Edward Llewellyn - [Douglas Convolution 03]

by Prelude to Chaos (epub)

  “You’d leave me?”

  “I don’t want to. But if you won’t come with me I’ll not wait to watch you arrested, mind-wiped, and bound over to the custody of some damned Executive.”

  “Gavin—I can’t leave. I have to stay! These are my people.”

  “From what I hear they’ll need a doctor in those ‘rehab centers.’ The methods they’re using seem pretty rough. If you’ll be in any shape to practice medicine after they’ve rehabilitated you!”

  She bit her lip, but remained stubborn. “I have to stay with my fellow Believers.”

  “Then try and persuade the Council to get out of this trap. A move to Fairhaven might buy them time.”

  Fairhaven was the remains of a once-prosperous fishing village farther north up the Bay. It was still a safe small-boat anchorage but within a year of the Joseph Kinross meeting the Jenny Wren it had become a wilderness of collapsing wooden houses and now, some forty years later, the only sign to show that people had once lived there was the remains of a stone wharf. The forest, unchecked, had invaded the village from three sides; a forest still reputed to be filled with unexploded shells. The Navy had used it as a target for off-shore bombardment, and the inshore approach was dangerous. Fairhaven was isolated enough for the most devout Believer.

  Enoch took Judith and me to look at the place. Boats from the Cove sometimes used it as a shelter from bad weather when fishing up the Bay, but ashore there was only desolation. The forest had grown right down to the rocky beach. At least there wasn’t space to land a gun-ship. It was a refuge, but what a refuge! Both the near and the distant future of the Settlement depressed me. It would be a case of just surviving. They would have to revert to wood and canvas, muscle power and homespun. Living off the fish they caught and the deer they shot—while they still had ammunition for their rifles. And if they were left alone.

  Most governments had started cautious campaigns trying to persuade their citizens to cut down on their use of Impermease, but cancerphobia was as endemic as ever, farmers weren’t going to give up their cheapest, safest, and most effective insecticide without a very good reason, and women took no more notice of vague warnings about possible side effects from using the “liberator” than they had of Papal warnings of probable punishments in the life to come.

  No government had yet had the guts to publish the real reason for caution. That the panaceas they had all been pushing for over twenty years were a sterilizing agent with a twenty-year delay. And even less did they dare to tell their people that the time for caution was past. That the damage was already done. I suspect that Impermease was bringing the governments of the wotld closer together than had anything else in human history. Even obtuse politicians who had seen the true statistics could see the common disaster ahead. And have the self-preserving reflex of hiding the true statistics as long as possible, while they planned for their personal futures.

  Through the summer one could almost sense the percolating down of the dread information through the layers of government by the changing reactions of public servants toward the Settlements. The police, once helpful, had become so hostile that radio reports from other Settlements told us how they were starting to set up their own armed patrols. Both State and Federal Goverments were shrugging off Settlement charges of discrimination, and those Believers still holding positions in various bureaucracies kept warning us to avoid attracting attention to ourselves.

  Outsiders were beginning to skulk along the road to Sutton Cove. News from other Settlements spoke of vigilante groups forming in the cities and of bands of goons ranging the countryside. The authorities were accusing Settlements of harboring such bands; another excuse for liquidating them. As yet the declining population of young people was having no real effect on the operation of vital industries and systems. But a whole generation of teachers were losing their jobs as classrooms progressively emptied, and they added to the general atmosphere of resentful anger.

  The spreading social disintegration was the result of desperation and despair from people who could now see the darkness ahead. Settlements were only one of the targets for popular anger. Most minority groups everywhere were being assaulted. Racism and sexism were returning in their worst forms. But those Settlements within reach of the cities were special targets. They were definable, localized minorities who had acted like moral elites for years. And they had something the majority of outsiders wanted.

  Governments used Settlements to divert popular anger from themselves. And the destruction of vulnerable Settlements made useful examples of what happens to “troublemakers, revolutionary groups, un-American activists, fascists, and plain traitors.”

