“You’ve a queer streak in you after all,” whispered someone by his ear. His eyes shot wide open. A hand gripped his cock, rigid from the dream. Foul breath washed his face. The hand worked up and down, gripping tighter.
Like a plank bent to splintering point and released, Lawrence sprang clear of the mattress and threw himself from the bunk amid shouting and swearing. Someone kicked his leg. Someone else—it sounded like Spiderman—moaned.
“Can’t you butt-fuckers shut it for once?”
“You fucker Big Stak.”
That was Tricky Fingers. Hands grabbed the flaps of Lawrence’s overalls and lifted his chest off the floor. He swiped into darkness with his open palm and got a cracker like an oar smacking water. The impact drew laughter and cheering from all around, followed by furious cursing—Tricky Fingers again. By this time Lawrence was recovering his wits enough to curse himself for blowing up again. He shoved Tricky Finger backwards, rolled under his bunk and writhed through bags and boots to emerge in the next aisle, where he stood up, breathing hard. The tag in his ear must have caught something in the rush, as he could feel blood dripping onto his shoulder.
“Where is that prick?” Tricky Fingers was blowing like an angry bear on the far side of the bunks. Another man pressed against Lawrence.
“Well hell-oh, who have we here?” cooed a voice. A hand patted Lawrence’s chest.
“Excuse me,” he said, not really knowing why he was being polite. He backed away, tripped over a pair of boots and fell with a loud thump.
“Is that you, my perfect princess?” came the voice of Tricky Fingers. “I’m having you, my pretty little thing. You’re mine.”
Lawrence blundered about from bunk to bunk, hopelessly lost in the dark, until the faint rectangles of the starlit windows gave him a bearing. The realities of this idiotic blowing up were now large in his mind—a gang leader made a bad enemy. Passive evasion must be the healthiest tactic, at least until he had more allies like Spiderman. His hands touched bare skin. This darkness was alive with naked blokes. He ploughed into a table that rumbled like an earthquake.
“What are you running from Big Stak?” Tricky Fingers was closing in from the left. “I can make your queer streak flourish like Kew Gardens. There is no use running from yourself. Pretty boys like you are always queer.”
Spiderman called out they would have Ratty up to drag them out for a night parade if they didn’t shut up. Lawrence had reached the doorway by this time, where he paused, shaking his head. It was just like being back at public school, with a sook monitor whining at them. The Value System reduced grown men to this.
He skimmed down the steps to the door out to the Yard. It was not locked. Out on the cobbles, the chill reached through his open overalls. He fastened up the bone toggles. There was no point in returning to the dormitory for a while, the situation had to be left to cool. To shelter from the worst of the wind, he edged into the nearest archway and then on impulse marched straight out onto the track that led to the Tidal Basin. Why did he do it? Any guard would have shot him dead for certain. The truth was that he just did not care.
In fact, there was no guard. He was free! Out of the shelter of the Square, the wind stabbed through every crevice, up his sleeves, down his neck, it numbed his ears. He kept walking into the night. Behind him, the Square disappeared within a few paces due to its blackout. It was the obvious pointlessness of the excursion that brought him to a halt. He had no plans, no route, no boots even. It was hardly the prologue of a successful escape. Perhaps the same blind revulsion had swept Gnevik’s mind clear of any caution, driving him to make a lunatic bolt for freedom. Perhaps he would make it.
It took a summit of will to begin the reluctant trudge back to the Square. Still, the escapade into the night had not been useless. He had discovered the ultramarines kept no guard. He would be able to make nocturnal explorations, building up a mental map of the whole prison territory, counting paces in the daytime, remembering little details like posts or culverts that could be touched in the darkness. It was peculiar in the extreme that the ultramarines did not maintain any guard. There must be a good reason for it.
Back up on the first floor, the dormitory door was shut. Rather than risk getting surprise-attacked, he passed on to the toilets, reasoning that the toilet floor would get him through the first night, if not very comfortably.
A couple of minutes later he drifted back, dazed. The toilets were alive with nudity, bodies wrapped around bodies, legs in the air, stifled cries of ecstasy. He hung about outside the dormitory, feeling like a spare prick at a party. Finally, he rammed down the handle and threw the door wide open. To the whole dormitory, he announced:
“This is the return of Value Big Stak. Do not fuck with my arsehole, or I will fuck with their head.”
