“What’s your name?”
“Sarah-Kelly. Yours?”
“I’m Lawrence. Do you know the Smith Grill?”
“I do, but—”
Lawrence pulled his crooked grin.
“But what? But what time?”
“It’s a dear place.”
“I’ll pay.”
“Suits me,” she said, ducking her face and smiling.
“Seven o’clock tonight.”
“Will we get a table?”
“It’s expensive. You can always get a table.”
“All right then.”
There followed an awkward pause, in which she stared across the gardens and fidgeted with the handle of her briefcase. He stooped and kissed her on the mouth, then turned and walked briskly away.
The point had been made. She was with Cost-Centre Lieutenant Aldingford. Now she had cover.
*
So that was how he met Sarah-Kelly Newman. He could see her face a foot from his, feel her blonde hair on his cheek, smell the perfume she made from lemons, cinnamon and vanilla oil. Like him, she was blonde and pure white. There had always been a nebulous suspicion of racism around them. That would have been fine on certain sovereign lands—the Shellingfield clan had a reputation for ‘shade preferences’—but it was not fine on Krossington land. Lawrence had sensed a subtle ‘bad smell’ expression from the waiters. Sarah-Kelly and he were utterly ostracised at the one officers’ dance they attended. Maybe that was the real reason he got fogged, he broke too many social taboos… And he had no friends or family looking out for him. Denouncing a fellow officer was only the catch of a trap door he had cut for himself. Yeah, it was not so hard to understand this fate now.
Chapter 6
Lawrence yearned to rest behind his own eyelids, the only private life available in the Night and Fog. However, he still had the evening shift of this first day to get through. His feet ached in the new boots. The collar of the stiff new overalls chafed his neck. He found himself looking back with nostalgia on the empty, supine days in the hold of the barge, sharing with the doomed load on the far side of the bulkhead a merciful ignorance of what life was about to serve him.
In the Dining Hall, men weaved from the counter with plates of pig’s cheek or kidney, roast potatoes, boiled pigeons’ eggs and cabbage. The food at least was one thing to be thankful for. By the time Lawrence had collected his dinner and edged back towards the tables of Gang 4, there were no places near Spiderman, Ugly Toes, or Yip-Dog, or anyone else he knew in passing. He asked if he could take a place between a couple of value he recognised from the gang. They nodded and beckoned him in.
“You the new boy then?” asked the chap on his right.
He had a round, cheery face with heavy, upswept eyebrows like a bird’s wings. When he spoke, he shut his eyes and slid his elbows about on the table top. To Lawrence, he seemed a bit of a clown.
“Yes, I’m Big Stak.”
“I’m Buttons.”
“And I’m Pig Tit.”
Pig Tit was a short chap, who looked like a piglet due to his upturned nose. He had small, chubby hands and stumpy limbs. Lawrence noted that Buttons’ tag was Gamma162 and Pig Tit’s was Gamma163. Possibly they arrived on the same barge.
“The grub is good here,” Lawrence said. In this banality, he was aware of how he was already getting absorbed into the place, by an irresistible process of blunting. He had spent the day up to his waist in drowned bodies and then dragging skin off cadavers, now here he was gobbling down roast potatoes. It had to be that way, for without food he could not work. If he did not work, he was done for. “It’s strange how fast you get used to this place.”
“You’ll settle in no problem, I’ve had my eyes on you, you’re a stallion. It’s not that bad here, if you make the best of it.”
Pig Tit giggled.
“How did you end up here?” Lawrence asked.
“Best not to talk about that,” Buttons said. “It doesn’t matter now, we’ve all had past lives that are over. All I can say is that personally, I’m as well off here as I was there.”
“Maybe better off,” Pig Tit said. The two men giggled again. This was getting on Lawrence’s nerves. He speeded up eating. Buttons’ hand slipped off the table and made a stealthy excursion up and down Lawrence’s thigh.
“Very nice. You’re very white—and blond. You from a racist family?”
“No. Do you mind…?”
“Oooh! My apologies.” Buttons leaned around Lawrence and winked at Pig Tit. “He’s choosy!”
