‘What do you see, Sorlie?’ Pa asked as he threaded his arm through mine.
‘I see mountains and water and an island. I see a great blood-run sky and cairns piled like pagan charms around the car park.’
Pa remained quiet as if waiting for another answer.
‘What do you see?’ I asked, not wanting to fail.
‘I see freedom.’ He pointed to the northern horizon, where no islands could be seen. ‘It seems distant but it’s there. It’s where we’ll be heading one day soon.’
‘Where? I don’t get it.’
He continued to peer into the distance. I shivered at the thought of heading there now, leaving behind Ma, and home, and everything.
I coughed. ‘I’m quite happy at the Base, thanks very much.’
He hugged me then. ‘Oh Sorlie, you don’t know what freedom is. That’s reason enough to fight for it.’ He released me from his arms. ‘Come on, we’re not going home yet. Let’s go and find our own little piece of freedom for a while.’
A shadow of doubt wiped Pa’s face when we spied a trio of vehicle lights travelling in convoy towards us on the great main road that stretched below and back to the urbans. We sat together on a cairn and waited for them to arrive to take us back, but they never did so we moved on.
After a bowel-squelching descent down a precipitous track, Pa pulled the Jeep off the road and bumped over rough, rutted terrain until a mound of reed-stubbled sand barred our way. Something different in the air nipped my nose and mouth this time as I climbed from the cab. I licked my lips and tasted salt. A constant crash like the booming of traditional artillery sounded from beyond the dune. The scarf Ma wrapped round me before I left protected my eyes and nose against the sand gusts peppering the air.
Pa grabbed my arm and hauled me to the Jeep’s tailboard.
‘Come on, let’s set up camp and build a fire,’ he said.
‘A fire? Is that allowed?’
‘Don’t be such a worrywart. The State has more pressing things to deal with than a camp fire.’
He pulled camping gear from the Jeep and louped up the dune while I tried to follow. Sand dragged my feet into its mercurial folds, spilling over my boot tops, burrowing deep to scratch between my toes. It was nothing like the sand back at the Base, used for mending roads. I was fair puggled when I reached the crest, only to be blown back by the wind and the sight that greeted me. White froth thrashed the shoreline, wave upon wave slurped and gobbled a bank of pebbles then spat them out as they turned back on themselves. I held my arms wide and felt my blouson balloon with air. I half expected to rise from the earth like a kite.
While I Da Vinci’d, Pa collected a scattering of wood from the shore.
‘Come on, are you going to help or not?’ He dragged a piece of tree-trunk the size of a bench towards me.
‘Wood – on a beach?’
‘Aye. It’s submarine peat. This will be an escapee from the nets of the moor-logging trawlers. The natives who live in these parts comb the beaches and collect it for fuel. If we chip bits off this beastie,’ he slapped the trunk, ‘there’s enough for a kindling.’
Once the fire was crackling, I knelt on the sand and Pa draped a blanket over my shoulders. Soon the battered, blackened pan he’d dug out of the Jeep was bubbling with water. I felt a warmth I had never experienced before, even though the air was cold around me and the wind off the sea bristled my cheeks.
‘Tell me more about freedom, then,’ I said.
A shower of sparks erupted from the fire as Pa poked it before he settled back on his heels.
‘It wasn’t that long ago when we were free. At least, people thought they were free. They were too wrapped up in their own greed and pleasure to see what was happening. All they were interested in was celebrity trivia and petty parochial affairs.’
He raked at the fire again, sending a spray of sparks too close to my blanket for comfort.
‘And all around populations were growing, unemployment was high, natural resources were running out and people began to starve. There were threats from the East, threats from the West. All the countries in what was then Europe faced the same challenges. That was when the State of Esperaneo was formed. You would have thought it would have brought people together but the situation deteriorated. That’s when the Nationalists and Conservationists began to take power and divisions widened. Neighbour turned on neighbour, families fought amongst themselves.
