The Penal Colony

by Richard Herley

  7

  “I like Lampert’s idea, Alex,” Obie said. “Swap him for Des.”

  “Just the lines I been thinkin’ along, Obie. Have to clean him up a bit, though. Give him a bit of appeal.”

  The new meat, naked and covered in blood and grime, had been thoroughly abused even before being brought here to Old Town and the hotel. Zombie, Curtis, and Reed, who had found him, had gone first. Then they had hired him out, cheaply enough for almost anyone to afford. After that they had lost interest and sold him to Peto.

  “Zombie reckons he was a virgin,” Obie said.

  “What’s your name, Sonny?” Peto said.

  He did not speak. He was huddled in the corner, on the floor of the old dining-room, hunched up like a foetus, needlessly now trying to protect himself from the onslaught. He had not merely been raped; he had been dehumanized. His eyes, when they had been open, had registered nothing. This was the worst case Obie had ever seen, and he had seen plenty. At the lighthouse, with Houlihan, this blond-haired boy would not last long. He was pretty, prettier than Desborough, and as a bargaining counter would be worth a lot.

  “If the stonks hadn’t got there first I could’ve gone for him myself,” Peto said.

  Obie felt his stomach turn. He was beginning to regret having supported the idea of a swap. But then it was vital for Peto’s standing in the town that he got Desborough back.

  This morning Obie had returned to Martinson’s hut to find him much improved. The broken bone was giving him somewhat less pain, and it looked as if the cleaning and setting might even have worked. Obie had prepared Martinson a meal, emptied his slop bucket, and generally made himself useful before coming over to the hotel, as he usually did, towards noon. Often he would just sit around with Jez or Bubbles or Penguin or Peto himself, either outside on the terrace or in the dining-room. He might lend a hand with the goats, or do a bit of digging in the vegetable patch or among the stalks of oats or corn. Occasionally they would swim in Town Bay, or go after birds and eggs. If the helicopter had left new meat Obie might join in the hunt, though today he hadn’t bothered.

  The dining-room, with its old bay windows overlooking the terrace and the beach, was the best preserved part of the hotel and formed Peto’s main quarters. A driftwood grid overhead was covered with fertilizer-bag plastic and turf. Most of the floorboards remained intact and only a few, mainly those near the windows, were rotten. The doors had disappeared, as had the window frames and glass, while nearly all the plaster had fallen out of the walls, revealing crumbling laths and here and there strands of old wiring. In winter and at night Peto leaned sheets of corrugated iron against the windows. The furniture was the best Old Town could offer, extending to a pair of smelly armchairs and a settee with springs and stuffing hanging out at all angles, as well as to some hard chairs and a broken card-table from which Peto ate his meals.

  Peto was slumped in one armchair, while Obie occupied the other. “Get Jez,” Peto said. “You two clean him up. I’ll find him somethin’ to wear. Then you go over the light and talk to Houlihan.”

  “On my own?”

  “Take a white flag.”

  “I want people with me.”

  “Penguin, then. And Jez.”

  “Hard people. You come, Alex.”

  “No chance. They’d bod me for sure.”

  At that moment raised voices outside in the sunshine preceded the sound of a scuffle on the steps, where Jez Brookes and Eric Craddock had joined Bubbles and Lampert on guard. There was a shriek: Obie glanced at Peto, who jumped up and grabbed the iron bar he always left leaning against the wall. A second later Dave Nackett, behind him Lampert and Bubbles and Craddock and three more, appeared in the doorway.

  Nackett was holding a machete. An anglo, heavily built, with a grey beard, he had once been prominent on Peto’s team. Obie saw that all his predictions were coming true; only the speed and boldness of the move had been unforeseen.

  “What about you, Walker?” he said to Obie, when at last it had stopped. “You want some too?”

  Obie had taken refuge by the fireplace, ignoring Peto’s screams for help. While Craddock and Lampert had held Peto’s arms, it was Nackett who had struck the first blow.

  “I don’t want no bother, Dave,” Obie managed to say.

