Ways of the Doomed

by McPartlin, Moira;

The outside door buffeted against a driving easterly gale. Ridgeway struggled to keep the old hinges from popping their screws. He made sure I had a good hold on the hand rail. It was the first time I noticed the old-fashioned lock. No electrics. The authorities obviously assumed this old door was enough of a deterrent to enter from such an imposing cliff stairwell. It certainly seemed like madness as we teetered down the precarious steps. The rock was slick and slimy with a combination of rain, sea wash and bird shit. Ridgeway’s boots lost grip and he landed on his bum. At first I laughed, then thought from this position I need only put my boot to his back to push him off. If he slipped from the steps he would fall at least a hundred metres to the waves that hammered the jagged rocks below. He’d be bashed to smithereens. I thought of the keys in his pocket – they would be lost, he would be lost, so I let that plan go in the wind, but it gave me an idea for something else.

  He soon recovered and scrambled to his feet, brushing his wet behind with a gloved hand. Despite the cold his face was red and sweating.

  ‘Stuff this madness,’ he shouted up to me. ‘Why must you go out today?’

  ‘I’ve something to show you,’ I shouted back.

  His grumbled reply whipped away in the wind and he left me to pick my own way down the slithery steps as first his body then head vanished into the mist below, but I knew he would wait at the bottom. When I reached him he was hood-bent against the wind like a bowing native. I took care on the last few treacherous steps. When I reached the last one I thought I was home and dry but the rock I stood on was soapy and my boot shot from its footing. I grabbed Ridgeway’s jacket to stop my fall and almost pulled him over with me.

  ‘This is madness,’ he shouted again, but stood aside to let me lead.

  ‘Come on, don’t be such a native,’ I hollered back.

  He shot me a look that warned me not to push my luck.

  ‘Don’t you be rushing ahead again,’ he said. ‘Not in this mist, you’ll get lost.’

  We walked single file to the lower coastal path. I knew exactly where I was going and struck out. The distance between us stretched but I kept turning to check Ridgeway remained in sights. I didn’t want him getting suspicious – not yet anyway.

  At the cairn marking the junction with the path that led to Kenneth’s cave I stopped. What I was about to do was risky, but my choices had diminished along with my Privileged status. If I stayed in the prison I would eventually tip the balance too far with my unpredictable grandfather and he would fulfil his promise to kill me.

  I waited for Ridgeway to catch up. Now off the clifftop, the world was less windy and reduced our holler to a hoe.

  ‘Down there,’ I pointed.

  He took a swatchie over the edge. ‘You’re mad if you think I’m going down there.’

  ‘You have to. That’s where the corncrake is and if we don’t find it my grandfather might send you to Bieberville.’

  He snorted. ‘Don’t you threaten me. You don’t have that sort of influence with your grandfather.’

  He was right but I needed to make him believe I had that influence. ‘How do you know I don’t? I’m his kin.’

  ‘Because I’ve worked for him for years, and I know the make of that man. He cares nothing for kin. All he cares about is Black Rock and his position here.’

  ‘That’s a bit presumptuous for a guard is it not?’

  Ridgeway straightened his back and looked right at me square in the eye. For the first time I could see that the bumbling, lumbering guard had been an act. He stood tall, his stomach pulled in and his eyes narrowed, turned hard.

  ‘I’m more than a guard and you know it.’

  Did I? What did I know? He pointed to the bruise on my temple. ‘Where did you get that, stumbling about in the dark?’ There was a bitterness in his voice. ‘No, if he was so fond of you he would hardly beat you, would he?’

  I touched the telltale sign. So he had noticed.

  ‘And has he beaten you?’ I asked. ‘Can you tell me honestly that he never beat you or the other guards?’ I watched his face and there was a slight flicker that hinted I was nearer to the truth than he wanted to admit.

  ‘He’s a violent man – we both know that. He would never have got into his position if he’d been biddable.’

