by Tom Becker
Straight into a brick wall.
Adam crashed to the floor, Paintpot’s sketchpad flying from his hands. Dazed, he looked up to see that what he thought had been a wall was actually another boy standing in the doorway, a craggy mountain of muscle and flesh topped with cropped dark hair. He stared down at Adam with utter contempt.
“You dozy chimp,” the boy snarled. “Look where you’re going, eh?”
“Sorry,” said Adam, hurriedly getting to his feet. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Scarecrow and Jonkers had skidded to a halt and were reluctantly retreating back up the stairs. They were the least of his problems now – more boys had followed the first through the doorway and were crowding around him, all dressed in identical woollen greatcoats and with matching stern expressions.
“Sorry,” Adam said hastily. “It was an accident. I don’t want any trouble.”
“You’re bloody right you don’t,” the first boy retorted.
“Hang on a minute, Corbett.”
The circle parted, revealing a much shorter figure wearing a peaked cap and a crisply ironed blue uniform. Though he was younger and a head shorter than everyone else in the corridor, the other boys stopped as he calmly picked up the sketchpad, which had fallen open at the page of Paintpot’s drawing of Luca.
“I like a good picture,” he said conversationally. Then he slammed the sketchpad shut and shoved it back into Adam’s hands. “And this is nothing like one. I don’t recognize your face. Who are you?”
For the third time in a matter of hours, Adam found himself outnumbered and on the defensive. This was worse than Scarecrow and Jonkers, though. Any one of this gang looked like they could make mincemeat out of him.
“I’m Adam,” he said. “I’m new here. Who are you?”
A wave of deep chuckles greeted his questions. The young boy smiled thinly.
“You’ve got a lot to learn, sunshine. Let me introduce myself: my name is Major X, and this here is the Tally-Ho Escape Committee. Seeing as you’re new here, I’ll give you a little bit of advice: if you want to do a nice peaceful stretch without any palaver, stop drawing pictures of collaborators. And remember our faces – because we’ll remember yours. Come on, lads.”
The Tally-Ho Escape Committee marched haughtily down the corridor after the diminutive Major, Corbett making sure that he banged into Adam on the way past. Adam waited until they were out of sight before trudging over to the mess hall, his heart heavy once more. His relief on making friends with Doughnut had been short-lived. Mr Pitt, Scarecrow and Jonkers, now the Tally-Ho . . . if life wasn’t difficult enough, Adam was making a lot of enemies in a very short space of time. If he was going to have any chance of surviving this place, he told himself, he was going to have to watch his step.
Although Adam’s first day on the Dial was the longest of his life, the next few weeks passed by with increasing speed. For all the idle hours in the dormitories and the yard, roll calls and mealtimes gave the days a routine, soon making them as familiar and mundane as a French or chemistry lesson. In a strange way, the sheer length of Adam’s sentence also helped: there was simply no way his mind could grasp the prospect of spending nearly three centuries in prison. It was all he could do to get through one day, and then the next.
Mindful of Bookworm’s warning about staying sane, Adam tried his best not to think about his home and his family and friends – especially not Danny. But in the middle of the night, when winter was reaching its icy nadir, it was hard to block out the images of his home and the people he loved. It was then that Adam allowed himself to cry, his shoulders shaking silently beneath his blanket.
Despite such dark moments of unhappiness, Adam was coping better than many of the inmates. Distressed prisoners could be found in most corners of the prison: shedding tears of shame during roll call; rocking back and forth in the chapel pews; staring numbly into space for hours on their bunks. A week into Adam’s sentence, a boy ran amok in the mess hall during dinner time, smashing plates and throwing chairs while screaming unintelligibly. He was jumped on by three large guards and promptly manhandled towards the exit.
“That’s the last we’ll see of him,” Mouthwash said sadly. “He’ll be dosed up in the infirmary until the day he gets out.”