  “Cut his head off,” Craddock said. “Like we done to Brookes.”

  “Christ’s sake, Dave,” Obie said. “Town’s yours now. I don’t want it. I never did.”

  “That’s right,” Nackett said. “It’s mine now.” He turned to Craddock. “He was only Peto’s bumboy. He knows what to expect if he makes trouble. You, Walker. Get rid of this carrion.”

  “Yes, Dave. Sure thing, Dave.” Obie grasped Peto by what remained of his armpits and began pulling him towards the door.

  “When you done that, come back and clean up the meat. We’re dealin’ with Houlihan now.”

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Godwin’s workshop was much better finished than King’s shack, with a flagstone floor and windows of real glass. It consisted of one large and one small room, together with Godwin’s bedroom and kitchen. For Fitzmaurice, Godwin’s assistant, there was a folding bunk in the main workshop.

  “This is where you’ll be sitting, Mr Routledge,” Godwin said, indicating a small plywood table set against the wall. “You can have that orange chair. Fetch it, will you please.” Routledge went to the bench and collected the plastic stacking chair, much faded and scuffed, taken no doubt from the laboratory in the bungalow. “Extra paper’s in that cupboard. Waste as little as possible.” Godwin motioned that Routledge should be seated. Already waiting on the table were a propelling pencil, a ruler, a solar-powered calculator, and a pile of scrap paper.

  “Something relatively easy to start with. I want you to draw some graphs. You’ll have to make your own graph paper. Do it as accurately as you can. Then plot these equations. There are twenty of them.”

  “Right.” Routledge accepted the sheet of paper and glanced at the equations, which had been numbered and written out in blue ballpoint. Below them was another, unnumbered, equation and a line of figures.

  The light from the window flashed momentarily in Godwin’s glasses. The style of the dark plastic frames, which held the lenses in place with a single heavy bar, was distinctly old-fashioned. He wheezed slightly when he spoke, as if he suffered from asthma or emphysema. At one time he might have smoked a pipe and worn cardigans with leather elbow-patches, and spent his evenings tinkering in a basement den.

  “Now, yesterday you said you were familiar with the evaluation of definite integrals. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you remember Simpson’s Rule?”

  “Finding the area enclosed by a curve?”

  “That’s the one. Or you can use Dufton’s Rules. However you do it, I want the areas of the curves between the ordinates x equals zero and x equals thirty-six. Two per cent accuracy will do for now. Then substitute each of the equations generating the three smallest areas for theta in the master equation. Evaluate alpha for these values of x. Got it?”

  Routledge nodded.

  “Any questions?”

  “No, Mr Godwin. Not that I can think of.”

  “Fine. Give me a shout if there are.”

  Godwin returned to the bench, where Fitzmaurice, leaning on one elbow and cradling his temple in his fingers, had been using a pencil point to trace the flow of current in a large circuit diagram.

  “It’s here,” he said to Godwin. “Look.”

  “All right. So what does that imply?”

  “A glitch somewhere in the filter.”

  “Got to be.”

  They fell silent, both poring over the diagram.

  Routledge turned to the sheet of equations. Theta was usually an angle. His suspicions about the nature of the project began to take more definite form. Acoustics, electronics: they were trying to build an echo sounder. Echo sounders were used to identify obstacles on the sea bed. Rocks, for exam
ple. Or to find clear channels for navigation. A boat. Franks was planning a boat. There could no longer be the slightest doubt about it.

  Routledge began work. It should have been soothing beyond measure to return to the logical, clear-cut haven of mathematics. Out there the sun was beating down; in here, in the drowsy stillness of the summer afternoon, he was on safely familiar territory. But a week ago, to the minute, he had been in the bracken searching for his knife, almost out of his mind with guilt and fear. He could not stop thinking about the events of that day and, worse, of the following Monday. The images of Gazzer and Tortuga he could perhaps, in time, manage to come to terms with and absorb. The other one, the one at the chapel, was different. No conversation had been exchanged, only the primeval communication of intent between hunter and victim. The man would have killed him. It had been a question of survival, pure and simple. Routledge’s conscience should have been clear. But Routledge was not a caveman. He could not rid himself in one week of five thousand years of cultural conditioning. Where had the man been born? Where attended school? Who were his parents? And who was Karen, the name in the tattoo? Had she occupied Louise’s place in the man’s heart?

