2184

by Martin Parish

  "That's Cavendish Road," said our companion. "We'll come back here in a minute." He rebuffed any questions we asked him with monosyllables, so I knew little about him beyond what he'd told us before. It occurred to me that, if he were headed to London, we could trade part of our fifty nationals for passage down the river - and reach London in under 48 hours. The Mods seldom interfered with river traffic and we'd be relatively safe. I decided to keep this new plan to myself and suggest it later, at the end of the day.

  "Now there's where I've got the barge," Scott said. At some distance downstream, the river diverges around an island. Near the island a barge and towboat had been moored to a small concrete quay. "This is where I need you to move the drums, see?"

  "And where do we get them from?" I asked.

  "That's what I'll show you." We retraced our steps towards the bridge, then crossed a roundabout – without any cars you could walk straight across - into a Richfield Avenue. Richfield Avenue in turn led past a row of rusting warehouses into a Cow Lane. We left the lane for a dirt path and followed Scott to a railway siding teeming with cars, some disused and others that had seen recent service. The skyscraper in central Reading was closer to us than before; it was disquieting to realize it was under a couple miles away, easily within sight range for an Mod.

  "It's this one right here," Scott said, rapping his knuckles on the black iron tank car.

  "And it's full?" I asked.

  "No, only about half."

  "So you just want it put in drums and then taken over to the barge? that's it?" I asked.

  "Exactly."

  "And the drums? Where are those?"

  "See that flatbed car down there with all the drums?" he replied. "You can take those. They've got all this other crap in them so you'll have to empty them out, but you can dump whatever's in them in the field if you want." The same wilderness we'd passed when walking along the Thames adjoined the tracks on the northern side.

  "Do you want the drums cleaned out?"

  "Nah, nah, it don't make any difference. It's got all this other crap mixed into it anyway. What's important is not to fill the barrels too full, because once they're full they're what, 450, 500 pounds, right? so don't fill them all the way because then you can't get them over to the barge, do you follow me?"

  "Yes."

  "So as long as you get it all in the barge by six that's fine. But it's all got to be in there by six tonight. I can't pay you anything if it's not done by six, yeah?"

  I nodded. "Yeah, that's fine."

  "I'll meet you over at the barge at six o'clock," he said.

  "And if we need anything before that? where can we find you?" I asked.

  He frowned. "There's no reason why you'd need to find me until then. I'm not going to be in any one place anyway.”

  Kamal shook his head as we watched the retreating figure headed back down the dirt path. "It doesn't make any sense to move it from a tank car to a barge. Least of all like this."

  "Maybe he doesn't want to pay the fee. It's probably not even his and he's not allowed to take it. Who knows. If he's paying us fifty nationals I don't care why he wants it moved," I said. Breakfast had rejuvenated my flagging optimism. "Here's the thing. If he's headed downstream to London why can't we trade in part of what he wants to pay us and go along for the ride? We'll be back in London, journey over, problem solved."

  "That sounds like a plan.”

  "Why don't we empty all the drums out first, then we can just line them up and fill them - figure out how full we want them to be - and move them last of all."

  "That works for me." The plastic drums were heavy with a brown liquid that stank like moulding food. We lugged them one by one from the tank car to the edge of the trees, where we turned them on their side to discharge the waste; the liquid left an ugly stain where it soaked into the grass. A squirrel watched us with an inquiring eye and a hopeful look.

  "Just thought of something. I hope this isn't breaking some regulaion," I said as we carried back the first of the empty drums. "What if we get hauled in for this?"

  "I doubt it, it's not chemical waste," Kamal said. "If they wanted to keep us away from their trains they'd have swooped in on us by now. They can see us from that tower.”

  “That's true.”

  “And it looks like it's just rotting algae or something. Come to think of it, wish I'd saved half that sandwich."

  "I don't mind being hungry for a few hours, I'm just glad it's turned out like this," I said. "We could be back in London by tomorrow night. Can you believe it. And only a week ago you were in that work camp and just about to give up."

  "Life is strange," Kamal said. "I don't know. We'll see."

  "Bloody hell. Are you jinxing us?"

  "No, I hope not. I just - I don't like to tempt fate, you know what I mean?"

  "Like it makes any difference," I said. “I'm just glad we we stowed away on the train. We were trying to go south, and we probably needed to go East. We could've wandered around out there forever." We picked up another of the drums from the flatbed car and struggled with it back into the field.

  "How many of these do you think we need?"

  "I don't know. Depends on how much is in the tank car," Kamal said.

  "Then we'd better hurry. We'll look pretty stupid if we get done late. It'd be a shame to do all that work and not get paid anything."

  "Now that would piss me off.”

  "I didn't know you could get pissed off, you don't seem to get angry about very much," I remarked. "Those bastards at the work camp were trying to starve you. Now if that was me, I'd have broken somebody's skull."

