Donald prepared himself mentally for having to walk the eighty-odd miles back to London. Within the limits imposed on him, he also prepared himself physically by pacing up and down his cell and performing press-ups to stay fit. He judged that 750 lengths of the cell made a mile. There was in any case damn-all else to do but pace out endless figures of eight thinking ahead to how he would rebuild his life back in London.
*
On the seventh day, just after lunch, the sergeant fetched him out of the cell block and escorted him up to Team Lieutenant Haighman’s office. The young officer was in an upbeat mood. He barked at Cooper to bring in a chair. Donald sat in front of the desk.
“I can advise you that General Wardian has drafted a memo which will be the basis of negotiations,” he said.
Donald was almost too stunned to respond.
“Are you saying it has taken a week just for some bureaucrats to write up a summary of standard terms? I could have done that myself in five minutes.”
“That’s lightning fast by their standards—you should try wringing promotion out of the bastards.”
Haighman seemed to dawdle, as if there was something else on his mind.
“You know,” he said. “When we last met, I mentioned having met your brother Lawrence. I was not entirely candid in what I said. I knew him quite recently—up until last spring, when I transferred here to Kent because my wife got sick of the weather up north.”
Donald waited for more. He assumed the reticence was out of the naturally secretive nature of life in a glory trust. To keep Haighman going, he coached:
“Is he well?”
“Oh yes, thriving. Or, he was.”
“He’s still with General Wardian?”
“Definitely. He’s an officer. Lawrence reached cost-centre lieutenant, which is a senior rank for a guy of twenty-six. It’s not easy to get rank in any glory trust, especially if you’re like him and you started at the very bottom as a probationary basic. He made it because he’s bloody good.”
Donald was startled to learn his brother had made a successful career in General Wardian. Everything he had heard of life in a glory trust was of suffocating routine. All he had seen here in the Broadstairs garrison confirmed this. The teenaged Lawrence who vanished one sunny day back in 2096 was a boorish, rebellious lout; hardly promising material for such a life.
“Where is he based now?”
“He was based in Oban in the spring, that’s where I met him, but—"
“Where’s Oban?”
“It’s a port up on the west coast of Scotland. Personally, I loved the place. The landscapes are so beautiful, even when it’s raining, which I must admit is quite often. In May and June the sun comes out and it’s the most vivid paradise you can imagine. I can’t tell you more because it’s a closed town; the Krossingtons own Oban and the land around it.”
“Is Lawrence married? Does he have children?”
“No and no. I hesitate to call him a womaniser… He was a good friend after all. He likes the ladies but not the commitment.”
Well, that sounded Lawrence enough. The teenager had been outrageously promiscuous and with the coarsest sorts of girls.
“You know, this is a tremendous windfall,” Donald said. “I’d like to send him a letter through General Wardian’s postal system.”
“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve picked up rumours. I don’t like rumours or the people who spread them, but I’ve heard this one from several people I trust. It seems he got pulled up for corruption. In a way, that doesn’t surprise me—not that he was corrupt, not at all. His problem was being too brutally truthful. If he held another officer in contempt, even one senior to him, he did not bother to hide his point of view. That’s a dangerous habit.
“But I suspect what really took him down was his politics. He had a wild theory about the causes of the Glorious Resolution.” Haighman got up, strode around his desk, shut the office door and sat down again. “He once told me—when he was pretty drunk—he believed the Glorious Resolution was planned. He was convinced a top clique of the Public Era contrived the collapse of affluent society to destroy the Fatted Masses and take over the world. I mean, that’s a pretty dangerous thing for a glory officer to believe. It’s possible he told the wrong person.”
“You think he could have been disciplined in some way?”
“Glory officers don’t get disciplined for that kind of opinion.”
“You think he was dismissed?”
“Glory officers don’t get dismissed either. They get fogged.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Sent to the Night and Fog.”
Donald often saw Night and Fog slave gangs at work in the Central Enclave, raking and beating the gravel roads or hauling wagons loaded with anything from live pigs to barrels of fresh water. The gangs were lorded over by kind of gangster cult called the ultramarines. They strutted about in their black uniforms, cracking bull whips and cuddling sawn-off shotguns. Polite society had nothing to do with them.
“When did this happen?”
“Sometime during the summer.”
In all the disruption caused by a disciplinary process, it was possible recent correspondence about their father had simply got lost. Otherwise, Lawrence had simply not cared enough to reply.
“Who was his superior officer?”
“Account-Captain Turner.”
“I could write to him.”
“Don’t do that. He won’t want mail for an officer he’s got rid of. It might set Corporate Audit sniffing down the trail of how you found out. They’re a bunch of bastards. Even as a civvy, you don’t want them on your back.”
“Why are you telling me this, if I can’t do anything?”
“I was hoping you could do something, actually,” Haighman said. “You must have friends in high places.”
