Ways of the Doomed

by McPartlin, Moira;

  ‘I don’t understand why that’s a bad thing,’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what revolutions have been trying to do since the beginning of time, bring about equality? Everyone would be a Privileged, so what?’

  Kenneth narrowed at me. ‘Use your head laddie,’ he snapped. ‘Genes are only part of what makes us who we are. There are environmental factors that the blinkered government refuses to acknowledge.’ And then he lowered his head and shook it. ‘Changing the odd pigment here and there is easy but when you get into the behavioural genes, now that’s where the problems lie.’ He soothed the head of Ridgeway, almost unconsciously. ‘Have you never heard of individual thought? This is what makes us who we are, not our class. Remember a percentage has been diluted in Scud. In many cases the psychological and physical impact may be so great the individual will die. It’s worse than genocide. And what of the final solution? What is the perfect mix? Even Privileged genes can mutate.’ He stared at me as if I was responsible for this mess. ‘There is not, and never will be, a final solution. But how many natives will die before someone puts a stop to the madness? Now that is genocide.’

  There was that word again – genocide.

  ‘No, he may look “Privileged”, he may act “Privileged” but the question is, has he ceased being Scud?’ Kenneth sighed. ‘I bet you liked Scud didn’t you? Despite the fact he was a native and you have been brought up in a society that scorns natives.’

  ‘My parents brought me up to respect everyone,’ I bristled.

  ‘What was it about Scud that you liked?’ he asked me.

  I thought about his humour, even after all his years of incarceration. His bravery, all the zaps he risked to get a message to me.

  ‘Will we be able to change him back?’ My voice sounded choked.

  ‘Is that what you want? What about this equal world you saw a minute ago.’ But he didn’t bother to let me finish. ‘And what about Ishbel? Your aunt – she was like a mother to you, would you like her to change? She loves you as her own child.’

  I thought about what would happen if Ishbel changed but it was a stupid thought because she wasn’t here; she was dressed up in a fake uniform taking care of someone else.

  ‘Well? You realise if they have progressed with the experiments on this island the dilution, once refined, will soon be implemented nationwide. Would you like Ishbel to change?’ he asked again, goading.

  A blush swept over me at the memory of my old schoolboy fantasies about her, horrible now I knew the relationship. This was serious shit. I didn’t want her to change. ‘No, I suppose not.’

  Kenneth moved and pulled his legs out from under him to give them a stretch. He settled Ridgeway’s head on his lap then felt his pulse. The rain had eased to a smir but a cold seized my fingers and toes and spread inward to my core. As if reading my thoughts Kenneth unravelled the gut stitching, pulled the bottom of his coat apart and placed it over Ridgeway.

  ‘I’m not sure you are yet convinced of the arguments Somhairle, so let me ask a question,’ he said. ‘What do you think happens to anyone with more than 15% native?’ He thumped his chest hard and I knew what he meant.

  I remembered Scud’s suffering. The freckles that came and went – the freckles he said were not his.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I suppose it would be painful, but in the end you would be pleased that you were a Privileged and able to get a position in the Military rather than be a drone.’

  Kenneth wiped a leak from Ridgeway’s wound and checked the vial above his head. There was disappointment in his eyes.

  ‘Unlike our friend Ridgeway here, who seems to be recovering well, our native kin will eventually die.’

  I loathed being referred to as native, even though it was true.

  ‘I bet Scud went through hell to get to the stage he’s at now. He’s probably on the threshold of anyone going through the experiment. Those with a high percentage of native genes, I am positive, will die. Just think of that Somhairle, billions of natives subjected to an excruciating painful death so that a handful can become Privileged. And suppose this part of the “final solution” takes place and the eradication of the full so-called native population is successful.’ He looked at me, willing me to understand, but I didn’t want to understand because the prediction was too horrible to comprehend.

  ‘Yes, a world of Privileged. We will have solved our overcrowding problem, helped our fuel and food shortages. Ten billion reduced to five billion souls or less is not bad for a world solution is it? Yes, that math stacks up. But who would do all the work? Who would drone the Military? The Purists have already denied native children education to train for this task. Who would do it when there are no natives?’

