by Tom Becker
“Don’t worry, Jess—” Corbett began hastily, before the Major waved him silent.
“Listen, you really shouldn’t be here,” Major X continued calmly. “We’ve got some important business to discuss, and we don’t need any girls turning up and getting all emotional.”
“All emotional?” Jessica echoed incredulously. “Well, why don’t you calm me down by taking that knife away from his throat and telling me what’s going on here?”
The Major made a small noise of exasperation. “If you must know, we’re looking for an informer.”
“And you think it’s Adam? That’s a ridiculous idea! Of course it’s not him!”
“All we’re asking him to do is prove it. This may look a little rough to you, miss, but you can’t be too careful with rats.”
“Rats indeed!” Angrily tossing her hair out of her face, Jessica strode over to the Major and poked him in the chest. “You boys and your little gangs. You stride around this place thinking you’re so honourable and heroic, but you’re nothing but bullies. Let me tell you one thing. If anything happens to Adam I’ll run straight to Mr Cooper and tell him you’re responsible. You’ll be in solitary for a year – unless you’re planning on slitting my throat too.”
Adam couldn’t tell who was more stunned – himself or Major X. It was as though Jessica was a different person.
“I’d never harm a girl,” the Major replied bashfully. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
“Well, I guess you’re leaving then, aren’t you?”
Jessica gave him a challenging stare. The Major looked thoughtful for a second, and then came to a decision.
“Tally-Ho!”
Adam felt the grip around his throat relaxing, and Corbett stood up and folded his knife. He spread out his hands helplessly and tried to say something to Jessica, but she turned her back on him.
As his men filed out of the quarters, the Major called out to a small blond boy cowering by the door. “Bosworth? When I tell you to keep a lookout I mean it. You and I are going to have a serious discussion when we get back to HQ.”
Bosworth blanched and scurried out of sight. Major X looked back at Adam, setting his hat carefully atop his head.
“Just because you’ve been saved doesn’t mean I think you’re on the level. If you are a rat, I’ll find out. Trust me on that.”
The Major spun on his heel and marched past Jessica out of the room.
Doughnut chewed slowly, his eyes closed, hands behind his head, savouring every second the chocolate lasted in his mouth. Finally, with great reluctance, he swallowed.
“Bit of a close shave, that,” he said eventually, inspecting his fingers for stray specks of confectionary.
“Close shave?” Adam repeated incredulously. “They nearly slit my throat!”
It was early evening, and the pair were stretched out on a small slanting patch of roof on top of the prisoners’ quarters, their backs gently warming on the slates. Sandwiched between two higher sections of rooftop that hid it from prying eyes, this was Doughnut’s private paradise. The only access point was a skylight in a cupboard that nobody ever used, and from here the careful observer could poke his head over the incline and view the whole of the Dial – from the guards keeping watch in the towers to the tiny figures charging around the Bucketball pitch. The wind had been picking up since mid-afternoon, and as he looked over the desert Adam could make out a dust cloud dancing across the horizon.
“Nearly,” Doughnut acknowledged. “But not quite – thanks to Jessica. Didn’t think she had it in her.”
Neither had Adam. If anything, he had been more stunned by the shy girl’s intervention than the Tally-Ho’s ambush. He was still staring open-mouthed at Jessica long after the Escape Committee had left his dormitory.
“How did you get in here?” he managed finally.
Jessica pointed at the yellow trustee band around her arm. “I’m on official duty. A boy’s fallen ill on your corridor; I’m supposed to help take him to the infirmary.”
“Lucky for me,” Adam said ruefully.
“Ignore those creeps,” said Jessica, with a sudden fierceness. “You’re not a rat. You’re more honourable than they’ll ever be.”
As she turned to leave, Adam scrambled up from his bunk. “Listen, about the other day, in the theatre. . .”
With a smile, Jessica pressed a finger to his lips.
“I know,” she whispered. “And I’m sorry too.”
She walked out without another word.