There was no security over energy and the lights went out for a while. And when the lights go out chaos follows. It was worse in the urbans.’ He stopped suddenly and waved his arm as if to wipe out his memory of that time. ‘I was just a small boy during those dark days but I remember the cold most of all. I was scared of the dark and somehow my mother always managed to keep a light burning for me.’
The daylight was fading, washing out towards the western horizon, and with the drawing over of night, five small lights appeared out at sea. ‘Look,’ he said pointing to the lights. ‘Why do you think they need trawlers to deep trawl for wood? It’s ridiculous.’ I jumped when he spat his words into the fire and they sizzled. He pointed back to the trawlers. ‘Look beyond the boats. The small islands out there were cleared of their inhabitants so they could be turned into penitentiaries. You can see their lights twinkling in the distance. The pride of Esperaneo’s Criminal Justice System.’
His arm circled me and the blanket pulled round us both as we huddled in the sand, our bodies warm against the sea chill. He remained silent for a few minutes and the steady rhythm of his heartbeat replaced the lull of his voice. A crust of tears linked a chain down the cheek I had pressed to his chest. Black and white birds teetered at the tide line on spindle legs, stabbing the wet sand with scimitar beaks.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ I said.
‘Because you need to know,’ he said. ‘Not all taught history is true.’
I felt stifled by his closeness; I was no longer a child. I moved from him and we both lay back on the sand; he understood. The sky had cleared of its clouds, which left an ominous chill in the air. As we lay with backs moulded into the sand I looked up at the satellites tracking between the stars. The sky was silted with satellites. Something was chewing at Pa; he’d been silent for too long.
‘What are they all for?’ I asked. It was time to get Pa to crack open the topic he’d been hoarding, but he needed a nudge. ‘Maybe you’re wrong about them not listening.’
At first I thought he’d fallen asleep. His breathing was quiet and even. When he eventually spoke the edge to his voice scraped like the blunt blade he took across his neck in the morning, ready to nick and draw blood.
There was no preamble as he slipped straight into a well-rehearsed litany – ‘i’s dotted, ‘t’s crossed and wax sealed with a capital ‘D’ for Doom.
‘David Pringle is the warden of Black Rock Penitentiary,’ he began. ‘The furthest penitentiary from our shores, at the edge of the Western Sea. Black Rock was one of the first of its kind to be established because of its location many miles from land and with a dangerous coastline. It was perfect as a deterrent.’ He dug his elbows into the sand and shucked himself to sitting. ‘It was once a hidden bunker base.’
‘Have you been there?’ I sat up to join him, and cooried into my jacket.
‘I was there once and never want to return. It’s upgraded now though. To something even worse.’
‘Worse?’
‘David Pringle is your grandfather, Sorlie.’
They used to call it dropping the penny, then connect shit; now I don’t care what it’s called, every scrap of information Pa told me over the years slotted into my logic store and calculated a huge heap of trouble headed my way.
‘My grandfather lives on a prison island in the middle of the ocean?’
‘Yes, as I said, he’s the warden there.’
Memories
of the day Ma gave our native the present flooded back.
‘So why tell the native to take me there?’
‘What?’
I tried to remember Ma’s exact words but they were gone. ‘I heard Ma tell the native to take me to my grandfather.’
‘She might have to, one day.’
‘Why?’
‘Because we might not have any choice.’ He picked up handfuls of sand and let them trickle through his fingers. ‘Look Sorlie, there are some things you need to know. About your grandfather; about your mother.’
As if on cue the normally elusive moon pulled up from the dunes behind us and lit a lamp just bright enough for me to see my father’s ravaged face.
‘Your mother was brought up on a farm by her grandfather,’ Pa said. ‘Your great-grandfather, Sorley. Your namesake. Same name, different spelling. Her father, David, left her there while he bigged it up in Beckham City.’
‘What about her mother?’ The wind picked up and slapped the curtain of cloud back across the moon’s face.
