‘Tell you, the eddy-turbine barrage is a council project, right. Unless you’re on the city council labour register, there’s no way you’ll get to work on it.’
‘Well, why don’t they sign on with the council, then?’ she asked.
‘A lot of people on the dole right now are ex-apparatchiks. And the New Conservative Inquisitors have got their hands full purging the administration staff of any that got left behind after the PSP fell. The government is nervy about them; what with inflation and the housing shortage, a few well-placed PSP leftovers could cause serious grief. So the last thing the council wants is to take them back, especially not on a project as important as this one.’
‘Why don’t you apply to join the Inquisitors?’ she teased. ‘That’d be a regular job.’
Greg grinned. ‘They couldn’t afford me.’ He pointed ahead. ‘This is the turn. We’ll park in Bretton and walk the rest of the way.’
She took a left through the old Milton Park golf club entrance. The Duo powered along the rough cinder tracks lined by hemispherical apartment blocks that’d sprung up to replace the greens, uses, and bunkers. The three-storey buildings were self-contained Finnish prefabs, a burnished pewter for easy thermal control. Fast-growing maeosopsis trees dominated the estate, their long branches curved over the tracks, affording a decent amount of shade. There were small allotments ringing each of the silvery hemispheres, laid out with uniform precision.
‘Tidy,’ she remarked, approvingly. ‘They’ve got a different attitude here.’
‘You’re not being fair. Think what this’ll be like in twenty years’ time. Just the same as Berrybut.’
‘It might, then again it might not. These people are more in tune with the future, they believe in it.’
They drove by a clump of mango trees in full fruit. She saw children playing around the trunks, seemingly immune to the ripe temptation dangling above their heads. ‘Whatever happened to scrumping?’
‘Do you want to move?’ Greg asked.
‘No.’ She grinned. ‘You couldn’t live here.’
They left the rustic eloquence of the Milton estate behind and slowed, slotting into the chain of vans and rickcarts trundling through the grid maze of the Park Farm industrial precinct. It was made up of bleakly functional sugar-cube factory units with coal-black solar-collector roofs. Nearly half of them sported the Event Horizon triangle and flying V emblem, she saw, most of the rest were overseas companies, some kombinate logos. The foreign factories were anathema to the PSP, economic imperialism, but they had to let them in to pay off the massive investment loans which the Tokyo and Zurich finance cartels had made in Peterborough’s new housing.
‘Do you mean you would move if it wasn’t for me?’ Greg asked.
‘Don’t be silly.’ She was still grinning. He looked like he had bitten something sickly.
‘You don’t have to come with me to see Royan, you know,’ he said. ‘It isn’t exactly a picnic at the best of times. It’ll only take me an hour or so.’
‘Oh, no,’ she said loudly. ‘You don’t get out of it that easily, Greg Mandel. Do you realize I know practically nothing about the time between you leaving the Army and meeting me? This is the first glimpse you’ve ever allowed me into this section of your life.’
‘You only had to ask.’
She shot him a quick glance. ‘If you’d wanted me to know, you would’ve told me. And now you’re starting to. I’m not sure what it means, but I’m bloody pleased.’
‘He takes some getting used to,’ Greg offered. She recognized the tone, regret for the impulse decision to invite her. Just how bad could his friend be?
‘You said he was hurt?’
‘Very badly. Completely disabled, and burnt. It’s not pretty.’
‘I won’t embarrass you, Greg.’
‘I didn’t imagine you would; rather, the reverse. My past is not totally savoury.’
‘Women?’
‘No!’
‘There were,’ she corrected demurely. ‘That sort of knowledge isn’t exactly hereditary.’
He gave her a weak smile and gave up. Happier, though, she thought. However badly disfigured this Royan turned out to be, she was determined Greg would never be disappointed he’d introduced them.
The narrow streets and iron-red bricks of Bretton were registering through the windscreen. She parked in an old school yard, next to an impressive New Conservative council banner proclaiming its incipient refurbishment as the community’s cultural centre. The classrooms were all boarded up, and someone had driven surveyor’s stakes through the playground.