  The rain was dripping off our hoods causing a curtain of drops to draw past our eyes and fall on the jacket fronts. Anyone observing us from afar would see two helpless creatures, heads bowed, hands in pockets, waiting for some miracle to come along and sweep them to the promised land. We were a bit like the old sepia pictures of the last miserable inhabitants of this island.

  The wind funnelled down the valley, nudging our backs and urging us towards the path, willing us to the beach.

  ‘Come on, it’ll be sheltered down there. You go first – it’s not as hard as it looks, you know?’

  He shrugged. I watched him kneel on the grass and take a tentative shuffle backwards, his big backside facing the sea. The big coward was going to down-climb facing inwards. He looked up once and the expression on his face as he searched with his feet for a hold was almost comical; his tongue stuck out so far I could have nailed it to the ground. He shoved the hood back and let the rain soak his hair. He chewed his lip and crossed his eyes under his dancing eyebrows. At last he must have found a ledge and lowered himself. I waited until he was two metres below before I rolled a boulder the size of a small lunch pack to the edge. My heart louped. I’d never done anything like this before. I thought of my parents who had both been in the Military and had had to kill for the State. And how many men had Davie killed? I guessed it was in my DNA. No, I shook my head. My grandfather had a choice. I had no choice in the same way my parents had no choice for their actions. This was not what I wanted to do.

  I peered over the edge. If he fell now he would only fall about fifteen metres. He would be stunned, maybe break a bone. That would give Kenneth enough time. I hoped Kenneth would be in his cave waiting like a spider at the edge of a web, ready to scuttle out to his prey and have him bound before he had a chance to struggle. I aimed the boulder to the left of his head; I didn’t want to kill him. I closed my eyes and gave it a shove.

  ‘Below!’ I shouted. I opened my eyes to see Ridgeway look up. The boulder bounced on a clump of grass, bounced again, changed trajectory and moved directly towards his head.

  ‘Watch out!’ I screamed. I saw him pull his arms off his perch to shield his head; the boulder skiffed his shoulder. He began to slide. His hands scrabbled for purchase, tore heather from the bank. His body tumbled and rolled and eventually stopped in a heap at the bottom of the cliff, motionless.

  Oh Jupiter, I’d killed him. I levered myself off the edge and scrambled down to the prone guard. There was a cut on his forehead and lots of blood, but at least he was still breathing.

  ‘Ridgeway?’ I crouched down trying find the source of the blood flow.

  ‘So you decided to come back young Somhairle?’ I could hear the smile in Kenneth’s voice, but when he saw Ridgeway he rushed to him and shoved me out the way.

  ‘What happened?’ he snapped.

  ‘Have I killed him? The blood!’ In my head I shouted this but the actual words were whispered.

  My back was soaked in rain and sweat. Ridgeway lay like a starfish – I now saw a fountain pumped from his neck where a sharp shard of flint protruded. Kenneth grasped his neck with both hands and turned to me with thunder on his face.

  ‘He’s going to bleed to death. What have I done?’ My voice rose to shouting.

  ‘For the Lord’s sake Somhairle, stop being such a native.’

  This comment was as good as a slap across the face.

  Still holding Ridgeway’s neck in a strangle hold he placed the guard’s head on his lap. The blood soaked his skin coat.

  ‘Go into the back of the cave and bring me my hide bag.’

&nb
sp; I ran to the cave which I found to be deeper than I’d first thought a few days ago when Kenneth abducted me.

  The part of the cave he had taken me to had a sandy floor and walls damp with green algae. It was cold and stank of stale seaweed. I searched for the bag and found nothing but a midden of rusty cooking implements and jars, so I moved further into the dark until I came to an inner chamber. In there an electric light burned low, casting my shadow large and imposing on the walls painted bright corals and yellows, blues and greens. There were pictures of animals I didn’t recognise, and transports and submarines. I wanted to stop and stare and make sense of things but I had to get back to Kenneth. There was a bed made up of animal skins and a bag on top. It was crudely fashioned like his coat, but with the absence of any other bag I guessed this was the one he meant. There was another hide vessel like a water bottle so I grabbed that too.

  When I ran outside Kenneth was staring towards the cave entrance.

