The Sea and Summer

by George Turner

  Amazingly, Francis became quite still, blinking as if trying to focus the face. Edward let go of him and Francis flung himself on the tougher, stronger boy who, taken off balance, crashed his head against the wall and slumped to the floor. He lay momentarily unconscious and Francis was a total flare of triumphant hatred. He had discovered in himself a force to throw even fear aside. I could not doubt that he had taken a revenge that had waited all his life.

  Derrick grabbed him before he could begin on his plain intention of kicking his brother into cripplehood. Nikopoulos went on his knees to attend his stunned officer, who stirred and sat up quickly. Billy reached out with what looked like timidity to take Francis from Derrick, who pushed him away. The boy gazed at Billy with a fresh fright, expecting retribution, and tried to pull away, but Billy held him fast. ‘It’ll be all right, boy. No harm’ll come.’

  Francis shook like a leaf while very young tears ran down his cheeks – and took instant advantage of the opportunity to mumble, ‘I didn’t mean it, Billy. I never hated you.’

  I wished Billy had been in condition to give him the merciless belting he had earned. And knew he would not have done it. His brother said derisively, ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ and climbed to his feet.

  Derrick was intrigued. ‘I don’t know what all that was about but if it gets the brat home without further drama, well and good. He will be safe there so long as nobody reveals his address. And so long as he stays away from the soldiery.’

  Edward laughed without pleasure. ‘He won’t have the guts to walk through a Swill street.’

  Billy was suddenly angry. ‘You had to learn! Half his trouble is your bloody big opinion of yourself.’

  ‘And the other half was you selling him to the ma’am!’

  Derrick observed that nothing cleared the air like a family brawl, but would they please keep it for later? ‘We have more important moves to discuss, haven’t we, Captain?’

  Nikopoulos shook his head. ‘No, it’s over. You won’t touch any of us.’

  Derrick seemed to have expected no less. ‘I like a man who can keep his head. My Department can use you.’

  ‘No. Sooner or later you would give me an intolerable order ‘for the good of the State’ and I would be sick over your boots. I haven’t given in to necessity so thoroughly as you. I was born Swill and can go back there where useful things wait to be done.’

  ‘By your New Men?’

  For once the Captain was taken aback. ‘Where did you hear that?’

  ‘From your friend, Arry Smivvers. I sat up half the night listening to his shameful confidences.’ He made a mollifying gesture to Edward’s breath of dismay. ‘Don’t call him traitor, he did all he could to make saints of both of you and the complicated Mr Kovacs, though I must say the Kovacs image faded when the Sykes story came through just after dawn.’

  Edward asked savagely, ‘What did you do to make Arry talk?’

  ‘Nothing, young feller, nothing. He is very intelligent. He saw what the end must be and decided on a clean breast, which might save him from penalties for his part in the adventure. That’s all it was, really – he couldn’t face the possibility of relegation. As we say in the Department, There’s no Sweet like an old Swill. Add to his intelligence that he is an excellent advocate who argued very convincingly that I should take no action against any of you. That way took some of the stigma from his pleading for himself. And all the time Captain Nikopoulos had foreseen his arguments! Eh, Captain?’

  I did not know then who Smivvers was, but the explanation of betrayal, which was in some manner not a betrayal, seemed of a piece with the sad moralities that held our lives together with darns and patches.

  Derrick said cheerfully, ‘I do nothing and you all keep your mouths shut on what you know. Agreed?’

  Nikopoulos grunted, ‘Agreed,’ and Billy muttered, ‘Right.’

  That might have been the tame, stand-off ending of it, save that Edward seemed unable to believe what he heard. He cried out, ‘Nick, you mean to let him get away with it? Treating people like laboratory animals!’

  Nikopoulos snapped at him, ‘Use your head, boy!’

  It was Derrick who showed his teeth without reserve. ‘Talk and I’ll have you killed! Judicially if necessary. That’s the threat, boy. Now here’s the sense behind it. Yesterday you saw the foolishness of talking to the Swill. Today, tell me what would be gained by talking to the softer-hearted Sweet?’

