Futuretrack 5

by Robert Westall

  The sergeant on the gate was British police. He was gardening, his blaster hanging from the rusting wire. He was reluctant to break off his chat with an old man sitting on an upturned bucket, a slow argument about how to thin carrots. He paused just long enough to raise the barrier pole just high enough for us to ride under. Didn’t even give us a glance, let alone check our ID.

  The town centre was derelict. Roofless, windowless houses peered from side streets. Botchergate was full of the ghosts of shops whose windows announced emptily that they’d once sold cattle feed, fishing tackle, Eley-Kynoch shotgun cartridges. Even the closing-down-sale notices were curled and faded beyond deciphering. All that seemed left in the gathering dusk was the dark bulk of the cathedral, one garish supermarket surrounded by smashed trolleys, and Vic Hugget’s Bargain Mart, the Shop That Sells Everything.

  The supermarket filled the dusk with flickering blue light. The few people inside moved slowly, jerkily, like some automated toy running down.

  Vic Hugget’s was dimly lit. It gave the impression of having burst at the seams, for the pavements outside were stacked with wardrobes and elephantine sofas. I wondered what Vic did when it rained. The peeling veneers on the wardrobes, one squelch of my hand on a plastic settee, convinced me that Vic did nothing.

  We plunged in. Bare electric light bulbs only made the air seem darker. In murky corners and on stairs, candles and glass-bellied oil lamps flickered. Smells of rising damp and dry rot.

  “And what can I do for you?” The deep voice enjoyed making us jump; its owner emerged from a littered office hidden behind a chest of drawers, lit by another oil lamp. A huge, pear-shaped man, in frayed maroon jumper, baggy, grey trousers, and carpet slippers. A deeply bearded man, who moved like he had woodworm in both legs and smelled like he had mushrooms growing in his beard. In the dimness, he could’ve been any age.

  To gain time, I asked about spare tires for Mitzi, knowing he wouldn’t have any.

  He went out to poke through a tangle of rubber in the backyard, urging us over his shoulder to keep looking around. We walked from room to room, upstairs and down, staring at wallpaper hanging off walls, holes in the ceiling where plaster had fallen and dark strings of fungus swayed in the draft, groping for a new victim. I heaved on the handle of a huge suitcase. The top ripped away, sending full jam jars with rusted lids rolling across the sloping floor. I kicked a bucket full of rainwater that immediately began to leak. An endless succession of the ancient, the useless, the blackly ugly…

  “It’s like a graveyard,” said Keri.

  “Useful stuff in graveyards.”

  “Bones for your doggie. …” I groped under an ancient washing machine. “We could use this pan.”

  “You don’t know what’s been in it.”

  “It’ll boil clean. Better than nothing, if we’re going camping.”

  “Whatever turns you on. There’s a plastic jug—if it doesn’t leak.”

  Just then, there was a dusty little whirr up in the ceiling.

  “Rats,” squeaked Keri. Delighted she was woman enough to be scared of rats, I grabbed a broken golf club and poked violently at the patch of dark strands where the rat was lurking.

  The golf club slid off something small, round, hard, and permanent.

  Again, it whirred. Then I knew what it was. A mickey mouse: a close-circuit TV security eye. The slob downstairs was trying to spy on us. But, hard luck for him, his mickey mouse was suffering from damp and rust, like everything else in his crappy shop. Otherwise it wouldn’t be making that giveaway noise. Or still be trying, for the third time, to focus on us. I got Keri behind a sagging bookcase that smelled like Shakespeare’s grave, before the little black lens finally got itself pointed in our direction.

  My mind was whirling. Two kinds of people still used mickey mouses. The poshest shops in the London enclave…

  And Paramils.

  I glanced round the crap-museum; nothing worth pinching. The slob downstairs couldn’t afford mickey mouses.

  Paramils? Paramils wouldn’t let mickey mouses get into that kind of mess.

  Either he’d stolen it (he looked the type to steal anti-thief devices) or the Paramils had given it to him. Either way made him pretty unhealthy company. I put my finger to my lips and led the way downstairs, still carrying jug and pan.

  He loomed behind us again, noiselessly.

  “Jugs and pans? Going camping?”