As the boy clung on to the doorway, snarling and spitting at the guards, Adam realized he knew him. It was Carstairs, the know-it-all from the Quisling. Adam watched, shocked, as the boy’s fingertips were peeled from the door frame and he disappeared with an anguished yell into the night.
Following the Quisling’s crash landing, the Docking Port was closed off to inmates, and over subsequent days the prison echoed with the sound of welding and hammering as repairs began on the zeppelin. With the Dial’s only airship out of action, there was no way to return to Earth to pick up supplies – placing great strain on the prison’s food stores, which were housed in the granary store and the allotments behind the mess hall.
Adam didn’t need more reasons to dread mealtimes. The food was shockingly bad: an endless cycle of scalding-hot stews, blackened lumps of potatoes and mouldy bread. At first he pushed away his meal half-finished, and was shocked to see the rest of his table descend like vultures on his leftovers. But as the days progressed and the temperature continued to drop, Adam began wolfing down his food out of sheer hunger. Even so, he felt increasingly tired and weak, and his stomach rumbled angrily through the night. How Doughnut managed to maintain his portly shape after decades of measly portions was a mystery. But then, there were a lot of questions about Adam’s new friend that remained unanswered. The loss of the Quisling seemed to irk Doughnut in particular, and the curly-haired boy was chased away from the Docking Port several times for checking on the progress of repairs.
One afternoon Adam received an urgent message to go over to the library, where he found Doughnut struggling to carry several large boxes down to the cellar.
“Give us a hand, will you, mate?” he asked, glancing around the library. “These books are pretty heavy. And don’t hang about, yeah?”
Adam ferried the boxes down the cellar steps, repeatedly overtaking Doughnut as the larger boy puffed and panted with the effort. They left the boxes in the corner of the cellar, draped under a sheet of tarpaulin. Doughnut remained tight-lipped about where his haul had come from, and despite his curiosity Adam knew better than to ask. The next day, however, he saw that several of the girls were showing off brand-new scarves as they swished around the Dial, and that the boys in the next dormitory had somehow got hold of a large net which they had stretched across the room for an impromptu game of volleyball.
Doughnut wasn’t the only inmate guarding a secret. There were endless doorway conferences and impromptu councils of war, where delegates talked in whispers behind their hands. Chapel services provided an excellent opportunity to do business – the congregation’s off-key singing and Mr Harker’s energetic organ playing drowning out any private conversations. The first time Adam went to chapel he found the Tally-Ho assembled in a bulky row along the back pew, crowding around Major X as he held court. Despite their awkward first encounter, Adam couldn’t help his gaze drifting over in their direction, earning himself a glacial stare from the head of the Escape Committee.
“I don’t think the Major likes me very much,” Adam remarked to Doughnut as they mooched out of the chapel afterwards. “He’s a bit odd, isn’t he?”
“It’s not all his fault,” the fixer replied. “The Tally-Ho’s been going for thousands of years, and they’re pretty heavy on tradition. They’re named after the first Major’s rabbit, Tally-Ho, who kept escaping from his garden back on earth. Before he can take charge, every Major has to learn all these regulations about how to dress, how to act – even how to speak. It’s supposed to help maintain discipline.”
“It doesn’t make sense, though,” said Adam. “If they’re always trying to escape, why don’t the guards lock them al
l up?”
“Give Mr Pitt half a chance and they would. But Mr Cooper won’t let him.”
“Why not?”
Doughnut shrugged. “Why bother? Even though most of us keep our heads down and do our time, there’s always going to be someone crazy enough to try and break out. At least this way the guards know who to keep an eye on. He’s clever like that, is Mr Cooper.”
“OK,” Adam said slowly. “In that case, why don’t the Tally-Ho keep their gang a secret?”
“Because they’re a bunch of poseurs,” laughed Doughnut. He lowered his voice. “But they’re also a big bunch of poseurs, so don’t tell them I said that.”