  ‘They could pull your bloody-minded State down in ruins!’

  ‘Doubtful. Captain?’

  ‘Very doubtful. You have the armed forces. The Swill might not rally to help Sweet, and if they did they are packed into easily controllable ghettos.’

  ‘Say they succeeded. Who would be better off?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  Edward said desperately, ‘We could have human beings in power instead of robots.’

  Derrick showed reasonableness, an honest effort to instruct in his fashion. ‘They would soon be the same robots as their predecessors. Government means doing what you must, not what you would. This country and every country has survived the nuclear century by keeping on talking and never taking an irreversible step. It will survive the next decades of secret biological warfare by constant vigilance and defensive research and everything else will be subservient to those. After that, what? War by weather control, with toxic rains? I don’t know, but if it is sufficiently horrendous and won’t slaughter its perpetrators, it will arrive. States will survive by doing what they must. Throw a government out and its successors will be constrained to repeat the monstrous actions they rebelled against. The State that breaks the status quo may destroy the planet. Mr Kovacs, do you agree?’

  ‘Every Tower Boss knows those things. The ones that don’t, don’t last long.’

  ‘You get rid of them?’

  ‘We surely do.’

  ‘Just like the embattled State preserving the balance?’

  ‘Like that.’

  It seemed that only platitudes remained, running in circles.

  Derrick said, ‘Why don’t you all go home? We’re finished here.’

  And they did, with a flurry of little behavioural flourishes.

  Edward looked from Nikopoulos to Billy as if idols had fallen. The Captain rested a comforting hand on his shoulder and grimaced as it was shrugged off; a great structure of young idealism had been blown away like cobweb. That misery would not last. Nikopoulos and PI held him fast and would provide new goals.

  Billy stood up, slowly, a joint at a time as his stiffening bruises cried aloud. ‘I’ll be limping a bit.’ He put out his arm. ‘Give me a shoulder, Francis,’ Francis hesitated, probably revolving doubts and fancies about the nature of his welcome, then gingerly moved under the waiting hand.

  I’ll swear that what I saw briefly in his brother’s eyes was affronted jealousy. Billy had his second family together again. He was welcome to them.

  I said, ‘Goodbye, Francis,’ startling him, bringing him face to face with the immediate fact of turning his back on the Sweet life. It was best that he break cleanly and at once. ‘I’ll send your belongings after you.’

  ‘Thank you, ma’am. Goodbye, ma’am.’ It was a desolate sound on which he went out of my life suddenly and forever. Mrs Conway must have been a surprised woman that day.

  Which reminded me . . . ‘Billy, come and see me when you feel better.’

  He smiled as best he could, understanding that I would not stop his ‘pay.’ I could at least continue that as a hostage to human decency.

  In watching Billy I nearly missed one other last exchange: there was a hesitation, the merest slowing as Nikopoulos passed Derrick at the door, a quick, cool meeting of glances. I am not sure that the Captain did not give the faintest of nods to Derrick’s mask of an empty smile. I am sure a message passed, an understanding was admitted.

  4

  Arthur Derrick

  Nikopoulos did not foresee the Smivvers arguments. How could he? I gave him
the public credit rather than have the truth about Sykes pop out in front of Francis. The Captain – nobody’s fool, this jumped-up Greek peasant – knew that I would have had Sykes shut up before the rank and file troops were alerted to anything but delirious ravings, and would surely have perceived the obvious action taken. So he knew that I lied.

  And, because he knew, he saw that the lie told to gag and frighten Francis – a lie supplied by the peasant himself via my sneak’s toy – was the amnesty for all of them.

  He did not know why, but he is an opportunist. (Aren’t we all?) So, ‘You won’t touch any of us,’ taunts he, impudent as you like, while only he and I know the unspoken question, What will this forbearance cost and how will I use the screw?