She got out and looked at him expectantly. He was wearing Levis and his leather jacket over an olive-green T-shirt. She’d dressed in a shapeless navy-blue sweatshirt and black jeans; nondescript, as he’d told her. Now she was beginning to realize why; Bretton was a backwater, untouched by the vitality which roared through the rest of the city. The houses she could see all had heavy wooden shutters over the windows, and solid metal security doors.
Greg blipped the Duo’s lock.
They were quickly surrounded by about fifteen kids, none of them in their teens yet. Silent, eyes shining bright out of grubby faces.
‘Car watch, fella?’ piped a prepubescent voice.
‘Highway robbery,’ Greg protested.
The ritual was a relief in an obscure fashion, putting her back on solid ground. Bretton was still plugged into the rest of the city, during the day, at least.
‘Five pounds,’ the lad said.
‘I think we’ll park in the next street,’ Greg retorted.
‘Four.’
‘It’s very dirty,’ Eleanor pointed out.
The kids put their heads together.
She exchanged an amused glance with Greg.
‘Three,’ declared the summit. ‘And we wash it, too.’
‘Half now?’
‘Two now,’ said the highly affronted ringleader.
He and Greg showed cards, both of them pictures of woe.
‘Wonder what Walshaw will make of a three-pound transport expense item?’ Greg mused whimsically as the kids moved in on the Duo, two racing away for water and sponges.
She let him guide her into the centre of Bretton, pleased he was with her. The place looked rough. She would never have gone into it by herself.
The main street was roofed over by an erratic collage of plastic sheeting, solar cells, corrugated iron, even thatch; all supported by an equally bizarre collection of trusses like telegraph poles and rusting chunks of electricity pylons. It was a twilight world where relief from the sun’s heat was tempered by the clouds of arid dust any motion kicked up. The stalls snaking along the pavements lacked the cramped clutter of Oakham’s disarray, here the shops were coming back into use. There was a greater emphasis on material goods. Food was appearing in packages again. But no tins yet, she noticed.
They grazed the stalls for stuff Greg said Royan would want. Junk, Eleanor thought. He picked out circuit boards, electric motors, inexplicable mechanical gizmos that were parts of bigger machines, antique watches, the wind-up sort. Three plastic carrier-bags full, which came to thirty pounds. There was no logic behind it. He seemed delighted when he found a Sanyo VCR. It was lying among Mickey Mouse phones and kettles on a stall which was half lobster-tanks, half broken gear. He haggled the owner down to a tenner and departed well pleased.
She began to wonder about Royan again. Strange gifts.
They walked out of Bretton and into the Mucklands Wood estate; and Eleanor decided that Bretton wasn’t so bad after all, not compared to this. The fifteen high-rise blocks which had risen out of the dead forest were council-run low-cost housing. They represented the least successful aspect of the city’s expansion programme. A throw-back to the worst of the nineteen-sixties style of instant slums.
They were twenty storeys high, identical in every respect right down to the cheap low-efficiency slate-grey solar-cells clinging to every square centimetre of surface. Heat
shimmer twisted the blocks’ harsh geometry, blurring edges; it was as though nature was trying to distort the inhuman ugliness which their desolate lines delineated. The ground between them was a wasteland. Less than half of the estate’s intended employment workshops had been built, and those that the council had completed were abandoned, either burnt out or gutted. The Trinities gang symbol was scrawled everywhere, brash and sharp, a closed fist gripping a thorn cross, blood dripping. She’d heard of the Trinities, even in the kibbutz. Anti-PSP in a big way.
Mucklands Wood could’ve been deserted. Nothing moved; worse, there was no sound: there should’ve been something coming from those hundreds of grimed windows, music or shouting. Their footsteps crunched loudly on the badly rucked limestone path.
She stuck close to Greg’s side, eyes darting about nervously. ‘Is this part of your past?’ she asked.
‘Briefly. I taught some of the people who live here.’
‘I never knew you were a teacher.’
‘Tell you, not your sort of teaching, school and such. I trained them in streetcraft.’
‘Streetcraft?’
‘Techniques to break police ranks, ambush their snatch squads, how to counter the assault dogs. That kind of thing. It’s a reversal of the counter-insurgency courses the Army gave me.’
‘Oh.’ You wanted to know, she told herself. Her eyes dropped to the crushed yellow stone fragments of the path.
