Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 1

by Malcolm J Wardlaw

  TK waited for more.

  “Is that it?” he said.

  “That’s all I have at the moment.”

  TK sat thinking for a while. He could see a chain of cause and effect. After being shot down, Donald witnessed the poverty of sovereign natives without understanding why they were so wretched. He saw natives discharged to the public drains without understanding the need to balance land. He could have picked up radical ideas from glory troops in the Lands of Dasti-Jones. Then on getting home he contacted the National Party.

  “Let me summarise our situation,” TK said. “When Pezzini’s treachery came out, it was nearly the end of you and I because he was our man. Land Council bayed like mastiffs. Then I championed Donald is the only man for appointed regent. Land Council bayed like mastiffs. I’m convinced the only reason Marcus-John finally agreed is because he’s addicted to stuffing Lavinia. If I go back to Land Council and tell them Donald’s gone radical on us… Then you and I are finished.”

  “We are,” Wingfield said.

  “So, we aren’t going anywhere near Land Council with this. Let’s get Donald tucked away nice and safe in the Marylebone Suite to do the demographic calculations. We’ll tell him our land records are too sensitive to be kept at Wilson House. Once he’s done the calcs and signed them off, you and I will confront him. My gut feeling is there’s more to this than meets the eye... I hope so for his sake. If not, he’s joining Pezzini in the Value System of Nightminster. Lavinia will marry someone of her own status and everyone else will mind their own damned business.”

  Wingfield pulled a face.

  “That’s a bit harsh, isn’t it?”

  TK shook his head.

  “I’ve been too nice for too long. People have become insolent—people who should know better.”

  *

  Two troopers of the Krossington marines escorted Donald into the basement of Wilson House, the Georgian-styled Mayfair palace of the Krossingtons. They unlocked a steel gate of rivetted plates half an inch thick set in granite framing and proceeded into an area of stores and machinery: fresh water tanks, oil tanks, diesel generators and gun rooms. They continued along a short brick corridor to a small room. In the middle of the room was a circular hole like a well surrounded by a guard rail with a gate in it. Through the gate they went and down and down spiral steps they plunged, sinking into deepening silence, the only light being from battery lamps carried by the two marines. The steps ended far under the earth in a narrow passage.

  The party then proceeded through a circular hatch about a yard in diameter, the door of which was reinforced concrete two feet thick with steel plate facing.

  On the other side, they stood in a much larger tunnel lined with heavy concrete castings obviously of Public Era vintage. There was no floor as such, rather, two raised concrete shelves that ran parallel along the floor of the tunnel. Donald guessed they must be in the Tube, the legendary underground train system of the Public Era. This surprised him, as he had always been told the miles of tunnels had quickly flooded in the Glorious Resolution. A tiny light appeared in the distance as they cleared a rise. It hung tantalisingly in the darkness for some minutes until it resolved to mark a port in the wall of the tunnel. They turned into a narrow corridor only just high enough for Donald to stand. Their ascent seemed even longer than the descent under Wilson House. They emerged into darkness. One of the marines switched on a light to reveal a bare, brick-floored store room and workshop.

  This must be a most secret place. To be brought here was an honour, reflecting the utter trust the Krossingtons now placed in him. The lead marine confirmed this when he spoke:

  “This place is called the Marylebone Suite. Never mention it to anyone. You’ll be here until you finish the calculations.”

  “But I didn’t bring any overnight bag,” Donald said. He was annoyed at not having been warned he would be stuck in this place for five days. He was still probing his network for a means to obtain Lawrence’s personnel file from General Wardian records. And he had a date with Tanya on Friday. If he missed it… That would be awkward—possibly dangerous. “I have a client meeting on Friday.”

  “Sorry, Boss’s orders. We’ll take messages out for you.”

  Donald resigned himself. Damn these fucking sovereigns. They just assumed they owned people’s lives. The problem was, they did own people’s lives. Damn them.

