The Penal Colony

by Richard Herley

  Thaine had devised one, but Routledge had suggested another, even simpler, consisting of a T-shape in plywood. The perpendicular of the T would be thirty centimetres long; the width of the bar would be determined by schoolboy trigonometry based on the distance between the lightships. Held horizontally, with the bottom of the T touching the chin, the bar, its tips stained white on the observer’s side, would be aligned with the two flashing lights. If the lights fell between the tips the ketch would be over seven kilometres from the coast and so could safely surface.

  “Good,” Appleton said, putting his notebook away. “Fine.” He retrieved the protractor from the top of the small oil drum, brought specially by Routledge, which they had been using as a base. Appleton closed the limbs and slipped the protractor inside his coat: the fix had been accomplished in less than half a minute. There was little chance that this fix, any more than the others, had attracted the attention of the Service. For safety’s sake the fixes had been spread over a period of a month.

  Routledge picked up the drum and they set off, Myers leading the way, following the western path along the peninsula.

  For Routledge this terrain held private memories. Here, at this rock rising boatlike from the turf: this was where he had shot the wild man. No bones were visible on the top. The birds, or foxes, or other men, had removed them.

  The place seemed different now, tamer, smaller in scale. Routledge’s nightmares had ceased. In fact, he found himself able to regard his former feelings about the incident with what amounted almost to detachment. The wild man had played and lost the fatal game he had himself insisted upon. As with Gazzer and Tortuga, Routledge had not wanted any part of it; had been innocent of malice. And, just as with Gazzer and Tortuga, Routledge had taken the correct and necessary steps to win.

  It was hard, but then Sert itself was hard. The slack, ill-defined morality of his upbringing had no place here. He understood now and approved of the way Franks ran the Village. The initiation procedure was cruel and harsh, often, doubtless, unfair. It was wasteful of men and abilities. But, like natural selection, it worked.

  In the same way, Franks’s right to the helicopter drops could not be judged by fuzzy mainland standards. He got the drops because he had won that particular game. Again, hard: but not as hard as the consequences of losing.

  Routledge glanced over to the right, up at the ridge which hid the ruins from view.

  “What’s on your mind?” Appleton said, drawing level.

  “The monastery.”

  Appleton grunted. “There’s some stone there we ought to take. Be handy for paving.”

  Except during his patrol duties, Appleton rarely left the Village. He had said he had come today for the exercise. Routledge felt there was another motive. Appleton may have been checking that this morning’s fix, like the ones last month, was being correctly taken: his life, after all, might depend on it.

  Since that excursion to Azion Point he had become much more friendly. He seemed, in tune with several others, to be responding to the changes that, difficult to define, Routledge had felt developing within himself. He had been admitted to informal terms with Tragasch, with Fitzmaurice, even with the undemonstrative Scammell.

  In the past few weeks his status had risen: he did not know how far. Neither his academic abilities nor his contribution to the escape project had earned him any appreciable points. What benefit he had accrued for working for Godwin and Thaine had come because he had applied himself every day and willingly done whatever had been required of him. Neither, it now appeared, had it passed unnoticed how hard he had worked to finish his house on time.

  He had revised his opinion of Appleton. The man was a stickler for what he believed to be right and true: for the interests and welfare of the Village. He cared nothing for popularity, yet was regarded with profound respect, almost veneration, by the whole Community. And, hidden below dense layers of reserve, visible only to those to whom he chose to show it, Routledge had detected in Appleton a keenly observant sense of the ridiculous.

  When they got to the bungalow he accompanied Appleton to the door of Franks’s office.

  The visit had been arranged yesterday. Franks was expecting them. With a gentle knock on the panel, Appleton went inside and sought permission for Routledge to enter.

  Franks was sitting by the window, in the tapestry-covered armchair, pencil in hand, a file in his lap, more files and papers on the low table beside him. “Good morning, Mr Routledge.”

  “Good morning, Father.”

