Ways of the Doomed

by McPartlin, Moira;

  The approaching light never wavered from its line. Soon it would rise to the landing spot. It didn’t. It kept on a trajectory, straight for my window. The noise of the engine growled, overwhelming the sound of the waves. It was going to crash. I closed my eyes and ducked, clattering my funny bone against the wall – nothing happened. The growling heightened to a whine. I rose to my feet, clutching my stoonding elbow, not wanting to open my eyes. When I did, I saw the Transport hover outside my window, like some weird firebug, two globes of light unblinking, as if trying to wire me a telepathic message. It was Ishbel. The Transport tipped its nose downwards in a bow then brought back to level. Slow to react, the lights from the perimeter crown decided to spark to life. Gunfire rained on the Transport before it somersaulted backwards and upwards into the night.

  ‘No, don’t go,’ I said to the dark room and my surveillance. But she had gone. She’d left me again. I thudded my forehead on the cool of the window and thrust my hands in my pockets to stop me punching the glass. I fingered the pebble Ishbel had given me and rubbed the indentation of her own homesickness. Once our society believed in an afterlife; how I wished that were true. The breath of my ancestors deserted me now. Were Ma and Pa out there somewhere in the ether, looking over my shoulder? I made a wish on the pebble that Ishbel would come back for me and take me to her island, wherever that was. Maybe it was close to Pa’s mythical land of freedom.

  Even if she wasn’t coming back for me just yet, she hadn’t forsaken me; she knew exactly where I was in the Penitentiary. This time I left the pebble in my pocket and thumped the window with my fist until it hurt too much. The trogs behind the surveillance dot should have stopped me but they were silent, no doubt enjoying my pain. The pinprick light faded and little orphan Sorlie stumbled, lost in the dark.

  • • •

  Scud proved to be a daemon in native clothing. The curriculum he set was merciless although it was obvious that history was his thing. Even though Academy systems were out of bounds, somehow Davie had procured the learning modules. Scud scuttled around explaining how the desktop learning worked. He and it were about ten years past sell by and yet Academy modules operated on it. During the first level he peered over my shoulder. His odour had a ripeness of weekly washing and dubious dentistry breath, but at least he didn’t smell of vinegar.

  ‘Are you going to stay sitting here?’ I asked, trying to sound pissed off.

  Lessons should be done alone, everyone knows that. It was only when tactical assignments cropped up that the additional help of the native Ishbel had proved useful. Somehow she knew all the answers even though natives were not required to learn. I never questioned it at the time, but now I wonder what else she knew.

  ‘Aye, ah’m fine here.’ Scud showed off the command band on his wrist. ‘Davie boy said ah wis tae make sure you studied and ah wis tae help ye if ye got stuck.’ He tapped the band. ‘If ah’m needed elsewhere he’ll soon let me know.’

  ‘And you’ll be able to help me?’ I couldn’t stop the sneer in my voice. To meet one educated native was unusual but two was unbelievable.

  ‘Aye, ah’m no as daft as ah sound ye know.’

  The history module was ‘Changes to the Government in the Last Fifty Years.’ As each lesson appeared Scud would tut and mutter under his breath.

  ‘Rubbish, utter tripe.’

  ‘What?’ But he would tap his nose and raise his eyes to the ceiling then right then left.

  Next was maths – ouch. The standard deviation example was brutal. Two years I’d struggled with SD and none of my tutors satisfied my pleas for help. You could have wrapped me up and posted me to the moon when Scud explained the principles in SD for Dafties format. OK, so what if Scud’s method was like cheating? It worked.

  ‘Sorted,’ I beamed.

  He nearly smiled. But pride is a Privileged emotion so he stood up, stretched his back and wandered to the window for a quick fix of ocean watching.

  ‘Right ah’ll go fetch yer lunch and then ah’ll take ye tae yer precious books and ah’ll git some peace and quiet.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Back tae ma cell,’ he said. ‘This duty’s a soft touch fur me. Every scholar in ma block wis efter ma blood when Davie chose me. But ah only huv the morning wi ye, wee man, that’s aw. Then it’s back tae ma cell tae recite the alphabet backwards.’ He tapped his nose and clasped his command band.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind son.’ His voice was soft, low, almost a growl.

