The Penal Colony

by Richard Herley

  “Sonar’s working!”

  And so was Routledge’s suit. No water, not even the tiniest amount, was coming in. Only his head felt wet, his face slapped by the sea and continuously washed by the rain and the heavy outflow from the deck.

  “Any leaks?” Thaine called out to his fellow swimmers.

  There were none.

  “One two three half!” Franks cried, ordering Thursby, Reynolds, and Thaine, on the starboard side, occupying positions one to three, to halve their efforts: the bows began turning in that direction.

  “Reef ahead! Gap depth three metres. Range eleven metres. All half! Three four slow! Two slow! Seven eight full! All dead slow! Nine full! Nine half! Nine slow! One ten stop! All stop! Range seven metres. Five metres. Three.”

  Below him Routledge sensed the deadly upward thrust of the rocks. Keeping himself as horizontal as possible, riding on the swell, he let the gliding momentum of the ketch take him forward and over.

  “We’re through. All half. Anyone touch?”

  When there was no response, Thaine said, “No touch.”

  The sky was so dark that Routledge could see nothing at all. Looking back towards the beach, the bulk of the cliffs seemed to form a blackness denser even than the night itself.

  “All forward! Reef ahead! All slow!”

  That reef passed; and another; and yet another. At the fifth there was much difficulty and delay. The swimmers had to reverse direction several times before Franks was satisfied. “Range nine metres,” he said. “All half.”

  As Routledge began kicking again he heard a curious noise, a ventriloquial chirping, with squeaks and chatters apparently coming from several directions at once.

  “What the hell?” Franks shouted. “The bloody sonar’s gone haywire! All stop! One two nine ten reverse! All stop! All stop!”

  The chirping grew louder, became closer, and closer still.

  Routledge felt something large and insistent pushing against his flank, investigating, nudging.

  “No!” Peagrim screamed, suddenly hysterical. “No! No! Keep away!”

  “What’s happening?” Thaine said.

  Routledge extended his free hand. Beneath the goatskin palm of his mitten he felt an inexplicably smooth, gently curving surface. In the moment before he realized what it was he was still in control of himself, still a rational human being. His brain had not yet had time to understand.

  And then it did.

  His hand was exploring the receptively stationary snout of a killer whale.

  11

  There were at least half a dozen, possibly as many again.

  Blackshaw, the chaplain, began gibbering prayers.

  “Shut up!” Ojukwu said, several times.

  Blackshaw took no notice.

  What was it Talbot had said? Killer whales never attacked people. Not unless provoked. It was imperative not to upset or excite them.

  “I told you to shut up, Creeping Jesus!”

  Routledge heard a dull thud; Blackshaw was silenced. “For God’s sake, Ojukwu! Don’t do anything sudden!”

  Why didn’t killers attack people? The taste, Talbot had said, or the strange feel of human skin. But the dry-suits smelled of pig grease and tan-liquor, and would make their wearers seem like nothing so much as some new and possibly edible sort of marine mammal. Were the whales waiting to strike? Were they puzzled? Did they think the ketch was one of their own kind, sick, perhaps, or injured, in need of rescue from these ten strangely finned creatures? In need of an escort ashore, to the beach?

  O Holy God. It was back again, nuzzling his arm, his chest.

  The chorus of chirruping had grown. There was an occasional soft report of air and spray expelled through a blowhole.

  Thaine managed to say, “They’re this side now as well.”

  “I can’t tell where we are,” Franks said. “We could be moving onto the reef.”

  The pulse length and frequency of their sonar emissions had to be interfering with the receiving transducers. For as long as the whales remained in the vicinity of the ketch, Franks and Appleton would be blind.

  There was a grating bump and Routledge felt his legs lightly touching rock. Ojukwu cried out.

  “Carr and Gunter reverse,” Thaine said. “Slowly. Very slowly. Now Peagrim and Redfern. Appleton, keep the pump going!”

  The ketch drifted backwards. The whales squeaked and chattered.

  “Are you all right, Ojukwu?” Routledge said.

  “Yeah.”

