The Penal Colony

by Richard Herley

  For all that, for all his apprehensions about his future here, he allowed himself to acknowledge a sense of achievement, almost of elation. He had got in. Despite Martinson, and Peto, and Gazzer and Tortuga, despite the man at the ruins, he had beaten all the odds and got in. Really it had been luck, mostly, that and the cave. Without the cave he couldn’t have done it.

  He wondered how long the Community had been in existence, how long Franks had been in charge, and how many of those in the Village had undergone the same ordeal. King, for instance. How would he have fared? Or Franks himself, or Appleton? If they had all undergone the same test, or something similar, then the Village was populated with a formidable collection of men indeed.

  The test had two main objects, Franks had said: to show what a man was made of, and to give him practical knowledge of life outside. If “practical knowledge” meant a bottomless dread of the outsiders and a frantic resolve to avoid them evermore, if it meant a resolution to do everything in his power to ingratiate himself with the leadership and advance to a position of privilege in the Community, Routledge conceded that, in his case, the test had been spectacularly successful.

  His arms and legs ached. He still felt deeply fatigued. His night’s rest had refreshed him hardly at all. Worse, he had been dreaming again.

  Anxious now for his first daylight view of the Village, he got up, pulled on his sweater and trousers, and slipped his feet into his boots.

  On the table he found a plastic mug and a plastic plate with three slices of coarse bread, a blob of jam, some butter, and a hard-boiled egg. Beside the plate lay a scrap of paper bearing a pencilled note written in a hasty, cursive hand. He held it up to the light. Water in tank (in corner). Latrine behind house – corrugated iron roof. Will be in potato fields if I’m needed – B. K.

  Routledge went outside.

  The sun had just risen; the sky was clear. It looked as though the day would be fine.

  From what he had previously seen, he already knew quite a lot about the topography of the Village. The Village peninsula, at the south-western corner of the island, was roughly oblong in plan view and covered an area of about two hundred and fifty hectares. The border fence ran from north-west to south-east, and had two gates, one near either end. Most of the peninsula seemed to be under cultivation of one sort or another, with scattered areas of natural vegetation and here and there a barn or byre. The main concentration of buildings, assorted in size and style and huddled together for safety, was not far from the north-west gate, on fairly sheltered, sloping ground running down to the western cliffs.

  King’s shack was near the middle, one of about twenty grouped round the broad, shale-surfaced precinct in front of the bungalow steps. Beyond the bungalow stood a line of fir trees, more shacks, and, just visible from this angle, the posts and framework of the gate through which Routledge had entered last night.

  The bungalow was not technically that, for there were two dormer windows on this side. Built of stone, with a slate roof, it had a slightly institutional appearance. The design was not the usual compromise between cost and someone’s idea of domestic bliss: it achieved a close accord between its function as both a residence for the warden and headquarters for visiting scientists. The most prominent feature of its broad façade was the wide veranda, supported on stone pillars and with a teak balustrade, where even now a guard was seated by the reinforced front door, nursing a crowbar. As Routledge watched, another man, dressed in jeans and a green and yellow sweater, mounted the steps and engaged him in conversation. No one else was in sight.

  Routledge found the latrine, which appeared to serve at least a dozen shacks, and noted with displeasure the open pit and the fenestrated plank serving as a seat. But there was no smell. Below the seat a faded polythene sack was being held open on a wickerwork frame. The sack was a third full of water; the frame allowed it to be easily lifted for emptying. A rota in ballpen was fixed to the rush-and-lath wall:

  June 1-15 Mr Reynolds

  " 16-30 Mr King

  July 1-15 Mr Wilson

  " 16-31 Mr Carter

  August 1-15 Mr Wouldham

  " 16-31 Mr Rothstein

  September 1-15 Mr Flagg

  " 16-30 Mr Ojukwu

  Routledge read it as he stood there, conceding to himself that Mr Carter was indeed doing a sterling job in keeping the place clean. There was even a new roll of the familiar iron-hard Prison Service lavatory paper, hanging from a loop of string.

  He returned to the shack to wash and to eat his breakfast, leaving the door open to provide more light. Except for the two men at the bungalow, there was still no one about. The settlement of shacks seemed to be deserted, its inhabitants long since up and busy with their chores. Directed by the Father or not, the thought of emptying latrines or working in a potato field held no great appeal, especially at this hour of the morning.

  Using King’s old kitchen knife to spread the butter, Routledge tried to re-examine the conclusions he had drawn from last night’s interview with Franks. However compelling the man’s personality, however well camouflaged his motives, he had nonetheless been handing out the same old message, the one regurgitated by politicians everywhere. This society was no different from any other. It ran on self interest, with the biggest and greediest bastards at the top of the heap. “You might end up as leader in my stead.” What a joke!