  ‘Hurry lad,’ he shouted. ‘Go into the bag and find graft skin.’

  There were five graft skins all in different sizes. I had seen them used once before when I had fallen from my gyrocycle and punctured my leg on a piece of glass. Because they were made from a rare substance derived of precious hydrocarbons, only medics were permitted to use them.

  ‘Don’t stand there gaping at it boy, give.’ But his hands were full and bloody.

  ‘Here, Somhairle, you hold.’ Kenneth nodded to Ridgeway’s neck. ‘Place your hand over mine and press down really hard when I take my hand away.’

  The blood was warm and sticky and smelled funny, like a rusted nail. The skin around the wound was cold and there was so much blood. My hands were shaking and I was scared my tremors would affect Ridgeway’s blood flow. His pulse fluttered against my palm like a blinking eyelash.

  Kenneth used his teeth to pull the cover off the graft, then in one nifty move he lifted my hand off the gash and clamped the graft over the wound. It seemed to suck onto the surrounding skin and immediately fused. Kenneth took a small vial and tube from the bag, inserted the tube into Ridgeway’s vein and propped the vial on a rock above them to create a drip.

  Kenneth untied the kerchief from his neck and handed it to me.

  ‘Here, soak that in the rock pool over there and bring it back. Quick now.’

  I did as he bid, washing my bloody hands at the same time. As I ran back I remembered the water bottle slung round my neck.

  When I reached the physician and patient I handed the kerchief and the bottle to Kenneth. He looked at me with surprise and also, for the first time, with compassion.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said before he popped the stopper with his teeth, swigged a drink and poured a little around the wound. He dribbled some on the kerchief and dabbed some round the cut on Ridgeway’s eye.

  He handed the bottle to me.

  ‘Here, have some.’

  I could tell as soon as I put the bottle to my lips that it was not water but the banned substance Mash. But I was not as surprised as I should have been. I was now becoming used to this island of banned substances. To drink this was serious. Every Privileged and native had a taste for Mash. When the Product Locality Law first banned exports, production of Mash stayed high even though demand plummeted. The citizens of Lesser Esperaneo began a period of mass binge drinking on the low-cost glut. The Mash took over. At first it was viewed as a form of social control to replace the banned religions, but the control got out of hand. Dependency was high; the prisons couldn’t cope even with the introduction of the island penitentiaries. The export ban was a political blunder. The Purists nationalised the distilleries and turned production into a military affair. All large-scale production went to barter for solar energy and weapons with the Dry States. A mass destruction of small stills followed but some survived – you just had to know where to look. It seemed I’d found one.

  It was a prison offence to hold Mash. It was a prison offence to drink it. To make it was punishable by death.

  Kenneth smiled as he watched me examine the bottle and fight with my conscience.

  ‘You haven’t quite caught on to where you are, lad, have you?’ he said. ‘There are no laws here.’ He pointed up the cliff. ‘Oh I know that the penitentiary is just back there, but laws don’t apply there either – you’ve seen your grandfather’s library. What do you think he takes for a nightcap?’

  I remembered the goblets and decanters on Davie’s lunch table; Vanora’s delivery, the Noiri consignment.

  ‘Go on – take a drink; I’ll not report you.’ He patted Ridgeway’s shoulder. ‘And neither will he.’

  I put the bottle to my lips and sipped. It tasted like iodine; my nose flared as the fumes ignited my tubes. The liquid warmed the back of my throat and grabbed it before sending a rod of fire through my breeches; my face numbed but at least my hands had stopped shaking. Suddenly I felt calm and yet my pulse still galloped. My toes curled in their boots with a satisfied glow.

  Kenneth laughed loud and heartily and slapped the unconscious shoulder of Ridgeway. ‘You want to see your face. Your eyes are almost popping their sockets.’ He laughed the laugh of my mother, and although this made me sad, it was reassuring to recognise him as kin.

  ‘Good, eh?’

  As I put the bottle back to my lips he grabbed it.

  ‘Not so quick, I don’t want you getting tipsy. If we need to look after this fellow here, I won’t be able to get up to the still for a wee while yet.’