  ‘This place’ proved to be more luxurious and spacious than suggested by the bare store room. They climbed a staircase to a long corridor carpeted in Krossington sky blue with wood-panelled walls. The far end was closed off by sky-blue curtains. The corridor proved to be the main avenue of a luxury business complex with a large conference room and five spacious, self-contained apartments furnished in a clean style he recognised as ‘heirloom Swedish’. The lead marine showed him a library, a small cinema and a gym. He told him under no circumstances to look behind the sky-blue curtains at the end of the corridor.

  A flight of spiral steps led up to an open-air deck where there were a couple of benches and cherry trees in large earthenware tubs. The only view was straight up at the sky, as the deck was surrounded by an eight-foot-high wall to prevent anyone’s head showing above the parapet. The marine warned him never to look over the parapet, as he would risk getting his head shot off by a glory sniper enforcing Naclaski.

  Donald managed to negotiate access to the Tube tunnel for a brisk walk every morning and evening accompanied by a marine. Otherwise he was ‘respectfully requested’ to keep to the first floor or open-air deck at all times. One positive point was that he had the conference room at his disposal to lay out the extraordinary volume of documentation associated with the demographic calculations. TK had explained the gist of the work and provided the official Krossington specification for the calculations. It was an exceedingly tedious read, even for Donald, who had suffered considerably more than his fair share of nit-picking and hair-splitting sophistry in his career.

  In principle, it was not hard to balance land. Just forecast the population and forecast the harvest. If there was an excess of mouths over grain, then the surplus mouths had to be discharged to the public drains. The chief demographer would then report balanced land.

  In practice, the calculation was not simple. Harvests could not be predicted with certainty, only forecast within a probable range. The feeding needs of native stock varied depending on what that native stock was: a five-year-old kid making bricks? A twenty-five-year-old stag hauling a plough? A pregnant fifteen-year-old doe carrying water? Each required different nutrition. Then there was the lifespan of the population. The Sovereign Lands of Krossington contained 104 manors in addition to lands owned directly by the Krossington clan. These manors ‘nestled for collective safety’ behind the greater Krossington frontier, each contributing to the cost of General Wardian’s protection according to an elaborate formula. One such manor was of course Laxbury, birth place of his wife Her Decency Lavinia. By-the-by, Donald learned that Laxbury was a prosperous concern bearing 3,256 natives according to the most recent census (dated 11th September last and signed-off by Antonio Kwasu Pezzini). Each manor had its own native life expectancy, ranging from twenty-eight years, up to forty-one years on lands owned by the Krossingtons, which possessed the richest soils. Then there was the matter of trade. Hydrocarbon products from the oilfields at Kimmeridge and Winchester commanded high prices in luxury transport markets. Gold from such sales could be used to purchase wheat to alleviate shortages and reduce discharges of surplus. Against that, the sovereign landowners had needs too: race horses, costumes for masked balls, jewellery, portraits, motorbikes, racing cars, a refit for the clan yacht Neptune, a new flying boat to replace the one (carrying Donald) shot down over the Lands of Dasti-Jones and so on and so forth.

  To work through the procedure and aggregate all the results for the 104 independent manors as well as the home lands of the Krossington clan took him three days—gruelling days exasperated by vagueness in
certain explanations of the calculation, mislaid data sheets, mixed-up data sheets and trances of despairing apathy.

  Donald could grasp a fundamental reasoning behind the calculation. No sovereign clan could afford to let its treasury run down over time; if there were too many natives to feed, then gold expenditure would exceed gold income, an unhappy state of affairs that had to be resolved by discharging the ‘surplus’ natives.

  There was a certain intellectual inescapability about the calculation that made it hard to argue with—except that waiting for sleep, he did argue about it. The Public Era certainly had not worked this way—he recalled over and over again his grandfather Sir Bartleigh telling him there were no dead bodies strewn about the public highways of the Public Era. It was quite possible to pass through life and never see a dead body at all. Even in counties far poorer than Britain, bodies got cleared away rather than being left for hogs, dogs and lammergeiers.