“Haighman, if I ever get back home I’ll do bloody well to dodge bankruptcy. I married a sovereign when I was young and foolish—it’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long. Most commoners who marry a sovereign self-execute because they can’t pay the bills. So the last thing I’m going to do is to spread rumours my brother has been disgraced.”
They sat in silence. Privately, Donald did appreciate learning a bit about his long-lost brother’s life. Lawrence was the only family he had left in the world. What he now knew was an enormous advance over what he had known of Lawrence’s life since 2096, which was precisely nothing.
“To return to the main topic, what happens to me now?”
“We hang on instructions from Dasti-Jones.”
“Do I have to go back to that bloody cell?”
“It’s regulations.”
“Can’t I at least have something to read?”
“Well… I suppose so. This place is such a pish-hole it doesn’t have a library. I’ll see what I can arrange.”
Later in the afternoon, a leading basic unlocked Donald’s cell and deposited a handful of paperbacks. They were trashy erotic novels of the type his wife Her Decency Lavinia consumed in remarkable quantities. Apparently, the only reading matter Haighman could lay his hands on came from the reading club of the garrison’s typing pool.
*
More days passed. Donald explored the world of erotic novels. The works of Titty Titterington and Samantha Saucifield dominated the genre. The plot would typically centre on a glamorous and wilful daughter from a sovereign clan never named but recognisable as the Krossingtons. The book would open with her frustrations in the uptight manorial society of her sovereign land. Whilst on a lone flight to a sex-party in the Central Enclave, engine failure or some other misadventure would force her down in the petty domain of a gangster. After astonishing the gangster chief with her expert horsemanship, she would proceed to exhaust not just his loins but those of his henchmen too in the course of leading raids against rival gangsters. Havin
g become too powerful for her own good, she would escape crucifixion only through a desperate escape up the public drains to the Central Enclave.
The sex scenes—which occurred about every five pages and in some cases lasted for five pages—were described with such a livid frankness that Donald’s ears burned. It was, after all, more than a week since he had even set eyes on a woman. His imagination wondered to the other survivor of the crash, the dark-haired young woman with the gorgeous backside and... Damn, the memory of her commando state was torture in the night waiting for sleep. It was like tossing and turning back at public school… But there was a useful aspect to these erotic books. They provided a great deal of hard data about the gangsters, their petty domains and the public drains that ran through them.
During the Glorious Resolution of 2038-40, the Public Era financial system of national currencies collapsed. Fiat legal tender vanished into thin air—unsurprisingly, as it had been conjured out of thin air in the first place. This left hundreds of millions of the Fatted Masses stranded in the cities of the world. They had no power, no water, no money and before long there was no food. The great flows of surplus began. Most flowed out to the countryside, where it either gained asylum working the land as natives, or else it disappeared into the Nameless Gone; by starvation, dysentery, influenza or violence. Other surplus flowed into the city centres and gained asylum in the factory districts that sprang up to make luxuries for the new sovereign élite—hence the term ‘industrial asylum’.
But between the countryside and the industrial asylums was a wasteland of abandoned suburbs amounting to hundreds of square miles in London alone. Enterprising thugs quickly took over this vacuum, bullying gangs of natives to rip out railway lines, strip out metal pipes and wires, gather wood from rafters and floors, in effect to glean everything of value that could be sold to the industrial asylums or the sovereign lands. These enterprising thugs came to be known as gangsters. When the endowment of metal and wood was exhausted, they directed their natives to demolish the shells of houses. Bricks were always useful. Frontier walls could be built with bricks. So could glory forts. Hence the red brick construction of the Broadstairs fort in which Donald was incarcerated. After the houses were cleared, the land could be worked to grow crops and breed horses. The gangsters became masters of countless petty domains between the industrial asylums and the sprawling lands of the sovereign caste.
So this was all very interesting to Donald. It was also frightening. The one absolute truth was that the public drains were jungle. A lone man without at least a pistol had no chance. If it was not a pack of wild dogs, it would be a troupe of travelling players whose leading man would kill for pleasure with his bare hands. If not that, a stealthy shot from a gangster over the wall of his petty domain. A man alone who lasted a day on the public drains was luckier than he deserved.
Donald now learned how fear stimulates the intellect. The essential thing was to be armed. He would prevail upon Haighman’s conscience to give him a rifle. Donald was a fine shot; he had been the captain of the school shooting team. He would trade his Rolex watch for a Lee Enfield or a Mauser, or even a Mosin-Nagant. The last valuation of the Rolex had been 145 Troy ounces of gold. That was no mean sum. Even Haighman probably drew a salary of no more than a hundred ounces a month. Whatever it took, he would have himself a rifle. Blind determination turned fear into anger.
On the tenth day, he was led up to Team Lieutenant Haighman’s office again.
“I am pleased to inform you that the Krossingtons have agreed to negotiate for your repatriation.”
Donald was almost disappointed, having spent days psyching himself up to be discharged as extracted infestation. He was also surprised. The Krossingtons must still perceive value in the body of Donald Bartleigh Aldingford.
“The Dasti-Joneses are sending a carriage later today.”
