, stepped into her shoes. ‘Do you know what one it—?’
    Sonya shook her head. ‘I just overheard some guy later. Sitting at a table by himself, drinking and talking – about, uh, bloody cranks, I think.’
    â€˜Oh.’ Some of Janis’s tension eased. She smiled quizzically. ‘This guy was talking to himself?’
    â€˜Oh, no!’ Sonya sounded put out at the suggestion that she’d been eavesdropping on a loony. ‘He was talking to his gun. ’
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    The night’s muggy heat had given way to a sharp, clear autumn morning. Janis pedalled through the streets of Uxbridge, slowly so as not to break sweat. An AWACS plane climbed low from Northolt, banked and headed west, towards Wales. The High Street looked untouched by the troubles, a cosy familiarity of supermarkets and wine bars and drug dens and viveo shops, vast mirrored frontages of office blocks behind. Around the roundabout and along the main road past the RAF barracks ( DANGER: MINES ), swing right into Kingston Lane. Usual early-morning traffic – a dozen buses, all different companies, milk-floats, water-floats, APC s flying the Hanoverian pennant from their aerials…
    In through the security gates, scanned and frisked by sensors. The sign above the games announced:
    Â 
    BRUNEL UNIVERSITY AND SCIENCE PARK PLC
    WARNING
    FREE SPEECH ZONE
    Â 
    She rode along the paths, steering clear of snails making suicidal dashes for greener grass. On one lawn a foraging party of students moved slowly, stooped, looking for magic mushrooms. Some of them would be for her. Janis smiled to herself, feeling like a great lady watching her peasants. Which the students looked like, in their sweeping skirts or baggy trousers and poke bonnets or broad-brimmed hats, patiently filling baskets.
    In the wall of the ground floor of the biology block a three-metre hole gaped like an exit wound.
    Janis dismounted, wheeled the bike mechanically to its stand. She’d half expected this, she now realized. Her hands flipped up her lace veil and twisted it back around the crown of her hat. Up the stairs: two flights, forty steps. The corridor tiles squeaked.
    The door had been crudely forced; the lock hung from splinters. A strip of black-and-yellow tape warned against entry. She backed away, shaken. The last time she’d seen a door like this it had opened on smashed terminals, empty cages, shit-daubed messages of drivelling hate.
    Behind her somebody coughed. It was not a polite cough; more an