  Donald’s teeth ached with frustration at his inability to achieve the same answer twice. His first try yielded discharges of 7,540 head of surplus, the second 8,150.

  On obtaining a third answer of 8,525 head of surplus for discharge, Donald gave up and went for a walk in the Tube. He was sick of bruising his fingertips rapping a calculating engine made for Public Era drudges of 150 years ago. On the fourth cycle of calculation, his efforts returned 8,563 head of surplus for discharge. This was close enough to the third cycle. TK had said he would accept agreement within a few percentage points. Donald signed the sheets off and advised the duty marine that the calculations were ready for checking by His Decency. Then he flopped down in his apartment.

  *

  He awoke to the cheery face of one of TK’s officials bringing him a mug of tea and a bacon sandwich. Donald knew the man’s name was Wingfield. At dinner parties in Wilson House, Wingfield kept very much to himself, in a corner or propping up a pillar, eyes roving about, focusing to inspect for a few seconds, then roving on. He was not especially tall, perhaps five foot ten. His build was all towards the top like a boxer, with an added heaviness of middle age. He habitually wore waistcoats rather than suits, probably because he could not get a suit to fit his powerful shoulders and arms. Yet, his face was as calm as a holy man’s. Donald was not alone in never having spoken to him. Few guests ever did.

  “There you go, Donny Boy,” he said. “Sweet dreams?”

  “Thank you… Should I address you as Your Decency?”

  “‘Hey you’ will do just nicely.” He pulled a mirthless smirk that left an uneasy impression. Donald sat up, looked at his watch and frowned. There were no windows, so he had no idea whether it was quarter to nine in the morning or evening. He thanked Wingfield for the refreshments and lifted them across to the writing table.

  “Is His Decency here?”

  “He’s checking your work—so far so good. Apparently your working notes are much clearer than Pezzini’s.”

  “Speaking of Pezzini, what did happen to him?”

  “’It’ not ‘him’. The poor devil was a eunuch—some parents just can’t show enough love. As for what happened to him, well, I will say this; I would not like it to happen to me. Let us leave it at that.”

  The gentle discretion with which this was said unnerved Donald. The bacon sandwich lost its appeal. He only finished it after a great amount of chewing and with the aid of the mug of tea. They sat in silence, which apparently bothered Wingfield not in the least. It was like being guarded by a Rottweiler. Wingfield had something of a Rottweiler’s composure; the same cold certainty in his violence. It was a relief when TK stood in the half-open door and gave a little knock, eyeing Donald over his reading glasses. He waved the executive summary of the demographic calculation.

  “This is really excellent, Donald. All clearly laid out and explained. Pezzini used to drive me up the wall with his scattered logic and bloody awful handwriting. It was like something an angry cat would leave.

  “I expect you’d be angry too if you’d had your balls chopped as a boy,” Wingfield said.

  “Yes, poor chap.” TK perched on the edge of the sofa, still eyeing Donald over his reading glasses. An atmosphere of hostility was falling over the room. It stirred a formless alarm in Donald, the unease of an animal beginning to be frustrated at its failure to locate an exit. This alarm melded with confusion—he had done nothing wrong. He had not peeked behind the sky-blue curtains, for instance, tempting though it had occasionally been. He waited, his heart thudding harder and sweat trickling down his spine.

  “You conclude necessary discharges of around eight and a half thousand head of surplus.” TK laid the summary sheet aside and took off his reading glasses, whilst his stare hardened. Donald in turn stared back, directly eye-to-eye, his emotions funnelling into anger. He waited, the words cycling around and around his mind: I have done nothing wrong. He had thought plenty of things that would have got him flushed to the drains a hundred times over—but who had not?

  “What do you think of eight and a half thousand head of surplus discharged to the public drains?” TK said.

  “It…” Donald cleared his throat. “It troubles me.”

