“This is routine?”
“Oh yes. All the sovereigns do it.”
“But why?”
“To balance the land.”
This did not illuminate Donald, but he was too sickened by the butchery on Blue Bell Plaza to pursue the point.
*
They crossed the Great Ring Drain of London around three o’clock in the afternoon. Donald asked them to stop so that he could open his top hatch and get a better view. The Great Ring Drain encircled the whole of the London basin at a radius of between fifteen and twenty miles from the Central Enclave. The Great Ring Drain had been a major highway of the Public Era marked on old road atlases as the M25. Nowadays it was taken as the demarcation separating the world of the gangster petty domains from the Big Seven sovereign lands that radiated into England beyond. Hence it featured routinely in the erotic novels of Titty Titterington and Samantha Saucifield.
As they continued, Farkas explained that their way became more hazardous now. Between the Great Ring Drain and the Central Enclave lay the petty domains of the gangsters. The public drains in this stretch were prone to flooding, others got blocked by gangsters, others simply became so churned up as to be impassable. Farkas had been given a route in his briefing, however, it turned out to be quite theoretical for picking a way along tracks constantly splitting and converging in featureless bushland. They came up against a brick wall about a dozen feet high—the boundary of some gangster’s petty domain—and back-tracked to try again only to blunder into marshy land where even their ten wheels were struggling for traction. They tried a woodland route to the north where the land was a little higher and drier, attaining good progress until an ear-stinging clang resounded inside the hull. Farkas ordered a halt. Donald thought they must have suffered some drastic mechanical breakage.
“That was a rifle bullet glancing off the armour—a warning shot,” Farkas said. He stooped to scan with the periscope, whilst shouting up to the gunner in the turret: “Did you see where it came from?”
“No. But I can see a turnpike about a mile in front.”
“How do you know it’s a turnpike?”
“There’s a couple of ultramarine armoured cars on it.”
Farkas studied the scene ahead of them, obviously weighing pros and cons. He glanced at his watch.
“It’s after half past four; it’ll be dark in an hour. We can’t go on messing about.” He sighed, set his jaw, and made up his mind. “Okay boys, we’re doing a tour.”
“Yeehah!” cheered Wightman. He plunged into gear and gave the mighty engine such a welly of power that the vehicle reared up before charging forward, breaking through stands of hazel to cut across strip fields, scattering natives in panic. Donald pressed his eyes to the heavy glass port in his front hatch while a furious storm of thwangs and clangs lashed at the armour. The car burst through a wall of firewood, jolted across a ditch and skidded around a pond amidst a cloud of panicking ducks and hens. The pelting of bullets on the armour never ceased. Farkas was swearing, shifting the focus of the periscope constantly to spot where the shooting was coming from.
“Horsemen in the woods on the right—two o’clock. Can’t you see? Open fire!”
Donald had also picked out horsemen in black armour nearly blended into the shade of trees about two hundred yards away. They were exactly as Titty Titterington described them, like Cromwell’s New Model Army. He flinched. His spine quivered as an outburst of demonic viciousness stunned his senses—the sensation was of someone pounding their palms against his ears. The horsemen disintegrated before his eyes. The head fell off one horse whilst its rider toppled in opposite directions, having been shot in half down the chest. Again the demon roared. Cartridge cases gushed across the deck under the turret cage behind him. The quadruple-gun turret fired at such a high rate that individual shots merged into one deafening clamour
“Good kill! Wightman, keep your foot down!” Farkas yelled.
A particularly violent jolt tossed Donald out of his seat. He crouched on the deck beside Farkas, shocked, his ears still dulled by the roar of the ‘brass-muncher’ (as Farkas called the quadruple machine guns). After a minute or so more clinging on, he felt the armoured car pitch up. There was a sense of climbing over an edge onto a flat, smooth surface.
“Splendid! Civilization at last,” Farkas smiled. “We’ll be in Euston depot within the hour.”
*
After Wightman shut the engine down, Donald remained in his seat, staring ahead across Euston depot. It was an immense concrete hall, formerly a great train station of the Public Era (Farkas informed him). Now it was full of smoke from diesel and steam trucks and resounded with the crash of marching troops.
“Home sweet home,” Farkas said. “Enjoy the trip?”
“Are all the public drains like that?”
“The ones around London are better than those further afield. Once you get west of Bristol, you really need a half-track.”
Donald shook his head.
“It’s shocking—frightening—I had no idea how bad things were. All my history books are coming back to me. Think of the Public Era airports lined up with those sleek, sheet-metal airliners. I remember my grandfather Sir Bartleigh telling me he used to drive from the south of England to a power station somewhere up near Scotland. It only took him about four hours. None of it meant anything to me as a small kid.”
“Perhaps it’s time you joined the National Party,” Farkas said, tapping a badge on his tunic lapel, one amongst a number. It was deep green with an orange circle in the middle. Donald had overheard some of his servants talking about the National Party, probably more so recently. Farkas looked at him. “How about it?”
“I don’t know anything about it.”