  "Well, it's no good getting angry when you're a skinny fellow like me. If I get angry it doesn't do any good, I'll just get my teeth smashed in. So maybe that's why I've got a sense of perspective about all this kind of thing. I try to think - if I die, so what, the planet keeps on turning. It's not what happens to me that matters, it's do I live up to a standard that I want to keep, you know? Have I - how do I say it-"

  "Do you keep a moral code, you mean," I said. "I try to live by a moral standard, if that's what you mean. I can see that makes sense."

  "It's a little like that." We staggered with another one of the drums back over to the field and dumped the liquid into the grass. "I'm not explaining it really well. It's a philosof-” He stammered the word out several times to get it right.

  “Yes, I know what you mean.”

  “Ok, so you know what I mean. It's a perspective, it's like this. You can't always choose what happens to you or where you are in the world. The only thing you can always choose is what you think about what happens. And for me it was once I realized that I'm not important - that what happens to me doesn't matter - that I realized what is important."

  "Really. And what brought on that revelation.”

  "No, it wasn't like that. It's not like like I woke up one day and said, this is what's important. It was more a gradual thing."

  I shook my head. Religious doctrine was a foreign language in my ears. I knew the words meant something to its adherents, but to me they were unintelligible. "I knew you were part of Heavenward,” I said.

  He smiled, perplexed. "You make it sound like we're all part of a huge group and we sign our names in blood on a scroll. It's not like that. I mean, there's different churches, even different religions that are Heavenward. We're not part of a group, we don't – There are things we have in common, but-”

  "Yeah, you think the Mods are part of some divine plan. Well, in that case I don't know I want to meet your God.”

  "No, it's not like that either."

  “Yes it is. I used to know someone who was one of your real hard-liners. One of the Ascension cults.”

  “Oh, those people. I don't think like that, I'm not one of these people that thinks the Mods are in Revelation. What Heavenward means to me is - I think that everything that happens is fate, it's destiny. We're just soldiers on a battlefield, we can only see our individual part of it, the
hill we have to take. We don't know the plan for the whole army and we don't need to. We just carry out our own individual part.”

  “So how does that relate to the Mods.”

  “Well, think about it like this. Just imagine you could know everything that's going on with every molecule in the universe, everywhere at every instant. All events would be predictable.”

  Hadn't scientists found that the behaviour of individual particles and atoms is unpredictable, I wondered? And didn't that disprove his theory? But physics wasn't my strong suit, so instead of arguing I resorted to sarcasm.

  “Good to know,” I said. “Wish I'd known that before, it'd save me a lot of time.”

  “So to God, destiny, Infinite Intelligence, call it whatever you want – the universe is predictable. Everything that happens is part of a plan.”

  “Ok,” I said. But my sarcasm was lost on him.

  “And to me that's destiny. We're here for a reason, just like the Mods are here for a reason. I may not know what that reason is, but I'm just the private in the army, it's not my business. You know, like it says, 'God forgive them, they know not what they do.' That's why I don't see the Mods as something we have to fight – but if we need to, if we're going to, I'm willing to do that as well.”

  Kamal's ideas were beginning to irritate me; it was embarrassing like listening to a bad joke. I didn't understand how he could attribute the absurd accidents of life to a deliberate plan. For my part I could see only that the world was ruled by Chance; that life and evolution were senseless and cruel; and that dignifying the cruelty of chance by ascribing it to God was taking refuge in fantasy, like Santa Claus for adults. “All I know is, if your God dreamt up a plan that includes famines, plague and wars, I don't want to meet them. But I suppose He or She or It probably thinks plagues, famines and wars are good things for the Earth, right,” I said.

  “No, I don't mean that.”

  “Well, all right. Whatever. As long as your God will get us back to London by tomorrow morning I'll call it fair enough.”

  “I hope so too,” Kamal nodded. We emptied the drums one by one in succession until we had fifteen of them lined up by the tank car. Inwardly I reminded myself to avoid any mention of Heavenward or Kamal's ideas in future if possible.

  "I think that's enough," I said. "Don't want to empty all these others and find out we don't need them." We took one of the empty drums and positioned it next to the car, uncoiled the hose and connected it. The sickly-sweet chemical smell of solvent - the most pleasant scent of any toxic chemical - perfumed the air. A thin haze like heat waves crept from the lid of the drum. I closed the valve once the shadow of the water level reached halfway. Behind us we heard a blast of air from a passing train, hidden from our view by a line of boxcars on one of the sidings.

  "Let's see how heavy that is. Actually, you know what, let's take that one over to the barge first - that way we know if that's too heavy or how full we should fill the others."

  "Good idea," Kamal said. "Here, got to lift it over these tracks." He tilted the drum back and crouched to hold it low to the ground while I stooped to lift the other end. We crossed the tracks and the dirt path leading back to Cow Lane. At that point I dropped my end and Kamal rolled the drum with just one rim on the ground. I followed behind to lift it again if need be.

  We kept to the centre of the road, and though a couple of passer-by cast us curious glances, no one seemed terribly interested. They'd seen stranger things before. Years of life under the Mods had altered our expectations; we Mongrels had the mentality of a population under siege. We lived near labs and forgot them, we saw hsing tr torn down for scrap and wondered whether we could find anything for ourselves. Humans get used to anything, eventually, and over time we'd learned to do what we had to in order to survive.