  He didn’t sound it: he sounded as though he were hurt.

  “Has your suit been torn?” Thaine said.

  “No.”

  Blackshaw began again. “Holy Father deliver us from evil! For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory!”

  Go on, you old bastard, Routledge had said, all that time ago, flinging his challenge up into the thunderstorm. Do your worst. It seemed the old bastard had been clever, biding his time, waiting his chance to answer such a challenge as it deserved.

  He was here again tonight, among the whales. He and the whales were one. There was no distinction between them. None at all.

  Blackshaw didn’t understand. The whales were not evil. If they attacked, it would be because they had decided the flippered, leathery creatures could be regarded as meat like any other. But somehow, despite his brain-numbing terror, Routledge began to know that they would not attack. They were just curious. Highly advanced, gregarious, playful, they had simply been attracted here by something new in their environment. Their power, their supreme potential for aggression and speed and mayhem, was being held in check by a consciousness that was essentially benign. The selfsame consciousness that inspired the whole world; the same that had plucked Routledge from suburbia and brought him here to this point of darkness. Errant, bumptious, obnoxious children occasionally needed to be reminded exactly who was boss.

  The pitch and intensity of the chirrups increased. Routledge heard a clear, bird-like whistle, repeated several times. The chattering grew louder. Again he felt the force of a blunt snout, pushed into his flanks, driving the lesson home. Then it was withdrawn.

  “They’re leaving!” Thursby said.

  It was true. Abruptly the chorus of chirps died almost to nothing. Two, three, four blowholes sounded, moving away, parallel with the shore. The whales had gone.

  “Is everyone all right?” Thaine said.

  “I’ve cacked myself,” Redfern said.

  “Me too,” Carr said.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Thaine said. “You won’t lose any heat because of it.”

  “Extra insulation, in fact,” Routledge said, close to weeping with relief.

  “Hey, Blackshaw,” Ojukwu said. “Sorry I hit you. But when you come it with that God jazz you make me want to puke.”

  “My prayers were answered,” Blackshaw said.

  Routledge smiled and shook his head in the darkness.

  “And mine,” Franks said, from his place at the sonar. “Let’s get back on it. Range eleven metres. Nine ten half. Eight half.”

  Routledge began to paddle his legs once more.

  “Gap depth two point five metres. Three four five half! All slow! All stop! Range four metres! Two!”

  After this there was one last reef, easy to pass. Franks relinquished the helm to Appleton and took over at the pump.

  For some time the men swam in silence. Routledge found himself becoming almost warm with the effort. He could not believe that the escape was working. The flavour of the moment was so unreal that, with the regular, easy motion of his fins, he began drifting into a sort of reverie, his thoughts about the whales growing fragmented. He started thinking of the men left behind, of King and his awkward, embarrassed farewell; of the prospects for the future now that Foster looked like becoming the new Father.

  He heard Ojukwu speaking, using his name.

  “What was that, Ojukwu? I didn’t hear.”

  Ojukwu’s voice sounded feeble and very odd. “I said, it was
you, wasn’t it? It was you put that note in my pocket.”

  Routledge was on the verge of lying. “Yes,” he said. “It was me.”

  “We appreciated that, Routledge.”

  “Ojukwu? What’s wrong?”

  Ojukwu did not answer.

  “You’ve torn your suit, haven’t you?”

  When Ojukwu again failed to reply, Routledge knew that the attempt would have to be abandoned. The cockpit hatch would have to be opened, the lading changed: and for that to happen the ketch would have to rise and make itself known to the Magic Circle.

  “Answer me, Ojukwu! Thaine! Thaine! Ojukwu’s torn his suit! We’ve got to get him on board!”

  “Did you hear that inside?” Thaine said.

  “Yes,” Appleton said. “I’m shutting the inlet valve now. Try to get him out of the water. We’ll break the hatch seals just as soon as we can.”

  The handgrips were so spaced that the swimmers were set far enough apart not to interfere with one another’s movements. Ojukwu’s handgrip was about two metres along from Routledge’s.

  “Can you help me, Blackshaw?” Routledge called out. He checked his safety line and began groping his way forward along the hull.