  His voice was far too eager. It warned me just in time.

  “No, we’re Racers. Going racing in Glasgow.”

  “But camping on the way?” he said, genially, indulgently.

  “No.”

  “What you want a pan for, then?”

  “Doing oil changes on the bike,” I said quickly, before

  Keri could open her mouth.

  “I’m not selling you good pans for that!”

  “What’s it matter to you what we use the pan for? You get your credits, make your profit.”

  “Matter of principle. My pans are for camping.”

  “You got camping on the brain or something?”

  “Oh, it’s a grand life. You and your girl in your little tent, out in the blue, miles from anybody, snug as a bug in a rug.” His tongue travelled across his lower lip, like two slugs mating.

  “We haven’t got a little tent,” I said. That really spoiled his day. I stepped outside and tried to jam first the jug, then the pan, under Mitzi’s oil sump. “Too big,” I said, and slung them back on a pile of other junk.

  From his expression, you’d have thought I’d kicked his shins with hobnailed boots. But he forced a smile back, though he nearly had to use a car jack to do it. “Keep on looking around, squire. Never know what you’ll find.”

  I should have grabbed Keri and scarpered then. But suddenly he interested me. He was more than a man selling lousy pans; more than a dirty old man, daydreaming about what boys and girls got up to in tents… We mooched round the’ shadowy crap again, eventually emerging with a couple of antique rock-and-roll tapes.

  He didn’t want to sell us rock-and-roll tapes, but he let us pay for them, dully. Then suddenly bent behind the counter, where we couldn’t see what he was doing, and straightened up all cheerful with the tapes wrapped in newspaper. Enjoyed stuffing them into Keri’s breast pocket.

  Maybe he was just a dirty old man. Maybe he only used his mickey mouse to spy on kids who went upstairs for a bit of grope and fumble on his damp mattresses…

  But as we were going out, he drew me aside by one elbow. “Look at this, squire.” He drew out, from under a sag-bellied sideboard, a green canvas bag. Pulled out green folds of thick nylon. “Isn’t that a lovely tent, squire? Built-in fly sheet and ground sheet. And a camping stove… lightweight nest of pans…”

  Keri’s eyes grew wide. Everything we’d wanted.

  “Fifty credits to you, squire. You won’t find a bargain like that, between here and London.”

  “Fall off a lorry, did it?”

  “Guy riding down from the north. Needed money for juice.”

  I bent forward. Saw, on the tent’s door flap, faint smudges and streaks of silver powder. Somebody’d tried

  to wipe them off, but hadn’t tried hard enough. That tent had recently been dusted for fingerprints. That tent had been used in court as criminal evidence. Of what?

  I straightened up. “No thanks.”

  “Take it to sell,” he coaxed. “You’re certain to make a good profit.”

  “No, we haven’t got room on the bike.”

  “Suit yourself.” He pushed the tent roughly back under the sideboard and stalked off into the darkness.

  Why should an Unnem like him use the word “squire”? Squire was a Tech word.

  “You’re mad!” said Keri, starting up the bike with vicious fingers. “We’ll never get another tent like that. You just lost me. I’m going back to London.”

  “We need a tent,” I said, “and we’re offered one just like that? Is life normally that kind
to you? As you would say, what’s the catch?”

  She looked thoughtful. I explained my suspicions.

  “Let’s get the hell out, then.”

  “No—he interests me. Ride around town while I think.”

  I saw the answer to my prayers eventually. Sitting dejectedly on a curb, throwing stones at a Coke can in the middle of the road. From the way he hit the can every time he’d spent his life practising. We pulled up and I said, “Fancy a ride on this bike?”

  His eyes lit up like instant Christmas.

  I pulled off my leathers and helmet, and while he was struggling into them, I drew Keri on one side.

  “Drive past Vic Hugget’s and then out through the gate. Make plenty of noise—get noticed. Drive this poor slob around a bit, then park among those grass mounds we saw coming in. Keep out of sight. Make him lie down, even if you have to seduce him.”

  “Anything else? You ask so little of me. …”

  The lad came across, the beatific grin still on his face.

  “Pull your visor down,” I snapped. “Don’t you know it’s against the law to ride with your visor up?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said humbly. He wasn’t very bright.