Pig Tit giggled. Lawrence tossed the knife and fork onto his plate and stepped out backwards clear of the bench.
“Leaving us are you?” Buttons glared up at Lawrence. In a waspish voice, he said: “You’re a natural born wanker. Have fun with your right hand.”
Pig Tit giggled.
Lawrence drifted about for a minute, aware his face was burning in self-consciousness at standing alone like a spare prick. After some embarrassment, he saw a yard of bench free at the end of a nearby table and he sat without asking, eating with his head down.
Was everybody in this place homosexual? Is that why they ended up here? Or did it come naturally after months and years of being isolated without so much as a picture of a woman? He just could not see himself taking to men. He had never been interested in that kind of thing. With puberty, it was straight to girls without passing through his school mates’ bottoms, unlike so many in his class at the all-male boarding school within the Central Enclave of London. He lost his virginity at the age of fourteen to a sympathetic chambermaid down a back-alley off the Fulham Road. His early sexual adventures were squalid in the extreme—behind some cheap bar, rows of spread legs and clenched bottoms pumping amidst the alley cats. How the hell he had avoided gonorrhoea or worse was a mystery. He would sneak over the school railings into the big wide world, beyond the petty fiefdoms of the monitors, roaming far down into Fulham and Brompton, almost to the towering battlements of the Grande Enceinte itself. Streams of bored maids swirled about looking for diversion after their shifts in the great houses of the Central Enclave. Garish jazz clubs, street dances jigged by folk bands and backstreet gin… No wonder he messed up his O-Levels.
It was from around that time Lawrence noticed a subtle exclusion at family dinners. His father debated with elder brother Donald disputes in the Land Court of Westminster, while their stepmother ate in silence. These were matters in a vocabulary and following a logic that meant nothing to Lawrence. Donald was ten years the older, long graduated from Oxford University, with years of specialist legal training under his belt. Lawrence had just screwed up his O-Levels. On the rare occasions he did try to join in, there would be silence, followed by a delicately condescending lecture from his father on the matter in question. His father never asked him about history essays, or football, the only two aspects of school where he still achieved excellence. Donald never spoke a word to him. If they passed in the house, his elder brother simply ignored him. So, Lawrence spent most dinners in silence, his head down, excluding them as they excluded him. Now he found himself in the Value System, still with his head down excluding the world. The difference was, no girls here; just spays, gays and the very frustrated.
Lawrence eyed the man opposite, recognising him as from the front row of Gang 4. That meant he was an old-timer. Like Lawrence, he was physically hefty, with strong shoulders and wrists as thick as clubs. His large face was bold-featured, with heavy brows and a deep chin, the kind of face that might once have made a career on the stage. However, the eyes were now sunk in shadows and they held a dulled mood of resignation. Lawrence guessed he was in his mid-forties.
“I’m Big Stak.”
“I’m Mirror-Face.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I forget.”
“You can’t have forgotten that.”
Mirror-Face took a gulp of the dandelion tea and smacked the cup down.
“You’ve a lot to learn, tyro.”
He turned his face away, shutting Lawrence out of his attention. SMS London had just ascended to the dais. The population fell silent, leaving the clangs of pots and pans being stacked in the kitchen.
“These are the tasks of the evening shift.”
Gang 4 would be on harvesting. This was good news, apparently—no pleasures of the flesh.
Harvesting involved copses, rather than corpses. The gang harvested willow from the plantation and stored the yield in the Factory. From questioning Spiderman, Lawrence began to appreciate the extreme economic logic of the Value System. Cadavers came in at Goods Inwards, the hides got separated from the meat and waste. Waste got left on an open area near the Pig Farm called the Midden, where the local population of seagulls, magpies and crows, not to mention an colony of giant rats, was happy to assist in stripping it all down to bare bones. Hides were either bated in tanks, or smoked into buckskin in the Smoking House. The treated hides got sorted out, dyed and made into finished product in the Workshop. Products for working people were branded “The Captain’s Best”. Luxury items like briefcases, motorcycle jackets, coats and gloves were branded “Style Captain”. The bones got pounded to dust in a hammer mill powered off extremely bored value on a treadmill. The bone meal got mixed with ashes from the Smoking House and spread as fertiliser into the rich fenland soil of the farmland around the Factory to grow food for the population, thus closing the cycle. By the end of the shift, it was completely dark and they finished under a splendid exhibition of the Milky Way. Lawrence was amazed the ultramarines were so lax about security. He would quickly learn nothing got you hated faster than upsetting the clockwork schedule of the Value System. Delays ate into the very little leisure time that there was.
