The brick patents? They shouldn’t be providing an income for him yet. Maybe an advance payment. “We had a little business plan. Didn’t he tell you about it?”
She poked at the food. “Why should he tell me? Go, pour yourself one of his beers, whatever.”
There would be no hurried exit for me. I nodded toward the mass of food Mabel had prepared. “I’ll join you, if I may.”
While we ate, I told her about the patents. “It could be years before they make money.”
“Big money?”
“Maybe.”
“Good.”
Footsteps sounded on the gravel drive.
Mabel wiped bread into the fat on her plate. “Men. Bastards, every one. What does she see in you?”
“Sy?”
“Who else?”
I knew Mabel too well to take her words personally. I grinned. “Could it be my rugged good looks and easy charm?”
“No.”
“Ah. Then it beats me.”
The doorbell rang.
Mabel reached for my plate and pulled it to her. “He’ll wait.” Her fork hovered. “She’s been hurt. I can see it in her eyes. Will you hurt her one day, just because you can?” She leaned back and stared out the window.
I put a hand on hers. “You have hidden depths, Mabel.”
She forced a smile. “Not just a pretty face, do you mean? Go. Let me enjoy a few days of misery.”
I settled back in the cab, the Wider View on my lap.
A breeze through my window ruffled the pages.
Much of the paper concentrated on the planned festivities, with the EBC promising constant entertainment up to and beyond the Darken’s Day countdown. A pull-out section filled with cartoons and quizzes promised to keep children quiet for an hour or two each day.
News was scant, but there were two items that gave me cause for concern.
Two paragraphs, a late-news item on the back page, told of Ronnie Bile’s death. His body had been found by his cleaner the previous evening, a single gunshot into his upper palate.
Suicide? I had met him only once, but that didn’t seem his style. He could kill, but he didn’t seem the sort to end his own life. Why should his death concern me? I had met few less pleasant men.
The other brief article hit me harder and with less ambivalence. The site for the Molotaver dam was to be reconsidered. It didn’t mention the Wellar Land Consortium, but the effect on its stock value didn’t need to be spelled out. Was it coincidence that the news had been released at the start of a four-day market closure?
My greed had drawn me in and let me down. Worse, because I had used Draco employee credit, I owed money to Draco Trading—Hector Bandstorm, in effect. He was not an enemy I would choose.
I tossed the paper aside and stared at open country on either side of the cobbled road.
For an hour, I dozed. A curse from the driver snapped me to attention.
I leaned forward. “Problem?”
He reached a hand back and slid a separating window across. “Roadblock.”
Half a mile ahead, barriers stood across the road.
“Police?”
“Who else?” The car began to slow. “Could be a criminal on the run. It happens. But my money’s on the randy rumpards.”
He pulled up alongside the barrier and stepped out.
A single policeman, scarcely out of his teens, sat on the bonnet of his car. “Not safe, sir. The rut has spread over the road, just like it did in twenty-three.”
The driver took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, offered one to the policeman, then lit both. He nodded toward hills in the west. “The farm tracks. Are they clear?”
A few minutes later, we set off up a steady incline that stretched as far as I could see, between fields of ripe cereals, partly harvested. We passed few houses, received waves from curious children, and turned off at a hamlet where a narrow cobbled road crossed the track. After half an hour, the driver pulled up outside a tavern.
He got out and opened my door. “We’ll stop here awhile, if you want to stretch your legs. Me, I’m having a beer and whatever.”
I stepped on cobbles.
The wind had settled, and a balmy calm filled the air. A group of children were huddled by a fence beyond the tavern, looking to the east.
I wandered over and settled on a bench. The ground dropped sharply after the fence then leveled to a gentle slope. The road we had planned to use reached across the land, a few hundred yards from where I sat. The nearer side held crops. On the far side, a few small trees peppered scrubland that reached to the ocean. It was there that the rumpards—horned amphibians the size of a large car—gathered.
