The Penal Colony
Page 29
A faint gleam of bald skin identified Houlihan’s head. As Pope had predicted, he was not alone. Both men were fast asleep, lying on their backs.
Martinson crouched down by the mattress. For a moment he thought the other man was Desborough, whose grief at Peto’s passing had, it seemed, taken second place to considerations of the practical merits of remaining here as Houlihan’s toss-artist; but, although fair-haired, this kid was not Desborough, but the new meat Nackett had acquired on the day of Peto’s death.
From the back of his belt Martinson took a long-bladed survival knife which Tompkins had lost in the wars. In sinister Japanese steel, with a serrated spine and a half-kilo grip, the knife was Martinson’s favourite, lovingly brought to scalpel sharpness and, now that the crossbow had gone, the pride of his collection.
He peeled back the bedclothes. Houlihan was wearing a vest, his little friend nothing at all. Houlihan was breathing the more heavily, so Martinson killed the boy first, placing the point directly above his heart and banging down the pommel with the heel of his right hand. Blood welled up, its animal stink filling Martinson’s nostrils.
The soft noise of the blow, the victim’s quick writhe, seemed to have registered with Houlihan, who uttered a dreaming groan. Being careful not to touch any blood, Martinson pulled out the knife and quickly positioned it over Houlihan’s breast.
This was the bit he had been looking forward to. He paused, savouring the moment, before he struck.
Now that it was done he knew he should get out, but he remained there, crouching by the mattress, feeling curiously empty and unsatisfied. He wanted something more, something else: he did not know what.
In the heap of clothing by the mattress he found a pair of cotton underpants which he wrapped around his knife and placed in the spreading pool of blood on Houlihan’s chest. When they were soaked, Martinson went to the wall. He was about to write a message, smear it in red, a cryptic message for Pope and all the world to see. Eli, Eli.
He stayed his hand. There was yet a part of him which would not allow it. If he were to commit that sacrilege he knew he would be condemned, finally, irredeemably, to the damnation which he already believed was his. He did not care about that; but still he did not write.
Instead he let the underpants drop on Houlihan’s face, and wiped the knife clean on the bedcovers.
It was good to get outside once more into the cleanness of the night. Martinson climbed down as rapidly and quietly as he could, keeping especial watch on the window in the fourth floor. Pope did not appear.
“Anyone see us?” he whispered to Obie, pulling on his dark trousers and sweater and then, having removed one of the two pairs of socks, his boots.
“No.”
“Sure?”
“I’m sure. You was gone a long time. What happened?”
“Santa delivered the goods. Don’t he always?” Martinson glanced at the mess window, just above them and to the right. “Now let’s get back to Toytown and cut off Dave Nackett’s balls.”
8
Who would lead the Village when Franks had gone? How would the new Father be chosen? At last Friday’s Council meeting these questions had again been raised and again been left unsettled.
As to the means of choosing, some sort of election seemed the likeliest, contrary as this went to the way the Community had been operated hitherto. But then many changes – such as the abolition of the initiation procedure – had overtaken the Community in recent weeks and months, and many more were bound to follow Franks’s departure.
Of his councillors who would remain, none possessed anything remotely resembling his personal magnetism. Godwin, or Sibley, the most senior, were nonetheless improbable candidates for an election. Routledge had already decided he would not put himself forward, even if pressed to do so, which he thought so unlikely as not to be worth further consideration. He was the most junior councilman. If Stamper and Mitchell held no chance, which common opinion had already agreed, then he could hold no more. Besides, he had no taste for leadership. He simply did not want the job.
That left only one councilman: Foster. Given his views on the outsiders, he would be a most popular choice. If Foster became the Father he would immediately declare war on the outsiders and do his best to kill them all, regardless of whatever reaction this would have on the mainland.
Routledge was too worried and frightened to sleep. It was not so much the prospect of Foster as Father that he feared; that was only a contingency and could for the moment be pushed out of mind. There were far worse, far more immediate problems facing him, facing everyone. The alliance of the two outsider camps had at last taken place. Obie had met Johnson, Foster’s deputy, this morning to deliver the news: the attack on the Village would be coming tomorrow afternoon. Martinson had personally killed Nackett and Houlihan six nights ago, on 21 April. On that same night there had begun a violent realignment of Old Town and the lighthouse, fought out over the succeeding days and now concluded. Although Martinson was the guiding spirit, the new leader was ostensibly a man called Wayne Pope. Pope had been one of Houlihan’s most trusted advisers, a member of his brain gang, all but one of whom had eventually sided with the traitor. According to Obie, the exception was being held prisoner in the lighthouse, awaiting death by crucifixion. Martinson was planning the same fate for Franks.
Had Routledge not met Martinson and spent time in his company, he would have dismissed such hideous talk out of hand. But now he took it seriously, as did Franks and the whole Council. And he took seriously the warning by Obie that he himself also featured prominently on the list of those for whom special punishment was being reserved. It seemed that Martinson had forgiven neither the theft of the crossbow nor the damage Routledge had done to his house.
“Prine?” Routledge said. “Are you awake?”
No answer. How could he be sleeping?
