Parade followed at half past seven. Value had to be free of makeup and dressed in their overalls and working boots. At eight, an especially good breakfast was served, with bacon, pigeons’ eggs, French fries, rye bread and unlimited dandelion tea. At nine o’clock the population formed in a long crocodile behind SMS London, who led a two-mile run to the watering lake and back at a surprisingly tough pace considering what a bulky, unlikely runner he made. Then he posted teams for the Sunday football league, which was played on an expanse of grassland beyond the Factory. There were sixty-four half-sized pitches on an eight by eight square, marked out with knee-high wicker fences. Refereeing, keeping scores, breaking up fights, all were dealt with by the gang leaders. The ultramarines goofed off to their compound for the rest of the day.
Lawrence found himself in a team of strangers. He played until lunch time and then said he was going to switch to Spiderman’s team and would send a player back to balance things out. After lunch, he left the Dining Hall early and ambled around in the Yard. He paused and took a quick look about. There were a couple of groups chatting on the far side of the Yard, which paid no attention as he slid along the wall and out through the archway that led to the Tidal Basin, where the barges docked.
He scanned the roof of the Square, trying to spot any lookouts before they spotted him. The Square itself was windowless to the outside, to simplify black-out arrangements. There were no obvious lookout posts on the roof. He doubted the ultras posted anybody, it was not their style to suffer tedious duties like watch-keeping, or even basic precautions like locking the Yard at night. They had the marsh and its savages to do all that for them.
The day was perfect for his purpose. It was clear all the way from one side of the sky to the other, with low tide around 2 pm. This provided the chance to investigate something that had puzzled him since the very first day: why could he hear breakers at low tide?
It took him only minutes to reach a point about half-way to the Tidal Basin, where he left the main path at a right angle, pushing along an unkempt dyke running towards the sea defence. The top of the sea defence offered a vista of mud flats and sand bars spreading away to a white skin of surf on the horizon. From the right came a smooth roar of breakers where a channel issued into the sea about a mile away down the coast. At low tide, it refunded its backed-up head into the surf, which stood high and peeled over in longs grins of foam.
There were many channels that drained the hundreds of square miles of the fens. They changed course all the time. The neat, engineered water system of the Public Era had largely disappeared as the sea had returned to inundate the hinterland. By the sun, he knew this coast faced almost due north. The complete absence of sea or air traffic hinted this forgotten place was on the coast of The Wash, a dead end of dangerous shoals and swirling tides at the northern corner of East Anglia many miles from any trade routes. He could think of no other north-facing coast as soggy and desolate, unless this was continental Europe beneath his feet.
He sat with his knees drawn up under his chin, staring at the horizon, feeling almost free, yet all too aware of the metal tag pinned through his ear and harshly conscious of the miles of water and wilderness all around. He had to force himself to believe that nothing was so formidable he could not beat it.
On the path back towards the Square, he started to hear rustling and grunts in the bushes to the landward side, then a sort of yelp and another yelp. He picked up a couple of stones and stretched into a steady jog, nothing panicky, just better progress. The sounds of pursuit correspondingly intensified, suggesting a hunting party throwing itself through vegetation, no longer bothering about stealth, which meant they must believe they had him banged to rights. A marsh warrior leaped onto the path just five yards ahead. He wore a wicker jacket and a dress of what looked like seagull wings. Across his forehead was a scarlet bar. Lawrence threw out his arms and uttered a dreadful scream, charging just as a second warrior jumped out and abruptly jumped back in fright. Lawrence hurled one of the stones, hitting the first warrior smack on the mouth with a crack of teeth. The warrior spun away, wailing with both hands clamped to his mouth, assisted by a punch in the kidneys from Lawrence as he broke into an outright sprint. He pounded the last two hundred metres with death’s terror scorching his blood, folding up panting on reaching the archway to the Yard. Christ, he had thought the area around the Square safe in daylight. He would have to be more careful. That was just too close a call for comfort.