  Routledge gave himself a conscious order to attend to the business in hand.

  Two per cent accuracy, Godwin had said. Twelve strips, say. Routledge opened the calculator wallet and the black bars of the liquid crystal display came instantly to life. Clear it. Press % C to scroll the instructions. Eight memory-registers. Not programmable, but plenty of functions. So. Equation One. Let x equal zero.

  All this had something to do with a sound beam. Theta was the width of the beam. What could he remember about sonar? Very little. Well, what problems were they up against? Range would be a function of power. The transducers would need to be small and hence operate at high frequency. But at high frequencies there would also be high attenuation due to absorption by the water, calling for higher power. At close quarters, say when detecting a reef, that would increase reverberation. Then there would be background noise caused by the waves, as well as thermal noise and turbulence. And how would the signals be produced? How would they be synchronized and regulated?

  Routledge looked up. I’ve already guessed what it’s about, he wanted to say. Tell me exactly what I’m calculating and I’ll work better and faster. I might even be able to suggest a few short-cuts.

  Fitzmaurice glanced round. “Yes,” he said, “is there something?”

  “No – nothing. I was just thinking.”

  8

  Only after about ten days in the Village did Routledge come to appreciate just what Franks’s organization had achieved. He had never before had cause to give much thought to the amount of care and labour needed to provide even the most basic municipal services. To supply the Community with clean water, for example, was a major undertaking involving hard work and strict attention to hygiene. Drinking-water was taken from two wells, one of which the Community itself had dug, while water for other purposes came from a brook which discharged over the cliffs as a small cascade. Above the cascade a pond had been hewn out of the rock to act as a reservoir. Drinking-water was distributed by donkey-cart and delivered daily to the door of each house, in a variety of found plastic canisters. Water for washing was delivered weekly; more could be collected from a central point, using one of a fleet of special wheelbarrows fitted with drums and taps.

  Fuel for cooking and heating was at a premium. Much of the spare brush and driftwood was used to make charcoal for the forge, leaving a limited supply for other purposes. At a place called Mencaro Field, however, near the centre of the island, was an extensive peat bog which the Community had begun to exploit both for fuel and as a source of compost for improving the soil. To provide warm water for laundry and showers, Thaine had constructed a number of solar absorption bags from black polythene, while the bungalow was served by solar panels and an undersoil heat-exchanger inherited from its former occupants.

  Besides candles and paraffin from the mainland, which were allocated by Stamper, for lighting the villagers used a spermaceti-like wax obtained from the stomach of the fulmar. The smell permeated all clothing and furnishings and papers wherever fulmar candles were burned; it was this odour which had served Routledge, on first awakening in King’s house, as his introduction to Sert.

  The fulmar was also collected for meat. Between April and July the cliffs around Pulpit Head, Porth Thomas Bay, Beacon Point, and other parts of the south and south-eastern coast still held large colonies of seabirds, especially fulmars, kittiwakes, puffins, and guillemots. A little further north, at Trellick Stack and Half Moon Bay, the colonies included razorbills too; while the triangular area between Angara Point, Perdew Wood and Old Town was home to a thousand pairs of Manx shearwaters. Formerly there had been five thousand pairs: Sert had been a seabird sanctuary of international scientific importance, but heavy predation by the convicts had drastically reduced the numbers of all the species and restricted the cliff-nesters to the less accessible ledges. On Franks’s orders, only a quota of seabirds was taken from the Village peninsula. The bulk of the birds was caught outside the peninsula by large, armed expeditions formerly led by Shoesmith, an expert cragsman whose mainland hobby had been rock-climbing. King showed Routledge some of the ropes, fowling-rods, and horsehair snares. Once each spring, at the neap tide, the fowlers crossed the causeway to Trellick Stack. This spring Shoesmith had slipped and fallen to his death: that, King had said, was the price of fulmar light.

