‘Don’t shout Sorlie; it will do you no good. I have other work and there is nowhere else for you just now.’
‘What if the Military come to hunt me down? You said I was an outlaw. What about my chip?’
‘Your chip is short range so you’ll just disappear off their system. They might suspect you are in your grandfather’s care, but if they do come looking for you, he won’t hand you over, I’m certain.’
‘You can’t leave me with a stranger who lives in a penitentiary. I just know it’ll be horrible.’
‘It may not be for very long,’ she said, still looking at the sky.
Thick silence fell over us like a plague, infecting my mind with dark thoughts. A couple of days ago I was a sixteen year old boy whose only cares were what grades the science project earned and who I would next wallop at wrestling. Today I was an orphan being placed into the care of an evil grandfather. It was like something out of the Games Wall multi-layer, not something real.
‘You know him, don’t you? My grandfather?’
‘Yes, I’ve met him. Only once. But I know him better than he realises.’
‘Well, what’s he like?’
She picked at her broken nails.
‘Spill,’ I said trying to chase fear from my voice.
‘Dark.’ She sounded angry. Then she coughed and spoke as if she had rehearsed. ‘Dark,’ she began again. ‘Not his hair, which is silver, but his face; everything about him is dark, from the wiry brows above his vicious blue eyes to the boots he uses to kick his way around. And cold and sharp, like a steel blade. But sometimes that blade reflects his past and his future and then he becomes just another pitiful old man.’ In the space of one sentence her anger turned to sadness in this description of a man she had only met once. This was personal.
A sound approaching from above turned her attention back to the window. ‘Let’s go,’ she said as she grabbed the holdall.
The sky ahead streaked with fork lights highlighting specks of rain dancing towards the sodden field. It looked almost pretty.
‘Your name is Ishbel, isn’t it?’
The tendons in her neck snapped with the speed of her head-twist to me.
‘Forget that.’
‘It’s what Ma called you.’ I wanted to topple her while she was off balance.
‘Your parents were often lax.’
‘Will I ever see you again?’
‘I don’t know, Sorlie. I hope we’ll meet again one day.’
The Transport that landed in the field carried an insignia on the nose, a badge like an old heraldic shield, almost childlike: it showed a Celtic knot woven through with small white flowers. It was a most peculiar sight on such a battered old Transport, which was definitely non-military.
‘I don’t understand. Non-military flight is banned.’
‘Some people can get past the rules.’
Yes, she had already proved that.
‘What sort of Transport is this?’
‘More questions I can’t answer,’ she said as she took my arm. ‘Come on.’
• • •
It seems we had cheated the dawn as the Transport headed into a deeper darkness where light was endangered and warmth was extinct. The Transport was a small six-seater twin engine affair and deserved a lowercase status; everything around me rattled, including my teeth and bones. The rip in the red plastic seat I perched on bumfled with escaping wadding, and the torn edge scratched through my clothes. The seatbelt round my waist was frayed and held together with a dodgy buckle.
If I wasn’t being kidnapped I might have enjoyed the thrill of the turbulent ride. As a military family, we used Transports to take us on our rare visits to the Leisure Lands, but those Transports were well maintained, unlike this rickety piece of junk. The native sat in the seat next to me, sending a message on her wrist communicator, even though this was forbidden to her. I knew I was staring but couldn’t stop; I’d never seen a native on a Transport before. Although her brow was pleated in concentration, she was calm, as if this was part of daily life.
‘Who are you?’ I asked.
‘I am your native. That’s all you need to know.’
Chapter Seven
It was like being inside a game. If I held out my hands I could touch the pilot’s seat, read the hi-vis green dial. If I had a handheld with me I swear I could have flown the thing; I had played it often enough. Eavesdropping on the pilot’s conversation with the co-pilot was difficult; they spoke to each other and communicated with some controller in a dialect of English that eluded me. It wasn’t even like the new Garble language the State had tried to introduce last year.
We travelled low over the water and I spotted the light formation of those weird crawling moor-logging boats Pa pointed out to me from the beach that night. Through the rain-drenched blackness a few more lights emerged. Some seemed to trace us in their beams, searching, twitching to shoot us down. Each time a light bounced upwards the pilot manoeuvred the Transport to avoid it, slamming the throttle forward and throwing us back in our seats. I couldn’t have done better on the Games Wall.
When the hard lights died, the clouds grudgingly parted to an indigo sky; the moon on the horizon bowed to the dawn. At last the day had arrived; maybe things wouldn’t be so bad in daylight.
Ishbel hunched forward, jaw clamped, her eyes fixed ahead. Where would she go? Where did natives go when their useful life is over? A reservation, perhaps, far away from harm? It’s one of those pointless mysteries that do not concern the Privileged.
In all the time she served us she’d never been absent, not even for a day. I remember during Academy selection periods, the only time we were required to physically turn up for class, she was there when I left home in the morning and there when I came home at night, food prepared ready for me to eat alone. When the meal was cleared she would help me with homework, then we would play chess. She was an excellent chess opponent; she always let me win but stretched the game long enough to challenge.