One of the children, a girl maybe eight years old and dressed in a blue gingham dress, came and stood beside me.
I turned, expecting an outstretched hand, but her attention remained on the plain below. “Do you know what they’re doing, Mister?”
I smiled. Should I explain? Better not. “What do you think?”
She giggled then turned to me, her cheeks dimpled. “Gaston says the winner gets to boogle the girlies.”
Boogle? I didn’t ask.
Two bulls had their horns locked, heads down, feet braced against the ground. When the shoving failed to decide the matter, they separated, thundered away from each other, turned, and nuzzled the ground a hundred yards apart. One charged, then the other. Their skulls crashed together.
Within half a second, the thud reached us, followed by a drawn-out roar. They stepped back. Soon, one turned and trotted away.
“He’s had enough,” the girl said.
“So, the other has won?”
She laughed. “Don’t be silly. Look.” She pointed to the distant coast. “See? They’re still coming. The big ones won’t be here till evening.”
I looked around the plain, where four separate pairs of males faced each other in different stages of battle. Must every male go through the process until there was one overall champion? “It’s a savage business,” I said. “And Gaston has it about right.”
The girl gasped. “That’s scary. The biggest of those boneheads on those little girlies.” She shook her head and ran back to her friends.
By the time the last and largest of the bulls arrived, dead and injured rumpards littered the plain, and the sun cast long shadows.
I waited in the cab. When the driver arrived on unsteady feet, I held out a hand for the keys. After six lessons, it had to be safer than letting him drive, but he still charged me the full fare.
Sy’s one-mile heat on Friday had the crowd roaring.
Few seats remained in the recently refurbished and renamed Everest Stadium, Barford’s showpiece. As friends of the team, we could have sat in an enclosure along the finishing straight. Instead, Linnet led me to a raised tier, farther back but still well placed to watch the finish.
The competitors were announced. “Lane two, Ensayada Heyho, former world-record holder and world champion. Let’s see what she has for us today.” She waved to the crowd and got almost as loud a cheer as the Barford contestant had in lane one.
Sy must have heard my calls as she cruised past us to an easy victory, but she didn’t turn.
Later that afternoon, in the four-by-six-hundred-yard relay, a fumble on her baton pickup cost a yard or two, but the team qualified for the final.
She left the stadium without turning to us.
Linnet touched my arm. “She won’t speak to you until after her finals. Superstition.”
“Sy’s superstitious?”
“No, but her teammates are, and Sy is totally supportive of the team.”
We caught occasional sightings of Dick as he moved among the athletes with his notepad. When the last race had been run, he hurried over, kissed Linnet, and grabbed his coat from the seat next to her. “I need to go to the office for an hour or two.”
Linnet smiled as he left. She called after him. “Why don’t you have a beer on the way back?”
He wa
ved without breaking his stride.
With Linnet and Dick working and no need to be at the stadium, I spent the next day wandering the streets of Barford. Twice I was approached by children. In each case, I avoided eye contact and didn’t respond to their words.
I bought lunch from a street vendor. Perhaps at some subliminal level, I heard ocean waves crashing on a shore or sensed the salt spray. For whatever reason, I soon found myself seated on a bench, staring out to sea. Open water, it seemed, had become my new obsession. It helped when ideas didn’t seem to flow.
Rutting rumpards. Hector Bandstorm and his kind. The need to dominate.
There had been ruts among the mammals of Earth—a battle for the right of the strongest male to pass on his genes. What then? Did the females have a right to reject the male? Had their freedom of choice, if it ever existed, been obliterated by the demonstration of superiority?
I’d witnessed rape on Earth among mallards on a roof-park lake, with two drakes holding a duck’s head near the water while another covered her, and among now-extinct elephants, on ancient footage, with the dominant male mounting a young female as her mother nearby cried out in anguish. But no law had been broken. No moral rule had been infringed. It was just animals following their animal nature in a way that, decreed by merciless evolution, had advanced their species over the ages.
Linnet and I sat by her kitchen table that evening, each with a glass of wine.