“It’s the future, and it’s coming fast,” Wightman said. “The good old days are numbered.”
“You should think it over,” Farkas said. “I can’t imagine someone with your progressive attitudes being sympathetic towards the arrogance of the sovereigns.”
Donald was only half listening. He gauged that Farkas was some kind of political agitator, which would explain why such a capable officer had remained a team lieutenant. By implication, Farkas would be no admirer of the ultramarines and their Night and Fog system. Donald normally had no social contact with glory troopers. It could be months or years before he got another chance like this.
“Tell me, how would I go about visiting someone who is serving time in the Night and Fog?” he asked.
The two of them expressed complete disbelief.
“You would not go about it,” Farkas said. “The Night and Fog is a closed world. Men vanish into it and come out the other end, just as a stream drops down a hole and bursts from a cliff ten miles away. There’s no way of finding out what happens until they come back—and some never come back.”
“Don’t the ultramarines have some kind of headquarters?”
“They occupy a fancy building about a mile south of here in Holborn district. It’s called the Ultramarine Guild. I’ve heard all manner of tales about the fantastical ornamentations of its interior.”
“And if one went there, could one not make enquiries?”
“Don’t do that, Donald,” Wightman said, shaking his head most emphatically. “I know people who’ve tried. Not that the ultras will be rude to you or anything, on the contrary, they’ll be all sweet and kind telling you they’ll make enquiries, only they have admin. overheads to pay like any business and so they’ll have to charge a commission. So you pay over fifty ounces or whatever they think your life savings are—they’ll ask you for a lot more obviously—then they’ll come back a month later saying it’s proving difficult to trace your loved one and they need another fifty ounces. And it will go on and on and you’ll never learn a thing, while those bastards are sniggering up their sleeves at you.”
“Exactly the way it is,” Farkas said. “They are utter cynics. Who is this person you wish to trace?”
/>
Donald was wary of breaching his word to Haighman again.
“The information came to me in confidence, and I do have to say it was only a rumour.”
“Is it your brother, Lawrence?”
Donald tipped his head a little to indicate this could be so.
“You said he was a cost-centre lieutenant. That means the big-wigs are grooming him to command the garrison of a whole sovereign land. High-fliers like that are not normally sent to the Night and Fog. Are you sure the rumour is true?”
“No. But it came from a reliable source.”
“Where was he based?”
“That I can’t say.”
“Was it in the Lands of Krossington?”
“It may have been.”
Farkas frowned, thinking.
“Was he fogged for corruption?”
“If so, he was framed up.”
“Of course—innocent as charged. There are only two reasons why men get fogged, Donald. One is their sergeant doesn’t like their face. The other is they try to blow the whistle on corrupt officers and they get framed up by those very bastards they were trying to expose. I assume, from what you have said, that you aren’t in close contact with this brother.”
“Not close contact, no.”
“Try approaching General Wardian HQ on Northumberland Avenue—a gent like you must have security clearance for Westminster district.”
Donald tapped a forefinger on his top lip, uneasy at how private matters were getting drawn out to these strangers. General Wardian HQ would do nothing to help, because Lawrence had not listed any next of kin. Donald was already aware of this from recent efforts to contact Lawrence about their father.
“I’ll give that a try,” he said. He wondered if he might be able to bribe someone at General Wardian HQ.
“Let me give you one word of warning,” Farkas said. “If your brother was really sent to the Fog for crimes on Krossington lands, that could affect your standing with the clan.”
“If that was going to be a problem, I’d know by now—but thanks all the same.”
Before the conversation could go any further, he got down from the cabin, bade his escorts good-bye, and made for the civilian reception of the depot. He sent a messenger to his house to fetch his chauffeur Okeke Ortalo with the limousine. Then, he sat and waited, concentrating on the pluses: he was back home, he was fit and healthy, the gash over his eye had largely healed and he no longer suffered headaches.
The high times come from the dark times—just keep believing it.
Chapter 6
“Donald, Contact Wilson House immediately on your return home, [signed] TK.”
Wilson House was the town palace of the Krossington clan. It stood in the district of Mayfair more or less bang at the centre of the Central Enclave along with most of the town palaces of the richest sovereign clans. The message left Donald with a sense of having rotated a full circle; still not knowing what His Decency TK wanted. What Donald wanted was work—that came from solicitors, not heads of clan. If a head of clan called, it was make an offer you could not refuse.
His exasperation grew as he opened a succession bills that had accumulated during the eleven days of internment. The first was for two tons of fresh water and ten tons of seawater to replenish the tanks of his house. The next was for one hundred and fifty gallons of oil for the generators. Then there was the servicing of the household battery, which included the replacement of two cells. The honey-man had dug out the septic tank. Donald signed all the cheques off as nothing else could be done. They had to be paid.
The next message provoked a ferocious muttering. The clerk of his chambers advised that his case load had been redistributed to the rest of the set. He tossed it away. The set would bloody well redistribute the case load back first thing on Monday morning.