Prine had completed his probation. At the end of last week he had been made a full member of the Community. He knew as much about the attack as anyone outside the Council, and yet here he was, fast asleep.
If the outsiders were repulsed at all, the man responsible would be Thaine. Routledge wished Thaine were here now, in the Village; but for the past ten days he had been in the cave, alone or with one or more of the carpenters, finishing the ketch. Today the sky had been clear and no one had been able to get down there to warn him. Thaine did not know the date of the attack.
The preparations for defence had been stepped up. Almost everything that could have been done had been done. Foster and Johnson and their helpers had put both outsider camps under full-time surveillance; a system of relayed signals, using Morse-flashing torches in the darkness and semaphore by day, was keeping the Council informed.
Routledge pressed a button on his watch and read the display. Three forty-eight. Less than an hour till dawn. He had not slept at all, but it was no use trying any more. The night for him was over. Besides, he was due at the bungalow at five.
He climbed out of bed and slipped his feet into his boots. Taking his pocket lighter, he moved to the door and let himself out into the cool, sweet air drifting in from the cliffs. Except for the faint noise of a quiet and distant jet, passing westwards at high altitude, and except for the whisper of waves in Vanston Cove, he could hear no sound.
Tonight it seemed there were more stars than ever. Mainland skies were always polluted, both with industrial haze and with the reflected glare of sodium streetlamps. Here the atmosphere was pure; here the full extent of the heavens was revealed to view. He looked over towards the east, towards the place where the sun would rise. The horizon there was still black.
Entering the latrine, he lit the candle, lifted it on its driftwood sconce and checked for earwigs. In spring and summer especially, the latrines attracted large numbers of these insects, active by night and the quarry in the sport of “wig-frizzling”. Much too sadistic for Routledge’s taste, this involved using the candle to burn them alive. His use of the candle consisted merely in m
aking sure there were none on the seat or likely to be swept into the bag and drowned.
Rescuing the fourth or fifth earwig with a folded sheet of lavatory paper, Routledge’s formless flow of thought was interrupted by a remote sound of shouting. An instant later the gong at the main gate was frenziedly struck, over and over again; there was fresh shouting, much nearer at hand, and the frantic ringing of the gate gong was taken up by the deeper tone of the gong on the bungalow veranda.
He blew out the candle and, shouting now himself, shouting to his neighbours in their beds, ran back to his house and lit the lamp.
“Prine!” he cried, pulling on his outdoor clothes. “Get up, for Christ’s sake get up! Get to your station! The outsiders are coming!”
The precinct was already alive with activity when Routledge stepped up to the veranda, dodging the buckets of water with which the woodwork and floorboards were being doused. He noticed that the emergency shutters, specially prepared during the preceding weeks but kept concealed from the outsiders’ view, had already been screwed into place, and the front door had been reinforced with a steel panel. Little was being said. Everyone knew his allotted task; the work was proceeding with a smoothly ominous efficiency. As he approached the doorway, Routledge almost bumped into Appleton, who, with a clipboard, was just coming out.
“We’ve nearly an hour yet,” Appleton told him. “Johnson’s signal said they were massing at the lighthouse.”
“How many?”
“Worse than we thought. Two hundred plus. In one group. It looks like Foster was right. They’re probably coming straight for the bungalow.”
So much for Obie’s warning. He knew he wouldn’t be getting a place on the ketch. “Obie’s betrayed us,” Routledge said.
“I doubt it. He doesn’t want Martinson in charge of the island, especially when any one of us might live to tell the tale. He had no choice but to be straight. Martinson must have switched the plans at the last minute. Maybe he smelled a rat.” Appleton held out his clipboard and brushed past. “Oi, over here with that cart!”
Routledge had the feeling that, like himself, the Father had not slept during the night. He was unshaven and his eyes were dark with fatigue; when Routledge entered his office he saw a bottle of paracetamol tablets on the desk, a half-empty glass of water beside it. Conferring with Mitchell and Sibley, Franks seemed shorter and smaller than Routledge had hitherto believed him to be, and with a sense of alarm Routledge realized what had escaped him before: the Father was ill. He had the look of a man in perpetual pain. Somehow, previously he had been able to keep it hidden. In normal hours, when everything was under his control, that must have been possible.
“Mr Routledge,” he said, when Mitchell and Sibley turned to leave. He looked beyond Routledge’s shoulder: more men were gathering at the door. “It’s going to be the frontal assault, we think. You’ll be taking Mr Thaine’s place. You know what to do. And I want you to assemble Mr Appleton’s squad for him. He’s a bit busy at the moment. Your men will defend B2 as planned. Fall back to the gate if necessary. If they get over the boundary you come back with the rest of us to protect the precinct. I repeat, don’t open up unless they threaten the bungalow, and even then not unless there is absolutely no alternative. Understand?”
“I understand,” Routledge said, wanting to say something more, to express concern for his health, to convey some message of loyalty and support, but this was not the moment for that.