  Ridgeway began to groan.

  ‘Who would the guards be? Or do you believe Privileged don’t commit crimes?’ He snorted at this. ‘They are the biggest criminals of all. As ancient folklore states: “too many chiefs, not enough Indians”. But the one thing the Esperaneo authorities, the Purists and the Land Reclaimists, conveniently overlooked in this great master plan of theirs was: who defines a native? They overlooked the fact that the definition is different in all three of the Global Zones.’

  The realisation was so horrific I felt the Mash in my stomach cook to bubbling bile.

  ‘How do you know so much? How do you know Scud? You even know Ridgeway.’

  Kenneth looked at his watch, then at me. I knew that soon we would need to decide what to do next, but there were still too many missing pieces.

  ‘How do you know all this?’ I asked a second time.

  His laugh was rusty, that of a tired old man whose pocket watch told him too many truths.

  ‘To you I’m just a smelly old hermit who lives in a cave. Some scum or flotsam the sea has washed up and left on the shore. It hasn’t always been so. Remember the Purist regime in this region only came into prominence just over twenty-five years ago, before you were born but not long in my lifetime. No, not long, but long enough for them to put their differences to bed and join forces with other groups in the regions to form the United States of Esperaneo.’

  I knew the truth of Modern History had always been veiled with smoke and mirrors and anyone discussing it was punished either by work or family restriction. There was no gain in querying the State line. Everyone knew this. Propaganda through media manipulation was the norm, but no one at the Base seemed to care as long as life ticked along. That was my view of the world but, as Ishbel said, I’d been protected. My father told me some of this but not all. He should have told me the full story about Davie and Kenneth and my heritage – he must have known. Why didn’t Ma tell me? What was the point in protecting me from the truth? Had they been foolish enough to believe the world would change before I became an adult? That Vanora would come charging in from her secret Empire to rescue me? What a monumental joke.

  Kenneth stared at the sea. The rain had ceased but the wind still hurled its worst at us. He sipped his Mash and handed me the bottle.

  ‘Here, you probably need this now. You’re as pale as a native,’ he grinned. ‘Sorry, bad expression.’

  Battling my nausea, I took a sip and enjoyed again that toe-scrunching sensation as the liquid seeped into my mixed genes. Kenneth settled his legs, crossed them at the ankles and leaned against the rock face.

  ‘Vanora was not much of a mother, I have to admit.’

  ‘She’s horrible to Ishbel,’ I said again.

  ‘Yes, Ishbel has served her well but they may have been apart for too many years.’

  He spat on the sand and Ridgeway stirred at the disturbance of his pillow. Kenneth took care to settle him then rolled over onto his side and onto his knees. I could hear his tendons and ligaments creak and crack as he groaned his way to his feet. He shook his legs out like a dancer and rubbed them hard. He chuckled then. ‘Living in a cave for years plays havoc with your joints.’ He chec
ked Ridgeway’s pulse then the drip.

  ‘Come on Somhairle, he is stable enough to move now. We must get him into the cave – get you both dry. You grab his feet and I will take his top half. Be careful, his body is still in a great amount of shock.’

  Ridgeway was a heavy guy when conscious but the dead weight of him was heavier than a builder’s bag of wet sand. We half-carried, half-dragged him to the cave and through to the back chamber. It was a relief to lay him on a pile of skins. We eased off his sodden outer jacket before Kenneth gently placed him in the recovery position and covered him with more skins. He then dug around in the back of the chamber to produce a heater which he attached to a cable strung up the wall and fed through a hole drilled in the cave.

  ‘Nuclear battery,’ he announced with pride.

  I blinked, and instinctively backed off.

  ‘Calm down, it won’t hurt. You were in more danger sitting out in that awful poisoned rain. Now slip your jacket off and get dry.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ By the look of the cave set-up, it seemed that he had been installed here for a long time.