  The rim of the drum emitted a grinding noise like steel wheels on a sidewalk; the barge lay just ahead, floating in the tranquil waters of the river.

  "This'll be the fun part," I said. Should I step in carrying one end of the barrel? Should we drop it in? I backed down the concrete slab and stepped into the barge unsteadily; as I did so the liquid in the drum flowed to my end of the barrel. I staggered backwards and dropped it.

  "You ok?" Kamal asked anxiously.

  "Yeah, I'm fine.”

  "Sorry about that."

  I shook my head, breathing hard. "We'll just drop the next one in," I said; "it'll be easier. Look at the sun." I didn't have a watch, but at a guess it'd been half an hour since we'd emptied the drums in the siding. Would we have enough time?

  "Have to hurry," Kamal said.

  "We'll fill the next one a little fuller than that one, and I'll roll it this time since you did the last one. You know what we'd better do is fill up all the drums first, that way we know how much time we have."

  Solvent, like gasoline, has an unpleasant aftereffect; the vapour leaves you with a headache worse than any hangover. I started to fill the drums 3/4 of the way full to try to save time. My heart sank as I saw the number of drums around us in the siding grow and realized that - at half an hour a barrel – the full load would easily take us the remainder of the day.

  "We're not doing this right," I said; "there's got to be a way to load it quicker."

  "We can both roll one each over there and then load them in once we've got them all over there." At last the stream from the tank car into one of the drums slowed to a trickle then ceased.

  "I think that's it. All right, let's go." I seized one of the drums and tilted it back on its rim. We'd have to hurry. We'd frittered away the morning, I thought, seething with frustration; we could have emptied the drums twice as fast if we'd been clever about it.

  "So what are you trying to tell me then?" she said as she turned to look over her shoulder. She was filing her nails over the sink, an occupation she took very seriously, and it was a dangerous time to talk to her. I should have known better.

  "I'm not trying to tell you anything," I said.

  "Are you trying to tell me you don't love me any more?"

  "No, of course not. Of course I love you."

  "Well then why do you say things like that? You really think it's funny to talk to me that way, don't you," she said frigidly, her tone a sure portent of the wrath to come. She had a way of signifying her disapproval that any fool could interpret a mile away; but like an idiot I usually blundered in just the same.

  "I was joking."

  "You call that a joke?" she said angrily.

  "Well, I didn't think-"

  "You didn't think. Is that your excuse? You're just too fucking stupid to know what you're talking about, is that it? No, quite frankly I don't think so," she said. "I think you meant it."

  "Oh, darling," I said, exaggerating my shock to try to placate her. All in vain. I laughed to myself as I thought of all the things I'd had to do to make it up to her; and in the end I couldn't even remember what I'd said that had caused the quarrel.

  Strange to remember a fight at a time like this. Yet even the memory of a fight was pleasant now that it was past. I loved her when she was angry at me, when she loved me, whatever she did or said, I loved even the thought of her and the way she moved, the way she talked, the way she brushed her hair.

  How long had it been? At least four and a half months, maybe more. Marengo could wait, hadn't it waited already? Kamal was right, I would find Becky first and the rest would follow afterwards. If Scott Peters could take us down the river to London - and if we could be there by tomorrow night – and in only another 48 hours I could see her again, could hold her in my arms-

  I deposited another of the drums on the concrete and stretched. Kamal came up behind me, looking as thin as ever.

  "How many more are there?"

  "I don't know," I said, "I didn't count."

  "I wonder if someone'll steal them if we leave them here."

  "I doubt it. Besides, if they do it's not like he'll know," I speculated; "what's he going to do, count how many drums we have an
d figure out how many gallons? I don't think so."

  "Wait, I need some water," Kamal said. He knelt to scoop up water from the Thames in his cupped hands, and the water soaked his matted beard and ran down onto his shirt. "All right, let's go."

  I turned to leave the quay then stopped. A shadow without an owner fled across the path, like the shadow of a ghost. It could only be an aircar. Their aircars were nearly invisible; they changed colour in keeping with the light. My stomach turned to jelly.

  “Oh, hell,” I whispered. I fought the temptation to run. After a moment the shadow darted away northwards and I heaved a sigh of relief.

  "That gave me the jitters," I said to Kamal.

  "Don't worry about it. It's like I said, we don't mean anything to them." But even that false alarm reminded me how closely the threat of recapture hounded us, how deceptive was the dangerous illusion of safety. Our freedom was only a privilege afforded our insignificance; an indulgence they could revoke on a whim.

  The hours crept past as we moved one drum after another. Originally I'd meant to stop for a break at about midday; instead we kept on working for fear we'd be late. At last the lengthening shadows announced the coming of evening, but we'd outpaced the sun. All the drums we'd filled earlier in the day stood ready to load. I slapped Kamal on the back.

  "Good work. We're there."

  "Almost," he replied, "we've still got to load them all in."

  "We'll get it done in time," I said.

  "Sure thing.”