On the way back to the football pitches, he had to cross the drawbridge over the Tidal Creek. In approaching it, he had several minutes on the long straight path to savour an encounter with SMS London, who was waiting, cracker pipe in hand, eyes cold with anger. This was not going to have a happy outcome. Lawrence adopted a hang-dog, submissive stance, keeping his eyes down.
“Value Big Stak presenting, Senior Master Sergeant London.”
“Where have you been, Big Stak?”
“I was admiring the sea view, Senior Master Sergeant London.”
“I would normally apply a peremptory measure by way of incentivising correct behaviour. However, fortunately for you, I do not have the opportunity on this occasion to do so. Follow me, The Captain wishes to talk with you.”
Back at the Square, Lawrence was led through the grand door from which The Captain’s emerged at each parade. Within was a gloomy, wood-panelled corridor running through the building. The door at the far end opened into a walled garden, a suntrap, balmy and calm. Ivy climbed the brick walls, grass neat like green velvet spread around flower beds cut in perfect circles. At this time of the year, it was of course a place of bare stems and roses pruned back to thorny stumps, awaiting the resurgence of spring.
The Captain was draped out on a deck chair, engrossed in paperwork. Files, thick books and notes surrounded him. A calculating machine stood on a foot stool. He was frowning at what looked like an accounts sheet. In a white shirt and olive-green cotton trousers, he appeared far from being the maniac who had conjured up the Value System. He reminded Lawrence more of his old physics teacher—the same absolutely exclusive concentration of a first class mind. The only hint of middle age was a pair of reading glasses perched halfway down the nose. He was not armed.
The two arrivals stood for some minutes before The Captain laid aside his work.
“I am sorry I kept you waiting SMS, but I couldn’t risk losing count. One day I will have an electronic computer for this drudgery.”
“I apologise for the delay, The Captain. Value Big Stak chose a little rambling in lieu of football.”
The Captain thanked SMS London, then they were alone.
“I’m going to ask you some questions, Aldingford. You will tell the truth—the full and complete truth.”
“Yes, The Captain.”
This was, of course, the first time in almost two months that Lawrence had been addressed by his real surname. There was a finite gap—a large fraction of a second—between hearing it and recognising it. In the years to come, if those years were allowed to come, that gap would get longer and longer, until it never ended…
“Were you in a fight last night?” The Captain was looking at the cut on Lawrence’s forehead caused by head-butting Tricky Fingers.
“Yes, The Captain.”
“What was it about?”
“Just a drunken scrap, The Captain.”
Lawrence answered with rising curiosity. His whole preparation rested on explaining the fight with Tricky Fingers. Now he had no idea what was coming.
“What are you passionate about?”
What the fuck? Well, The Captain wanted the full and complete truth, so that was what he would get.
“I am passionate about the outrage of being here, The Captain. I served the customers of General Wardian with honesty and dedication. I did no wrong.”
“I meant before that. You advanced from probationary basic to cost-centre lieutenant in a decade. That is not accomplished without ambition—s
ome would say it requires blind ambition. What drove you as a glory trooper?”
The answer was simple: rank. He had to reach account-captain first class before the age of thirty. Then he would return home in the magnificent dress uniform of that rank: white gloves, sword, a solid gold shield of sovereign rank on each sleeve. Not even a bombastic narcissist could argue with an achievement like that.
The answer was not simple: it was a blend of wistfulness and anguish that could not be expressed, although plenty tried when they were drunk enough. It was the outrage incited by the films of the Public Era shown at Camberley College during his Securitician A training and at other times. Beautiful valleys of white oak stretching as far as they eye could see—destroyed to make railway sleepers and land for cattle grazing. Now those valleys were forest again, peaceful and clean. A wilderness of rainforest hours of flying wide—wiped away for grids of palm trees and scoring highways. Now the rainforest was back. Most ludicrous of all, queues hundreds of yards long for the vanity of a moment at the summit of Mount Everest. The Public Era was an infinite list of such desecrations; Nature’s splendours thrown as bread and circuses to the Fatted Masses twisted in the bite of a leech so fat with debt it burst and drowned the world. It must never happen again. Public and Equal were out, Private and Elite were in—forever.