  I tell him, not too obliquely, that I will have use for him and he makes the token refusal that saves face before his friends. In mentioning the New Men I go as far as I dare without knowing what the words mean, and he sees – I think he sees – that in the corridors of ice there are some who may discern a hopeful flame in the seething mob and fan it . . . discreetly.

  Professional game-playing has made both of us adept at subliminal conversation.

  5

  Nola Parkes

  I wished only that he would go and leave me alone with all this beastliness, and he knew it, but he sat himself on the edge of my desk to say, ‘Now you have seen the State at work,’ as if I should acknowledge a special treat.

  I said, ‘Don’t be disgusting. A State that strikes its own, at random, for experiment, is past hope.’

  ‘Hope caused the experiment, hope of survival. As the great nations break up, each new little statelet shrinks behind its boundaries in new distrust of its neighbours. Piddling little bang-bang wars keep morale afloat while they empty treasuries and spread starvation. The big one will come when someone has a weapon that he thinks won’t recoil on him, so, like everyone else, we keep up with the latest.’

  ‘I’ve had enough popular cynicism for one morning.’

  He said with insulting patience, ‘Not cynicism. Depopulation is a future necessity and we’re in the survival race along with the rest. We could spread the chewey back among the Veets – we stole it from them if that helps your perspective – but we can’t send squads there to count cases and observe progress. We have to practice at home. And, as that disgraceful brat remarked, “They’re only Swill.” ’

  ‘Whom an hour ago you called the pulse of the world.’

  ‘And meant it. They’ll be the survivors. We top dogs, all plot and plan and devious cunning – like Nola and her mates – will hold the place together as long as we can and then go down with it, but they’ll survive. They get the training every day of their lives, learning to do more with less.’

  ‘Survival by brute endurance!’

  ‘In evolutionary terms it might outpoint intellect.’

  He brandished his policy-sanctified necessities and I had no alternatives to offer. It was mere sulkiness that made me say, ‘You infected Sweet as well. Did you count on sterile soldiers?’

  He refused to be stung. ‘No. We did not know that chewing was prevalent among them. That’s the sort of small but significant information that fails to reach the planners. Poor Sykes could have told us, if he’d known there was anything to tell.’

  ‘The sergeant? What happened to him?’

  He told me, in awful detail. ‘That’s the other face of your friend Kovacs.’ I could say nothing to that. ‘The joke, if your sense of humour can stand it, is that Sykes, once he realized the setup, was quite willing to have the information tortured out of him because that was the only way to get at it quickly. And all for nothing! But there’s a man for you!’

  ‘You suggest we turn ourselves into dumb beasts?’

  ‘Nola, Nola, idealism was for the last century, when there was still time. Everyone has his vision of the world one and indivisible – if only the other bloke will play the same game. But everybody wants to be the one to make the rules. No, we’re down to more primitive needs. The sea will rise, the cities will grind to a halt and the people will desert them. What then? A hunter-gatherer period while the ecology licks its wounds? I don’t know. I do know that with these things in mind the State has no time to concern itself with moral quibbles or—’ he slipped off the desk ‘—your petty pilfering.’

  He called his policemen and left.

  Tallis came to tell me that the household was running normally again. I told him to pack Francis’ belongings and he said that was already in hand; he was attending to it personally. And removing anything useful, no doubt I no longer had the power to punish presumption.

  I never saw the brothers again, or Nikopoulos. Or Derrick. Billy visits occasionally, as a friend, quite openly. He comes by the front door and we giggle together like children at Tallis’ prim disapproval.

  6

  Arthur Derrick

  To think that I wanted to marry her! I didn’t have the excuse of youth or first love, only of middle-aged madness howling at the moon. How we would have loathed and exacerbated each other’s self-disgust! Thank you, Nola, for losing your nerve; I, after a year or two, would have lost my sanity.

  Go back to running your junk-store satrapy with the added chore of doing your own complicated books. I hope, as you should, never to see that whining boy again; at another time I might begin to kick his grovelling arse and find myself unable to stop.