  XV

  “There’s Jona’s Point,” said Barbara. “Away on the port bow.” She stood at the wheel of Sea Eagle, handling her Cape Islander with the skill and confidence of a veteran fisherman. “Anything on the fuzzmeter?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Not even the old radiobeacons. All bands silent.”

  “Is it safe to go any closer?” Judith picked up the binoculars and studied the smudge on the horizon.

  “It’s safe enough. I’ve run to within five clicks of the Point and nothing happened. According to those people in Clarport nobody stays there overnight now.”

  “Captain Rideout didn’t say that!” I objected. “He just said that the warehouses at Clarport are filled with containers waiting to go aboard the John Howard.”

  Barbara shrugged and didn’t answer. Judith continued to study Jona’s Point through the binoculars. I moved to the rear of the wheelhouse, moodily wondering why I had come on this expedition with these two females. They had decided to take a look at the Pen after the Skipper of Ranula had told them that it was being used as a supply dump. I had been less than enthusiastic about seeing our old home, but Judith had insisted I join Barbara and herself in a voyage up the Bay. It was probably part of some wild plan to save the Settlement.

  If it was I wasn’t privy to it, nor to any of the other schemes the Council was debating. I had given them my opinion; that the Cove was indenfensible against any organized attack. Their only rational course was to evacuate to some remote place like Fairhaven while they could.

  But rationality was not the Council’s forte when religion was involved, and some members were arguing that this was another of those rigorous tests the Light inflicted on Believers. I had told Judith plainly that, when the time came, we must get out before the Settlement went under. She had insisted she would stay to the end. I hadn’t argued further. When I went, she’d go with me, unconscious if necessary. My wife wasn’t going to be grabbed by the Feds.

  The fuzzmeter beeped and I looked at the radar display. “Something’s leaving the Point.”

  “That’ll be the Howard. She’s finished unloading and is heading back to Clarport.” Barbara glanced at the bulkhead clock. “And she’s on time.”

  “You knew she’d be leaving the Pen this afternoon?”

  “Sure. Unless there was fog or bad weather. We’ve all watched her heading north on Tuesdays and south on Thursdays.”

  “You didn’t warn us we might meet the Howard!' I protested.

  “I’ll stand offshore while she passes.” Barbara spun the wheel. “Her skipper’s used to seeing us fishing around here.”

  I watched the blip on the radar screen, then studied the supply ship through binoculars. There was no minicopter on her poop now. Her siren gave a short blast and we acknowledged with a blast from our own. The old maritime acts of courtesy still functioned when all other civilized gestures were disappearing.

  “She’s making thirty knots,” remarked Barbara, as we watched her race by. “She’ll reach Clarport in six hours. Ran-ula takes over twenty to get there from the Cove. Why didn’t those shortsighted oldsters on Council spend more and buy us a decent ship? We’ve got the capital.”

  “The Ranula’s old, but she’s basic. You’ll be able to keep her seaworthy for another hundred years—if you have the chance.”

&nbs
p; Barbara ignored me. Our relationship, which should have been improved by our moments of tenderness and terror in the Brinks, had actually worsened. She altered course again to head directly for Jona’s Point.

  The Pen rose out of the summer haze. “Barb,” said Judith, with a trace of alarm. “The seas around the Point used to be deadlyl”

  “They’re safe enough now. The Howard docks there every week. And she doesn’t carry any special mine-detectiom gear.” “How do you know that?” I demanded.

  “Midge spent a night with her Skipper. While she was working in the hash house at Clarport.”

  “Midge—working in Clarport?” I stared at her.

  “She took a job as a waitress and slept around among the truck drivers bringing loads to Clarport for shipping to the Pen. The oldsters—most of ’em, not Dad—thought they could ignore what was happening outside.” She glanced at me as though I was one of them. “We knew we couldn’tl We needed information. And you have to pay for information.” “How the hell could Midge get away from the Cove for a week?”

