“Nightminster obscures identities by the use of tags. My source did not know the true identities of either of these value.”
“Any details on the other value?” TK asked.
“He was white and blond, about six foot two, with a scarred chin and a reputation as troublemaker, although he worked hard, so he got away with it.”
TK stared at his note pad thinking things that were not welcome to him. The hard case matched Lawrence Aldingford. If he escaped and was not recovered, it would be a severe setback. Donald would have to go. All the effort and gold TK had expended to resolve Donald’s situation would be wasted. The prospect of having to send a good man like Donald to the Nameless Gone was deeply painful.
“When can we get more information?” TK pressed.
“I’m meeting another source on Thursday—I need to explain that sources only report when they emerge on leave, as they can’t communicate from the Value System.”
“I want to know immediately.”
“Yes, Your Decency,” Wingfield said, taking an action item.
*
By Thursday evening, TK had not heard further from Wingfield regarding the breakout from the Value System. This annoyed him. His life was stressful enough without his bodyguard letting him down. For instance, TK was still bearing the burdens of leadership at nine-thirty in the evening. He was at Wilson House, the Krossington palace in the Central Enclave district of Mayfair. The butler and he were confirming the guest list for the Advent Dinner, which would be this coming Sunday night. A slight draft caused him to look up. In total silence, Wingfield had opened the door, entered and shut the door without either of them having noticed. The draft was caused by him wafting his notepad.
“Where have you been?” TK groused.
“My apologies. I had to go up to Camden asylum for a meeting.”
“With whom?”
“At the last Household Cabinet meeting, I said I would have more information about the breakout from the Value System.”
“Then let’s have it.”
Wingfield pulled open the door and nodded in a shifty-looking man in a leather jacket, blue jeans and black boots. He appeared to be a motorcyclist. TK would not have trusted him to empty a bin, let alone be a spy. The man had hard, beady eyes, a thin head and a long nose. The overall impression was of a greedy rat.
“This is Hyacint Nowak. He works in the Value System at the rank of master sergeant. By good fortune, he can give us detailed information about the breakout.”
TK stood up and shook hands with Nowak. In a gently apologetic tone, he asked the butler to leave them for a few minutes.
“I wanted Your Decency to hear it from the horse’s mouth,” Wingfield said. He gestured for Nowak to begin.
“Well Your Decency. I’ve worked in the Value System for almost seven years now. Started as an under-sergeant and now I’m a master sergeant. My point is, I know it well. There’s never been an escape. We’ve always got runaways back, or at least, what’s left of them. The marsh people that live around the Value System are not what anyone would describe as welcoming.”
“Are you familiar with the two value that escaped?”
“Yes, Your Decency. They are well known to me. I happened to be on duty when they arrived and got tagged by The Captain, so I know their real names and all about their backgrounds.”
The Captain was the name by which Nightminster was known in his Value System. Like pirates, they referred to themselves by nicknames. TK was prepared to bet this specimen before him went by the nickname Master Sergeant Ratty, or something similar.
“Good. Tell me all you know.”
“The big spay is called Antonio Kwasu Pezzini, he was Your Decency’s own chief demographer, I don’t recall The Captain ever stated what his crime was. He was tagged Zeta728. The hard case is Lawrence Morton Aldingford, tagged Zeta729. He was a cost-centre lieutenant of General Wardian glory trust. I’m certain Zeta729 was the driving force in the escape. He murdered one of the most senior value in the system, slashed this guy’s throat open with a knife. Very nasty individual.”
“Presumably they have been recovered by now?”
“The remains of Zeta728 were returned by the marsh people on Monday, Your Decency. However, Zeta729 was not returned at all. That’s never happened before—never—so it caused us problems with being unable to display the body to the population like we normally do. In the end The Captain ordered us to get a substitute cadaver, burn it and disfigure the face and put it on show. Some value weren’t convinced. I left early Wednesday morning and I was glad to get out of it. To be honest with you, I’d be surprised if we’re still in charge any more—that place was ready to explode.”