The gangs formed up for evening parade in twelve blocks on the cobbled yard of the Square. Lawrence took his place in Gang 4, in the rear row at the right-hand end.
SMS London stepped up beside a stone-framed door overlooking the Yard.
“Parade silence.”
There was silence. It was a calm night, sounds carried from far away. There was a faint roar of breakers. This, to Lawrence’s mind, was a detail worth remembering. It must now be nearly low tide, as it had been low tide in the morning twelve hours ago when they unloaded cadavers from the barge. The sea ought to have been miles away, retreated beyond tidal flats. That the sea was still close could be a critical detail in the chain of invention that Lawrence was going to have to assemble in order to get back to life.
SMS London rapped on the door. It opened to the magnificent figure of The Captain in his shimmering black uniform with its gleaming escarbuncles of status. He stepped out and the long jaw lifted and swept them all.
“Commence parade.”
“All master sergeants count and report.”
Ratty started with Lawrence-cum-Zeta729 and advanced up the back row in ascending order of precedence in the gang. Each value barked their tag and Ratty ticked it off. He had not reached the end of the back row before suspiciously large jumps appeared, suggesting a value was gone already; Zeta641 stood by Zeta620, for instance. Ratty progressed into the deltas in the fifth row from the back—epsilon must have been skipped as too awkward—and the gaps got larger. Delta961 stood by Delta905. The gammas ran out in the second row. There were no alphas left.
The first hint of a glitch was from Gang 7. An edge of restlessness began to grow, until SMS London bellowed for silence, and there was silence. The master sergeant of Gang 7 finally walked out to the front and offered a muted report. It greatly amused The Captain. The jaw lifted high and his cackling, high pitched laugh filled the Square.
“I have something amusing to share with you,” he announced. “One of our new value has departed. He is Value Zeta727 of Gang 7. He is about five feet tall and has the aptitude for flight of a ten-year-old.”
Gnevik had escaped? Lawrence had been left standing by a snivelling child molester. The Captain was not even slightly fazed by the escape. He turned his back on the parade and returned inside, shaking his head and slamming the door behind him.
When the grids broke up, there was much pumping of Gang 7 for details. Several people had seen Zeta727 at dinner. Seemingly, some of the toughs of the gang had given him a hard time, jeering he was classed S.O.S. i.e. to be Spayed On Sight. They had vowed to castrate the kid-fucker in the toilets that very night.
It was not clear how Gnevik’s crimes had become known. Lawrence had not said anything. He could not imagine the taciturn Pezzini would have tattled, Gnevik would hardly have revealed all unless he was an idiot. The ultras must have passed out the information for a laugh. It was even possible The Captain had imported Gnevik as a little treat for the thugs of the population. The general view was that Gnevik had bolted during the last shift, when Gang 7 was gathering potatoes from a section of the farm called the Great Patch. It was one of the most remote areas of the prison.
“Are we free?” Lawrence asked Spiderman.
“Free as galley slaves.”
Day One was over. He was within measurable distance of getting behind the privacy of his own eyelids. Spiderman beckoned Lawrence over to the Dining Hall. Late evening tea and cake were available, although not all value took advantage. They settled with a table all to themselves.
“What were you fogged for, Spiderman?”
“It’s a long time since anyone asked me that. Christ, it’s hard to recall ever having had a life. That’s the problem with you new guys, you make us old guys think. Not that it’s a bad thing. There’s no writing here, so if something drops from your mind, it’s gone forever. Your life slowly dies inside your head… Let’s see.” He sighed. “My real name is Julian Yves Allen. That’s the first thing I think when I wake up. I wonder if I could still write my own name.” A tear bulged from one eye and rolled down to the corner of his mouth. Lawrence perceived a doubt in Spiderman, as if he was no longer sure of his own name. “My real name is Julian Yves Allen. I shouldn’t curse you—damn you Big Stak. I’m Beta707 and that means I’ve been here an age. My old life is a blur at the far end of a bloody long tunnel.”