Now Adam propped himself up on one elbow, the stiffening breeze blowing his fringe into his eyes.
“The Tally-Ho weren’t serious, though, were they? I mean, I know they go on about escaping and stuff, but they’re not that bad. You haven’t heard of them, you know. . .?” Adam made a slicing gesture across his throat with his finger.
Doughnut frowned. “I couldn’t say for sure. There are rumours – there are always rumours on the Dial. It’s true that lads who fall foul of the Tally-Ho have a nasty tendency to have accidents afterwards.”
“Accidents?”
“Tripping down flights of stairs, falling out of second-floor windows, bookcases toppling over on to them. They go to the infirmary and when they come out they’re very careful about who they talk to. Draw your own conclusions. Don’t you want to eat that?”
Adam wordlessly passed the square of chocolate back to his friend. Though he knew how generous Doughnut had been to share such precious contraband with him, Adam’s stomach was still churning from his encounter with Major X, and the sweetness only intensified his nausea.
Doughnut popped the chocolate into his mouth and settled back with a contented smile on his face.
“It’s rough on you, mate, but it’s got to be done,” he said. “Even though this place is supposed to punish treachery, you can always find a goon who’ll be grateful for the odd bit of helpful information. Imagine if a bunch of prisoners escaped on your watch – would you want to explain that to Mr Pitt?”
“Not really.”
“It’s hard to blame them. And given the fact that every single prisoner here is a traitor, people have got to know that if they try and sell anyone out there’s going to be consequences. If it weren’t for the Tally-Ho going round threatening to slit people’s throats, it’d be chaos.”
“I’ve got no problem with the Tally-Ho trying to track down a rat,” Adam complained, “I just wish they didn’t think it was me. Everything I seem to do in this place goes wrong, and. . .”
Doughnut had stopped listening. He was looking out over the walls of the Dial, shielding his eyes from the sun. Following his gaze, Adam saw that the dust cloud was no longer troubling the distant horizon but churning through the air towards them.
Doughnut stood up and brushed the back of his trousers. “Time to go.”
“What’s up?”
“Sandstorm. We don’t want to be outside when that hits. Jesus, it’s coming in quickly.”
Even as he spoke, the sky began to darken and the sirens broke into a wail, calling the inmates indoors. The Bucketball players hared towards the gates, and the guards began a hasty descent from the watchtowers. Doughnut had hurried over to the skylight and was already lowering himself back inside. Adam knew that he should follow suit, but as the sandstorm closed in on the walls and filled his vision, he was transfixed by the way it writhed and thrashed about like a wounded animal. The screeching wind was so loud it hurt his ears.
Adam was turning to go when he saw Mr Pitt striding defiantly along the perimeter wall, shrouded in a long leather jacket with an upturned collar. Adam scrambled across the tiles and peered over the edge of the roof in time to see a second, smaller figure emerge from the opposite direction on the wall. A prisoner, Adam was sure – although the whirling clouds of sand stopped any chance he had of identifying him. Mr Pitt came to a halt directly
beneath Adam and nodded briskly at the inmate.
“What are you doing?” Doughnut shouted, his head poking up through the skylight. “Come on!”
The sandstorm had begun a full-frontal assault on the Dial, lashing one giant handful of sand after another at Adam, stinging his eyes and clawing at his skin. He tried to cover his mouth with his sleeve, but it was already filled with grit and his throat was burning. Through his tears, he saw the inmate hand a sheaf of papers over to Mr Pitt, who tucked them inside his coat and patted the prisoner on the arm. Whatever they said to each other was lost amidst the squall.
A violent gust of wind suddenly took hold of Adam, threatening to drag him off the roof. Grabbing hold of the slates, he turned and crawled blindly back in the direction of the skylight. It was impossible to see or hear anything now. The world was just sand and wind. Adam was wondering if he’d ever manage to find a way down when a pair of pudgy hands grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him through the skylight to safety.