“What happened to the young lady who survived the crash?” Donald asked.
“The one with no knickers? Oh, we did the decent thing and gave her some knickers. I don’t think she’d ever seen a pair… In seriousness, you don’t need to know that she is well. She’s in the deal too.”
“What’s her name?”
“You don’t need to know that her name is Her Decency Sally Tabetha Eugenie Krossington-Darcy.”
“I’ll remember these favours you’ve done me, Haighman. If you ever need a favour returned, don’t hesitate to make contact.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
Haighman obviously did not consider the likelihood worth taking seriously, although he was too polite to say so.
Chapter 5
Team Lieutenant Haighman escorted Her Decency Sally Tabetha Eugenie Krossington-Darcy from the administration block. Her clothes were the same as Donald’s, a set of brown canvas overalls, brown puttees and boots. She looked smaller and older than he remembered, and no longer glamorous; she could have been one of his own maids. There was a healing gash on her forehead and her left arm was in a sling. Haighman reached ahead to open the carriage door and stepped aside for her. She climbed into the cabin. Donald was but a commoner and so rode outside on the bench at the back, which he actually preferred as it was a relief to have wide open sky above his head. Besides, it was a warm, sunny day. The high position of the bench would provide an excellent view during the journey.
The driver rapped his bench with a drum stick and hailed:
“Take up your slack… Ready… At steady tempo… Pull!”
The team of a dozen men heaved the carriage into motion. It crackled through a long turn on the parade ground and rolled out through the fortress gate onto the rod-straight road along which Donald had been led ten days ago. The carriage was lightly-built in aluminium, with skinny, wire-spoked wheels about five feet in diameter that skipped over the gravel. It made an easy pull for the team, who soon found their stride in a brisk walk. The fields and hedges and water channels started to flow by.
The landscaped was dotted with settlements of cuddly thatched cottages reminiscent of the homes of dwarves in children’s story books. Small, dirty people worked everywhere. One field was crowded with children gathering weeds in wicker baskets and tipping them on a steamy fire. The next was loaded with women stooped over digging out potatoes with their bare hands. The next was being ploughed by a team of eight young men, bent over as if to dive, quivering and stumbling forward to the bark of the ploughman.
Spider-like systems of irrigation channels radiated out from header pools to surrounding fields. The header pools were kept topped up by women circulating around and around in bucket chains with the uncanny routine of a flywheel.
In surveying this human effort, Donald grew more and more perplexed that none of it was done by machinery. In truth, he had never thought much about life on the sovereign lands. This was the first time in his life he had ever seen the daily labour of sovereign natives. In his life he had only visited sovereign lands four times, in each case for a summer holiday with his family. On the last occasion two years ago, they had been borne by carriage through the crowded streets of Portsmouth to a long platform, where they boarded a vehicle like a caterpillar formed of several long carriages with steel wheels running on thick steel rails. His escort had informed him it was an heirloom from the Public Era known as a train. It turned out to be a smooth and fast way to cover distance. It carried them through miles of woodland to a charming village on a tidal estuary where Tom Krossington had arranged a cottage for their stay. Donald had never caught so much as a glimpse of the daily life of natives, nor thought to ask about them.
His wife Her Decency Lavinia of Laxbury came from a manorial clan on the Lands of Krossington. The scenes he was seeing now must be as familiar to her as their family life in London, yet she had never mentioned anything about natives struggling in mud. His daughters Marcia and Cynthia spent their holidays at Laxbury manor. Perhaps the natives lived better lives there? Or perhaps… Donald, being but a commoner, had never been invited to t
he Laxbury estate in ten years of marriage. He would probably never set eyes on the place as long as he lived.
A wide gravel avenue joined the main track ahead. As the carriage passed it, Donald received a perspective view towards a mansion a quarter of a mile away. The pale brown gravel drive ran up the exact middle of an expanse of striped lawn so perfectly flat that it could have been a green lake. The mansion’s style was hulking; big blocks, thick columns, frowning pediment, topped with an over-large dome. The ugly construction suggested a lurking beetle, a bleached monstrosity, for it was pure white as a swan. It shone with an almost insolent cleanliness amidst the mud and bitter labour in the hundreds of fields around it. A team of teenaged boys hauled a grass-mowing machine up the lawn, guided by an older man to keep the line exactly straight. They were clean and better-clothed than the field natives. Pulling a lawn mower must be high-status labour around here.
The carriage passed on. In the next field was a team of women, their dresses filthy, lugging a plough behind a couple of men who were scattering seeds to be turned under.
A cold feeling came over Donald. He looked at his knees. He found it difficult to put into words the emotions seething in his limbs and guts. A blend of outrage and indignation. It was not for himself. It was for these strangers pulling, stooping, carrying and digging mud with their bare hands. They were the squalid tails of a coin with a gleaming mansion on its heads. Why could these thousands of natives not see that? Why did they not smash that ugly colonnaded monstrosity? It kept them down, so why should they keep it up?
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