  ‘Why did he choose you?’

  Scud shrugged. ‘Must huv looked through ma records and saw ah used tae be a university lecturer before the Purists came tae power.’

  ‘How could you?’

  ‘How could ah what?’

  But I never got a chance to find out. A high pitch buzzing screeched from Scud’s command band. He started to vibrate, his eyes rolled back into those deep-set sockets and his whole body rattled like someone shot by a stun gun. It lasted only seconds then he dropped to his knees and curled his head into his chest. I rushed forward to help him.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ he snarled through gritted teeth.

  Bone by bone he uncurled his spine, rose from his knees to his feet. Beads of sweat drenched his red puckered face. He hovered his shaking hands in front of his chest. How long we stood like that, facing each other, waiting for his hands to stop their Saint Vitus dance and the pallor to return to his face – minutes? It felt like hours.

  ‘There,’ he said with a rasp. He coughed and licked his lips. ‘There, that’s what ah get fur opening ma big puss too wide.’

  In slow measured steps he left.

  An alert from the beast-station flashed an incoming message. It was from Davie boy, as I now thought of him: ‘DO NOT CONVERSE WITH THE NATIVES. THEY ARE THERE TO SERVE YOU. NOTHING ELSE.’

  Chapter Eleven

  The lunch Scud served masqueraded as a grain mixed with an unidentifiable green vegetable substitute. It looked like the sludge dredged from the Base water pumps after each flood. It reeked of it too. There was no remnant of Scud’s earlier shock; in fact he was chirpy, making a high-pitched sound through his teeth. It was the sound birds make from the trees in the morning and the evening just before dusk.

  Ishbel whistled through the gap in her teeth when she was anxious but she never made a tune. Despite the warning not to converse I asked, ‘What’s with the noise?’ What was I supposed to do, ignore him?

  His wrist band hummed ominously.

  ‘Sorry. Cannae help it. Ah don’t even know ah’m whistling most o’ the time. Hard habit tae break even efter twenty years.’

  ‘Twenty years, you said twenty years – is that how long you’ve been here?’ Panic shifted in his eyes, his head wobbled like some Eastern icon injected with akceli. Too far too soon, I’d need to learn to ride my cool.

  ‘Can you teach me? To whistle I mean.’

  ‘Ah don’t think so, son. No allowed in here.’ He collapsed into the chair and put his forehead in one hand and pointed to the food with the other. ‘Wire in Sorlie, then ah’ll get ye along tae the library.’ He wiped his hand over his eyes and looked up at me. His skin was paler than before. It wasn’t just the zapping: his stubbled head seemed blonder, and his grey eyes were now the colour of dried mud.

  ‘Are you ill?’

  ‘Just hurry wi the food.’

  • • •

  The library reeked of its dusty ancient histories, hidden and banned by successive governments. The flutter in my stomach was for the forbidden and also the fear of what I might find. I felt like an astronaut of old (in the time before space travel was limited to mineral extraction) landing on a far-flung planet, discovering a crusted tomb in which the secrets of whole civilisations were buried for their own good. As promised, Davie was absent; it seemed like years since I saw him. Scud pranced round th
e room, peering and clucking and sucking in, dancing some weird piss-hop.

  ‘If you need to go pee, then go.’ That stopped his trot.

  ‘Pretty impressive, eh?’ Scud said. ‘You’re one lucky lad being given this privilege. Ah wish it were me.’ He rummaged with his finger millimetres from the books. What punishment applied to a native touching paper? I dreaded to think but Scud knew.

  ‘Where do I start?’

  ‘If ah were you ah would spend the day looking at only one shelf. Take yer time, ye’ve got until seventeen hundred hours.’

  He circled the room of titles again then pointed to the shelves near the main door. ‘Start here.’

