Ways of the Doomed

by McPartlin, Moira;

  Cracked and veined paintings, the ancient kind still found in government buildings, hung on brocade-covered walls; tables carried lamps, china vases and bowls filled with dusty dried flowers; a museum. We approached ornamental wooden doors where carvings of huge oak hands the size of plates beckoned me. My grandfather produced an old-fashioned key and turned it, grinding the lock, moribund technology that should have been scrapped years ago.

  The doors hushed open over a thick fabric floor covering. My feet softened in the plush pile, my footsteps silenced. The room was brightly lit, busy and cluttered. One of those old lighting effects with glass crystals dangled from the ceiling. Scarred and scratched items of furniture were scattered lengthways and breadthwise across the room, leaving very little floor space. In the corner looking out of place on a small bureau, an obsolete workstation blinked. An equally incongruous white box hummed in one corner, water gurgling in its bowels as it sucked the moisture from the room, its frayed wire inserted into an electric socket.

  The room smelled like the mouldy native rag sales Ishbel used to drag me to on Saturday mornings. The wall covering was strange: rectangles of varying shapes and colours. The walls were bricked with books – real books, not texts. I’d seen books before on field trips to native settlements but never so many in one place; I wanted to touch them but was terrified to move.

  The expression on my grandfather’s face was unfathomable. Was it pride?

  ‘May I?’ I asked, pointing to the shelf by the door.

  He nodded. I picked off the first book that came to hand: Marcus Periwinkle’s The Loneliest Planet.

  We had been taught the text at Academy. It was deemed a classic but here was an actual copy. I rubbed my hand over the cover and opened it. It smelled of the dying leaves that fall and rot after the rainy season.

  ‘It’s a book,’ he said. Yes, it was pride. He couldn’t hide it in his voice. ‘Read them if you like.’ He waved his hand around the room like a magician conjuring up an imaginary world, except this world was too creepy to be believed.

  ‘I detest text readers. Some of these books are banned.’ He touched a spine of one with his fingertips. ‘But I permit you to read them while you’re here,’ he said like an old sage. ‘As part of your education, you understand.’

  Was this guy real?

  ‘Thank you,’ I said with the required reverence as my hand caressed the book. I cracked open the spine and pressed my nose into the crease between the pages.

  Bad move. He whipped the book from my hand.

  ‘You are to treat these with respect or I’ll deny you access,’ he said as he smoothed the wrinkle from the spine. The room was warm but I felt that chill again and I still needed to pee. This clutter must harbour colonies of germs; I could feel them crawling out of the books and fabric and into my immune system. I tried to imagine myself reading in this room and couldn’t. I wanted out.

  ‘I need to pee. Can I please use your facilities?’

  He replaced the book in its shelf space and with precision aligned it with the others. Then his pale eyes hunted over me again. He looked as if he could murder me without breaking sweat.

  ‘I’ll show you to your quarters. Come, boy.’

  Another wooden door opened into a white-panelled, sterile corridor. The smells of vanilla and leaves were replaced with that of synthetic pine. The corridor was long with perhaps six or eight doors leading off and a metal shutter at the far end. Half way along he lifted his foot and toed a partially open door.

  This room dazzled in its whiteness. It was larger than the reading room, or seemed so because it was sparsely furnished. There was little more than a utilitarian bed, a desk and two chairs, all white. There was no Games Wall, just a prehistoric workstation that was totally obsolete – a beast station.

  ‘Is this it?’ I couldn’t bite my tongue.

  I dumped my bag on the bed and fought to stop my piss-hop. Where was the toilet?

  ‘This was my assistant’s room.’

  ‘Oh yeah.’ He probably died of white blindness.

  At least there was a window, the first window I’d seen since I walked down those awful stairs below the crown of the perimeter walls. Until this moment I’d assumed the whole penitentiary was underground. It gave me a view to the sky and sea and circling birds. This window would be my salvation even though there was not one scrap of land to be seen through a fine mist.