Damn it! His girlfriend Tanya had written to him. Donald’s jaw hardened with anger. It was outrageously foolish of her to contact him in writing. She was angry at having been “dropped like a dirty rag”. Of course, there was no way for her to know about his captivity. That made her no less dangerous if she made a fuss and Lavinia picked it up. He wrote her a hasty note on a standard blank message slip, folded it and sealed it with wax. He would send Okeke the chauffeur out to despatch it from the local messengers’ office. Okeke would keep his mouth shut; that was a basic duty of any chauffeur.
The last message was addressed to Donald’s late father, Morton Aldingford. Its contents so completely startled him that he read it several times over. The handwriting was crammed into the limited space of the standard message slip by a hand trained in script, although not sophisticated. That suggested one who had worked in a large household staff, a someone whose name meant nothing to him. The message read:
“Dear Mr Aldingford. My name is Sarah-Kelly Newman. I’ve got to speak with you about your son Lawrence. I know he was not good at keeping in touch, but he desperately needs your help. He’s in a lot of trouble. I’ve called at your house twice. Your butler keeps sending me away because he thinks I’m just a trollop, so I’m spending my own silver on this message in the hope that you’ll receive me when I next call. That will be Saturday 16th October.”
This was the evening of Saturday 16th October.
Donald rang for service. He learned from the footman that a “tarty sort of bint” had been hanging around the gates on and off for about a week. The butler, a starchy Scot named Campbell, had instructed the staff to get rid of her “by any means” as she was obviously some sort of fortune teller or similar charlatan.
“Did you see her today?” Donald asked.
“Yes sir.”
“What was she like?”
The footman tried to gather words.
“What particular aspect, sir?”
“What age was she?”
“About twenty-five or thirty, sir.”
“What was she wearing?”
“A waist coat and… and trousers, sir.”
“Really?” Donald laughed. Women did not wear trousers, that is, respectable women did not. “Oh my word, no wonder Campbell told her to shift. Thank you, Blake.”
This Newman woman might be genuine. Then again, Donald could not shake off a suspicion she was in cahoots with Team Lieutenant Haighman—the coincidence of her approach otherwise seemed far-fetched. He put the note in his safe; it was documentary evidence he could show Lavinia should she ever jump to the conclusion Miss Newman was a romantic liaison. He burned the note from Tanya. Then he drafted a quick note to His Decency Tom Krossington to say he awaited instructions, after which he rang for service to have it relayed to the local messengers’ office.
The reply came back less than an hour later. It was personally drafted by Tom Krossington. There was no mistaking the flourishes of his handwriting, nor the rich turquoise ink with which he habitually wrote. The message was so absurd Donald frowned with disbelief.
“Dear Donald, so relieved you are safe and free. That was a real tragedy. Be at the Palace of Westminster Wednesday 20th noon sharp. Let your chauffeur drop you at the visitors’ gate, everything will be arranged from there, [signed] TK. PS, be prepared to make a public speech!”
The Palace of Westminster had been the seat of government of the old nation state in the Public Era. Now it was the most exclusive club on the Island of Britain. It was where the sovereign clans and richest factory owners met to connive and bicker. Donald just shrugged. He felt no excitement at the prospect of visiting such a prestigious club. Rather, he was disappointed His Decency did not seem to have any work on offer.
There was an additional problem; the Krossingtons had not paid him what they already owed. An invoice for three thousand Troy ounces of gold he had submitted to Wilson House more than three weeks ago had not been paid. Normally he would have a message from the clerk of chambers to confirm the funds had been received.
Donald stared at his desk. There is no worse hell than seeing gold leak away on
bills in the absence of any income.
*
Sunday began as the night had been—alone. Donald had no idea where his wife Her Decency Lavinia was, although he was prepared to bet that Tom Krossington’s elder brother Marcus-John would be in her proximity. He only heard of her whereabouts after the fact via gossip. His daughters Marcia and Cynthia were similarly absent. They might be at Laxbury House, the town residence of Lavinia’s clan, or at Wilson House. They might be at a school friend’s house party. It was pointless to get angry about his family situation as there was nothing he could do about it. To seek divorce would be suicidal. All the sovereign clans would shun him as an impudent commoner: no clients = Nameless Gone.
He was not one normally given to brooding. On this morning, though, there was such a range of worries and indignations festering away. Tanya had so far failed to respond to his message. There was the bill unpaid by the Krossingtons. His wife had abandoned him. His life was just plain lousy. And running under it all was what he had seen since being shot down. The conditions on the Lands of Dasti-Jones and the public drains were simply deplorable. Suppose all the sovereign lands were the same? And what other atrocities went on behind the veil of sovereign glamour? How could he continue to serve a clientele that any decent person could only regard as criminally immoral?
In the Public Era, there had been outrageously intrusive busybodies called journalists who made a living snuffling out the secrets of the powerful. Donald had been taught they were one of the major causes of the collapse of the Public Era. Those in power had been so afraid of journalists that they dared not take the hard decisions required to save their society. In effect, the Public Era had watched itself being devoured by its own stupidity.
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