  While still at Exeter, Routledge had imagined that these island colonies would have no social structure at all. He had imagined each one in a state of perpetual anarchy, a veritable hell on earth for those not strong enough to resist the continual assaults and outrages of those even more deranged and criminal than themselves. Yet now that he was here, he saw that such a view took no account of human nature. The population of the island had in essence divided itself into three predictable parts. The men who were so far gone that they could tolerate no society whatever had taken to living wild. These were probably in the minority. Old Town and the lighthouse settlement represented an interim stage, and probably accounted for the largest group of the population, those who were prepared to accept certain restrictions on their behaviour in return for a modicum of security. The Community was this idea taken to its civilized extreme, and as such would appeal most greatly to those who were not so much hardened, lifelong criminals as victims of circumstance. This last category would be likely to include most of the men with any of the customary social skills, automatically increasing the stability of the Community. Taken together with the ever-present threat of expulsion, this would produce a pliant population consisting of a disproportionate number of the more intelligent and disciplined convicts. Such a population was ripe to be exploited by the most intelligent and disciplined of them all: Liam Michael Franks.

  It appeared that Franks had entered into some sort of pact with the authorities whereby the safety of the helicopter was guaranteed. In return, he had gained control of all the benefits the helicopter provided. This alone would make it difficult to set up a rival village elsewhere; but it seemed he had also appropriated the most suitable peninsula on the island, and only a peninsula could be successfully defended against the outsiders.

  There was little alternative but to do it Franks’s way. Routledge had no intention of digging potatoes for the rest of his life. If he wanted even a degree of comfort and ease, he would have to climb the ladder as quickly as he could, and that meant conforming to the rules Franks had laid down last night.

  Like King’s whisky, the bread was better than he had expected. The butter tasted rather strong and he guessed it was made from goat’s milk; the jam seemed to be of bilberries or something of the kind.

  He ate the egg, which was excellent, made himself a jam sandwich with the two remaining slices, and embarked on a more thorough examination of King’s personal effects. Going to the mantelshelf, he bent his head first one way and then the other to read the thirty or so book spines. The only hardback was an ancient volume of poetry: the collected works of Spenser, much thumbed an
d repaired with sticky tape. Most of the other books concerned practical or technical subjects – vegetable gardening, do-it-yourself, knitting, an illustrated guide to seashore life. A battered German dictionary had lost its covers. Beside it stood two books of chess theory. There were a few fiction titles, in French and German, none in English. Holding the remains of the sandwich in his mouth, Routledge briefly examined a couple before sliding them back. He read neither French nor German, but from what he had seen had managed to advance a little further in his divination of King’s personality.

  He left unopened what appeared to be a bundle of letters, held together with a rubber band. The address on the outer envelope was in a woman’s rounded handwriting: B. E. King Z-160551, c/o H. M. Prison, Princetown, Devon, PL20 6SA. The letter had been posted in Milton Keynes on the ninth of April last.

  Routledge supposed he too would be getting a new number, prefixed with a Z. Did “16” mean Sert? Was King the 551st man to be sent here?

  There were no photographs on display, and in the rest of the objects on the mantelshelf there was no real distinction between ornament and haphazard junk. King appeared to be a humble, frugal man. From the pile of darning and mending by the hearth it appeared that he undertook work for others besides himself. He had already shown a capacity for kindness, and Routledge decided to invade his privacy no further.

  Besides, it was nearly twenty to six, and Routledge was receiving indications that called for a second and more prolonged visit to the latrine.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The interview with Appleton began punctually at six o’clock.

  After lengthy and detailed questioning about his education, aptitudes and career, Routledge was told how his first few weeks in the Community would be spent. He was to be billeted with King for as long as it took for suitable accommodation to be prepared. This meant a stone and timber shack, or “house”, as Appleton called it. Routledge was expected to supply most of the labour himself, although the materials and help with the heavier and more skilled work would be provided. So long as he consumed no more than the materials allotted to him, the shack could be of any design approved by the Father. Once the shack was finished Routledge could live in it himself; or, if by then he had been offered a place in one of the larger houses with multiple occupancy, he could accept it and the shack would become the property of the Village.

  Appleton had shown keen interest in Routledge’s knowledge of the building trade, but he had been more interested still in his facility with numbers, and had given him a test in mental arithmetic, the results of which he had checked on a solar-powered calculator.

  “Sixteen point three four plus ninety-seven point two one seven. Divided by eleven. Times two.”

  “Twenty point six … Twenty point six five. Or a bit under. Say point six four five.”

  “Square root of eight five three.”

  “Between twenty-nine and thirty. On the low side: twenty-nine point two. Something like that. Nine point two one, near enough.”

  “That’s remarkable, Mr Routledge.”

  Routledge found nothing remarkable in it at all. For him, ever since he could remember, arithmetic had been easy. Both at school and in his adult career, figures, abstracted quantities, estimates, had been the daily substance of his working life. Despite the calculating machines and computers at his disposal, he explained, a QS would not get far on site without at least a basic numeracy.

  “You have more than a basic numeracy,” Appleton said.

  Routledge didn’t answer; he disagreed. Compared with the mental agility of some of the quantity surveyors he had known, his own father, for example, his was not very good.

  “What about algebra?”

  “I know how to do it.”