‘Stay calm,’ Greg said quietly.
She glanced at him, puzzled. His eyes had that distant look. He was using his gland.
Then the Trinities boy stepped out from his hiding place behind a crumbling employment workshop wall, he did it fast and smooth, simply there. And it was all she could do not to yelp in surprise. He fitted her image of an urban predator perfectly, almost a stereotype. Asian, somewhere in his mid-twenties, with hair cropped close, wearing a filthy denim jacket with the arms torn off, slashed T-shirt, and tight leather trousers. Two bowie knives and a compact stun puncher were clipped on to his belt. There was some sort of gear plug in his left ear. A taut strap running round his neck held his throat mike. The Trinities emblem was painted on his jacket.
He leered at her, and she knew he could read her fright.
‘What the fuck are you arseholes? Hazard junkies?’
There were more Trinities spreading out of the ruins behind her and Greg, dressed in a grab bag of camouflage jackets, jeans, and T-shirts. Faces hard, carrying weapons ranging from knives up to things whose function she couldn’t guess. They fanned out, forming a tight blockade.
‘Cool it, mate,’ Greg said levelly and put a bag down, holding out his right hand, very slowly.
The youth’s sneer faded when he saw the Trinities card Greg was holding. ‘Where you get that?’
‘Same place as you.’
‘No shit?’ He pulled out his own card and showed it to the one in Greg’s open palm. Confusion twisted his features as his card acknowledged Greg’s authenticity. ‘I don’t know your face.’
‘I don’t know yours,’ Greg said.
‘Don’t smartarse me!’ he shouted.
‘Greg’s one of us, Des,’ a throaty female voice said from behind Eleanor. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a small figure with spiky mauve hair, wearing tourniquet-tight leopard-skin jeans and a sleeveless black singlet. The girl’s age was indefinable; thin-faced, she could’ve been anywhere between fifteen and thirty. She was cradling a big gauss-pulse carbine casually across one arm. Bandolier straps crossed her flat chest, loaded with red-tipped slugs. Additional power magazines were clipped to her belt. Her face was one big smirk.
‘Shut the fuck up, Suzi,’ shouted the boy confronting them. ‘Hear me? You could drive a fucking tank through that mouth of yours. This is my turf, I’m the Man here. These bastards could be Party.’
Eleanor held on to Greg’s forearm with her free hand, pinching. Suppose the card wasn’t good enough?
Greg grinned faintly. ‘Hi, Suzi.’
The mauve-haired girl gave him an impish thumbs up.
Des’s face darkened. ‘You know these?’ his forefinger jabbed at Greg.
‘Sure,’ said Suzi. ‘Greg’s been Trinity from way back. Taught me all kindsa things.’ Her eyes met Eleanor. ‘Good, too, isn’t he?’
Eleanor kept her face perfectly blank, emotions frozen, just as they’d been for all those years in the kibbutz. ‘Depends on the material he’s got to work with, dear.’ Not the greatest comeback in the world, but pretty bloody good, considering. Even Greg seemed vaguely surprised; approving, too, she suspected. Suzi started laughing.
‘So why the big reunion?’ Des asked.
‘I’m here to see Son,’ said Greg.
‘Christ, Des, let the man through.’
‘Last fucking warning, Suzi, I’ll rip you good if you don’t shove it.’
‘Just ask Father,’ Greg said. ‘He’ll tell you my credit is good.’
‘Yeah? So what about her?’ Des pointed at Eleanor. ‘I don’t see no card.’
‘She’s with me.’
‘No shit?’
‘Des, the man has our card, that makes him one of us.’
The new voice was deep, it didn’t seem loud, but it carried to everyone. Authoritative, Eleanor decided. The Trinities were suddenly still and attentive. There was a hint of irritation in the voice, which she was very grateful wasn’t directed at her.
When she looked round she saw a tall black man picking his way over the cracked concrete footings of a stillborn employment workshop. She thought he looked about the same age as Greg, moved the same way too, dangerous grace. Most of his two-metre frame was muscle. He was wearing combat fatigues, clean, with knife-edge creases, a blue beret sporting a single silver star; she recognized it as an old-style British Army regimental insignia. Greg’s memory cores at the chalet were full of military trivia like that.