  Routledge had never been in this room before. It adjoined the laboratory, where the Council met and new arrivals were interviewed, and through its French windows gave Routledge an unfamiliar perspective of the back garden, the line of larches, Godwin’s workshop. Godwin was there now, his head bent over his bench.

  “This won’t take long,” Appleton said.

  The left-hand wall was dominated by the warden’s 1:10,000 map of the island, showing place-names, contours, tidal zones, vegetation, and the various survey stations used in studying the animals and plants.

  “Do you want to take it off the wall?” Franks said.

  “It’d be much easier if we did,” Appleton said.

  Using a screwdriver attachment on his pocket knife, Appleton unfastened the perspex sheet and with Routledge’s help lifted it down. They carefully unpeeled the map.

  “Shall I clear my desk?” Franks said.

  “There’s no need. We’ll take it into the lab.”

  Franks came to watch. Routledge and Appleton laid the perspex sheet across two trestle tables and spread the map across it. Appleton produced his notebook.

  With Thaine’s tape measure and a large pair of folding-leg compasses borrowed from the carpentry shop, Routledge ascertained the distance on the paper between Azion Point and Beacon Point, 401 millimetres, and drew an arc with this radius from each of the two Points. From Azion Point he raised an arc of 663 millimetres, which was the reading taken on Beacon Point multiplied by 401 and divided by 500, the distance from the inner to the outer nail on each limb of the protractor. With a pencil and straight-edge he joined Beacon Point to the place where this arc crossed the arc he had just raised from Beacon Point. Performing the reverse operation on Azion Point left him with two straight lines which intersected somewhere out to sea about four kilometres south of Beacon Point. This was the position of the southern lightship. It fell beyond the edge of the map, so he took some extra paper from Franks to make an extension.

  He next plotted the position of the northern lightship. Stretching the tape measure between the two points gave a converted distance of 16,060 metres.

  “Say 16,100 to allow for inaccuracies,” Routledge said.

  Franks smiled. “I’ll buy that.” He turned his head. “Come in, Stamper. Come in.”

  The door to the corridor was ajar: Stamper had knocked on it anyway.

  Stamper appeared extremely agitated. Routledge had never seen him like this before.

  “Father,” Stamper said. “I must have a private word.”

  “If it’s not a personal matter, you can say anything in front of Routledge here.”

  For a moment Routledge did not realize the honour that had just been done him. He was too worried by Stamper’s expression, by the growing premonition that something terrible had happened.

  “There’s an outsider on the porch,” Stamper said. “He says he wants to see you.”

  “An outsider? How did he get into the Village?”

  “Through the gate. Mr Myers took the decision.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Obadiah Walker. Father, he knows about the boat.”

  4

  “That’s OK, Wayne,” Martinson said. “I understand.”

  “Just protectin’ my interests, Jim.”

  “Sure. Sure. I’d do the same if I was you.”

  “’Nother thing. Ain’t safe to push Gomm and Wilmot no more. When the time come, that time enough.”

  “An
d Feely?”

  Pope grinned, showing his yellow teeth.

  “Want to know a secret, Wayne?”

  “Spill.”

  “You and me, we speak the same lingo.”

  This was their fifth meeting in all, the third at Piper’s Beach. At the second, on the day after Boxing Day, Pope had brought the binoculars and Martinson had known that everything at last was about to go his way. Their earliest conversations had been almost like a ritual dance: elaborately wary, replete with buried meanings, of full significance only to the participants. Later, when it had become apparent that they did indeed speak the same lingo, Pope had been the first to open up.

  “What’s happening about the binocs?” Martinson said.

  “Archie blame Des now. Reckon he leave the door unlocked. Des get a bit of a smackin’. Still, he like that anyway. He like that fine.”

  “Yeah? Never did before. When he was with Peto.”

  “Do now.”

  “You in’t no tin roof, Wayne?”

  “Me? No. Not special.” Moving his hips back and forth in unison, he made a brief pumping movement with his right hand. “Any hole do Wayne. I takes it as it come.”

