‘Looks like you’ve brought us another hoodie, Brooke. Chavs and hoodies are no use to us. We need scientists, doctors … clever people.’

Achilleus pushed the fair-haired guy to one side and stood up. Advanced on the kid in the lab coat, put an arm round his shoulder and held his neck just a little too tight.

‘Ow,’ said the boy. ‘I was joking, OK? It was meant to be a joke.’

‘You hear that sound?’

‘What sound?’

‘The sound of me not laughing.’

‘I’m sorry, OK?’

‘Yeah. Well, you listen up, funny man. If it wasn’t for me and my friends, you wouldn’t have no labs left here. You’d be fighting off zomboids, and you’d be losing. Badly. So let’s have a little appreciation here, OK?’

‘OK. OK. Ow. Let me go.’

Achilleus threw him away. ‘Next time you tell a joke make sure it’s a funny one, yeah?’

‘Yeah …’

‘Hello, Einstein,’ said Brooke. ‘You really know how to make friends, don’t you?’

Einstein rubbed his neck and swallowed.

‘I only came in to tell you that Justin’s called a special meeting. He wants everyone there now, in the Hall of Gods.’

‘We’ll come when we’re ready,’ said Achilleus.

Chapter 12

12

Maxie was sitting next to Blue in what the local kids had named the Hall of Gods, but which was actually only a side entrance area of the museum. There were star charts and images of the planets painted on the polished black walls that rose some thirty metres to the roof, where dim blue light washed down through tinted windows. At the back was a long escalator that led up through a rusty iron globe into the darkness of an upper floor.

Lined up along either side of the hall were six white statues lit by candles, and in the underwater glow from the high windows they looked weird and slightly sinister. There was a Cyclops, a gorgon with snakes for hair, a scientist, an astronaut, Atlas holding up the world, and the figure of a man that looked like it might be God. Maxie supposed they were meant to represent the advance of human knowledge about the world and how it worked. She wondered whether they ought to add another statue – of a diseased grown-up.

There were kids lined up on chairs as if ready for a show, but Justin was keeping them waiting. Maxie hoped they hadn’t stumbled into the arms of another David. There was certainly a similar atmosphere here to the one at the palace. An attitude that said that the way these kids did things was the right way and the way everyone else did things was wrong.