As he lay coughing in a heap on the cupboard floor, winded by the impact of landing, Adam was certain of one thing: Major X’s suspicions had been correct. There was a rat on the Dial, all right.
Adam didn’t tell anyone else about the clandestine meeting he had witnessed on the perimeter wall. He supposed that he could have gone to Major X, in the hope that telling him would help to clear his own name, but there was no guarantee that the Tally-Hoer would believe him. And anyway, with the memory of Corbett’s knife pressed against his throat still fresh in his mind, Adam didn’t particularly feel like cooperating with the Major.
But why he didn’t tell Doughnut, or Mouthwash, or Paintpot was another matter entirely. For reasons he couldn’t quite explain, the matter of the rat had become personal for Adam – the same kind of feeling that had driven him to try and find out more about Luca D’Annunzio. In the crammed dormitories and bustling corridors of the Dial, where there was never any space or privacy, there was something life-affirming about a secret, about owning something you didn’t have to share.
As the summer progressed, the preparations for the upcoming show intensified. Everyone seemed to have a role, whether it was acting or singing, sticking up posters advertising the performance, or making streamers with which to festoon the hall. A newcomer to the prison might have been surprised by the feverish anticipation, but Adam had been inside long enough to appreciate how an event like this – something different to the everyday routine – raised morale. Every afternoon, strangled strains of music emerged from above the classrooms, as insistent as they were out of tune. Whenever possible, they were timed to coincide with one of Echo’s broadcasts, drowning out his sneering pronouncements – much to the amusement of the other inmates. Following his latest run-in with the Tally-Ho, Adam didn’t watch the rehearsals again, but that didn’t stop him from glancing up to the theatre windows from time to time, wondering what sort of perilous activity was being cloaked behind the racket.
There were only two weeks to go before the show when the prisoners were summoned to a special roll call in the exercise yard. Mr Cooper stepped forward, a broad smile on his face as he declared:
“I am pleased to announce that repairs on the Quisling have finally been completed! This afternoon will see its first voyage since the accident, and all prisoners and guards are invited to the Docking Port to wave it off.”
His announcement garnered a mixed reaction: some clapped and cheered, relieved that the airship could finally go back to Earth for desperately needed supplies; others folded their arms and said nothing, aware that the Quisling would not return with food alone. There would be more prisoners; more misery; the walkway would continue to revolve around the Dial.
Doughnut tried hard to disguise his glee, but Adam knew that the fixer needed the Quisling functioning more than anyone.
“I bet you’ll be going to wave it off this afternoon, won’t you?” he teased at lunch, in between mouthfuls of cold stew. “Make sure you take a hankie.”
“I bet everyone will be going this afternoon,” countered Doughnut. “I know Mr Cooper said we’re ‘invited’, but you just try not going. You’ll be off to the punishment cells before you know it – prisoner or guard.”
Sure enough, when the sirens sounded later that afternoon, the inmates trooped across to Wing I as one, sweat dripping down their backs as they congregated in the oven-baked air. They were herded through the docking area into a cordoned-off section of the landing strip, the Quisling rearing up above their heads like a black, leathery beast. Men in overalls scurried around the airship’s gondola, checking the guide ropes and making last-minute adjustments to the engines before take-off.
Back in Adam’s dormitory, the sound of a single dripping tap echoed around the room. The only movement was a ripple of notepad pages in the breeze stealing in through the window.
Then Adam rolled out from beneath his bunk bed.
He knew that what he was doing was crazy. But if Doughnut was right, and everyone in the prison would be down on the landing strip, then the guards’ quarters would be empty. Which presented Adam with the perfect opportunity to find the copy of Luca’s missing record.
