Read Online Blind School by John Matthews - Free Book Online Page B

in any direction. And every now and then amongst those, you'll pick up a demon apparition. We won't see them.’ Ellis indicated himself and the operator. ‘But if you look closer at these screens, you’ll get an idea of what you might see.’
    The students edged in, and at first as the bus sped along they could only make out a blur of vague shapes. But as the bus stopped at a set of traffic lights, the images became clearer: grey-green cross-sections of people milling on streets and in shops or restaurants.
    ‘Most of those will be mid-level demons or those already under watch. But once in a while we'll pick up the golden prize of a high-level demon. The main reason we're all doing this.’
    Ellis stared the message home, then put the zoom control on a couple of screens. They sped rapid-frame through the city blocks, finally coming to rest on a small group of people. No demons visible among them, but Ellis knew he’d planted the seed in the pupils’ minds of how they’d be viewed.
       ‘So each day you'll split up as you go 'demon tracking'. Fifteen pupils in the bus, five each in three vans. All with the same scan capabilities, but without the holo - pod rostrum.’
    Three days later Ellis sat at the end of the control room by a bank of screens listening to what he’d just said on tape.
    On one screen he had the scan bus, while on another he viewed three vans as they swept out of the Blind School compound.
       Ellis preferred doing it this way. He knew that the first few days induction for new arrivals to Blind School were the most vital, yet he couldn’t be with them all the time. So he’d stay with them that first day on the holo-bus, then monitor the rest of their progress over those days on a series of screens.
    ‘And as soon as you pick up an apparition on screen, we move in...’
    Ellis looked at one of the top screens with two pupils picking out an apparition on screen. The operator zoomed through five city blocks, then locked in: a middle-aged woman coming out of a department store.
    The bus raced through the streets to catch up, the on-screen image becoming progressively closer until the pupils were looking at the same woman straight across the street from them – the action now caught on camera on three screens that Ellis surveyed: one with the woman live, another her thermal image, the final camera on the pupils inside the bus.
    The combination of his voice on tape and the visual track-back ensured that all the key points were covered. Anything missed or that came up unexpectedly during the three-day induction he could then cover in later lectures.
    Ellis looked through a series of video loops where the pupils had picked up apparitions and the scan bus moved in: a middle-aged man putting out trash by his house, a parked cab driver, a college girl jogging. Only low or mid-level fallen angels. Nothing too worrying so far.
       ‘And finally when you're viewing them live, you describe what you see to our sketch artist.’
    Ellis’s gaze shifted to two screens to his right showing a portrait-artist agent sketching a man through a diner window as pupils alongside gave descriptions.
    ‘Then Professor Mentinck will explain what you've actually seen...’
    On a bottom screen, Mentinck was pointing to another hologram image as the bus cruised through the city streets. Ellis turned up the sound for the video loop:
    ‘Notice here serpentine features, as we saw before with Andromalius and Balam. Though the shape of its tail and its scaling suggest more a lesser-ranked fallen angel – Jeherak.’
    Ellis switched his attention to another screen showing a lab technician working on a computer schematic while four Blind School pupils and the sketch artist guided him. He faded out Mentinck’s voice and brought back his own:
    ‘...And if there isn't already a match in the database to what you've seen, then one will be made.’
    The pupils huddled round the computer finally seemed satisfied with what they’d