  “Why you doing this?”

  “Fun, man. Laughs.”

  “And the island.”

  “That too.”

  “You’ll be king. Wayne the First of Sert.”

  “Might wears purple and swaps my name. Be the Pope instead. Pope Wayne.”

  Martinson shook his head and smiled. Seated on a flat rock, he was popping the bladders on a strand of green-black weed. He let the waves break a few more times before speaking again. He liked the stertorous noise they made, like giants breathing. Crash. Drag. Crash.

  “So I’m on me own,” he said.

  “’Fraid so, Jim. ’Cept the rope. I’ll do that OK.”

  “Comes down to the when.”

  “Can’t be yet awhile. Not till the weather warm up.”

  “Don’t he never take the shutter down in winter?”

  “No.”

  “Couldn’t you unfix it, like? On the night?”

  “No. Couldn’t do that. You got to wait, Jim. With the curtain it be easy.”

  “When you say warm weather, what do you mean? March?”

  “April. Could be May.”

  “May!”

  “April. Usually April.”

  It was now early February. Two months. Eight weeks, maybe ten. A long time to wait. But then he had been waiting five years to hear Franks, disillusioned at the last, raise a despairing voice to his Maker. If he had to wait another five years it would still be worth it. What were ten weeks, balanced in the scale of Armageddon? And he could use the interval to gather yet more intelligence about the Village, to continue probing at Nackett’s boys. Bubbles was in the bag. With Bubbles he had already begun to plot and plan.

  Nackett would die a rapid death. He was lucky. Unlike Pope. Pope would be taking Nackett’s place. On the right hand side. Feely would be in Houlihan’s place, on the left. But, unlike those of the man in the middle, their legs would be broken and for them it would be comparatively merciful.

  April. When did Easter fall this year?

  “All right,” Martinson said. “We’ll do it your way. Let’s have a date.”

  “April 15th.”

  “You sure?”

  “’Pend on the weather. Could be sooner than that. Could be later. And don’t forget the moon.”

  “We need a signal. Hang something from the gallery.”

  “Too chancey. I tells you what, Jim. Every day after April 15th, you look here on the beach. If’n this rock gets turned upside downside, you know that’s the night to move.”

  Martinson bent his head to examine the rock on which he was seated. “All right.”

  “Till then I don’t wants to see you no more. If you got a ’mergency, send Obie with some bullshitty message, then I’ll knows to meets you here. If I gots one, I’ll come to the town. Right?”

  “Right.”

  Pope glanced round. No one was in view. “Like I said, if you get caught, hard shit.”

  “I won’t get caught.”

  “See you in the spring, then, Jim.”

  “Yeah.”

  The pact now settled, Pope turned and started to move away.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Obie began to wonder whether he had made a mistake, the worst and last in the long chain of appalling blunders that constituted his life. The way Myers was looking at him, the way he was being kept waiting outside, the way Stamper and Myers had conversed in low tones: all this was leading him to believe that he should have listened to his own original counsel of caution and stayed away. Because, even if they acceded to his demands, the best he could eventually hope for was a faceful of TK-6 and the splattering, torrential impact of the batch of Prison Service machine-gun rounds reserved specially for him.

  The prospect of escape, however remote, had been too intoxicating to resist; setting foot in the Village had instantly sobered him up. He should definitely have kept further watch and then reported everything to Jim. Definitely.

  “Where d’you think you’re going?” Myers said.

  “Got to take a leak.”

  “Sit down.”

  Obie decided not to protest. “Cold out here,” he said.

  “Shut up,” Myers said, flatly.

  “Suck my big toe, Myers.” Obie was about to say more, but Myers moved the hatchet just slightly and Obie remembered that his own weapon, one of Jim’s machetes, had been confiscated at the gate. No point in antagonizing the hired help. The goons.