“I can’t remember.”
The Captain eyed him, with a patient, avuncular expression.
“Let us nudge your memory. Tell me about the first occasion you prevented surplus flow.”
“No. I’m not going to talk about brushes. Even though I am no longer a glory officer, I will never breach the unspoken law of silence that surrounds that kind of work. It just has to be done.”
“I was a glory officer once. Like you, I commanded a barge. There is nothing you can tell me I don’t know.” When Lawrence held his silence, The Captain added, “Let’s talk about your first posting as an officer.”
The Captain’s Value System consumed men with the indifference of a steam engine combusting coal. So why all this patient coaxing? For certain, The Captain was playing a long game. All Lawrence could do was bat along with it.
“My first posting was to the Sovereign Lands of Montina, based at Reading Garrison,” Lawrence said. “It was a kids’ fancy-dress party. The local hunt, ballroom dancing, a spot of tennis, strutting about showing the flag. That was when I first read a lot, just to combat the boredom.” He trailed off, his eyes glazing as he retreated into memories. “I banged a hell of a lot of sovereign gash.”
The Captain burst out into a rich laugh. Lawrence jumped in shock. For an instant every muscle in his body bulged rigid to strike with blind fury. The Captain met him eye to eye for a moment, entirely candid, a pitying look, as given to a lion in a zoo.
“You were talking about sovereign gash,” The Captain said.
“The Oban garrison put a notice in the Glorious Gazette for officers with action experience. I applied and got promoted to grade lieutenant second class. Once I had gained my Master’s Certificate, I was promoted to grade lieutenant first class and given a command, a 110-ton patrol barge.”
“Your task was to prevent surplus at sea. Did you approve?”
“It’s a ghastly duty.”
“No one spends three years preventing surplus who lacks a hard soul—and I should know. So, what is it, this hard soul? What do you feel when you pull the triggers?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I can send you back to my system if you don’t want to talk.”
After a long silence, Lawrence began to speak. He listened to himself, wondering why he was telling this repugnant stranger his deepest secrets. Was it because he would probably never get another chance? His voice quivered. Why this tension of the diaphragm?
“I was eighteen when I first pulled the triggers. I was a leading basic on a patrol barge out of Portsmouth with a beat in the middle of the English Channel far from coastal traffic. Not even flying boats came out that far. When we spotted a raft, my commander ordered me to the brass-muncher, while the crew tossed scrambling nets over the side and waved and shouted to the surplus. I felt honoured as the new boy of the crew. I remember wondering where on earth we would keep all the surplus, as the barge had no secure hold. We certainly could not tow such an unwieldy thing.
“Then I heard the order to fire. The raft was not thirty metres off, loaded down with bucks and does and kids—you know how these ignorant savages breed. The commander came up and shouted I had to open fire. He called me every name under the sun and then finally said he would be forced get someone else to do it, if I wouldn’t. So…” Lawrence felt his face burn and his throat choke up. The mind’s eye is not a cine camera. It captures only glimpses, perhaps enhances here and blots out there, so it is not faithful. His memory replayed a merciful shield of leaping cascades of spray punctured by only a few realities; a lump of scalp trailing black hair like a flame, a forearm spinning, a baby flung at the barge in one last desperate bid to save it, falling hopelessly short. After the roar of the brass-muncher, fragments of raft spreading out, riddled steel barrels sinking, waves agitated by writhing forms like fish. While the cheering crew danced around the turret Lawrence vomited over the breeches of the brass-muncher. The reek of sizzling vomit filled his nostrils now. “I got a commendation for that. When we returned to base, the flotilla commander gave me a pep-talk about the dreadful necessity imposed on us. I could not fault his logic. We prevented about two hundred head of surplus on that one patrol. Multiply that by a flotilla of ten barges, month in and month out, soon there’d have been a lager of surplus as big as Portsmouth, all feeding, shitting and breeding. Through prevention at sea, we kept the land safe. In any case, surplus we missed got wiped out by fishing escorts or hacked to bits on the beaches. I’ve seen black sand with my own eyes. Even so, I was glad for a transfer to Peterborough to hunt fenland bandits.”