∗ ∗ ∗
Before coming to Sert, Martinson, like, he supposed, everyone else, had been fully exposed to drugs. At primary school they had sniffed glue and butane; at the comprehensive and afterwards it had been crack, PCP, ether, heaven’s gate, reds, grass, shit, uppers, downers, bennies, zoots, speed, heroin: the list went on and on. He had been friendless even then, but still the others had offered and cajoled. He had refused every time, despite the opprobrium and ridicule this had earned. He had not refused for his grandmother’s sake, but because he had felt no need of an artificial high. Compared with the supreme, the antarctic purity of his vision, everything else was mud and shadow. Later he had become increasingly aware of its order and purpose, the deeper meanings made manifest in symbols. It had been building all his life, this irresistible journey into the heart of things, into the centre of the universe itself. He was a tuning fork. Closing on the centre, he had recognized the harmony and known it as his own. And today, this morning, in this mystical April dawn, the vibrations had coincided and there was no more division between out and in: he was the centre and the centre was himself. He was a giant. He was unstoppable.
It did not matter that the first attack had been repulsed, that his army had temporarily scattered. Some had fallen, hit by spears or crossbow bolts. Some had been cut down with axes and scythes. Some had fallen in the tangle of the boundary fence and been dispatched with hammers. Many had run along the border to get in elsewhere, and the chapel had been torched; but most had simply retreated and regrouped. With Pope giving the orders, they had advanced again, slightly more disciplined, and driven the villagers back through the gate, back into Franks’s territory. With the Village force in rapid retreat, the real fighting had begun.
Bubbles was now in possession of the workshop under the trees. It had been ransacked; smoke was beginning to pour from the broken window. Gomm was besieging the other workshops and the Village houses.
The bungalow too was still being held. Franks was sure to be in there. The windows and the glass doors of his office had been protected with wooden shuttering, obviously prepared well in advance, just like the villagers’ battle plans and their armoury of spears and barbed-wire morningstars. He must have known about the attack. Someone, Obie perhaps, had been playing a double game. Martinson had not seen Obie since the first skirmish at the gate. If he were not already dead, Martinson would question him later. And if it turned out that Obie had been responsible for this debacle he would soon find himself on the top of Pulpit Head, nailed up beside Franks, Pope and Feely, facing the ocean and the broad southern sky.
Martinson, Pope, and Craddock had hastily arranged a plan of attack, taking the bungalow from the side and rear where it was most vulnerable. Pope had elected to approach the side. Martinson, leading his contingent of forty or fifty men across the garden, began making for the rear.
Almost as he reached the edge of the crazy paving, the big shutters fell or were pushed forward from the doors and hit the ground with a crash. The glass had been slid back: the furnished interior of the room was suddenly laid open, with figures in the background and some at the front, holding what appeared to be some sort of nozzle, enclosed in perforated metal, connected to a hose and then to a steel tank. At the mouth of the nozzle Martinson glimpsed a subdued and faintly sinister glow of heat, like the resting flame of a blowlamp; among those in the room he saw Franks, and among those with the nozzle he recognized Jenkins, and before he could twist and turn aside the glow exploded and blossomed into a roaring nimbus of flame. The blast pushed him off his feet and he was on the ground, half on the stones and half on the lawn. Everything had become orange. The grass blades before his eyes were shimmering slivers of bronze; heat, not air, was what his lungs now breathed. For that long, floating moment he became a salamander. The moment ended with a choking stench of paraffin and the realization that he was on fire. His beard, his hair, his clothes, were burning. Rolling over and over, away from the heat and across the dew-soaked turf, he beat at himself and managed to put out the flames.
It was then that he saw the huge silhouette of the helicopter overhead. Without his knowledge it had arrived and was hovering above the bungalow and garden. As it passed above him he glimpsed a crewman leaning out, directing another nozzle-like object downwards, black and small and threatening; in his confusion Martinson half expected this to spout more destruction, but it was only a camera, a harmless video camera. Louder even than the scream of the engines, he heard an amplified voice shouting unintelligible orders to those below.
The helicopter had slid sideways and was hanging twenty metres above the precinct. “Stop fighting!” its voice was saying. “Stop fighting or we’ll use gas! Stop fighting!”
Martinson could not see Franks among the group with the flamethrower, which now was being dragged across the lawn towards the workshop under the trees. That meant he was still in the house.
As if in slow motion, as if in a dream, Martinson examined himself and found that he was whole. There was an iron bar, not his, lying on the charred surface of the grass. He picked it up and, to the blaring helicopter’s refrain, started for the open bungalow doors.
“Stop fighting! Stop fighting!”
Mixed with something bright yellow to make it visible, the TK-6 began streaming from outlets in the helicopter’s flanks, driven down into the precinct and dispersed by the wind from the rotors. The pilot descended even lower and flew above the bungalow roof.
Martinson had almost reached the doorway when the gas hit him. The effect was instantaneous: an acrid burning in the sinuses and throat, a feeling of needles jabbing at the eyes, disorientation, weakness, loss of control. He wanted to fall to his knees and cover his head, but he kept on, up the step and into Franks’s office. He stumbled, put out his hand to steady himself on the tapestry-covered wing of an armchair, and sought in these last few seconds to find his enemy’s face among those in the room.