There was no way that Adam would do anything to put his friend in trouble – he was already indebted to Doughnut. On his second morning in the prison, Adam had awoken to find a woollen cap and a pair of gloves lying next to his bed. The fixer didn’t say anything, but Adam knew who he had to thank. Standing up for Doughnut in the canteen had also helped Adam earn a measure of respect from the rest of the boys in their dormitory. At first the nicknames and the prison slang were like a foreign language, but as he became more familiar with life on the Dial he cautiously joined in with the jokes and the grumbles. The largest complaints surrounded the continued banning of Bucketball. Although no one had bothered to explain the game to Adam, it was clear that the inmates were itching to play it again.
“Someone had better hand those bloody infirmary sheets back,” Mouthwash muttered as he squinted at a gift from Paintpot – a painting of a rolling green pasture filled with flowers, now hanging on their dormitory wall. “I don’t care how much it’s annoying the goons – I need to play a few rumbles.”
“It’s too cold to play now, anyway,” said Doughnut. “They’ll back down when spring comes.”
“Like you care,” came a sly voice from a lower bunk. Caiman’s head emerged like a turtle from a shell. “When was the last time you did any exercise?”
Doughnut raised his middle finger by way of reply, and rolled over in his bed.
Given that Scarecrow and Jonkers’ vendetta against Adam had died down to glares and rude gestures across the exercise yard, he had decided that Caiman was the most annoying prisoner on the Dial. Caiman treated his bunk like a sniper’s nest, only raising his head to take bitter potshots at the others. According to dormitory legend, he suffered from vertigo so badly that he had browbeaten his bunkmate into switching beds so he could be closer to the floor. Caiman didn’t appear overly grateful for that – in fact, he didn’t seem capable of a nice word about anything or anyone. If any of the other inmates had complained so incessantly, Adam knew that one way or another they would have been sorted out. Why Caiman was treated with such patience was a mystery.
The Dial’s other great hate figure was less of a puzzle. Every day, usually in the middle of the afternoon, the loudspeakers cleared their throats of feedback and a high-pitched voice gleefully delivered messages to the inmates – usually a combination of taunts, admonishments and punishments. The announcements were broadcast from a small radio station perched on top of the guards’ quarters. Adam recognized the announcer from his bedroom radio and quickly grew to hate his nasal tones. He wasn’t alone – every time the boy spoke, the prisoners spat on the ground.
“Who is that?” Adam shouted finally, over the jeering din.
A dark look crossed over Doughnut’s face. “That’s Echo. The little runt finished a three-hundred-year sentence last year – only he liked it so much round here he asked to stay on to help the guards. Now he hides away up in the Radio Station, lording it over us and sucking up to Pitt and Cooper. What a toad.”
It was the angriest Adam had seen the affable fixer look. He tried to change the subject, but they slipped into an awkward silence that lasted until the mocking sneers came to an end.
With Major X’s warning about Luca D’Annunzio still fresh in his mind, Adam waited a couple of days before following Paintpot’s advice and sneaking over to the library. Bookworm’s eyes narrowed at the mention of the Codex Treacherous, but the librarian said nothing as he led Adam up one of the spiral staircases to a glass cabinet on the first floor, whereupon he produced a key from his pocket and unlocked the door. Reaching inside, Bookworm pulled out a large official-looking file and handed it to Adam.
“Here you go,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “Although I’ve no idea why you’d want to read it. The Codex isn’t allowed out of the library, so tell me when you’ve finished with it.”
As Bookworm shuffled away, Adam carried the heavy book over to a reading desk and thumped it open. He pulled off his gloves and tried to rub some life into his cold fingers. The Codex was filled with typewritten reports, brisk summaries of the Dial’s most infamous inmates: the liars and the thieves, the double-crossers and the backstabbers. But when he reached the page with Luca’s name at its head, Adam saw that the rest of the report had been torn from the binding. On the facing page, someone had written, in an elegant, mocking scrawl:
They seek him here, they seek him there,
The daft goons seek him everywhere,
But he’s long gone, the only true traitor,
Luca D’Annunzio – the Collaborator!