Last year when the Ento 3 virus erupted in Academy, she sat by my bed all night even though my parents were home. They needed to sleep, she said; their work was important to our Noble State. The spit in her voice when she said our Noble State struck me as strange and for the first time I thought about her life, though not for long. She never complained, she hardly ever laughed, she never cried; what more was there to think about?
Only once did I find her missing. I’d been sent home from Academy early; it was the beginning of the major power failures, before they re-commissioned the back-up nuclear stations. The house was empty and the rooms held a sort of chill as if an ancient ancestor had travelled through and stroked the hairs on my neck as they passed. I felt scared, worried that an unknown force had disabled the security surveillance and lay in wait for me. Pirates or rebels – there was always talk, kidnappings, disappearances. Pa constantly called me a worrywart, but still, sometimes worrywarts itch and bleed and after all, sixth sense was becoming the next big thing.
I climbed the stairs to the native’s cell at the top of the house, unknown territory for me. It was the size of my bathroom with a bathroom the size of a closet. The bed was wedged into the corner leaving just enough space for a table and chair; all were plain white utility wood. No pictures hung on the walls, no mementoes or trinkets lay around. Every surface was bare, all except a blue and white speckled pebble the size of a duck’s egg. It had a dent in the middle as if it had been worn away. Why would anyone keep that? It wasn’t even pretty. I left the room then; she wasn’t there and there was nothing else to interest me.
• • •
‘Did you bring your pebble?’
‘What?’
‘The pebble, the one from your room, did you bring it?’
She said nothing.
‘Remember that time I came home early and you weren’t there. I looked for y
ou in your cell and all I found was that stupid pebble.’
When she had returned that day she showed no surprise to find me there, but she did scuttle up to the cell before preparing my meal. On her return she looked flushed; her face rearranged in features of many expressions. I could see it moving again now in the same manner as if there was an intruder inside her body pushing and struggling to break free.
She put her hand in her pocket and pulled out the stone. It was smaller than I remembered but the markings on the surface were the same.
When she ran her thumb over the stone and into the depression, it fit perfectly.
‘I rub it for luck. It normally lives in my pocket, but I left in a rush that day and forgot to pick it up. It’s from my motherland, my home island.’ She turned to the window. ‘Look, you can see the lights up ahead. We’re almost there.’
The Transport began to slow in its approach, buffeted sideways by the wind. It was almost full light.
White-crested waves crashed against a jagged shoreline above which towering black and white peppered cliffs hung in balconies decorated with vegetation and guano. Birds whirled and wheeled oblivious to the wind.
One would have thought the sea and cliffs would be deterrent enough for such a prison, but grey walls even higher than the Base perimeter fence formed an impressive crown on the clifftop.
A large H was red-painted on a central section inside the crown. In my Recent History class we learned the most common form of air Transport for short distance had been a helicopter. This H was a helipad. Helicopters had been banned as dangerous and replaced by fixed-wing Transports fifty-odd years ago. The realisation struck me: Black Rock Penitentiary was over fifty years old. It was ancient.
• • •
The sharp, ozone-tinged air scratched my lungs as I stepped onto the H pad. The native followed and motioned me to stay put. An old man dressed in dull clothing stood watching our disembarkation; he tried in vain to smooth his long hair, which blew all airts in the wind. I guessed it was my grandfather, not because he reminded me of my mother, although there was a likeness, but because he matched the dark description Ishbel had given of him.
I hadn’t believed her. I hadn’t known what to expect: a little old man perhaps, an oldie who should have been reclassified long ago? Certainly not the reality of what strode towards us like some jackbooted history gag. On approach his height became obvious; he was many centimetres taller than me. His hair was the colour of palladium and now, under control, it swept back tight from his high forehead; a neat bristle beard sculpted his chin but not his cheeks, as was the recent fashion with other men of his generation. His dull clothing was a long grey coat of heavy waterproof material, the type worn by adventurers in the earlier part of the century. It brushed his worn calf-high boots as he marched towards us with the straight back of a military man. He had never been in the Military but his appearance defied that fact.
‘Slow down,’ I ground into my teeth, but he was there too soon. His stature was striking, but even more was the startling intensity of his pale blue eyes. In the synthetic lights of the Transport I could see they were almost wolf-white, shining above a flattened broken nose that gave him the look of an aging warrior. His face was not handsome, one to avoid, but magnetic. There was no smile for the grandson he’d never met, no friendly welcome. His eyes ranged over me, as if I were a piece of machinery to be bought and put to work. What did he look for? A semblance of his dead daughter or something he did not wish to find? That ancestors’ breath touched my neck again and my feet flexed to flee. After an aeon of scrutiny he nodded to himself and turned his attention towards the native, who handed him a packet and said, ‘This is from your daughter.’
My heart thudded in my ears as I mistook the package handed over for the one she instructed me to keep secret, which was stupid because I could feel its regular outline tucked tight under my belt.
The old man slit the packet open with a crooked thumbnail and stepped under the beam of the Transport’s landing lights. As soon as he clicked the card into his communicator port and started reading, flashes of emotion passed over his features, ending in a thunderous scowl.