  The word tipsy was new to me but the swimming in my head gave me a clue to its meaning.

  ‘Right now we need to deal with the problem in hand.’ He took an old fashioned timepiece from inside his jacket.

  ‘Tell me what you have found out and why you found it necessary to push Ridgeway down the cliff.’

  ‘I didn’t push him.’

  He waved his hand in dismissal. ‘Come on, be smart about it. We need to get you both back. What time do you need to get back?’

  ‘I’m not going back. My grandfather is going to kill me.’

  ‘Now don’t start. Tell me what you found out.’

  I pulled up the hair from my forehead and showed him the cut.

  ‘This is what he did after Vanora wound him up.’

  ‘Vanora? Of course, the Transport yesterday.’

  ‘Right. That was her, with Ishbel. Vanora is crazy by the way.’

  Kenneth stroked his matted chin. ‘She didn’t let me know she was coming.’

  ‘She said she wanted me to be her lieutenant but she didn’t take me with her. She provoked Davie and he took it out on me. He pushed me around and smashed me against a wall. He was murderous and unpredictable. He said he had nothing to lose now.’

  Kenneth beckoned for me to move closer. He examined my head and, taking a clean rag from his bag, he dabbed some Mash onto the wound. It nipped for a bit then calmed.

  ‘She was horrible to Ishbel.’

  ‘Tell me, from the beginning.’

  So I told him about being locked in my quarters and the Transport’s bow – he chuckled at that – and then about my grandfather taking me to see the visitors. With each detail I watched Kenneth’s eyes sink deeper into his forehead. Now and again he would nod. Was that a frown when I told him about the charismatic Merj? When I got to the bit about Vanora and Ishbel he sat forward.

  ‘And Vanora? How did she look – well?’

  ‘Old, decrepit, frail. She coughed a lot.’

  ‘Did anyone try to give you anything?’

  ‘Vanora tried to give me a present but Davie yanked me back before she had a chance.’

  ‘What happened after that?’

  I told him about Ishbel’s strange words, about ‘not long to wait’.

  ‘What did she mean?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know but Vanora was here for a reason. And you say she got the bet
ter of Davie. Good for her.’

  ‘Not for me though.’ I said, pointing to my head. ‘I’m not going back. She should have taken me with her but she didn’t. And Ishbel, she did nothing.’

  Kenneth patted the ground for me to sit. ‘They would have good reason. But are you sure she didn’t give you anything?’

  ‘No. She came to goad him…and me.’

  ‘Oh there would be more to it than that and you know it Somhairle.’

  My head dropped. Did I?

  ‘OK, you’re safe now,’ he said. We sat in silence for a few minutes, then Kenneth said, ‘I wonder what he meant – he had nothing to lose.’ He scratched at his beard. ‘Did you manage to get to your grandfather’s workstation?’

  ‘No, I went to the library but his workstation had gone. And Scud was no help because now he’s one of them.’

  Kenneth’s head snapped up. ‘What do you mean?’

  I could feel my chemical courage disappear.

  ‘I mean Scud looks and acts like a Privileged.’

  ‘This is bad.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘They must have settled on a combination for a native dilution. I thought it would take decades of haggling to get agreement and I had hoped I had put enough confusion into the process to keep it in suspension until we had time to act.’

  ‘What are you talking about? I don’t understand.’

  Kenneth’s eyes held the worry of the world in them. ‘Scud has, or had, a certain percentage of alleles that have been deemed by the government to be native. During the purge years every citizen of Lesser Esperaneo was DNA tested. The government had a definition of pure alleles and undesirable alleles. If a citizen had below a certain threshold of pure, they were classed as natives. Those above the threshold became Privileged, forming the two class system you know today – that you have always known. Not long after the Separation of Classes the fundamentalists in the Purists regime began work trying to find a solution to dilute the native alleles, or to eradicate it completely. Taking Scud as an example, if they had managed to change even a small percentage of his undesirable alleles it would mean the eradication of the native class. The world would be full of Privileged.’