  Even before he reached Ojukwu’s empty handgrip he had guessed the truth.

  Ojukwu, the dying Ojukwu, had cast himself adrift.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  It was no use searching. They had no ropes or lifejackets, no means of finding or retrieving him. They did not know how far away he might be, or in what direction. There was nothing to be done except open the valve, work the pump once more, and continue, guided now solely by the compass. Reynolds, who had occupied the position on the starboard side corresponding to Ojukwu’s, unfastened his safety line and with great caution moved back, past Thaine and Redfern, to the stern. Taking up a position between Carr and Gunter, he tied his line to Gunter’s grip.

  At midnight, after two hours of paddling, the swell grew noticeably rougher. Franks said they had emerged from the shelter of the Village headland and were probably about level with the Mare and Foal. From now on they would be in open ocean.

  The swimmers rested for ten minutes, rising and falling, pitching and rolling with the ketch. Routledge queasily shut his eyes. Sea-sickness aside, he already felt exhausted, utterly drained, and he began seriously to doubt his ability to keep up. The other men had been prepared to some extent with three weeks of special exercises; they had eaten a high-carbohydrate diet, increased in the closing stages to four or five thousand calories a day. Routledge had been on this diet too, but only since Tuesday.

  A wave cuffed his face and he spluttered. He had to keep awake, to draw on his innermost reserves of strength.

  The rain had become less heavy, but the night was just as dark and there was no differentiation between land and sky. Intermittently, when the wavecrests allowed, the flash of the southern lightship could be seen, red from this angle, indicating danger. Its sister flash, from the northern lightship, was as yet obscured by the cliffs of the long north-western coast.

  It struck him then for the first time that he was no longer on the penal colony. The sea no longer held him captive. There was space between the island and himself. Even if he were dead by morning, he knew that now, at this moment on Friday night, he was free.

  They went on again, and it soon became increasingly difficult to make effective progress. But then, off the end of Azion Point, they encountered a tidal stream which bore them west by north-west, roughly in the direction they wanted to take, and by one o’clock, when the impetus of the stream faded, Appleton said they were more or less on schedule. The northern lightship had been visible for some time. The ketch was at least three or four kilometres from the coast.

  By the time Franks gave the order to use the rangefinder, Routledge was light-headed with nausea and fatigue. His whole body seemed to be lagging several seconds behind, yet his legs had continued kicking, responding to some other command than mere will. He had become an automaton, a slave to keeping going, to the forward motion of the ketch.

  “Stop swimming, Routledge!” Peagrim said.

  Redfern opened a compartment in the transom. He took out the rangefinder, gave it to Thaine. Just above the surface of the deck, below the sprinklebar, Routledge saw a faint yellow glow. It belonged to a miniature penlight, encased in transparent polythene and taped to the body of the rangefinder. The bulb was just strong enough to illuminate the white tips of the crossbar. Thaine’s face remained in darkness.

  Routledge waited, his head hanging, his mouth barely clear of the sea.

  After an interminable period, Thaine said, “We’ve done it.”

  “Are you sure?” said the loudspeakers, Franks’s voice.

  “There’s even a bit to spare. We must’ve been in another current.”

  The flow from the sprinklebar continued for a while longer, pumping out the tank. As the tank emptied, Routledge’s handgrip rose a centimetre or two, three, four. From the cockpit came the thumping of a mallet. Franks or Appleton was freeing the turnbuckles.

  “It can’t be happening,” Routledge breathed, as the cockpit hatch opened, releasing into the rain an indirect glow from the cabin and sonar lights. The hatch was twisted and drawn inside. Franks’s head appeared.

  Without speaking, he handed out unwrapped chocolate bars to the swimmers. Routledge could not face his. He had even forgotten what came next. Then he saw. Appleton was passing the water-filled goatskins up to Franks, one by one. Franks rolled each of them over the side. The ketch began rising more quickly.

  Peagrim was the smallest. He was due on board first. Helped by Carr and Reynolds, Franks pulled him over the stern and into the cockpit. The flow of goatskins resumed. As the skins were jettisoned so too were the timber cradles in which they had been held.