TK had been making some notes. When he finished, he looked up at Nowak.
“I must say your intelligence is of critical value. There is no need for you to go back to the Value System if you don’t want to, Wingfield will arrange for you to be suitably rewarded.” TK asked Nowak whether he had ageing parents or any young grandchildren. He told Wingfield to arrange vaccinations and medical coverage for immediate family. Nowak was effusive in his gratitude. His beady eyes shone with the joy of a new life.
Wingfield returned from having seen Nowak into the hands of a footman for escort back to Camden asylum. He found a bleak-faced TK.
“We now know something about Lawrence Aldingford we did not know before,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“He would rather die than be an ultramarine.”
“You think his escape is connected with Nightminster’s idea of getting him into the black uniform?”
TK pulled a face. “It’s bound to be, damnit. Now we have a problem again. Have you any ideas for picking him up?”
“No one’s going to be picking Lawrence up, Tommy Boy. He’ll die in the marsh, by drowning, by marsh people, by freezing to death, by starvation—he will die. It’s not possible for a lone man to cross the marshes in winter.”
“How can you be so certain?”
“I served there when I was young. No one ventures into the marshes in winter. It’s a freezing mud bath. Even in summer, with amphibious trucks, most of it is no-go.”
“If he got out, where would he go?”
“In my professional judgement, the question is not worth asking.”
“I’m asking it,” TK said, becoming irascible.
“Probably the General Wardian garrison at Peterborough. Most likely he’d get picked up as infestation and dumped on the drains.”
TK tucked his chin down and pushed the world away to think. This was an occasion when no one around him was going to help. He would have to make this decision on his own.
“Have you ever made contact with these marsh people?”
“They are stone-age throwbacks. Their idea of fun Friday is getting high on mushrooms followed by self-immolation in the nearest bonfire. They are not approachable people.”
“What language do they speak?”
“It’s a bastard patois of old Norfolk mixed up with Cockney and West Midlands. There’s a tradition—which I can quite believe—that they’re descended from criminals and lunatics of the Public Era set free as the nation state collapsed. That would explain their utterly bizarre beliefs and practices.”
“They’re our only hope of tracking down Lawrence. We have to find him, Wings. We must not allow any leakage of the secrets of the Value System—we have to be certain he perished in the wilderness however hard it is to achieve that certainty.”
“It will be a challenge, Tommy Boy. Still, what is life without challenges? Leave it with me.”
“And quickly.”
“What about Donald?” Wingfield asked.
TK sighed. A grim duty descended upon him, one he had most earnestly wished to avoid.
“I must now face the unbearable.”
“I believe the death rate in the Night and Fog is about 10% per annum,” Wingfield said. “They’
re quite careless people, these ultramarines, you cannot be blamed that Lawrence perished.”
“I told Donald I would return his brother and now I will fail in his eyes. He will no longer respect me. Then he becomes dangerous, for he knows too much—far, far too much—to be disillusioned, especially with the nationalists baying for reform.” TK propped his elbows on the table and hunched. “He’s confirmed for the Advent Dinner, we’ll take him then, I can’t imagine Laxbury Manor will bother over him.”
“What about Nightminster?”
“It has to be good, Wings; there must be no suspicions, or at least, no substantiable suspicions that we the Krossingtons had anything to do with his disappearance. I don’t need a war with the Ultramarine Guild on top of everything else.”
TK was conscious of a sick regret coming over him. He was looking back three decades to the outstanding young man who reached Oxford from nothing, full of zeal to change the world. What had gone wrong? Why had Nightminster thrown his life away, just frittered away the best years of his life in a squalid conspiracy against humanity? Perhaps the flaw had always been there, unnoticed until tragedy ripped it wide to endure as a livid ulcer of malice.
“It’s done, Your Decency,” Wingfield said. “Flying boats disappear all the time—especially in times such as these.”
“It doesn’t stop there. Dismantling the Value System will be a vast undertaking.”