  In food, in clothing, and shelter, and indeed in everything else, the Village was all but self-sufficient. There were now nearly a hundred and ninety inhabitants, who had brought with them a wide range of expertise which Franks, through Appleton and Stamper and the descending layers of the hierarchy, had employed to the greatest possible effect. When knowledge was lacking, Franks sent to the mainland for books, and in this way had developed some of the more specialized skills of food production on a barren Atlantic island.

  The Community bred goats and sheep, and had recently begun to expand its dairy-farming, poultry-keeping, and pig-breeding. It grew wheat, oats, barley, sugar beet, potatoes, and a number of other vegetables. An early enterprise was fruit-growing. Blackberries and gooseberries were native to the island and cultivated strains did well. Netting cages were put up to keep birds away from the raspberries, loganberries and blackcurrants. More tender fruits such as strawberries were protected from the sea wind by greenhouses made of driftwood and polythene sheeting, in which salad crops were also intensively grown. Surrounding the soft fruit area were orchards of young apple, greengage, pear, and cherry trees, and surrounding these were shelter belts of Leyland’s cypress which, besides providing rapid growth, were evergreen and could eventually be harvested as timber. Most of the produce was eaten fresh, to give the greatest dietary benefits, though a proportion was preserved for the winter.

  All the processes of production in the Village were interdependent and demanded a high degree of co-operation. At busy times the men growing fruit were excused other duties, and extra labour was drafted in to pick the crops. Every member of the Community had his own area of responsibility, yet the work was so well scheduled by Franks and Appleton that nothing ever seemed to be left undone. It was this aspect of life in the Village that Routledge found the most remarkable. He would not have believed it possible, least of all from a disparate bunch of convicts whose chief common trait had been an inability to function in mainland society.

  The need to conform, to earn the respect of their fellows, and to avoid at all costs the spectre of expulsion, had wrought equally remarkable changes in their social behaviour. Routledge had scarcely begun to fathom the rules of etiquette which regulated Village life, so different were they from those of the mainland. He almost felt it would be easier to master court life in twelfth-century Japan. The business of names was endlessly delicate and subtle, the chief medium through which status was measured and made known. Paradoxically, the more times a man was address
ed as “Mr”, the lower his standing. Such exalted individuals as Godwin or Thaine might be accorded one or two “Mr”s in a conversation; but this varied according to the substance of the conversation and the status of anyone else within earshot.

  Breaches of etiquette, conscious or otherwise, resulted in a lowering of a man’s status which was instantly and mysteriously broadcast to the whole Community. Among these, besides clumsy use of names and unwarranted criticism of the Father and his Council, were any acts which could be construed, however remotely, as selfish or inconsiderate of others, particularly those with a lower status. Virtues which earned an increase of status included physical or mental courage, generosity, personal pride, and a capacity for hard work, especially when this was of direct value to the Father. Myers, for example, Franks’s senior guard, enjoyed a status second only to Appleton’s, though he was a man of comparatively low intellect and did not serve on the Council.

  The granting or refusal of informality reflected on the status of both parties involved. Refusal was not necessarily a snub. Routledge’s status was such that he was already on surname-only terms with two of the men who had been appointed to help him with his house. But Ojukwu, a senior carpenter, was still “Mr”. Routledge had been quite wrong in thinking that the crossbow would improve his position. He was near, if not at, the bottom of the social scale.

  The Village held many other surprises. The stone and driftwood chapel drew a congregation of forty or fifty men, many of them born-agains like the chaplain, Blackshaw, himself. There were musical evenings, a darts league, a drama group, a bird-watching club. King was active in the chess circle, which attracted an unexpectedly large number of devotees.

  “You ought to join,” he said. “It’s what your game needs.”

  Routledge did not reply. He was staring at King’s small portable board, trying to find a response, any response, to King’s last move. This was the fifth time they had played: on each occasion Routledge had been thoroughly humiliated. Now he was already a rook and a knight down, and an evil-looking combination was assembling against his queen.