by Chris James
An elderly man in shorts and sandals came into the room and began looking through the biography shelf, his failing eyes a mere four inches from the book spines. Vaalon closed the laptop, arose and beckoned Pilot to follow him out. They walked downstairs and through the reading room towards the exit, tracked as they went by half a dozen curious retirees, already seated for a morning lecture on ‘The Bells of St. Mary’s’.
In Morrab Gardens they found an empty bench near the bandstand and sat down. Over by the bushes, a young couple lay sunning themselves. Three old ladies on the adjacent bench sat stony still, as if dead. Vaalon raised his face to the sun and closed his eyes. “Mmmm, that feels so good,” he said.
They sunned themselves in silence for fifteen minutes, then Vaalon opened his eyes and turned to Pilot. “Back to the real world, Lonnie. You’ll be relieved to hear that your island won’t be born poor. To ensure your fiscal strength, I’ve put aside a fifth of one percent of the world’s gold reserves and two percent of its silver in the name of your country, whatever that name will be.” He took two business cards from his pocket and handed one to Pilot. “Think of a name for the island and phone it over to this man in Brussels. He’ll do the rest. Once you’re established and self-sufficient – which could take years− then you can sever the financial umbilical cord managed by this man.” He handed Pilot the second card. “Franz Barta. I mentioned him earlier.”
“One of the barges will be carrying cash to the value of five million dollars in a number of currencies – spending money for anyone needing to leave the island for medical reasons or to see family. Dispense the cash as you see fit for their travel and other expenses. There’s a box of false passports that can be personalized as well.” Pilot stole a quick look at his watch. “Do you have to be somewhere, Lonnie?”
“Uhh, well, I didn’t know all this was going to happen, Forrest. I’m sorry, but I’ve arranged to meet a friend for lunch.”
The old man smiled. “A friend?”
Pilot’s face went crimson. “Well, Jenny’s more than a friend, but it won’t be a problem come August. It’s just a fling. I can finish it at any time. I’ll cancel lunch if you want.”
“Not necessary.” Vaalon stood up and Pilot followed like a tall echo. “I have a dozen emails that need answering, Lonnie. Come by The Abbey at around two thirty and we’ll pick up from there.” Vaalon turned to go, then stopped. “Enjoy your lunch.”
Twenty minutes later, Lonnie Pilot was at Archie Brown’s sitting across the table from a strikingly beautiful, chronically destitute painter seven years his senior. He looked over at the Specials board, then took a menu out of its holder. “Have you decided what you want, Jen?” Pilot said.
“The usual. Shall I order yours, too?” As two people on the breadline, the couple always had the cheapest meal possible−soup for the main course and water to drink. While Jenny was at the counter, Pilot went through his options: One−finish their relationship there and then; Two−tell her he was leaving Penzance in August, but that they should carry on seeing each other until then; or Three− ask Vaalon if she could come with him to the Bay of Biscay.
Jenny returned to the table with soup spoons, napkins and tap water, sat down and stared into her glass as if it were a crystal ball. Pilot had first been attracted to her by her sexually alluring, hypnotic eyes, framed by a mop of burnt umber curls. When she looked him in the eye, he still went weak at the knees, but it seemed to him now that she was avoiding eye contact. The sexual charge, though, was palpable and he was inclining more and more towards Option Two.
“It’s been a weird morning, Jen.”
The painter looked up at last. “How so?” Pilot sensed something disengaging in her voice.
“Are you feeling okay, Jenny?”
“Fine. What’s been weird?”
“I met someone who used to work with my grandfather. It made me realize how little I know about him.”
“I never knew mine, either. Life’s full of holes, love.” She was staring into her water again.
They ate their soup in silence. Then, Jenny smiled, reached over and took Pilot’s hands in hers. He wallowed in that same sultry look she would throw him from down between his legs, gazing up with her mouth full. Option Three – taking her with him in August – was now a strong contender.
“Lonnie,” she said, “My exhibition opens in August and I have eight unfinished paintings in my studio. I haven’t put paint to canvas since our first date. I’m sorry, love, but this just isn’t working.”
Before his appointment at the Abbey Hotel, Pilot went back to Morrab Library to finish filling out his passport application. He’d had plenty of time after his short lunch with Jenny to have his passport photos taken. He asked the librarian to witness his signature, sealed the envelope, then went back to the post office to mail it. While waiting in the queue, he thought about what Jenny had said. Her words had taken him by surprise, and he should have asked her she meant by them. This just isn’t working could mean one of four things: One, it wasn’t working sexually− impossible; Two, it wasn’t working romantically; Three, once she finished her paintings it could work again− maybe; or, Four, she was dumping him. He had been ready to take their relationship to another level, that much he recognized, but to have been preemptively sacked by the woman cut him deeply. His life seemed to be slipping out of his control on all fronts and he didn’t like the feeling.
“Is Mr. Vaalon available,” he asked the hotel receptionist at 2.30 on the dot.
“I’m here, Lonnie,” the tall American said, emerging from the lounge. “Let’s go for a drive while the sun’s shining.”