  I turned and caught his stare. He stepped back, then seemed to collect himself.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Your eyes. They’re blue.’ He seemed surprised at this fact, even after his earlier scrutiny.

  ‘Yes. My mother’s eyes were blue.’ I waited to see his reaction, to see if he knew she was dead, to notice the use of the past tense. The horrible past tense. But there was no flicker in his expression.

  ‘Your mother should never have been born,’ he said, and left the room.

  That hurt. He should have just kicked me in the balls. At least then I would know the pain would subside in a short while.

  How could he be like this? Ma was so gentle. Had been so gentle. No way could he be my grandfather. Never. He must be an impostor.

  These thoughts recurred over and over as I examined the room to find any hint of modern technology and determine the surveillance points. At the window, the sight of the sea sealed my predicament. It was as if I were on a raft, adrift; an orphan with no native to care for me; I didn’t even have Academy to pass the time. I was imprisoned in a penitentiary, yet had committed no crime.

  I peed in the white washroom and stared at my reflection in the mirror for an epoch to see if there was any resemblance to him. There might have been a camera behind it but I cared not one grain. Let them take my stare. What I saw was the same blue-eyed boy who woke a few days ago, excited on his sixteenth birthday. My parents had smiled and hugged me and taken pleasure in the happiness their present had given. Was that only a few days ago?

  After a while prefab food was delivered by an insignificant native. He kept his head low and mumbled for me to leave the tray in the corridor when done. I considered firing up the beast station but it needed a key that was nowhere around. I connected my reader and watched some Snap TV. The signal was weak and the clips were repeats I had seen a trillion times before so I lay on top of the bed and watched the changing light, waiting for darkness to drop in. There was no moon, it was raining again and as I listened to the splashes on the window I tried to empty my mind. When tears threatened, I used Pa’s trick and pummelled the pillow until my upper abductors ached. The ordeal of the past few hours had left my mind numb so it was no surprise I slept. When I woke it was fully night and for the first time I noticed the sound of the sea. And from then on the sound of the sea pounded my ears every minute of every day. The hammering of the surge on the rocks below my window was so hard I feared, and sometimes wished, that the island would erode at its base and the crown of the penitentiary would crumble and it and all its inhabitants would tumble into the raging surf and perish. Who would care if we did?

  There were other night sounds in the lull when the tide receded. Screams. Not from the living quarters but from outside. Animal screams, perhaps a young rabbit hooked and lifted into the sky by an owl, but moments later a similar scream shuddered and I tried hard to believe it was not that of a man.

  That first night I lay on my bed and watched the timer on the wall click its way towards morning. There was nothing to drink and no kit to test the water. If I tried to ignore my pounding dehydration headache maybe I would sleep.

  A light from outside flashed into the room and across the floor. I counted the seconds, as I did for the fifty-three seconds of the Home Base perimeter light, but this light flashed again after nine seconds and then again after eleven. That can’t be right. It must be a lighthouse but a lighthouse beam is constant. I counted the varying spaces until daylight b
egan to creep across the floor and then I slept. I knew I slept because a slight shake of my shoulder woke me.

  ‘Come on now, wake up pal.’

  One eye opened to daytime. The dull light struggled through the window, casting a delicate halo around the dark apparition in navy overalls that stood before me.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Ye’ve got tae wake up now and eat something, wee man.’

  He was small with sandy-coloured hair and skin the colour of oatmeal. There was a definite native look about him, with freckles on his face and hands. His cheek bones and eyes were so hollowed it looked as though the skin on his face had been borrowed or stolen, pulled tight over his skull and vacuum packed. Grey eyes stared at me and crinkled when his smile revealed a mouth of discoloured, crooked teeth. That smile reached right into my soul and gave me a hug.