V. Mix
Adam scratched his head. It was hardly the first graffitied book he’d seen – but there seemed something very deliberate about the damage here. What terrible crime had Luca committed that made people want to cover it up? He wondered about asking Bookworm, but then he wasn’t sure he knew the librarian well enough to show interest in such an unpopular inmate. Instead he carefully placed the Codex back into the cabinet and went downstairs to tell Bookworm he was finished.
Still immersed in thought as he crossed the walkway back to the prisoners’ quarters, Adam nearly missed Jessica hurrying out of the infirmary, a yellow trustee’s armband wrapped around her sleeve. He had seen her a couple of times in the classroom since the incident with Paintpot’s drawing, but no matter how many times he tried to catch her eye or give her a friendly smile, she kept her head down and sat on the other side of the room. Now he waited for her outside the dormitories, but as she stepped down from the walkway a shadow crossed her face at the sight of him.
“Hi!” Adam called out. “Do you remember me? You gave me my uniform the night I first came here. I’m—”
“I know who you are,” Jessica said abruptly. “I don’t want to sound rude, but I’d really appreciate it if you stayed away from me.”
“What?” said Adam, taken aback. “Why? What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter. And I’d like it to stay that way. Why are you waiting for me?”
Adam shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know. I didn’t mean any harm by it. I guess I thought maybe we could be friends?”
Jessica looked down at her feet. “I’m sorry, Adam, but I don’t want to be your friend. My life’s horrible enough without being chased around by someone Mr Pitt thinks is trouble. Please – stay away from me.”
Before he could reply she hurried past him into the prisoners’ quarters, her long hair falling over her face, masking her expression from Adam.
If Adam had known how his day was going to turn out, he wouldn’t have bothered getting out of bed at all.
He had awoken to find the Dial in a state of feverish excitement. It was film night – when, once a year, the guards brought over a projector from their quarters and let the inmates watch an old black-and-white movie. Adam’s delight was only slightly tempered by the knowledge that it was his dormitory’s turn for slopping-out duty. After lunch and dinner, they had to head to the kitchen at the back of the mess hall to scrub the encrusted pots and pans clean, a chore that left hands pink from the boiling water and covered in a film of sour grease. By common agreement, slopping out was one of the worst jobs on the Dial.
Even so, after dinner the boys attacked their chores energetically, ke
en not to miss a second of the film. Adam was wrestling with a particularly stubborn black mark on a saucepan when something heavy and wet thudded into the back of his neck. He spun round to see a damp rolled-up cloth on the tiles by his feet. There was a snigger from over by Mouthwash’s sink.
“You missed a bit!” the boy called out.
Gloopy liquid dripped down Adam’s neck. “Oh, you’re going to pay for that, mate!” he said, with a grin.
Snatching up the cloth, he soaked it in the grimy water in his sink, bunched it up and hurled back at Mouthwash, who ducked neatly out of the way. Before long there was a crossfire of wet missiles flying through the air, splattering and squelching as they exploded against the walls. Only Caiman refused to join in, pointedly turning his back and continuing to scrub his pots.
Adam had Doughnut in his sights and was winding up a shot when his foot stepped into a puddle on the tiles. Slipping mid-throw, Adam watched in horror as his cloth veered away from its target, arcing in slow motion towards a tower of dirty plates stacked up on the sideboard. The cloth connected with the heart of the stack, knocking the plates to the floor, where they smashed into pieces with a deafening crash.
There was a shocked pause.
“Uh oh,” said Doughnut.
There wasn’t even time to sweep up the pieces before the door flew open and Mr Pitt strode into the kitchen, a cane clenched in his hand, his baleful eye sweeping over the shattered plates.
“What in damnation’s going on here?” he barked.
As one, the inmates looked down at their feet. Mr Pitt strode over to Doughnut and jammed the butt of his cane underneath his chin, forcing his head up until they were eyeball to eyeball.
“I’m assuming you’ve got some food stuck in your ears,” said Mr Pitt, “because you haven’t answered my question. You’re not going to make me repeat myself, are you?”