Pilot took him to the Tremenheere Sculpture Garden. Their stroll through the Woodland Area was Vaalon’s cue for the starting point of their afternoon session. “Trees are crucial, Lonnie. You’ll need plenty, because your land will be barren. You’ll be taking several thousand saplings, suckers and cuttings covering a variety of fast growing trees. You’ll need them as windbreaks against the equinoctial gales, which will start within a few months of your arrival.”
“How do you plant a tree on bare rock?” Pilot asked.
“In the Flotilla file, you’ll note that the four heaviest barges, positioned at each corner of the configuration for stability, will be carrying nothing but topsoil and compost− several thousand tons of it. Over 75% will be used for tree-planting. The rest will be needed for cultivation. You’ll be carrying provisions to last for a year and a bit, and that will have to suffice until your first harvest. Three hundred tons of topsoil should be more than enough to get your grasses and winter crops in. You’ll need more later for your spring planting. There’s a man in Cork, Liam O’Penny, with access to all the earth you need should you run short. O’Penny is no businessman and should be treated fairly by us. Whatever price he mentions, double it.
“As for water, there’s ten thousand gallons divided between three of your barges, so even if only one gets through, you’ll have adequate water to meet your immediate needs. It won’t take that long to build your cisterns and there will be plenty of rain to fill them, believe me.”
“Will we be taking animals?”
“It’ll be a long time before you have enough grass to support livestock, but there’s a rare breed of sheep from Orkney, the North Ronaldsay, that lives almost entirely on seaweed. Six of these hearty ungulates will be joining you after your landing, and there will be plenty of seaweed washing ashore to feed them. Their milk tastes like spinach juice, but you’ll get used to it.”
They found a bench in the Swampy Bog and sat down.
At that very same moment, in similar surroundings three miles south of Rumangabo in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a young mother barely into her teens rocked rhythmically in her hiding place, her dead child clutched to her breast. The voices were getting closer, the pain in her abdomen, sharper. Removing one hand from her son’s body, she explored her own wound with her fingers, trying to stop the bleeding. The hole in the side of
her son’s skull had hardly bled at all. She had heard the sound of gunshots before and they had always led to deaths in the family. Then, a sudden flash of sunlight from the blade of a machete caught her eye as it thrashed at the undergrowth in the distance. The excited chattering stopped. She froze. Her laboured breaths were the loudest noise around. Painful seconds passed.
The bullet reached her ear before the sound of the shot that fired it – if she had been alive to hear it. With a single 300-grain projectile in her brain, the last Western Lowland Gorilla remaining in the wild was dead.
“I’m not that worried about being able to survive on the rock in the physical sense,” Pilot said, “but how are we going to be able to lay claim to it politically and legally?”
“That’s the most important question of all, Lonnie. It has to be a fait accompli in the first hour. At the exact moment you’re making your landfall, representations will be made by our advocates in Westminster, Dublin, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon and, most importantly, the United Nations. Their intercessions should leave no legal doubts as to your just and proper claim to sovereignty over the new land. Without solid diplomatic moorings in the world you’ll just sit exposed, isolated and vulnerable to the outside. You’ll run the risk of being treated as pirates, renegades or accidental tourists instead of an independent, legally bona fide member state of the world community. As I mentioned to you yesterday, you’ll be playing by the world’s rules to begin with. And that means following accepted procedures and protocols to ensure you’re rooted from the first hour. To accomplish that credibly you need advocates on the outside. You can read about them in the file by that name.
“Another thing. All 86 of you will renounce your respective citizenships and burn your passports before sailing so that you’re technically stateless on landing.”
Pilot picked up an alien-looking seed pod and twiddled with it while constructing his next question. “What’s to stop us from being overrun and removed from the island?”
“If your land has something the others want−oil, minerals, territory− then it’ll be in their interests to take it. Just look at what my country did to the Native Americans when gold was discovered on the land we’d allowed them to keep. We just tore up the treaty, moved in and started digging. In your situation, the positive thing about being vulnerable is that people will hate to see you get hurt. Unscrupulous parties might try to harm you, but world opinion won’t let them get away with it. The fact that you’ll be forever underdogs is your strongest defense, stronger even than international law.”
Vaalon shifted position on the bench, eager for another bathroom break. “Research and preparation can never be said to be 100% complete, but I’ve unearthed nothing so far to suggest that our plans aren’t feasible, both in the physical and the political sense. I’ve put links to a number of IGP studies on the laptop and I advise you to read them all. We also have computer models at the Institute that I can show you in London. No-one can say what short or long term changes might occur as a result of the upheaval, or even how long you’ll be above water. We’ll just have to wait and see.”
The two men ambled to the visitors centre to relieve themselves and have tea in the café.
“Any questions so far?” Vaalon asked.
“The initial goal is to get established and become self-sufficient,” Pilot said. “I understand that. But then what? You said there’d be a second phase.”
Vaalon adopted an apologetic air. “My work here is almost finished,” he said. “After landing, you and your cohorts will take over the reins and plan Phase Two during Phase One. There will be many variables, and any plans will have to be molded around the shapes they make, without forgetting what the object of the game is.”
“I’ve got a strong feeling that we both agree on what that object is,” Pilot said.