  Off they ripped, passing the shop that sold everything with a brilliant squeal of tires. Old Vic peered out, and watched them avidly until they were out of sight. Suddenly, I felt afraid for Keri. Then Vic withdrew his head, like a wrinkled old tortoise.

  I gave him a minute, then slid into his shop by one of its several back entrances. I hardly breathed. I had a nasty feeling he was listening for me, as I was listening for him. And I was wearing boots whereas he was wearing carpet slippers.

  Somewhere, his phone rang. His voice answered it, deep and wheezy. “Yes, sergeant? They’ve gone, have they? Back along the road to the motorway?”

  He was talking to the gate guard. About us.

  “I’ll ring our Paramil friends, then. Not that they’ll pay much for this pair. They wouldn’t buy the tent—the boy smelled a rat. Sharp little sod. But I managed to slip a hiking compass into the girl’s pocket… Yes, evidence of a sort, but not enough. They’ll get a week’s jail, on suspicion, and we’ll get twenty lousy credits between us.

  “Yes … a tent is certain evidence of intention to camp. Gets them sent straight to the lobo-farm, every time. And gets us five hundred credits. Can’t tell you how much money that tent’s made for me over the years… the Paramils always bring it back afterward. Well, I’d better ring them. Don’t worry, sergeant, you’ll soon learn the ropes… your predecessor did very well out of it. Bought himself a bungalow in the Devon Enclave.”

  I listened, incredulous, while he rang the Paramils, gave them our bike registration, and accused us of intent to camp. Would Keri get off the road before the Paramils spotted her?

  When he put the phone down, I stepped out.

  “Do you enjoy selling people to the lobo farm?”

  He didn’t waste time feeling guilty. Grabbed up the phone. Luckily I’d noticed where the junction box was. I ripped the phone out by the roots.

  His hands went down behind the counter again. Came up holding something that glistened blue-black in the lamplight. An antique revolver. It didn’t occur to me it might be loaded, till he swung it toward me.

  I grabbed the barrel and pushed it upward, away from my face. The barrel was hexagonal, sharp-edged, cold. I went on pushing it back toward him. I couldn’t think what else to do. He was strong, with corded muscles under that wrinkled fat. He was using every ounce of his weight to bear me down.

  But he was old. His face, horribly close to mine, went red, then white. Drops of sweat grew on his forehead, ran down into his bushy eyebrows, caught there like flies in a web, then trickled down each side of his nose. He began to pant; his mouth gaped, smelling faintly of old whiskey and hay. Then his panting got a shudder in it. The arm that held the gun began to shake; then his whole body, as it pressed against mine. And all the time I forced his arm back and back.

  There was a bang like the end of the world. The gun barrel went hot in my hand. Sharp bits of stuff showered down from the ceiling, blinding me. I panicked; all I could think of was pushing his arm back harder… keep the gun away.

  The gun kicked and banged again, less loudly. Maybe the first bang had made me deaf. Stuff showered across my face again, but wet and scalding now, not cold plaster dust. A bit fell on my lip and I licked it. It tasted salty…

  I opened my eyes. We stared at each other, inches apart. His face was like a globe of the world with every wrinkled mountain chain and sweat-filled river marked in. His eyes were wide open, deeply puzzled.

  “Meeurgh?” he asked me. “Meeurgh?” He looked so hurt and baffled.

  The side of his head above the gun barrel was no longer there. The ear was gone as well.

  He let go the gun; grabbed me like I was his mother.

  “Meeurgh? Meeurgh?” he asked with increasing desperation. Then lost all interest in me. Swung away, arms wide, big hands groping. Lurched past the spindly desk with the oil lamp burning, missing it by inches. Tried to climb a towering bookcase. He climbed amazingly. I was glad I couldn’t see the other side of his head.

  When he was halfway up, the bookcase tore loose from the wall, with a long screech. For a second, it hung over the table and oil lamp. Then everything collapsed, and I was staring at a mountain of books and splintered planks, with his slippered feet sticking out the bottom.

  There was a whumf. A hot wind seared my face. When I opened my eyes, there was flame on the curtains, the floor, the scattered books, my own arm.