  ‘Come on now, wee man, let’s be havin’ ye up and dressed and fed.’ Northern native slang, not too strong but there all the same. As part of their Cultural Diversity programme, Academy gave demonstrations of different native slang, carving up Esperaneo into the native districts and showing how the language and slang dramatically changed according to those geographical districts. Up till now I’d never met anyone who spoke any form. The natives at the Base had their slang trained out of them. Apparently slang was heard at illegal sporting events when the pits were full of natives hollering and bawling for blood, but such events were a mystery to me. Ishbel, although a native, had a soft lilting accent not readily recognisable as native.

  So this was my new native. He was no Ishbel for sure.

  ‘Don’t you be thinkin’ ye’ll git breakfast in bed every day wee man, jist the day, see’n as how it’s yer first.’

  ‘My name’s Somhairle,’ I said, hoping he would get the message and stop calling me wee man. I was, after all, taller than he, and it seemed too familiar a term for a native to use with a Privileged.

  ‘Aye ah know yer name son, but it’s a bit formal no? So ah’ll jist cry ye Sorlie.’ He held out a puny hand for me to shake but when I didn’t take it he dropped it to his side and began smoothing down his tunic. ‘Mine’s Kaydon, but you can ca’ me Scud, that’s what aw ma mates cry me.’

  ‘Scud? What sort of name is that?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Why do they call you Scud?’

  He shrugged again. ‘No idea,’ he said as he placed the tray on my lap. ‘Now you be gettin’ that intae ye. Ah’ll be back in a mo wi some work fur ye tae dae.’ He wandered to the window, cast a look then turned to me. ‘Just cause yer here doesnae mean yer gettin’ aff school work.’ He thumbed toward the door. ‘Auld Davie there thinks there’s nithin’ as important as a guid education.’

  Still he didn’t leave. He looked back to the window and sighed, in much the same way Ishbel sighed. I wondered where she was waking up this morning. The first morning in years she didn’t have to prepare my breakfast. It was my turn to sigh and this galvanised my new native into action.

  The funny little man hustled round the room tidying as he went. As he folded my outer clothes he gravitated many times to the window. Each time he caught my eye he grinned. His overalls were a sort of uniform, not like the guards or those of a civilian but an all-in-one with a series of symbols etched on it.

  He eventually left me to my food which was warm with no added dairy. I detected a hint of added calcium, probably in powder form. My drink was water but it too had mineral textures and flavours added to it. So what, I was parched. My energy levels whooshed and I felt a kind of excitement at what was in store for me on my first day. As I leaned forward to place the tray on the floor I felt the pressure of the packet containing my DNA passport on my waist. Ishbel risked her life to give me this without my grandfather’s knowledge. Why? Surely he knew what my DNA passport held: my ancestry line. And what was the difference between this original passport and the benign substitute? Before I rose I secreted it deep in the bag, mindful of hidden cameras – my earlier inspection had identified a small dot beside the washroom door as the most likely candidate. Even though it was an old installation there were no corners to hide and examine the passport. I’d bide my time. Grandfather’s reaction to Ishbel was weird; although he didn’t seem suspicious of her, he certainly didn’t like her. He called her a whore – very quaint. It’s a wonder he didn’t search my bag when I arrived though.

  There were two utility suits packed in the bag so I put one on without showering. Judging by Scud’s body odour, I assumed the water restriction rules applied here too. One good thing, Scud had brought the key to the workstation. While I waited for him to return, I connected my reader and communicator and turned the beast on. After an aeon a screen popped up with the words:

  “Welcome Somhairle to Black Rock. We hope you enjoy your stay.”

  ‘Ah jist thought it wid make ye feel at hame,’ the scuttling Scud said on his return.

  ‘You did this?’

  ‘Aye – we aw huv terminals in our cells. We can send messages. Everything’s monitored though.’ He tapped the side of his nose with his finger, made a squinty mouth and hooked his thumb towards the small dot beside the washroom door. So I was right, there was a camera there.

  ‘Everything is monitored but that little welcome message seems tae have been kosher.’

  ‘You have a cell? Does that mean you’re a prisoner? You aren’t my new native?’