“I wouldn’t have asked you to take the position if we didn’t, Lonnie. I have every confidence in you. Your ends will justify your means, provided the ends themselves are justified.” Vaalon took a last sip and removed a tea leaf from the tip of his tongue. “I’m going back to the hotel for a nap. Come by at seven if you can. I’m looking forward to sampling some genuine Cornish street food.”
Pilot scratched his head. “Do you like saveloys?”
The houses in the backstreets of Penzance exhibited all the qualities of a person in a coma. At close quarters they appeared stone dead, but deep within, behind their locked doors and curtained windows, a strange life pulsed imperceptibly on. A life of pinging microwaves, reality TV, heavy metal on illegal file-sharing, the next dose of calcium and iron supplement or the next heroin fix.
The only visible sign of life this sultry May evening was at the local pie shop several doors down from Pilot’s aunts’ seashell emporium. Formerly a fish and chip shop, the too-late moratorium on commercial fishing had forced its owner to turn to ‘meat’ pies a vegetarian could eat without guilt. Outside, gangs of alienated youths stood gobbling oily chips and throwing empty soft drink cans at one another. Pieces of paper impregnated with suet and gravy blew down the street like tumbleweeds through a ghost town.
In the doorway between The Pen Sans Seashell Emporium and Morwenna’s Tattoo Parlour, Lonnie Pilot and Forrest Vaalon sat eating their saveloys, the computer case acting as a makeshift table between them. When they’d finished, Vaalon took out the laptop and switched it on.
“Do you mind if we don’t use that tonight?” Pilot asked. “I have a headache.” Vaalon waited for the laptop to spring to life, then put it back into hibernation. The slamming of a door at the back of the building was followed a moment later by the coughing of an engine. “That’ll be Sally and Hilda,” Pilot said. “My great-aunts. This is their shop. They have a seashell stall at the St. Neot Flower Festival starting tomorrow. They were supposed to set off this afternoon, and they’re both night-blind, so I may never see them again. Come on in, I’ve got a key.” Pilot unlocked the door, switched on the lights and ushered his guest inside. “When did you say you were leaving Cornwall, Forrest?”
“Late tomorrow morning. I have to be back in London in time for dinner. Life goes on. My other life, I mean. That’s a beautiful conch. Not from local waters, is it?”
Pilot picked up the shell and read the tiny writing on the label. “Sri Lanka.”
They spent the next hour and a half looking at Penwith’s finest shell collection and talking about coral reefs, sea turtles and dodos. “I need to wrap up a few more things with you in the morning before I go,” Vaalon said. “Then I’ll leave you to prepare for the rest of your life.”
It was past midnight, two hours after he’d fallen exhausted onto his bed, but through a combination of cerebral overstimulation and sexual frustration, Pilot was finding it impossible to sleep. He was just about to take matters into his own hands when he thought of a better alternative.
“Who is it?” Jenny asked, answering the light rap on her studio door.
“It’s me. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to you properly. Can I come in?”
III
Lonnie Pilot, an only child, had been twelve when his father died, leaving his mother in dire financial straits, compounded by the negative equity of the marital home and her inability to keep up with the mortgage payments. Out of desperation−in an attempt to save herself, her son and her home− she surrendered to the advances of a travelling computer software salesman, who had sold her a program of empty promises and bogus claims to great prospects. However, even at his young age, Pilot was a good judge of bad character and his toxic dislike for the man had been so overtly expressed, and was so threatening to her ‘rescue’ that Phyllis Pilot decided to place physical distance between her son and Mr. Stoker. Before moving to Essex with her new partner she had lodged Lonnie with her two larky-legged spinster aunts, Sally and Hilda Tink. ‘I love you, Lonnie,’ she had told him, ‘but I need this man. The two of you can’t live in the same house together, so Les and I are leaving Cornwall. I hope you understand. I’ll send mone
y.’
Pilot didn’t understand. The evaporation of his parents from his life, and the bank’s repossession of the only home he had ever known, threw him into an early-teens crisis. As for sending money, at the beginning of every month until his sixteenth birthday, he would receive a crisp five pound note with words like, ‘Don’t spend it all at once,’ and ‘Buy yourself a warm scarf.’
ADHD - Inattentive Sub-Type had been the label given to Lonnie Pilot by the school psychologist. Whether or not the teachers had felt threatened by his eerie precocity or thought him a disruptive influence on the other students, the result was the same. Within six months of his mother’s departure, he had left the Humphry Davy School to follow his own course of full-time higher education, the school system being unable to teach him things fast enough; the National Curriculum being too circumscribed for his expanding brain.
In the first floor reference section of the Penzance Public Library, at the farthest corner table, there was a chair acknowledged by all but strangers as being ‘Lonnie’s Chair’. The chewing gum screwed under that corner of the table was ninety per cent his. There, the autodidact had sat for days, weeks and years, systematically digesting everything the library had on its shelves and in its computers. Some afternoons, for extra quiet, he’d go to the antiquated private library in Morrab Gardens, where he had volunteered to dust shelves every Thursday in lieu of paying the annual subscription.