  I ran, beating my burning arm against my body. It didn’t seem to hurt; the flames went out. I was out of the back door, leaping the sagging fence like a hurdler. Not a good hurdler…

  The fall calmed me; my Tech training took control. Drew my attention to my right hand, which was still holding the gun. Made me walk straight back into the shop, up the smoke-filled passage till I got in sight of…

  A roaring mass of flame; no sound but the crackling of flames. I was grateful for that. I threw the gun into the middle of the flames and got out before the remaining bullets exploded.

  Tech training also suggested I might leave less of a trail if I kept to the streets. Suggested I should clean my face. Suggested I might roll the sleeve of my sweater down, so the burned place didn’t show. I began to appreciate my Tech training quite a lot.

  I slowly walked away from the shop, turned the corner. Nobody seemed to have noticed anything. No shouting, no running figures. Looking back, I saw why. The shop was huge, and the fire was buried right in the middle of it. True, every window was filled with orange light, and a lot of smoke was pouring out of the chimneys. But it just looked cheerful and jolly, like a Christmas card.

  And it was the time of night when people eat, or gather around the Box or a friendly fire. I shuddered… but the streets remained empty, as I trudged toward the gate. I felt numb, flat, willing to let happen what would happen.

  Nothing happened. As I passed the gate, the gate guard and his old friend were putting tools away in a shed. Still arguing about carrots. … At the bend of the road, I gave a last look back. They had come out of the shed and had their backs to me, staring at a column of smoke that was growing over the town.

  Round the corner, I began to run; ran till my guts were heaving. Only pulling up twice, as a car passed. But they didn’t notice me either. Too busy peering at the orange light that silhouetted the black, broken roofs of Carlisle.

  Keri had the boy well hidden. I heard them before I saw them, as I wandered rather hopelessly over the grass-grown mounds. So many mounds; Carlisle had shrunk from a city to a town.

  They were lying full length, smoking and chattering their heads off. Their fag ends looked friendly in the dark. I felt weakly jealous, because Keri was laughing with him in a way she never did with me. I threw myself down between them; lit a fag with shaking hands.

  Keri said, “What happened?”


  My cold Tech side took over, assessing facts.

  We had an alibi for Vic’s death. Vic had given it to us himself, when he phoned the Paramils. The gate guard would confirm it, when the Paramils got to him.

  But this kid, grinning hopefully in the dusk, could blow it all. If he once opened his mouth…

  “What happened?” Keri repeated. With the kid all ears. For all I knew, she’d opened her big mouth too much to him already. I said angrily, “I couldn’t get a thing to eat. You didn’t give me any bloody money, did you?”

  She opened her mouth to ask what the hell I was talking about. When I squeezed her arm, warningly, she closed it again with a snap. The kid said eagerly, “I can get you some grub, easy. We got a big allotment… potatoes, eggs. I didn’t know what you wanted. I owe you for the ride. We can put you up for the night. Me mum’s a good cook. …”

  I felt rotten, turning on him. But it was for his sake, too. If he got involved in a Paramil inquiry, they’d probably ship him off to the lobo farm, just to keep the records tidy. I hardened my heart and said, “By the way, you have got a permit to ride motorbikes, mate, haven’t you? Never thought to ask, before I offered you a ride. Only it’s a bad offence to ride without one—the Paramils will have you for it. Two years in the nick. …”

  He looked terrified at the mention of Paramils. “Permit? What permit? I ain’t got no permit.”

  “Then you are in real trouble.”

  “What can I do?” He turned to Keri, desperately. So did I. If she gave the wrong answer now, I didn’t know what I was going to do with him.

  “It’s all right, Lenny,” she said. “We won’t split on you. Will we, Kit?” She looked at me daggers, over his shoulder; a big row was certainly on the way.

  “No,” I said. “We won’t split, Lenny. Keri would get in trouble, too. Just keep your own lip buttoned. Don’t even mention meeting us. You wouldn’t like Keri to go to prison, would you?”

  “Cross my heart,” he said. “I’ll look after you, Keri.”

  “I know you will.” She gave him a hug, and not just to spite me, either.

  “Run along, sunshine,” I said. “And keep that lip buttoned.”