  “Quickly?”

  “Fairly quickly.”

  “Calculus?”

  “Yes, I know that too.”

  Appleton’s notes were becoming copious. Routledge watched the way he held the pencil, neatly and precisely, with a straight forefinger, exerting no undue pressure as his hand travelled across the paper. The writing was equally neat and precise, pedantic, quite unlike King’s.

  This morning Appleton was wearing a hand-knitted fawn cardigan, made perhaps here in the Village, for Routledge had already seen sheep. He was losing his hair from the crown: his beard still retained traces of a more youthful colour. On closer acquaintance, Routledge liked him even less. In fact, he disliked all the men closest to Franks, at least, all those he had seen so far: Appleton, Mitchell, Stamper, this morning’s guard at the door.

  “I want to turn now to your physics background,” Appleton said, looking up and again directing his brown eyes at Routledge’s own. Routledge had the feeling that his character was still being assessed, ready to be reported to Franks; he was still on probation; there was no reason to suppose that his position was safe or that he would not, on Appleton’s say-so and without a moment’s notice, be arbitrarily turfed out. This was a time for the utmost caution.

  “How much electronics do you know? Do you understand the principle, say, of the transistor?”

  “Yes, but it’s a long time since I learned. I’m a bit rusty.”

  “Did you ever do any breadboarding?”

  “Only at school, and even then not much. We concentrated mainly on theory.”

  “Do you know the theory of piezoelectric devices?”

  “Yes, I think so. Vibrating crystals and all that.”

  “Name some piezoelectric materials.”

  “God. I can’t remember. Quartz. That’s one. Tourmaline. Er …”

  “That’ll do. What about acoustics?”

  “The same. Only to A-level.”

  “Optics?”

  “The same.”

  “Now you said” – and here Appleton consulted the notes he had made during the first interview – “you said you didn’t know how to write professional software. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I assume you had a home computer.”

  “A Mac. My son used it as well, for games and for school. Uses it.”

  “Did you try your hand at any programming?”

  “Not very much. Just for the odd simple application.”

  “Which languages can you use? Anything structured?”

  “BASIC. Just to play with it.”

  “C? Assembly language?”

  “I couldn’t really be bothered with all that.”

  “Too time-consuming, or too difficult?”

  “Both, I suppose.”

  “The machines at work. What did they run?”

  “Geos, and Q-Sys. And tailored packages for the client or contractor.” Routledge failed to see the point of these questions: surely they had no computers here, no science laboratories.

  “Were you responsible for writing tender documents?”

  “As far as quantities went, yes.”

  “And supervising applications for interim payments?”

  “Yes.”

  “Using Q-Sys?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ever have to do it manually?”

  “Now and then, when the computer went down.”

  “What about dayworks? Did you ever measure those?”

  “Yes. I did. Only too often.”

  Appleton made more notes. Just before looking up, he said, “You’re wondering what all this is about, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yes, I am rather curious.”

  “What I’m trying to find out, Mr Routledge, is how much aptitude you have for structured thinking coupled with a high level of numeracy and fastidious attention to detail. There is no better training for that than programming computers, but it seems the life of a senior quantity surveyor might come a pretty close second. In some respects it’s even better for the work we have in mind.”

  “May I ask what that work is?”

  “Until I have conferred with the Father, no, you may not. The final decision must rest with him. As it is you will not menti
on to anyone what has been discussed here this morning.”

  Routledge was immediately on the alert. What were they up to? An escape attempt? Something to do with electronics? Were they planning to freak out the helicopter and hijack it? He wanted to ask more questions; but Appleton changed the subject and made it plain that this part of the interview had reached its end.

  4

  At the bungalow door Appleton told Routledge that, after lunch, King would be giving him a guided tour of the Community; until then, he might like to amuse himself by looking around on his own account. He was not to go near the bungalow or the workshop at the end of the garden, and it was recommended that he should keep away from the border-line, but otherwise he was free to explore all parts of the Village headland.

  As Routledge emerged, the guard on the veranda acknowledged him, which he had scarcely done before. Dark, bearded, and about thirty, in green corduroys and a predominantly white, chequered shirt, the guard was reclining in the usual chair, his boots resting on the stonework of the adjacent pillar. He was cradling a crowbar with a sharpened point; on the boards beside him lay a hatchet with a shiny-edged blade. “The name’s Mr Talbot,” he said.

  “Routledge.”

  “Glad to know you, Mr Routledge.” He squinted up at Routledge, who was standing against the sun. “Lodging with Mr King, ain’t you?”

  “Yes. For the moment.”

  “You’ll be all right with him. He’s an exceptionally nice bloke, is Mr King.” He paused. “Have you met any of the other men on his street? Mr Foster, for example, or Mr Ojukwu?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “You wouldn’t have seen Mr Foster, anyway. He went up Old Town. He’s our undercover agent. Anything going on among the outsiders, Mr Foster knows about it. This might interest you, Mr Routledge, seeing as you had a run in with him – the rumour is that Martinson’s dead.”