‘Shit, yeah, Father. But—’ Des began.
‘But nothing! Man with a card is one of us, always. We don’t all dress like crap. You got that?’
Des’s head lolled about like a moody nodding doll. ‘Sure, OK, Father. I just didn’t want to take no chances, y’know?’
The tension had evaporated from the other Trinities. Some of them grinned publicly at Des’s squirming, led by Suzi.
‘I know, boy. Now, is it going to happen again?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I don’t hear you so good.’ The big man’s eyes flashed round the circle of Trinities.
‘No, sir!’ they yelled gleefully.
‘Dismissed,’ he barked. Suzy flipped Greg a jaunty wave as the troop filtered away over the barren artificial moonscape.
Greg and the black man were bearhugging each other.
Muscles slackened all over Eleanor’s body in one convulsive shiver, she hadn’t been aware how tightly wired she’d become. So many weapons, and not even Greg could’ve protected them if that animal Des had got it into his mind to shoot. Mucklands Wood was like nothing she’d heard of before, undiluted anarchy. The cold flush pricking her skin wouldn’t abate now until she was back in the safe sanity of the Duo, heading out.
Greg and his friend released each other, both smiling broadly.
‘Man, you’ve been AWOL a long time.’
‘That’s the way it goes.’ Greg shrugged. ‘I can’t afford to be seen with the likes of you nowadays, I’m a respectable professional now, legitimate.’
‘Legitimate, shit. Soft, that’s what.’
‘Yeah. Teddy, meet Eleanor. Mate of mine.’
Teddy’s smile got wider as he swept her with an appraising gaze, then he pulled his beret off in a gesture of hopeless gallantry. ‘Christ, officers always did steal the best of everything.’ He offered his hand, and drew her knuckles to his lips. The ultimate stamp of approval. It cleared the air marvellously.
‘Bit jumpy, aren’t they?’ Greg said as the three of them walked towards the nearest tower.
‘Yeah, sorry about that,’ Teddy growled.
‘We had us a chunk of extra-parliamentary action against some Party hacks two days back. Couple of my troops got hit. They’re just keeping alert. Can’t blame ’em for that.’
‘You expecting some retaliation?’ Greg asked.
Teddy shrugged. ‘Dunno. The war isn’t nearly over, Greg. There are tens of thousands of card carriers out there. Smart, well organized, and tough with it. They’ll do it to us all over again if we let ’em.’
‘Are the Blackshirts making any serious moves?’
‘No bullshitting, Greg, they are screwing this city. Almost as bad as we did. Trouble most nights, police are stretched to the limit. Inquisitors can’t seem to get on top of ’em. Blackshirts have got Walton sewn up tight and hard, nobody in, nobody out unless they say so. We sit and eyeball each other over the A15; and I keep pissing myself over what they’re cooking up in there. Son watches what he can, of course, but even he’s got limits. What I’d like is some Spiral-armed Mi-24s, go in and beachhead the place, flush the bastards out. Just like the good old days.’
‘This isn’t the good old days, Teddy. We got rid of them, and they aren’t coming back. The Blackshirts are just a bunch of zombies, don’t know they’re dead yet.’
‘I know how to tell ’em.’
‘How many of them are in there now?’
‘Maybe two hundred regular Blackshirts, five if they called in the hardliners they’ve got scattered about the county. But it’s the rest who give me sleepless nights. Half of ’em still work in city chambers. If they get their act together they could cause a lotta pain. This inflation is stirring people up, man, lotsa grumbling about the New Conservatives. And you bet they’ve got it all planned out, fucking Party always loved plans. I can’t fight that, Greg. That ain’t physical, man. Physical I can handle. I gotta leave ’em to the New Conservative inquisitors. More fucking bureaucrats. I tell you, it plain drives me nuts.’
‘People won’t fall for the PSP twice,’ Eleanor said. ‘They’re not that daft.’
Teddy smiled softly down at her. ‘Gal, I sure as shit hope you’re right. Cos it ain’t just here, every town in the country is the same. Party ain’t got the power no more, but that don’t mean they don’t want it again. Bad. But whichever way it tilts we’re ready for ’em, AKs loaded and Bibles to hand. You bet.’
The Mandel Files, Volume 1 Page 21