  Redfern went inside next. Blackshaw. Thursby. More goatskins rolling out, rolling into the sea, rolling submerged, rolling away across the Atlantic to be washed up in Wales or Maine or Trinidad.

  By now the ketch was riding high. Routledge had lost his handgrip. Only his safety line remained to preserve him.

  “That’s the last skin gone,” Franks said.

  Appleton clambered from the cockpit, wearing a safety harness, a flashlight strapped to his forehead.

  Routledge could not go aboard yet. He was one of the six swimmers who had to wait while the forward deck shell came off and the mast sections were unpacked and assembled. The mizzen mast was raised first, then the mainmast. The rigging and sailbags emerged from the cockpit, were handed forward to Appleton.

  “Quick!” Thaine shouted. “Kill the lights! Kill the lights!”

  Routledge did not understand.

  “Appleton,” Thaine said, “do you hear it?”

  “Yes.”

  Routledge listened and heard it too, the drone of aero engines coming up from the south-east. From the direction of the mainland.

  Carr said, “It’s the helicopter.”

  “They’ve spotted us,” Gunter said.

  “Can you see anything, Appleton?”

  “No.”

  The noise grew louder. Straining to hear, Routledge persuaded himself there was another, underlying throb not possessed by the helicopter’s engines. Then he changed his mind. Carr was right: this really was the helicopter. Twenty minutes ago, out in space, or on one of the lightships, somewhere in the silicon microcircuitry of the computers, a square metre of wet plywood surrounded by hooded human heads, dwarfed by the vastness of the sea, of the planet surface, had been enough to divert a flow of electrons and throw a digital switch. The ketch, a tiny glowing blip on a phosphor screen, had shown up at last.

  Away to the south he saw the flashing green, red and white navigation lights, approaching at a slow but relentless rate.

  “Godwin got it wrong,” Carr said. “Five kilometres, he reckoned. Fifty, more like. The launch’ll be here next.”

  “Shut up!” Thaine said. “Shut up and listen!”

&
nbsp; “It’s a plane,” Redfern said, after a moment.

  “That’s right! It’s a plane! And it’s going past! Look!”

  Without knowing the range, it was impossible to know the size or altitude of the aircraft, but now it seemed its course was taking it farther to the west. It was not going to come any closer than this. And, as it drew level and continued on its way, as it faded into the distance, the engine note sounded so different that Routledge wondered how, even for a second, he or anyone else could have confused it with the familiar whine and clatter of the helicopter.

  “Turboprops,” Thaine said.

  The cabin lights came on again. Appleton resumed his work with the rigging. Peagrim helped Franks to fit the rudder. Thaine and Carr went aboard. Then it was Routledge’s turn. Hands and arms reached down. The encouraging voices receded. He felt his wrists being grasped, felt the strain on his shoulders and ribcage, and it was all too much for a mind already wandering on the shores of release, craving the dead weight of the numb anaesthetic that now fell in on him from above. With a soft, glad, yielding roar it pushed him downwards and back, towards Ojukwu, down into the fading depths, down and down and down.

  When he awoke only a minute or two had passed. His suit had been removed and he was lying in the cramped space of the cabin, occupying the whole length of the starboard bench, looking up at the dimly lit plywood roof. Beside him Thaine was busy with the lockers, handing out sweaters and trousers.

  “What happened?” Routledge said.

  “You conked out. You all right now?”

  Routledge sat up, leaning on an elbow. He felt deeply ashamed of his weakness. Handing out the clothing had been one of his tasks. “Yes,” he said. “I’m all right. I’m sorry. What can I do?”

  “Not much. Everyone’s on board.” Thaine squeezed himself against the bulkhead and allowed Carr and Thursby to go past, moving forward.

  Routledge saw that he was in the way. He got himself to a sitting position, accepted a pair of trousers and wriggled into them. “Where’s the best place for me?”

  “Aft.”

  There was no room to spare except in the companionway next to the cockpit, where Franks had switched on the binnacle light and was holding the tiller.