The Captain expressed surprise.
“So why did you go back to prevention?”
“That was when I was older, after I had accepted that control of the surplus is an ugly duty. Either one does, or does not, have the guts for it. The people I despise are the hypocrites who wail about glory atrocities whilst enjoying safe lives behind the Grande Enceinte. They should read about the Sack of Oxford.”
Lawrence let the silence hang. A sombre distraction—some tragic old scene—pulled The Captain into himself for a few seconds. He had scoured memories of the deepest privacy from Lawrence. Well, such excavation worked both ways, suicidal though it might be. Lawrence had nothing to lose after all. The thin, cold eyes flickered, came back to the here and now. The shovel chin lifted.
“You were talking about hypocrites.”
“The sovereign class are behind everything that happens,” Lawrence said. “They can’t complain about so-called glory atrocities. It’s obvious they know about preventions. It’s obvious they approve. Why shouldn’t they? Their ancestors created this world specifically to prevent overcrowding.”
“Now you sound more like the National Party.”
“Not everything the radicals claim is wrong. There was a Glorious Resolution after the global money system failed. Why did it happen? There were plenty of money catastrophes during the Public Era. Yet only one brought calamity. No history book will tell you why that is—and believe me, I have read hundreds of history books.”
Lawrence hesitated. At the back of his mind was the caution he was dealing with an utterly evil individual. Since his existence or non-existence would mean nothing to The Captain, there must be another, entirely selfish, motivation for this meeting. Sunday afternoon entertainment for a bored maniac? Play up the hopes of a desperate head of value before dropping him back in hell? Yes, that was probably what this was about. It really did not matter what Lawrence said, or did not say. So, he let his mouth run loose.
“It’s obvious why no historian will tell the truth. The élite of the Public Era could have saved their world
in the 2040s, just as they did after the Great Depression of the 1930s and the repeated collapses early in the twenty-first century. They failed to act, for the simple reason they despised the Fatted Masses. The Public Era was eating the planet alive, razing the great forests, annihilating wilderness for tourism, cutting beauty to pieces for the Fatted Masses and their ridiculous little sheet-metal cars. I’ve seen the films—the Great Ring Drain solid with motor cars and all the rest. The Public Era was cancerous. Come the final crash, the élite simply walked off to their land and gold. Nothing planned, nothing formally agreed, by common consent the Haves decided the Public Era should go; away it fell into history. Of course, no one will say anything about this now, because the descendants of those Haves are Tom Krossington and his like. That’s why you will never read any of this in the history books.”
Surprisingly, The Captain smiled and nodded, obviously in full agreement.
“All correct. Your problem, Aldingford, is that you are too intelligent for the career you chose. Your mind is restless. It probes into dangerous places. You slighted too many people. When you needed friends, no one spoke up, so you vanished into the Nameless Gone.”
Amid a ferocious creaking, The Captain jack-knifed out of the deck chair and stood to his full height. He was certainly a tall man, a good inch over Lawrence, with heavy, sloping shoulders and long arms.
“Join me. Be an officer of the ultramarines.”
Lawrence said nothing. The offer neither elated nor angered him. It would probably be most accurate to say that it passed straight through him. The Captain spoke on.
“One day you will be fifty-two years old, that is, my age—if you live that long. What do you wish to have achieved by then?”
“I’m no longer ambitious, The Captain.”
“Do you know your life expectancy?”
“I heard an estimate—from one who is an expert—that it’s about six years.”
“Give yourself some credit, Aldingford. You are a tough young man, you will last twenty years. You might even make it to fifty. Just think of reaching your fiftieth birthday after a quarter century in the Value System—the best years of your life gone. Does this thought please you?”
Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 2 Page 10