‘I’ll come to that, but let’s get under cover first.’
As Pa and I battled the tidal gusts to erect our sleeping pod, dark clouds converged in the south, obliterating the satellites and stars. A storm was coming, in more ways than one.
‘Don’t you think we should head home?’ I asked as we crawled under cover.
Pa shook his head. ‘It’s better we stay here tonight. Your mother needs rest.’ He took out his thermo wand and began to boil water. I wondered if he would fess about the Hero in Death stuff and why he and Ma weren’t permitted to speak to one another, but dwam-time claimed him.
We huddled in the open doorway of the pod and watched the moor-logging trawler lights in the distance as they dredged the deep.
‘They seem hardly to be moving,’ I said to break the spell. ‘Even in this squall.’
‘That’s because they use low grade fuel. It’s hardly worth the effort.’
Pa pointed across a short stretch of water to the nearest island. One by one the small lights pinched out for evening shutdown, leaving only one harsh white beacon searching in its clock face. At one point on its revolution it kissed the beam from the neighbouring island’s searchlight like lovers cast adrift, destined to be apart and yet given the brief intimacy of that one touch.
‘Energy must be conserved but not at the cost of security, eh?’ Pa leaned forward, the wind flattening his hair as he poked his head out the pod door.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘There, the intermittent flash. Do you see it? That’s it, that’s Black Rock.’
There were two beams, one constant like the lover’s kiss and another, smaller light that clicked on and off in its own particular way as if it had a loose wire that needed fixing.
As I sipped my bowl of grain soup, Pa rigged a dim halo from the strap on the roof. He settled back in the pod and we sat facing each other like yin-yang, watching the halo swing then buckle as a gust hit the pod side. I would have been happy if the great magma eruption had happened just then and we were captured like this for eternity in an avalanche of ash.
‘This tent’s too small for us,’ he said. ‘Look at you, almost a man.’
‘Come on Pa, spill. You were telling me about you-know-who.’ I thumbed to the pod opening. ‘And what about my grandmother?’
He cleared his throat. ‘Vanora, your grandmother. After your mother was born, Davie took Vanora with him to Beckham City. He had fine ideals at that time and believed that he could better himself. Until he met Vanora he’d been a contented landowner. She was a town girl. He met her at a pagan festival dance. Halloween, I think it was called. His parents were unhappy about the match, but it made no difference. Davie was set on her.’
‘What was she like?’
‘She had exotic good looks and intelligence. Apart from that, your mother remembers little of her. It is now forbidden by law to speak of her.’
‘Why? What happened to her?’
Pa’s eyes shifted to the ground. He was millisecs from telling me something, I knew he was, but he shook his head and said, ‘It’s not important at the moment. It’s Davie you need to hear about. He and Vanora married and lived on the farm and your mother was born there within the year.
‘Your great-grandfather, Sorley, blamed Vanora for Davie’s discontent. He was wrong. There was always a blackness in Davie’s soul.’
‘Why are you telling me this? Why isn’t Ma telling me?’
‘Your mother has a restriction placed on her, you know that. She can’t leave the Base unless on military business. The surveillance there prevents her telling you anything. Lately she’s begun to worry about your future and wants you to know these things.’
‘How do you know what she thinks?’ I asked. So what if my words hurt. ‘You’re not permitted to speak to each other.’
Pa didn’t even blink. ‘The State is not always as wise as it thinks it is. We don’t need words.’
A light rain pattered on the pod fabric, the walls flapped in the wind. Pa zipped the night out before he continued.
‘With your mother safe in the hands of her grandparents, Davie and Vanora lived the high life in Beckham City. They’d been there for almost a decade when the Purists took power. Things changed overnight. People started to disappear, even before the ethnos were deported back to their ancestral lands. Often Transports were ambushed; there was widespread killing and kidnappings by the opposition party, rebels; they were all at it. Even the Noiri.’