‘You will find the Care Plan in order. Do you have any questions?’ Ishbel braved. She faced him steadily, though he could probably have her put to death just for her tone of voice.
That primordial head jerked up from its reading to glower at her.
‘I understand everything. Now get off my island, Celtic whore.’
She held his gaze for a beat, then turned and placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘Be strong, and guard your possessions,’ she whispered in my ear. Her amber eyes no longer held far-away in them but reflected my plight in their intensity and there was something else.
Hope.
I saw hope in her eyes as she took my hand and pressed her pebble into its palm.
‘Take it, look after it for me. It will remind you of your past and the preparation your parents gave you.’
I placed it in my pocket and tried to decipher the message that was working in her earnest eyes. As she turned and walked toward the Transport, I felt an urge to run after her.
‘Wait!’
I jumped, at first thinking I spoke my thoughts, but it was Grandfather who hailed Ishbel.
‘Where’s his passport?’ he asked. ‘The original?’
She did not look round. ‘Your good daughter destroyed it.’
‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘Believe what you wish. It is destroyed,’ she lied.
‘Just as well,’ he muttered.
He stood with me as the Transport door closed behind Ishbel but did not linger to watch it leave. The hand he put out to grip my shoulder came with surprising speed. I shrank from his touch.
‘Over there and quick about it, the heat’s escaping,’ he barked, pointing to an open door.
The smell of institution, a particular mix of bodies, rubber-boot heels and pungent cleansing fluid, was my welcome to Black Rock. As the heavy metal door bolted and sealed behind us, the putrid air rose from below and the ceiling seemed to press down to crush me. I felt dizzy.
‘What’s the matter with you, boy?’ His hand pushed me forward. I saw we were at the top of a metal spiral staircase. A light shone through the hatching from about thirty metres below.
‘Take it if you’re scared,’ he said, slapping the handrail. It was more a challenge than a command.
My footsteps echoed in dull clangs as I descended. I began to count those clangs to take my mind off my shortened breath. With each step I became more stifled and had to stop once to loosen my tunic collar. He jabbed me in the back and said, ‘Get a move on, I’ve work to do.’
It was one hundred and ninety-six steps to the bottom. There, he stepped past me and opened another door with a punch of a fingernail upon the button. Before he pushed me through I snuck a last look back up the spiral. I may not have arrived here on the Dead Man’s Ferry but my soul had surely departed on the Transport in the keeping of the native, Ishbel.
Part Two
Chapter Eight
A long dark corridor lit only by floor spots stretched into an uncertain gloom. It was like one of the horrendous exercises the Military set to assess different stages of youth development where you’re locked in an unlit room filled with keys in obscure places. Not only do you have to assemble the correct combination of keys to find the way out to the blinking dull-light, but as soon as the clock starts the room begins to shrink, hiding some of the escape doors. I was rubbish at it then and nothing had changed; that strangled feeling of entrapment persisted. At my hesitation the old man knitted his brillo-brows, so I tried ‘a smile for a smile’. I was his grandson for jupe sake – there was supposed to be a bond.
I smelled the fear. Not from the old man: this was his domain and his confidence shone brighter than the buttons on his coat. It could have
been my stench, but more likely it was seeping from the abyss ahead.
‘We must pass some prisoners’ cells to reach my private quarters. This will be the only time. After today you will never be permitted access to the penitentiary.’
What about when I leave? But the question stayed cradled in a pocket of worry at the back of my mouth.
‘Walk by my side,’ he said. ‘Don’t make a sound. Don’t even breathe.’
I nodded. It seemed my voice had packed up and left with Ishbel.
Emerging from the shadows at the other end of the corridor a military-style guard stood rigid. His uniform was flat black and he carried an old-fashioned automatic rifle. A riot baton hung on his belt. His eyes never wavered from some fixed point above our heads, even when he clicked his heels in salute. My grandfather ignored him and poked me in the back with a sharp finger.
‘Move!’
Blood thundered round my body and I put my hand to my chest to catch the pulse and quieten it. Could the prisoners hear it or did they have their own sounds? I imagined huddled beings, behind doors, ears pressed to cold metal listening for our footsteps. The temptation to flop on my belly and crawl the length of the corridor was so strong I hunched to keep low, afraid of disturbing the pregnant air. The sound of my heels clattered like hail on a snare drum. The locked doors crowded me; the corridor stretched, narrowed and with each step the guard seemed to move farther away. A voice from somewhere sizzled and singed the hair on my nape; Grandfather’s step missed a beat, I lost my footing and tripped. He grabbed my arm, stopped my fall and jerked me forward like a naughty child.
Sweat soaked my oxters and groin and by the time we reached the guard I wanted to pee, but to ask seemed unwise. I probably couldn’t do it anyway.
A metal shutter door slid open behind the guard. I stepped over the lip and was propelled right then left by my grandfather’s arm. He waved his ring at a heavy pad and another door slid open to reveal a wide hall from the olden days. The air smelled different. The institution stench was replaced with the overpowering pungency of vanilla. There was the foosty smell of my grandfather with an undercurrent of something else, that powdery something I had only ever detected in the rare times I’d encountered oldies.
Ways of the Doomed Page 5