She smiled, but a frown remained. “Lemuel, do you remember the first time we met?”
The day of my EBC interview? “It was Sy’s birthday, forty—no, forty-one days ago. I thought you were Sy’s mother. Have you forgiven me yet?”
Linnet’s smile relaxed. “In a way, you were right. I raised her.” She picked up her glass and wrapped both hands around it. “Her suffering, more than anyone’s, made me determined to attack the abusers. I heard stories since; you wouldn’t believe the horror. Many have been hurt more than Sy, but none has gotten to me in quite the same way.”
The day had grown warmer, windless, and sticky. I brushed a hand against the sweat of my forehead.
Linnet looked hard at me, her jaw set with the same determination I had often seen on Sy’s face. “I met the Cragglemouth team bus yesterday. I got a few moments alone with Sy, and she told me about your island.”
“I asked her to.”
“Ah. Then you must know what I want to talk about.”
When did Linnet start getting coy with me? “Linnet, I make no personal claim for the island. My friend Newton is building homes there, and farms. In six months it’ll be ready for a small community. You and your friends—campaigners and all—are welcome. How we get there and back, we’ll work that out. There’ll be a dock, in time. Telephones to Eden? Mail? We’ll work all of that out. Just tell me what you want.”
Linnet turned her glass in her hands and set it back on the table. She faced me with a frown. “Lemuel, I’m meeting some friends tonight. I’d like you to come. They’ll have questions. The island is a perfect place to store evidence and to live while we build our campaign.”
“I’ll meet them if you like. But at the moment, there’s little more I can tell you. There is something else, though.”
“Now it’s you with that serious look.”
How much should I say? “Linnet, I lost a child once, and a partner. Did Sy tell you?”
“To abuse?”
I ran a hand through my hair. Another two years, it might reach a fashionable length. “I didn’t know it until I came here. It hurts. I’m telling you so you know, for me, too, it’s personal. I’ll do what I can to bring them all to justice, but it won’t solve the problem.”
“How can locking up the abusers not solve the problem of abuse? That’s ridiculous.”
Hinges creaked as the front door opened.
The ideas in my head were at best half-formed, but Giltstein’s words—that no rumpard would dare let Bandstorm get close enough—had been echoing in my head since I witnessed the battle to boogle. “It will help in the short term, but others will fill the void.”
Dick strolled into the kitchen carrying two bottles. “Guess who won the office raffle?” He put them on the table.
Linnet picked one up and read its label. “Whiskey. What can we do with that?”
Dick scratched his bald patch. “I’ll think of something.” He looked at me, at my untouched glass, at Linnet, and at the wine bottle. “I sense a chill in the air.” He got himself a glass, filled it from Linnet’s bottle, and sat at the end of the table. A neutral corner? “Well?”
Linnet shook her head. “No chill. A disagreement. Lemuel informs me that putting the pedophiles in prison wouldn’t solve the pedophile problem.”
Dick drank half his wine. “An interesting theory. Linnet, have you asked why Lemuel thinks this way? He’s not a fool, and, unless I’ve misjudged him even more than I once misjudged my own journalistic skills, he isn’t evil. Have your say, Lemuel.” He nudged my glass until it touched my hand. “And drink. It loosens the mind. At least, the first one does. After the fourth, it gets a bit wavy, and after eight or nine…I don’t remember what happens then.”
How to begin? “Linnet, I love this planet more than I ever loved Earth. There’s space to breathe here. You wouldn’t believe the crowded, polluted, automated world I left behind. But on Respite, you still have contact with the reality of nature. Sometimes, that reality is harsh, even brutal—the sort of actions that, from a human, would be seen as evil.”
Linnet stared at me. “I’m not sure where you are going with this, but I hope you are not suggesting evil is natural.”
“Of course it is, Linnet. What is the purpose of civilization if not to stop the powerful riding roughshod over the weak? Rape wasn’t rape, murder wasn’t murder, corruption wasn’t corruption, until we had a system of laws based on a moral code.”