  “Yes. That’s a good way of putting it. I can tell you that it troubles me and it troubles Wingfield. There are many in the clan who don’t care tuppence about discharges. They don’t give a damn about anything beyond fripperies and fucking. Cecil Tarran-Krossington was such an individual. He was the sovereign equivalent of the Fatted Masses of the Public Era, a selfish, thoughtless, stupid individual—the dead centre of the average. Whereas, the three of us carry the burden of being thinkers. Although we are rare, we matter, because we run things and so we can change things.”

  Donald followed this mostly with his eyes down, just glancing up now and again to nod in acknowledgement. This was obviously a preamble. The question was: preamble to what?

  “Donald, tell me what you have learned during your days incarcerated here with columns and columns of facts, using a calculating machine to determine how many human beings are going to die for the system. Anything good, bad, indifferent?” TK asked.

  Donald knew his fate turned on the answer. It would not be enough to bleat platitudes about necessity. He would have to convince them he really meant it, yet tell no lies.

  “The obvious reform would be to replace natives with machines. The problem is that machines are expensive, so gold must be exported to buy them. Machines burn oil, so that means exporting more gold. What do you do with the displaced natives? They would have to be discharged to their fate. What would you do with the extra grain? It would drive prices down because there would be no market for it. So the end result would be a loss of gold, more discharges, dependency on oil, yet no increase in income from grain.” Donald leaned forward, becoming more animated. “Of course, I don’t have much depth of economic insight. I may have missed something.”

  His impression was that his thespian efforts had changed nothing at all. He might as well have performed to a brick wall.

  “You are correct that we are stuck in the Underpopulation Bomb,” TK said. “It could endure a thousand years. On the positive side, humanity now burdens the natural world very lightly relative to the ludicrous excesses of the Public Era. There are of course always those like the National Party who believe they can lead the people to some New Jerusalem.”

  “I’ve already made clear I have no interest in politics.”

  “It’s shocking how events accelerate once courtesy is abandoned,” TK said. “The habits of civility smother a whole world of vicious impulses—some daydreams must remain daydreams, or else the world explodes.”

  “Could you came to the point, Your Decency.”

  “Don’t be insolent,” Wingfield hissed.

  “Is this some kind of test?” In his exasperation, Donald was becoming brazen. “You want me to tip out the laundry basket? All right, I freely admit I keep a lover called Tanya. I further admit she has in considerable degree the edge over Lavini
a in congeniality and intelligence. I also freely admit to having an estranged brother Lawrence who might or might not become an embarrassment to all of us.”

  “What makes you say that?” TK asked, his attention suddenly zoning in.

  “Rumours have come my way—I don’t believe them, but rumours don’t have to be true to be dangerous. When I was interned on the Lands of Dasti-Jones, a glory officer called Haighman claimed he knew Lawrence in your town of Oban. He told me there was a rumour going around that Lawrence was fogged for crimes against your clan. Then a couple of weeks ago a young slummy woman called Sarah-Kelly Newman hustled herself into my home with the same story. She claimed Lawrence got eight years’ Fog. Of course, I dismissed her as a liar. It’s out of the question such a thing could happen without my being informed.”

  TK was making notes in his little note book.

  “When was Lawrence supposedly fogged?”

  “Late July. I don’t have dates because I shooed her straight out.”

  “Where is this man Haighman stationed?”

  “The Broadstairs fort in the Lands of Dasti-Jones.”

  TK finished his notes with a flourish. To Wingfield he said:

  “Could you send a chap to Wilson House to fetch the Oban Castle reports for the summer months? Make it May to September to be on the safe side.”

  Wingfield hurried out. TK followed him more leisurely, leaving Donald in peace to stare at his socks. Half an hour later, Wingfield called Donald into the conference room. There were still boxes of documents along the walls from the demographic calculations. The calculating machine still rested at one end of the long table. TK sat at the opposite end, reading through some reports bound in thin leather folders.

  “I have news for you, Donald.”