  ‘Too long,’ he said, ushering me to some skins piled against the cave wall. ‘I started off with blankets but rabbit skins are much better for this type of living. Get comfortable, the place will soon warm up. I’ll fix us something to eat in a bit.’ He sat down beside Ridgeway.

  ‘But why here? Why do you live in a cave, under the nose of the man you were hidden from as a child?’

  ‘It was Vanora’s idea, the first of her native network. At first I didn’t question, but after all these years I suspect she had some perverse need to make a fool of him. I’m sure he loved her once. Her achievements in the city gave him a certain gravitas too.’ He looked at me. ‘You know what I mean?’ I nodded.

  ‘You said she was frail.’

  I nodded again, not wanting to open my mouth for fear of swallowing the thick odour escaping from his foul breath. At close quarters he was rank.

  ‘She was a beauty. Her hair was the colour of bracken in autumn and I’m afraid it blinded Davie to a few of her flaws. She was highly respected in broadcasting all over the earth. But some sections of society shunned her because of her accent, because of her looks, her red hair.’ He grabbed a handful of gravel from the cave floor and let it run through his fingers. ‘This land here was once called UKAY and dwelling within that land were many Celtic tribes. There was a lot of anti-Celtic feeling at that time, many reasons but mainly because of some political infighting and the power transfer in the industrial world. My mother seemed to rise above that while the Celts slowly descended into a subclass without even realising it was happening. They became a lower case society.

  ‘Davie called her a mutant.’

  ‘Yes he would say that. His kind really believe natives are stupid and mutated. And to be honest, some are. They can be led so easily by propaganda. The media were experts at that sort of native manipulation.’ Kenneth settled his restless legs again. ‘The media in the decades before the Purist victory had politicians in their pockets. They used their power to turn the heads of the sheep and aided and abetted in the rise of the cruel Purist Regime. I won’t go into the whole bloody history but it was frightening at the time. Normal citizens of the land hounded by thugs, then thuggery became commonplace. Riots happened every day and the government was covertly backing it.’ He snorted. ‘Read your ancient history books boy, nothing changes, you can fill in the gaps.

  ‘I studied genetics at university and by the time I was twenty was working in a laboratory, experimenting on DNA manipulation. We were on the cusp of a breakthrough into curing one of the most debilitating diseases ever. At least that’s what we thought we were doing. The government backed the research and one day without warning the focus changed. We were to concentrate on the main DNA found in the majority of Celts. The Celts were to officially become an outcast race. Someone somewhere had decided the rules.’

  Kenneth stopped and looked at me. His eyes were wild with memory.

  ‘So you see Somhairle. I helped to create the processes they are now abusing up there.’ He nodded towards the penitentiary. ‘I should have seen it coming but some nightmares you just can’t imagine. I suppose we should be glad it took this long.’

  ‘Your mother was still in school when the Purists took power. It didn’t take them long to expel all the immigrants of the last century, but what could they do about us? The native purge happened four years later. You either complied or you became an outcast. Every citizen’s DNA was re-examined and in a matter of weeks the Privileged and native system came into effect.’ He chuckled then in the midst of this shocking tale. ‘You see, we were already halfway there. When the stats were examined, it transpired many Celts had been working as slaves for years in the guise of government-backed work schemes.’

  The spell of Kenneth’s storytelling had me frozen – or was that petrified?

  ‘Davie must have seen it coming,’ he continued. ‘He protected Kathleen, your mother, had her passport changed and made a deal with the Military: she could serve them as an officer, help fill the growing military shortage and her heritage would never be known. As you can imagine, Vanora raged at this, cursed him, but Davie being Davie, he paid her no heed. He just beat her into submission. He was given Black Rock as a reward. His own little kingdom.’

  Kenneth laughed that rusty laugh again and looked around him. ‘Not much of a reward is it? The stupid fool didn’t realise that they just wanted him out of the way. His mixed-heritage family was an embarrassment.’

  ‘But what about Vanora?’ I asked, finding my voice.