Linnet slapped a hand on the table. “Rape is always rape.”
“No.” I sipped my wine. “Yesterday, I watched the rut of the rumpards.”
Dick laughed. “Whatever pumps your piston.”
“Have you ever seen it, Dick? It’s a bloodbath. And all for the right to boogle the girlies, who then have no right to refuse. They are animals, forged through a process of mindless evolution over millions of years. So are we.”
Dick stared at me. “Are you comparing us to those dull-headed, leather-bound amphibians?”
“In one respect only. It’s difficult, because there is no theory of evolution on Respite, but we evolved on Earth, alongside goats and horses and many other types of mammals, some of which had ruts like Respite’s rumpards. What I’m trying to say, and I haven’t worked out the details, is that the same desire to dominate—a desire that serves a purpose in many beasts, including our own ancestors—has become perverted by the powerful among our race.”
Linnet scowled. “How?”
Dick reached for the bottle. “I’ve got a question too. Why?” He refilled his glass.
I smiled at Linnet. “The how is easy. It’s by the means you’re campaigning against—by collusion, terror, and control of wealth and power. As for the why, that’s a little wooly in my head. We are no longer a species fighting for survival on the plains of Africa. I’ll tell you about it one day. Today, we compete for wealth and prestige, and yet we are by nature a cooperative animal. Isn’t it natural that the domination should become a shared activity, especially when sharing the load brings such great benefits?”
Linnet sat grim-faced. She sighed. “You’re saying there is no hope?”
“Of course not, Linnet. But there is no hope until we admit to the nature of the problem. I believe it’s the natural state of humanity to be ruled by theft and torture. In a tyranny, it’s done openly. In democracies, it happens below the surface, unseen and unknown, subtly. And it’s the stronger because of that. No clear target to attack.
“I’ll help in any way I can. I’ll give you whatever use of the island would help. I’ll make farm
s and homes available for as many people as you say. But the more you hurt them, the more they will close ranks. As many as you bring to justice, others will replace them.”
Dick reached out a hand and covered Linnet’s. “Cheer up, my dear. We never thought it would be easy.” He checked his watch. “Your meeting?”
Linnet hurried for the door, without repeating her invitation to me.
Chapter 15
Sunday brought a change in the weather. Heavy rain throughout the morning played havoc with the athletics schedule.
Linnet, who had greeted me over breakfast with her usual warmth, sat beside me, front row, by the finishing straight. The men’s four-forty finalists charged past close enough that they left us spattered in mud from the track.
Sy’s mile final, scheduled for one o’clock, lined up nearer to five. Eight runners gathered at the start. Sy stretched her last stretches, held up her hand when her name was announced, and bounced on her feet.
The starter checked the athletes’ toes against a staggered line, stepped back, and sounded a klaxon. In lane for the first two-twenty yards, the runners bunched as they broke.
Linnet glanced at her stopwatch. “She hates a wet track. She hates a tactical race.”
Sy, on the inside, would have to work herself out. So early in the race, it didn’t seem cause for concern. But her expression as she passed us after the first lap—a frown, a sideways glance—told me she was anxious. On the next bend, she eased her way to the right, but no one gave way. With a clash of feet, a runner in the blue and red of Barford stumbled into Sy, sending Sy sprawling.
The trailing three runners gave her a good clearance as she struggled to her feet.
A gasp from the crowd became a cheer as she set off in pursuit, settling in at the rear of the pack.
Next time around, bloody grazes on her thigh and elbow showed the extent of her injury, but her grimace made it clear she hadn’t given up. She would feel the pain once the race had been run.
By the start of the final lap, she had passed five of the runners but still had twenty yards to make on the leading pair. Entering the homestretch, she had made up three-quarters of the distance. The Barford runner was flagging. She moved out to let Sy pass on the inside.
A Gluttony of Plutocrats (The Respite Trilogy Book 1) Page 14