  “Fishing for hake,” said Barbara, her eyes on the compass, a slight smile on her lips. “We’re always away for up to a week when we’re after hake. Every fisherman knows that!”

  To be called ignorant of fishing was an insult in the Cove. I wasn’t a fisherman, but the gibe stung. “I suppose the ‘we’ are your gang of arrogant young brats?”

  “Cool it! Both of you!” snapped Judith. “You’re behaving like spoiled children! Barbara, you shouldn’t have told Gavin about Midge! If he tells her father—”

  “I’m no stoolie!” I snarled. “Midge’s secret is safe with me. And Barbara’s too—if she’s been making similar purchases!” Barbara went scarlet, the first time I had ever seen her blush, and I deduced she had.

  “Gavin—you can be a real bastard!” said Judith.

  “She started it!” I protested. “Oh hell! Did we come all this way just to fight! What are we here for anyway?”

  “Keep looking ahead,” said Judith wearily.

  I seized the binoculars and glared through them at the Pen. It was taking shape as we closed on the Point; the menacing silhouette I had last seen during our escape. I forgot my anger as I began to identify the changes. Through binoculars I could see the effects of weather and lack of care. The Yagis and the parabolic reflectors high on the antenna tower were askew from loose clamps and the winds of two winters. They drooped like weary arms or stared at empty seas. Not a single radio channel among them could be operational.

  “Have you ever been to San Francisco?” asked Barbara, in a tone that suggested truce.

  “Yes. Ten years ago. Why?”

  “I went there once with my grandmother and my sister. There’s an island in the harbor with a museum. Used to be a prison. Place called Alcatraz. Heard of it?”

  “Sure—closed down back in the sixties.”

  “It was abandoned. In the seventies a group of Amerinds walked in and took it over. Some political row. The cops had a job getting them out.”

  “I didn’t know that.” I paused. “Barbara, have you got some crazy idea about grabbing the Pen?”

  “It may be crazy. But not as crazy as staying where we are until we’re stomped. I’ve heard you trying to warn Council that the Cove is a trap if things get tough. You suggested Fair haven to them.” She shrugged. “None of us fancy a future in Fairhaven!”

  “It’s isolated enough not to attract attention.”

  “The object of our lives isn’t going to be avoiding attention! We—I mean my friends—can read the future as well as you can, Mister Gavin. And we don’t plan on waiting around to be grabbed as living loot when outsiders move into the Cove. I hear you don’t intend to wait around for that either! Sine, we’ve thought about the Pen as a possible hideout.” Judith said quietly, “It wouldn’t do any harm to scout the place.”

  I looked at the two. “That’s what you both had in mind when you suggested this trip up the Bay, wasn’t it? You know’ what Council would say—”

  “Shuck the Council!”

  “Okay—if you’re willing to risk a row! Ease in slowly so we can see if there’s a guard on the place.”

  “There isn’t any guard. The dockers who unload the containers go out with the Howard and come back in her.”

  “So Midge says! I don’t trust bedroom information! Stay offshore until dusk. Then we can take a closer look—if you still want to.”

  “Mister Gavin—this is my boat!”

  “Miss Barbara, it surely is. But it’s my neck you’re risking!”

  “You’d rather chance grounding after dark than being seen by people who aren’t there?” demanded Barbara, the wrath of a Skipper overridden aboard her own boat adding to her normal resentment of me as a person.

  “Barbara, I have complete confidence in your, seamanship! We know the channel’s clear right up to the dock because the Howard’s been going alongside for years. And I know your radar and depthfinders are accurate because I calibrated them myself.”

  “Then dusk it is, Boss!” She swung the wheel hard over, the Eagle heeled sharply, and I went floundering across the wheelhouse. Then she snarled at Judith, “Doc—you take over! I’ll fix supper.”