“Perhaps we could turn the place into a pig farm?”
“That’s not funny, Wings.”
Chapter 16
Donald’s household was starting to notice changes in him. To begin with, the changes were subtle, perhaps a shift of tone in addressing his servants, the pitch rising rather than falling, as if making suggestions rather than giving orders. Some days after the meeting with Sarah-Kelly at ZEEBRI, he made the boldest jump yet, when he welcomed Butler Campbell back from a long weekend.
“Ah, Jonathan, had a nice few days off?”
Butler Campbell slowed his pace, scowling at his boss as if he were some dirty animal wandered in from Hyde Park.
“Good day to you, sir,” he snapped back, marching past and disappearing into his office under the main stairs.
A few minutes later, Donald heard screeches of laughter from the kitchen and then a hearty bellow from the footmen’s dormitory in the basement. From then on, his servants eyed him with a cautious curiosity, as if they suspected their master had turned putty-brained.
That evening he briefed his chauffeur Okeke to have the limousine ready at half past seven to take him to the gymnasium. Now, Okeke had never been on quite the level of formality of the other servants. Donald knew a fair amount about Okeke’s private life from the man’s habit of continuous personal commentary while driving. On this evening, Okeke grinned.
“By the way, Donald, I’ll permit you to call me Okeke.” He turned over his lapel to reveal the orange circle on a green background of the National Party. “Butler Campbell is the only one in the house who isn’t a member, did you know that?”
“We’ll discuss it later,” Donald said.
After dinner, Okeke brought out the limousine and off they rumbled into the dim streets of Bloomsbury.
“So, are you a member now?” Okeke asked.
“No. I don’t think the National Party is the right group to reform our system. Banner is pursuing a path of dangerous extremism.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because the historical record tells me to say that.” In recent days, Donald had crammed much reading from his father’s library. The history books had illuminated the ground beneath his feet. Now he walked on glass plate and could see down through the centuries beneath his lifetime. “Banner wants us all living in stables and offering our genius to some great god of state power. He claims it has not been tried before. He’s wrong—Marxism was tried again and again during the Public Era and every occasion ended in barbarous tyranny.”
“Don’t you think that describes the sovereign system? Have you ever been out on the public drains and seen how the surplus dies?”
Donald was shocked at Okeke’s blatant derision, even while entirely agreeing with it. He dodged both questions.
“There’s a better way than either. It requires the sovereigns to sit across the table from the National Party and both to exchange concessions. We have to put machines back on the land and bring the natives into the cities to make more machines. If the process was carefully managed over decades, it would raise food production enough to end the vile practice of surplus discharges to the drains.”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, Donald, you need to get real. It will never happen.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Well…” Okeke was obviously making judgements about how much he could say. “My brother is a sergeant in General Wardian, he’s seen things you would never believe. What I’m getting at is there’s too many dirty secrets. Once they come out, it’s over for the sovereign class.”
“What secrets?”
“I’ll just say this: keep your eyes and ears open for the Atrocity Commission.”
Donald paused in thinking back to meeting Sarah-Kelly. She had been dismissive of the Atrocity Commission.
“Why should I bother with it?”
“I won’t say more. Sorry. If you’re interested, you should go down to Fulham Road this Saturday. There’s a big rally for the National Party to celebrate its new headquarters out at Brent Cross. All sorts of folk will be there. Mingle with the crowd and keep your ears open, I think you’ll be impressed by what you pick up.”
*
The Fulham Road was a winding ravine lined by dormitory blocks for servants and tradesmen, with countless gloomy lanes leading off into warrens of workshops and storage yards and doubtless much else better not identified. Donald kept to the main road, knowing he would get lost and look suspicious exploring the ‘back country’. Even on the main road, the air felt chilly and smelled of drains, septic pits and fat lamps. Breeze and sunshine passed clean over this gully, except possibly in mid-summer. Whenever he stopped, mangy cats slunk about his boots. They hung about every alley, glowering at the human world that created their habitat. Ahead, the road widened into an oblong plaza, which was mobbed like a Christmas festival. Public speakers were everywhere, yelling every strain of vituperation against the sovereign class, cursing the ‘murdering dogs’. They led chants of Solidarity! Unity! Nation!. Once upon a time, this demonstration would have brought truckloads of glory troopers, loud speakers screaming and batons whacking. In fact, glory troopers were already here—they were in the crowds cheering with everyone else. The orange and green badge shone from almost every chest.