‘The Noiri? I thought they were neutral – just out for profit?’
‘They are, but there’s plenty profit to be had in revolution. Something happened to David at this time. Your mother remembers him coming back to the farm without Vanora – he said she was visiting her parents. Then she turned up a couple of days later, bruised about the face and head. She slept in your mother’s room but left with him soon after. The next time he returned he again came alone. When his parents asked where Vanora was he just said, “No more.”
Pa picked at the stitching of his sleeping bag and rubbed a loose thread into a bobble between his fingers. ‘Soon after, he was appointed warden of Black Rock. It was supposed to be a reward. In exchange for the honour, he agreed to send or sell – choose any word you want – your mother into military service. She was thirteen. The farm stayed with her grandparents until they both died soon after she was conscripted. Then David turned it over to the State as part of the deal. He must have known his parents wouldn’t survive such a betrayal.’ Pa unzipped the pod door and threw the bobble out, grabbing a mouthful of air, like a resuscitation, before he closed it again. He poured water from a flask and placed a purifying tablet into it. It had hardly dissolved before he slaked his thirst and handed the bottle to me. Our eyes met and he looked away too quickly.
‘Wait a minute. Why are you telling me this now? You’re not planning the same thing? Not combat? I’ve already been deemed psychologically unsuited for combat.’
He grabbed me and held me in a tight bear hug. I could feel his heart battering through his jacket; I could feel the heat of his breath and smell his scent of polish and steel.
‘We would never do that to you,’ he hissed. He released me to arm’s length and this time held my gaze. ‘I’m telling you all this now because I fear a catastrophic change is on the way.’
My nose had started to run and I knew what was coming.
‘Does this mean there could be another war alert? What about our defences? You and Ma, is that not your job, to stop this happening?’
‘Yeah,’ his laugh was bitter. ‘Your mother especially, but she has resisted her status as far as she can. She’s done it for you – for us. But she can’t hold off much longer.’
The side of the pod sagged when Pa rested back. He wiped sweat from his brow with a handkerchief that I was sure smelled of
Ma. ‘Look Sorlie, I’ve said too much. Just be aware that I may not always be around. My work is difficult, and one day, well – you know the score.’
Death, he meant death, something military kids were taught to deal with.
‘Your history is more important to your future than you realise. Believe me,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m not the one to tell you and I pray to the stars you need never find out.’
Chapter Three
The native smelled of vinegar, always. Even on the days when she dressed in her best green overalls and walked from the Base to the market in the nearest urban.
• • •
Her name was Ishbel. I knew this because I overheard Ma call her name once when I was small and playing my favourite game of spying under the table.
‘Ishbel, can you try and find some fresh dairy products for Somhairle? It’s difficult I know, but you can do it.’ There was a little laugh in her voice of a shared joke, as if the native was her friend. Then later that same afternoon Ma found me in my spying den and went radge at the native for no good reason.
• • •
When Pa and I returned home from our trip to the coast we found the native stationed at the inner garage door. The taillights of the Jeep shone on her face, making her pale skin glow ruddy red. She was taller than both Ma and Pa, and carried her height well, as if she had a cord running from the top of her head that was constantly being drawn to the sky. I knew she was strong because she could open the sticky waste recyk unit door with ease and even Pa struggled with that. The sleeves of the green uniform always rolled above the elbow and showed off her bulking arms, and her shoulders stretched the seams. When I was very small, about six or seven, she would take me for walks in the nearby hills. There was a small lake nestling in a valley where the natives swam for pleasure, being forbidden to use the Base pool. On these walks Ishbel cajoled me into my swim suit, then coaxed me to the freezing water’s edge. At the first step my little feet would turn blue and I would scream for effect and it worked. She would park me beside one of the other green-clad natives and I spent the rest of the time watching her thrash her athletic body around the lake. At these times I thought she should be the one in the Military and not my mother, who was slight, almost childlike.
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