  “I’ll fix the supper!” Judith seized her chance to escape.

  We lay offshore while we ate, watching a summer sunset spreading over the forests of Maine. As I mellowed Barbara slowly thawed and began to talk, showing me a new aspect of life in Sutton Settlement. The attitude of the generation who were growing up there.

  They were a type almost extinct elsewhere in the Affluence. Bom and brought up in a seafaring community where the strict discipline of nature outweighed the prejudices of parents and the whims of pedagogues. Educated by an ocean on which they either learned to do the right thing the right way or they drowned, Barbara and her fellows had come from the same mold as had those earlier Americans who had spread out to conquer a continent.

  Superficially the generation gap seemed narrower in Sutton Cove than in any place I’d known. But I was discovering that many things in the Settlement were not as they seemed. What the youngsters did share with the midders and oldsters was an ability to avoid confrontations while still achieving their ends—a convoluted approach to decision making. The final outcome of a discussion was often the one to which most people had seemed initially opposed.

  Their parents, the founders of the Settlement, were neither unintelligent nor uneducated, but they lived in a world governed by their faith and worked too hard to worry about problems which were neither practical nor spiritual. They had rejected the Affluent Society twenty years before, and most of them were still uninterested in what was happening in it.

  The youngsters were educated in the basics, in the peculiar theology of the Teacher, and in practical skills. The Settlement had a large library of teaching tapes covering most areas of higher education, for those who wanted it. The way of life was neither restrictive nor oppressive; the rules were fair and obviously for the general good. Most of the founders had been pacifist liberals who had never made any particular issue of sex, so one major cause of conflict between parents and children was reduced.

  Anyone could leave the Settlement at any time, but those who did usually came back. Children who had grown up in a close society with the vastness of the Atlantic always before them, did not take kindly to anonymous crowds, vertical boxes, and scented deodorizers. Most Affluent occupations tasted insipid to youngsters who had fished Fundy, where their success had depended on the correctness of their decisions and the exercise of their skills.

  Neither did the professions attract them. Judith had not really been a Settlement child and Barbara’s mysterious elder sister was an exception, but most Sutton youngsters could not endure the prolonged adolescence a professional education demanded. In the Settlement a junior was treated as responsible from the time he or she was judged fit to handle a boat. They did not slip back into semi-literacy because the high technology of bo
ats and gear required theoretical as well as practical knowledge. Most important, for youngsters with the idealism of youth, was knowing the real value of their work. That in a good day’s fishing a boat could produce sufficient carbohydrates, fats, and proteins to feed fifty families for a week. In a world where millions were starving that was a reward few members of the Affluence enjoyed.

  They tended to be prigs like their parents; something I could accept. Without a leavening of prigs people behave like herds of swine. But until that evening I had not realized their awareness of reality. If the Settlement survived long enough for juniors like Barbara to become leaders, then it could survive for centuries. Although, like most survivor communities, it might not be the easiest place in which to live.

  At dusk we crept into the loom of the land. The Pen hung black above us. “No lights—so there’s nobody there!” said Barbara with the smug satisfaction of a junior who has been proved right.

  “There are no lights because there are no windows or doors in the outer walls,” I snapped. “Inside it could be lit up like Times Square. See if you can coast up alongside the pier. It’s the last of the ebb, so if there is a watchman the boat’ll be hidden.” The tides around the Point averaged five meters.

  She put us alongside so gently that I hardly knew we had arrived. “Make fast!” I whispered, and went scrambling up the ladder to go flat on the wharf with my gun ready.

  I lay listening. Only silence. A few meters away was a cluster of rectangular silhouettes, containers which had been offloaded but not yet moved into storage. The rest of the pier was dark and deserted. I went back to the ladder and hissed down, “Wharf’s clear. Judy, come on up!”

  Judith arrived, and then Barbara. I caught the girl’s shoulder. “Not you! You stay and watch the boat.”