  Obie eyed Myers’s pristine boots and clothes, his warm jacket. Myers was clean. His beard was trimmed, his hair cut short. His skin looked healthy. No blotches or pimples from eating crap all winter long. Since Nackett had taken over the flock, Obie had received scarcely any milk or cheese. The villagers not only had goats, lots of them: they had cows too. Pigs, chickens. Vegetables. Fruit.

  In fact, they had everything.

  The door opened and Stamper came out. “All right,” he said to Obie. “You can come in now.”

  Reluctantly, Obie rose to his feet.

  “You said you wanted to see the Father, didn’t you?”

  “Changed my mind.”

  “Tough,” Myers said, rising himself.

  “He’s waiting,” Stamper said.

  “I got to take a JR.”

  “Later.” Myers took his elbow.

  Obie angrily shook himself free. “OK,” he said. “Later.”

  He was not prepared for the inside of the bungalow. In the past five years he had forgotten what the interior of a civilized building was like. He had learned to accept as normal the lack of all facilities, the vandalism, the rotting boards, the commingled stink of stale bird-oil, urine, excrement, vomit, semen. He had almost forgotten what a window did, or what a hinge was for. And this was just the hallway. When Stamper opened the door to the large room where Franks was sitting with Appleton, Obie felt himself crushed by the shock of realizing how far he had fallen and how much he had lost. This was like the heartbreaking contrast between the cellblock and the two minutes the parole-seeking con spent standing in the carpeted, picture-hung cosiness of the governor’s office; like it, but infinitely multiplied by the knowledge that the denial of these treasures extended not just to the end of his sentence, but for ever.

  “What is it you want?” Franks said, from behind the trestle table.

  He did not offer Obie a seat.

  When Obie didn’t answer, Franks said, “Mr Myers tells me you seem to think we’re building a boat.”

  Obie had come this far. He reminded himself there was no point in stopping now. “In Star Cove. In the cave.”

  “What an extraordinary notion.”

  “Don’t give me that, Franks.” Now he had started talking, Obie found himself continuing volubly, simultaneously releasing all his pent-up thoughts and frantically trying to say the right words to stave off w
hat he now feared they were going to do to him. “I know, and one of my mates knows, and if I don’t come back he’s goin’ to tell everyone in the town, so don’t get no ideas about boddin’ me to keep me quiet. We seen you buildin’ it and me and my mate want in. We want to get off the island much as you. That’s all. That’s it. That’s our price. Way I see it you ain’t got no choice.”

  Franks seemed amused. “We have every choice. Let us first assume that you have put the correct interpretation on what you imagine you have seen. Let us assume that we are not merely building a cheese store in the cave.”

  Cheese store? Cheese store? Obie was about to panic, but then took strength from the memory of Appleton and Jenkins on the cliff. And why bother to hide a cheese store from the Eye? Why use dawn and dusk and fog to take the timber down? And why run daytime patrols to protect a few wooden shelves?

  “Let us assume, as I say, that you are right. We can then either believe you when you say that you have a mate who knows, or we can disbelieve you. If we believe you, what is to stop us from grabbing your dick with a pair of pliers and squeezing till you tell us his name? What is then to stop us from going to Old Town now to find and kill him before he suspects you won’t be coming back?”

  “I wouldn’t tell you his name. I’d tell you someone else’s.”

  “Perhaps. Or perhaps, and which is more likely, no one else knows anything about this. Perhaps you’re trying to four-flush us, Obie. What odds would you give on that, Mr Appleton?”

  “Good odds.”

  “Good odds, Obie. You heard Mr Appleton. Good odds that it would be safer to kill you now. After, of course, we have grabbed your dick with our pliers and squeezed until you’ve told us whatever else you might know.” He smiled icily. “Come to think of it, just what have you seen?”

  “I seen enough. With the binocs.”

  “What binocs?”

  “Barratt’s.”

  Franks studied him without speaking. He sat back and looked away, apparently considering what to do. He stroked his face a few times and drew air between his teeth. Finally he decided. He raised his eyes to Myers, who was standing by the door.

  “Kill him,” he said.