“I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No. I’ll answer.” He had to stop and take time to compose himself. Lawrence felt guilty now at having raked up ancient memories of times gone forever. It was not lost on him that one day he would be just the same, unless he escaped, or killed himself.
“It was back in ’92. Rhymes with ‘fuck you too’. I worked in the Corporate Audit of G2P.” G2P was short for Guards to the People, like Universal Parrier and General Wardian a licensed glory trust competing to provide security against calamitous irruptions by surplus flow. “I was so proud of myself. A guy who came out of a shitty backstreet of Camden asylum was a grade lieutenant investigating corruption by senior officers.”
Lawrence pulled a face. “I think I can see what’s coming.”
“You can see what’s coming. I pounced on the stores of the big depot at Kings Cross in the Central Enclave and discovered 120 tyres missing. So, I rounded up the whole stores team and grilled them until they started to crack. A corrupt little scheme to steal tyres from the stores and sell them to garages that serviced glory trucks. Tyres are worth good gold, because it takes skilled labour to make them and the sovereign lands stiff the glory trusts big time for the rubber. I was starting to trace the scam up the line towards some quite senior officers when—”
“You were arrested for being a kingpin crook, architect of a grand scale of tyre smuggling—”
“Yup. Exactly how it was. I got five years’ Fog. Except, it ended up being a bit more than that.”
They stared at the table. Finally, Spiderman stirred.
“It’s surprisingly easy to die in this place, Big Stak. You cut yourself unloading a barge and a week later die of blood poisoning. You lose hope and hang yourself. You piss someone off and they cut your throat as you sleep. Or Ratty shoots you.
They don’t bother much with the lash here, whatever The Captain told you—if you make a pest of yourself, you’re pig fodder. Live for each day. If there’s a moment of beauty and a good laugh, let that be enough. I’ve seen everything. Folk are hearty one moment, they snap and get shot the next. Don’t underestimate how lucky you were London didn’t shoot you. Probably the only reason he refrained is because you’ve got leadership potential.”
“No it isn’t. I was specially selected to come here. I can feel it.”
Spiderman smiled patiently, shaking his head.
“Everyone thinks that. I stand on the front row at the right-hand end. That means 90% of the gang who were alive when I got here are now dead. That’s hard fact. Keep your trap shut and work hard. With a bit of luck, you’ll make more friends than enemies.”
*
A few minutes later, Lawrence followed Spiderman into Dormitory 16. What an aeon seemed to have passed since last night, when Tricky Fingers showed him his bunk. Now the dormitory smelled of sweaty feet and stale grease, the latter he would come to know as the odour of the soap produced in the Factory from human fat. The narrow aisles were clogged with legs and boots and heaps of overalls. Lawrence picked his way to his bunk. The jolly fat face and bird’s wing eyebrows of Buttons chuckled up at him. Next, he saw giggling little Pig Tit. Burly Mirror-Face lay out on his bunk, cramming it with his frame, his morose face staring up blankly at the bunk above. Lawrence’s bunk was next along, on the lowest row about a foot off the floor boards. Well, Mirror-Face seemed OK. At least he was not a groper. Spiderman leaped up onto the top bunk with a spasm of his arms.
“I see we’re neighbours,” he said. “I hope you don’t snore, or make too much noise wanking.”
Wanking was the last thing Lawrence planned. A gorgeous relaxation came over him. At long last, peace behind his own eyelids. Away he faded into the back of his skull and the blissful oblivion of sleep. Colours flashed. Turmeric. Paprika. Sapphire blue sea. Emerald green oak, a livid canopy of spring. Sarah Kelly and he lying naked in the heather, clothes flung all around them, her skirt dangling from a branch. She laughed and rolled close against him, whispering in his ear, wrapping her hand around his cock, squeezing it…
Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 2 Page 5