  • • •

  The books in this section were fiction; some books I had never heard of, so guessed they were no longer permitted reads. Some were the same texts given to high ranking officers. Ma and Pa had some but not many.

  Old names such as Tolstoy, Babel, Steinbeck; native fiction – Gunn and Gibbon; more modern classics by Klein, Ling and Pascal. These were the names of legends whispered of in the corner of the playing fields. As students we had tried to get hold of the texts but never quite managed it. There were rumours and boasts but that’s all they were.

  The fiction we were given in English was insipid, safe and easy to learn. Our tutor, Mr Elliot, often hinted there was more. He would utter the names of the forbidden then bite his tongue and with a frightened stare waited for something unspeakable to happen in much the same way Scud looked at his command band. Nothing ever did happen during class, the surveillance trogs must have been occupied elsewhere. Academy trogs were inefficient in real time; playback was always their option. It was the sort of social control religion exploited in the olden days – you never knew if someone was watching so you walked within the margins and only dared dip a toe outside if the stakes warranted the risk. One time Mr Elliot signed into class the day after one of his utterances with a broken arm and a black eye; he apologised and said he’d slipped. At first his utterances seemed genuine mistakes, and then one day Mr Elliot disappeared. His risk must have been worth the beating, but maybe not what followed. And now Scud played the same game.

  After Mr Elliot’s disappearance the whispers on the playing field turned from banned books to rebellion, but what could a bunch of kids do? It was all talk.

  Once, one of the boys produced from his sweaty shin pad a tattered copy of a real book about a spy named James Bond. He retold the story of the classic cars and beautiful women. This vicarious read made us laugh and we couldn’t see the harm. Fleming was the writer’s name.

  Most of the shelves were arranged in alphabetical order, but there was no Fleming in F. Shakespeare was a name that struck a memory chord so I gave him a whiz – The Merchant of Venice. Venice was one of the first cities to disappear under water but I hadn’t a clue what a merchant was. The language was freaky, a bit like English but not. At least the introduction was in old plain English. It told me the tale was of a Jewish moneylender Shylock. So merchant must mean moneylender. These were like the creeps and their bruisers that hung around the Base gates waiting for the natives to return from market, something to do with credit and bad vibes. So this Shylock dude must be the bad guy. The word Jewish was alien, so I punched it into my hand reader. Nada. Even the worldwide translator blanked. There was a tattered old dictionary tucked into the bottom corner near the door but the word was not entered. Perhaps it was a misspelling; it happened in old text. Maybe fiction could wait.

  The book I spent most of the afternoon reading was the history of the island. I found it by chance when I returned the dictionary to its corner. When I entered this room on my first day it was hard to imagine settling down to read here, but in an animal skin chair, the kind now forbidden by the LRP, I did just that. The chair was cool and soft and smelled of candle wax which neutralised the sweet foostiness of the room. The creamy pages of the book were smeared with what looked like cooking oil, the middle section contained monochrome photos of grubby men and women. Men in caps puffed smoking sticks, the women were bundled in scarves and wraps like washed-out Russian Dolls. They all looked as miserable as natives these days do; no wonder because they had lived off a diet of seabirds and fish – putrid puke or what? The seabird provided them with every need including oil for cooking and lighting – primitive. Then the book took on this preaching tone which pure grates my nerves to sawdust. It said, “Their demise proved to be a prophecy for the rest of the world, but as usual no one was paying attention. They took from the earth but did not give back, their lifestyle was unsustainable, and unlike the peoples of Esperaneo, their practices were not checked.” You could tell it was written by a gum-bumping Land Reclaimist.

  • • •

  ‘What are you doing here, lad?’

  The harsh voice jolted me from dreamtime and back to the room. The half-read book’s pages were bent over, crumpled in my grasp, stuck like some smutty porno-card I couldn’t shake off. I quickly tried to smooth the page but Davie grabbed it from me, almost pulling me out of the chair with it. My mouth was dry and my head ached. How could I have slept?

  His face was centimetres from me, granite eyes throwing me back, impaling me to the chair.