  Scud walked to the window, placed his hands on the wall and took a swatchie at the sky. ‘Aye a prisoner, that’s me. And yer native,’ he said without turning.

  My grandfather assigned me a prisoner for a native. Great. ‘What crime did you commit?’

  ‘Nothing too serious,’ he said, examining the command band on his wrist. ‘Other than that ah cannae say.’

  ‘Where’s my grandfather?’ I said to break Scud’s sentinel at the window.

  ‘Busy man, busy man. You mus’nae disturb him.’ His voiced scurried like his body.

  ‘He said I could read his books.’

  Scud wheeled on his heels and peered at me with narrow native eyes. I was reminded of the cats kept in Academy science labs who stared down their captors with no fear even though they were doomed.

  ‘Did he now?’ Scud whispered. ‘Did he now? Well then wee man, ye’ll need tae nip along tae the library the morra after lunch. Davie boy always goes for a nap in his sleep quarters then and he’ll no be wantin’ you under his feet ony other time.’ Scud took one final glance at the window before joining me at the beast station. ‘But don’t tell him ah told ye that – about the nap. He’s not as young as he thinks he is and disnae like tae admit it. Aye, he’ll come a cropper one day if he disnae look efter hissel’.’

  The smile on Scud’s face didn’t disguise a certain menace present in his eyes, throwing doubt on the lack of seriousness to his crime. He seemed to snap out of that role and returned to the soft smile that greeted me on waking.

  ‘Why can’t I go to the library today?’

  ‘Coz.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I need tae clear it with him, is all. But being yer new tutor that shouldnae be a problem for me.’

  Snot erupted in my nose with that one. ‘You? My tutor?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘What about Academy?’

  His shifty look didn’t pass me. And then it dawned: if I was an outlaw how could I continue with my education at Academy? Scud knew this.

  Superb – no parents, no identity, no education, no snafin’ future. Scud nodded as if reading my mind. His eyes changed again but this time to intelligence I’d never seen, or noticed, in a native – other than Ishbel. I wanted him to leave me but I had one more question for him.

  ‘What were those screams I heard in the night?’

  He grabbed his command band.

  ‘Animals probably. It’s a jungle out there.’ He punched me on th
e arm. ‘Better aff in here, eh?’ He left abruptly and didn’t return until lunch. Then he loaded beast-station with an old desk top learning system and left again. Each time I tried to speak to him he tapped his nose and brushed my questions aside. Some line had been crossed when I asked about the screams.

  As he collected my lunch tray he smiled, almost apologetically. ‘The morra will be different, eh? We’ll git ye in tae the library, then ye’ll find oot aw sorts o’ things.’

  ‘Will I see my grandfather tonight?’

  He didn’t even look round from the doorway as he said, ‘Probably not.’

  Chapter Ten

  Of course the packet was still there – did I really need to check the holdall one more time? I did anyway. The sparse furnishings did not accommodate good hiding places so the only way to stow the holdall was to stuff it in the bedside locker.

  The power shutdown happened sooner than expected. There was nothing to do but lie listening to the wash and pull of the sea. The sounds changed depending on the tide and wind and sea levels. That’s when I noticed the lighthouse beacon again. Counting the erratic flashes was sure to put me to sleep, except tonight it was constant, every thirteen seconds. The pinlight of my communicator was pretty feeble but enough to aid my stumble to the window. It was impossible to work out where the lighthouse was and how it could shine in this room. There must be some deflection devices on the outside wall.

  The overcast sky hid the stars and satellites, but far out in the blackness of the sea the lights of five bold moor-logging trawlers twinkled, as stationary as the stars seemed to be. Then something winked in the distance, just about where the horizon should be. A low star? No. It flashed, it moved, groping a way towards the island. A Transport. My heart walloped. She was coming back. The temptation to grab the holdall and stand by the door like a child waiting to be taken to the Pleasure Dome tugged me, but the gravitational pull of the window was stronger.