  ‘He tried to murder her. Not just beat her up this time, but murder her.’

  Although Kenneth looked at me for a reaction, this revelation didn’t surprise me. I remembered the murder in his eyes – this was something he was more than capable of.

  ‘Vanora, and her unborn child. He didn’t want his spectacular career ruined because of a native. But Vanora too had seen the changes coming years before the Purists came to power and had been buying up gold and precious stones and storing them in secret locations. She had powerful friends in the United States of the West. Remember they have a different definition of a native, a different threshold. They didn’t care that she was Northern Celt, her wealth was what mattered. So she fled.’

  ‘Does he know about Ishbel?’

  ‘No. And he never will, unless someone tells him.’ He scowled at me but I shook my head, glad I’d followed my instincts.

  ‘And now Vanora’s back?’

  ‘Back and vengeful. She’s been back for years. Installed Ishbel into your home then set to work establishing her native network.’ Kenneth began to laugh. ‘Black Rock Davie believed he was a powerful man. And in his kingdom he is. He has done the government’s bidding all his life.’

  The bitterness never left Kenneth’s voice now.

  ‘He is nothing but a pawn.’

  He stumbled from his seat, creaked to standing and paced the floor. ‘Let’s get something to eat, eh? Before I ruin your appetite altogether with this putrid tale.’

  I watched him rig up a small cooker. He threw some vegetables in a pot and covered them with water from a stone jar that lurked in a dank corner. He clambered over a jumble of fishing nets and coloured buoys to reach into the back of the cave. He returned with a jar of preserved vegetables.

  It was one of Ishbel’s jars with the red wax tops and her mark stencilled on it. He saw me looking and smiled a sleekit smile.

  ‘Ah, another missing piece of the puzzle for you, young Somhairle. You see my wee sister was also put to work for Vanora. Come, I’ll show you.’

  He pushed the nets aside and led me through to the other chamber where one corner was stacked high with jars – Ishbel’s jars. A haunch of a small deer hung from the ceiling, dwarfing a couple of skinned rabbits suspended like gruesom
e afterbirth. There were also boxes filled with earth which he kicked, filling the cavern with a dull thud.

  ‘The last of my fresh vegetables,’ he said, pointing to the ceiling. ‘Up there on the clifftop is a garden, a small patch of land, a ledge, hidden from the land by the cliff and hidden from the sea by a hedge of broom. No one would ever guess it was there, no one will ever find it. Sometimes I have trouble finding it myself. There I can grow enough fresh vegetables to see me through the growing months but I need the preserves for the winter. He grinned then and picked up another jar.

  ‘Yes, you are right in your thinking. The rest of my food has come, came, from your garden on the Base, once Ishbel was established. But I am not the only recipient. A few others receive jars, in other hideouts.’ He shook his head. ‘We will have to revert back to our Noiri source now that Ishbel has been forced to abandon her post.’

  I clasped my head in my hands against the bombardment of fantastical information.

  ‘It’s all part of Vanora’s grand plan,’ Kenneth said as he consulted his watch again. ‘Well, our friend’s recovery has been slow. You did too good a job on him Somhairle. It is too late to send him back now. Your grandfather will have rousted a patrol to search for you. But don’t worry, he’ll not find this cave. I’ve been here twenty-one years and they haven’t found me yet.’

  ‘Twenty-one years?’ It was incredible. ‘That’s longer than Scud’s been here.’

  ‘Yes, we have both served our sentences, but they will soon be over.’ He looked at me under his bushy brows. ‘One way or another.’

  ‘How have you managed to avoid detection all this time?’ I found it impossible to believe, given the size of the island was not big.

  ‘Oh Davie knows I’m here. He must have noticed the paths are not just trodden by deer. I think in a way he doesn’t want me to be found. As far as he’s concerned it’s safer to have me here than out there causing trouble. He wants to stay locked up in his own kingdom, his own prison, his own delusions. That way he doesn’t have to think about his embarrassing family and the one he gave away.’