He hared out of the dormitory and along the empty corridor, then down the backstairs to the cellar housing Doughnut’s secret tunnel. Earlier in the afternoon, he had taken the precaution of removing the correct key from the fixer’s bedside table as he dozed; now he slipped it into the lock and opened the door. The cellar was as dank and forbidding as ever, and the rotting wooden chest covering the hole was difficult to shift alone. But Adam’s mind was made up – there was no time for second thoughts. He reckoned he had an hour at most before the Quisling went through the warphole and the prisoners returned to their quarters. Heaving the chest to one side, he squeezed through the gap into the tunnel, aware of the ceiling closing in around his head once more. Adam crawled onwards, past the small fissure overlooking the chasm, following the curve of the walls. It felt as though he was moving much more quickly than he had the time he’d accompanied Doughnut, and it wasn’t long before he reached the smooth flagstone ceiling that heralded his arrival beneath the guards’ quarters.
Taking a deep breath, Adam reached up and pushed the loose flagstone to one side, then pulled himself out of the tunnel and into the pantry. The air was cold and still. Ignoring the lure of the crates of food, Adam hurried up the stairs and inched open the pantry door into the guards’ quarters. The corridor was empty, silence ebbing from the surrounding rooms. Doughnut had been right – the guards had also been ordered from their rooms to watch the Quisling’s return flight.
Thankfully, none of the doors were locked. Adam supposed the guards had no reason to worry about anyone breaking into their building. Fighting the urge to fill his pockets with valuables and scrawl graffiti on the walls, he worked his way up from the ground floor, past the games room and the kitchen and the bedrooms on the second floor. On the third floor, he stopped outside a door with the words “Records Office” painted in black lettering on the pane of glass.
Adam hurried inside the sun-dappled room, grateful that the windows didn’t look out on to any of the watchtowers on the perimeter wall. The walls were lined with metal filing cabinets filled with bulging reports on current inmates – and, in their own cabinet, the notorious denizens of the Codex Treacherous. Thankfully, the records were listed alphabetically. Adam quickly located Luca D’Annunzio’s file and pulled it out. He began to read:
D’ANNUNZIO, LUCA
EARTH CRIME:
Stealing money from his mother, and then blaming it on his brother.
VERDICT:
Guilty of high treason
SENTENCE:
436 years
PRISONER NOTES:
– A popular inmate, D’Annunzio quickly rose to second-in-command of the Tally
-Ho Escape Committee, sharing the position with the prisoner known as Caiman.
– Unbeknownst to the Dial’s authorities, D’Annunzio and Caiman spent 150 years digging a tunnel to the Docking Port. They planned to wait until the Quisling was timed to leave during a Bucketball game, taking advantage of the lax security to crawl through the tunnel to Wing I.
– However, minutes before the Quisling was to depart, the escapees’ tunnel was discovered by guard Hector Pitt, whose pursuit inadvertently caused a cave-in. Caiman was pulled free from the tunnel’s debris, but D’Annunzio was nowhere to be seen. It transpired that he had sent Mr Pitt a letter that morning giving details of the escape. The only sensible conclusion is that D’Annunzio made his way through the tunnel to Wing I early and stored himself aboard the Quisling, which took off before the authorities could stop it.
– A thorough search of the aircraft on its return to the Dial revealed no trace of the inmate, and D’Annunzio has never been seen again.
– Inmate Caiman was sentenced to six months in solitary as punishment for his role in the plot. A harsh sentence was considered necessary in light of his co-conspirator’s escape.
– Though the prisoner’s successful escape should have damaged the Dial’s reputation, D’Annunzio’s betrayal of Caiman has made him a hate figure amongst other inmates. Now reviled as a “collaborator”, D’Annunzio’s actions have – if anything – worked to the regime’s advantage.
– After a thorough investigation, Chief Warden Frederick Cooper concluded that Hector Pitt had not colluded with D’Annunzio and aided his betrayal. Exonerated, Mr Pitt was promoted to Assistant Chief Warder on account of his bravery and forthright action.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
– D’Annunzio’s brother Nino is also imprisoned on the Dial – for stealing money from their father and blaming it on his brother. Although they were transported to the Dial on the same voyage, the two brothers share a mutual loathing and have never acknowledged their relationship. Nino is not considered to pose any sort of similar threat of escape.