Donald bought a badge and a newsletter called Freedom’s Dawning, in which he read that the Elephant and Castle industrial asylum had pledged support for the National Party after receiving artillery shells from Naclaski batteries of the Grande Enceinte. Donald shook his head, amazed by the stupidity of the glory trusts. They were driving the asylums into the fold of the National Party.
Further down the page was a ‘call for evidence’ by the Atrocity Commission of the National Party. Its teams were gathering evidence of criminal actions by glory officers. All right-thinking, morally oriented glory troops were urged to bear witness, even concerning incidents years ago. Personal confessions would be received with utmost sympathy.
What shocked him was the brazenness. The National Party head office at Bloomsbury College was virtually within sight of the great General Wardian depot at Euston, while the Guards to the People depot at King’s Cross was barely a mile distant. He very much doubted students or staff of Bloomsbury College had permission to bear arms. As a senior citizen of the Central Enclave, Donald did have that right, but his kind would not normally have dealings with Bloomsbury College. Sarah-Kelly was in that top floor office right now, or at least, she had said she would be when they parted at ZEEBRI. There was one way in and one way out
. It was a trap.
Without further thought, he quick-marched north, risking side lanes to short-cut, zig-zagging amongst the tight-set blocks of workers’ apartments towards the avenues of Brompton and the showrooms and boutiques of Knightsbridge.
His departure proved well-timed. Just as he left, glory trucks roared in, horns blearing, harsh mouths bawling “Smash the trash!”, “Waste ‘em lads!”, the crash of hob-nails, the deep, outraged howl of the crowd, gunfire. He quickened his pace.
The distance from Fulham to Bloomsbury College was barely four miles, yet two hours later he was still at the gates of Knightsbridge on Thurloe Place, awaiting permission to enter the district. His paperwork was impeccable, with resident’s passport (his real one), firearms licence and security carnet. However, his attire as a slummy sporting a National Party badge which, like an idiot, he had neglected to remove, clashed with the documentation. The border guards held him whilst a motorbike despatcher took his papers up to the City Hall in Westminster to check them against originals. Donald fretted out the hours amid grumbling servants and clerks trying to reach jobs in Mayfair, Bloomsbury, Soho and other districts consoling themselves on copious cigarettes. The talk around him proved quite an eye-opener. A wash of surplus flow had poured into Brent Cross asylum from the Great North Drain, having overwhelmed the ultramarines guarding the turnpike. The population of Brent Cross greeted it with axes, pipes, cleavers, wrenches and anything else that came to hand, compelling a flow reversal. The battle had left so many cadavers that the rendering plants had shut their gates. The surplus cadavers got dumped out on the public drains gratis by the ultramarines, who were in good standing as a result. No doubt the lammergeiers were pleased too.
“Mr Aldingford,” called the grade lieutenant in charge of the gate shift. He returned all the documents and apologised for the delay. Donald was hastening out before the man had finished.
On into Knightsbridge, where the avenues were parked up with limousines awaiting the return of owners from shopping trips, the drivers chatting and smoking. The great showroom windows cast fans of electric light into the street. Like tropical fish in tanks, ladies with their maids floated amidst carpets, paintings, rolls of silk, amphorae decorated in Greek or Egyptian pastiche, mirrors etched in tributes to Klimmt’s paintings (something of a current fad) and other status-clutter. This was hardly two miles from Fulham, yet in the relaxation of the drivers and the languid indulgences of the ladies, there was not a trace of alarm. These people had no clue what was happening.
Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 1 Page 19