  ‘Well? Answer me? What are you doing here?’

  ‘Em,’ a small squeak uttered from my dry mouth. My swallow wedged in my craw, bypassing a sliver of saliva on the way. I choked. ‘Em, you said I could read your books.’ I stood, edging to the door.

  ‘And did the native not instruct you to quit by sixteen hundred hours?’

  ‘Seventeen, Scud said seventeen hundred.’ It was neon and klaxons the minute the words left my mouth.

  ‘Scud?’ The word rumbled round the room, but he shifted and dropped his stare. There was confusion behind that roar. He banged his hand hard on the desk. ‘I said sixteen, and since when does a Privileged know a native’s name?’

  ‘It… It isn’t his real name.’

  He arched an eyebrow in disbelief.

  ‘It is just what I call him – to myself.’ My palms were sweating and I became aware that I was scratching my wrist but at least I didn’t have the book to worry. If I destroyed a book he would no doubt wring my neck.

  He pushed me aside and sat in the chair, smoothing down the pages against his thigh. ‘What have you chosen to read, anyway?’ He pulled what I thought were fabled pince-nez from his breast pocket and squinted through them at the book. ‘Pah, nostalgic drivel.’

  ‘Could you suggest one, sir?’ I asked.

  ‘Don’t use that pawky tone with me, boy! It won’t work. Find your own way.’

  I circled on the spot like a wolf before it settled in its den but there were too many choices. I was lost.

  ‘What are you learning in class, boy?’

  ‘The Purist Uprising during the collapse of the global market system in 2018.’

  He pulled a small wooden box from his pocket, took a pinch of powder and sniffed it up his nose.

  ‘Bit of a mouthful that.’

  ‘Grandfather?’

  ‘Don’t call me Grandfather,’ he said, blinking.

  ‘What shall I call you then?’

  He stared toward the corner of the room, his eyes clouded over.

  ‘Call me Davie.’ The glasses made him appear older. What was I afraid of? He was an oldie and not that much taller than me. The fact he needed glasses proved he no longer qualified for Corrective-S.

  Imitating Ishbel, I clenched my toes and stretched to my full height before I said, ‘I’m doing a project on flora and fauna and need to go outside.’ This was a whopping lie, he only needed to check my knowledge log before I had a chance to alter it.

  Those eyes crackled.

  ‘No.’ He pointed to a shelf of books. ‘All the knowledge you need is here. Now get out. I have work to do.’

  ‘Shall we have our meal together tonight?�
�� I would work on him then.

  He glared again but not before the hesitation dropped him a point.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please Grandfather, I mean Davie. You can’t keep me in solitary confinement.’

  ‘What part of the word ‘NO’ do you not understand? Now leave.’

  ‘Can I take the book?’

  As he passed the book to me I noticed the liver spots on his plate sized hands were dotted with concealer that had not fully rubbed in. That was interesting.

  ‘Don’t forget to bring it back.’

  Chapter Twelve

  When Scud arrived later with my supper, his pallor was ghostly, almost translucent.

  ‘What’s crackin’ wee man?’

  ‘What’s crackin?’ I pointed to his face. ‘You, by the look of it. What happened to your face? You look like a shedding snake.’

  He tapped his nose.

  ‘But your freckles, they’ve gone completely.’ His complexion resembled the aero flour and water paste we made at the Montessori by dipping straws into the mix and bubbling it up before mask making.

  ‘How did that happen?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’ know, nae great heartache, they wurnae ma freckles tae miss.’ He cackled like a hag and started busying himself, as all natives do, with my tidying up.

  ‘What do you mean, not yours – how could they not be yours?’

  ‘Shush.’ He bent low beside me and rapped his command band, then stood straight with hands on hips shaking his head.

  ‘Ah have tae say you are the untidiest wee pup ah’ve ever come up against. Did Ish… ah mean yer mother never prevent ye getting intae such a bad habit? Ah would have thought they’d huv sorted ye oot, you being a military kid an aw.’

  ‘Wait, you almost said Ishbel.’