  Nor do I want to see Kovacs, though I probably shall. His juggernaut virtue humbles me unbearably. He does appalling things because he believes in their necessity; I do worse, believing only in the vengeance of my political masters. I fear falling.

  The police brat doesn’t matter but his household god is something else: Nikopoulos is a planner and he has something in mind. He has too much sense to be a revolutionary (our history has slipped too far for revolution to change anything except for the worse) but little Arry’s talk of the New Men alerts my sense of activity impending.

  I must watch. It may be necessary to stop him.

  Or to help him.

  I would like to leave behind me at least one action that does not make me feel that I should join Sykes in the hypnotist’s hall of fancies and forgetfulness. Until then I must apply myself to the crude, stopgap politics of the despairing State – keeping a gameplayer’s eye on all our Nolas and Arrys.

  23

  Francis

  From his diary – AD 2056–2061

  February 11, 2056

  Five years back in the Fringe and resigned to it. Not reconciled, never that. What a hopeless, helpless lot the Swill are. I’ve lost fear of them but I can’t feel for them as Teddy seems to. I used to be afraid of their violence but that can be avoided; now I just detest their dirt, their whining voices and their lack of interest in anything but enduring through the night to the following day.

  March 4, 2056

  Drama! Nikopoulos has resigned from PI and gone to live in Twenty-three. Swilldom is heaving with the story. Nobody has ever thrown away status like that before. Billy knows the score but isn’t telling. Nor is Teddy.

  July 10, 2056

  Bit by bit the silly saga emerges. Crazy Nikopoulos heads a group of do-gooders – Swill, for God’s sake – who call themselves the New Men. What good they do is yet to be seen. One thing certain is that Nick is teaching Billy new tricks about organization and will probably take over Twenty-three one day – if the Kovacs kids don’t slit his throat first. There are rumours of similar happenings in other Enclaves. Richmond and Elwood are mentioned.

  March 22, 2057

  We need a new home. Three times this month the water has raced through the house. Sea water, salt and cold. We pay now for our great-grandparents’ refusal to admit that tomorrow would eventually come. The riverside towers are a full story deep, permanently. Rafts and home-made boats form a daily regatta of misery.

  September 1, 2057

  Our new home is on high ground on the other side of Newport, in another Fringe. At least it is dry. Teddy
found it or scrounged it or ‘persuaded’ some poor devil. It’s a queer old place which once had a shop on the ground floor and living quarters above. Very rackety and inconvenient but Maria loves it (she has the antiquarian pretensions that make a Fringer excuse for putting up with second best) and it may see our lives out if it doesn’t fall down before the sea rises to claim it.

  September 16, 2057

  Something’s up and I want nothing to do with it. Our big ground-floor room, once a shop, is a meeting place. That’s why Teddy did whatever he did to get this house. Who and what are the New Men? There seems to be no definition, but Nick is their leader. Billy is involved, too, and Mum is taking an interest. Billy wants me to join but I’ve lost any taste for involvements.

  October 3, 2057

  To stop Mum’s nagging I attended a New Men meeting. It is not, thank sanity, a secret society but a talkfest of the discontented. Oh, the intellectualizing and the barbershop philosophy! Idealistic stuff about educating the Swill, preparing them to outlast the end of our culture. The poor dimwits are the end of it. Maria has joined and pesters me but I tell her to leave me alone, she can do as she pleases. We are drifting apart already and neither cares greatly. It hasn’t been much of a marriage; my fault mainly, but so be it. I had my fling at preparing a shining future; now I’d rather others bang their heads against stone walls of reality.

  February 22, 2059

  Today I went with Maria to pick up groceries and on the skirting of Tower Four caught sight of something which turned out to be quite astonishing – a big group of Swill watching something in rapt silence. Maria, who seems to be known by an extraordinary number of them, coaxed a passage for us, dragging me unwillingly, my nose rebelling.