“Get to bed and sleep,” groaned a weary Spiderman from the darkness. Lawrence felt his way back to his bunk, where he found the mattress half off and the bedding scattered up and down the aisle. He gathered enough of it for a pillow and a blanket and got back in. The dormitory was cold now, his numbed hands and feet barely thawed and his ear tag ached, despite all of which he was soon fast asleep again.
Chapter 7
The morning bell yanked Lawrence into Day Two of the rest of his life. For several minutes he lay holding off the world with his eyelids, without enjoying his alternative sheltered life. An awesome thought dominated his mind: I spent yesterday unloading drowned bodies and then dismembering them, yet I got a good night’s sleep…
My name is Lawrence Morton Aldingford and I was born on 8th May 2079. Sarah-Kelly Cressida Newman was born in North Kensington basin in Old Greater London on 2nd Feb. 2080. Her name is anglicised from Nowakovski, an ancestor who fled Poland to fight with the British army during the Second World War of the Public Era. My brother is Donald Bartleigh Aldingford and he is a sleek rabbit. My father is Morton Fraser Peter Aldingford and he is a bombastic narcissist. My mother was Agatha Marcia Kay Harrison. She rotted to death from diabetes. My stepmother is a bitch… What else must he remember? He had to start the habit now to minimise the loss.
Someone jabbed his leg. He opened his eyes on the ankles of Spiderman, who was stooped over with his face just a foot away.
“On your feet, lazybones, or you’ll miss all the fun!”
When Lawrence lifted his head, his ear unstuck with a jab of pain, having become glued by dried blood to the pillow. He entered Day Two believing it would only be as bad as Day One. He was wrong. Confronting him in the toilets was a naked man hanged from a pipe over the urinals.
“Who’s that?” Lawrence asked Gnasher, who was taking a piss.
“It was Zeta505, undead prick. Now he’s a dead prick.”
Blood had collected in Zeta505’s hands and feet, blackening them. It had collected in his penis too, which was erect with a black bell end.
“Is he fucking happy in heaven?”
“No idea,” said Gnasher, hitching up his pants. “Most I’ve seen are like that.”
“Should we get him down?”
“Nah. The ultras will take it over to the Pig Farm.”
On returning to the dormitory, Lawrence spotted Tricky Fingers, Ugly Toes and Yip-Dog gathered by one of the bunks. Serial Sidney was the focus of their attention. He was the value Lawrence and Yip-Dog had loaded onto a cart the previous morning. Serial Sidney’s face was cement grey. He lay with his eyes shut and his mouth slanted, half open.
Tricky Fingers said: “There’s barely a pulse.”
The three stood in silence for some seconds. Finally, Yip-Dog said: “I’ll do it.”
But Ugly Toes stepped forward.
“No. I’m his section leader. I’ll do it.”
Ugly Toes pulled the straw-filled pillow from under Serial Sidney’s head and laid it over his face, pressing down hard, so hard the veins bulged at his temples. The value nearby turned their backs or stared at their feet.
Tricky Fingers felt for a p
ulse.
“He’s gone.”
More lessons awaited at parade. First, a couple of ultramarine heelers disappeared into the stairwell and a few minutes later returned with the body of Zeta505 sagging between them. They swung the cadaver onto their cart. Master Sergeant Ratty snipped off the tag and dropped it in his pocket. Serial Sidney’s corpse arrived a few minutes later and was similarly de-tagged. The heelers dragged the cart off clattering towards the Pig Farm.
Now SMS London ascended the steps outside the office of The Captain. He waited. Silence fell over some eighteen hundred head of value. The wind hissed across the roof tiles, a seagull squawked from a chimney pot, then, with a simplicity that broke Lawrence’s heart, spread its wings and flew away. SMS London rapped on the door. After a few seconds, it swung inwards. The towering, superhuman outline of The Captain stood against the glare of a chandelier. He stepped forward, right hand resting in his pistol, surveying the air above his population with an expression of bored contempt.
“Commence parade.”
This triggered SMS London’s bark: “All master sergeants count and report.”
And so the routine ran. After the count, the master sergeants gathered around SMS London. At length he turned around and confirmed to The Captain that all was in order. After this, The Captain addressed them in his hoarse, high-pitched voice.
“Yesterday at evening parade, I informed you of a deserter, Value Zeta727. I am pleased to report that he has been returned by the marsh people.”
SMS London shouted to bring up the remainder. A couple of heelers pulled a cart up through the gang blocks and parked it before The Captain. On it rested a small, white form. It looked hardly more than a seal pup.
“You will pass the remains and learn once again the outcome for those who steal my future value. That is all.” He swung around and swept back inside, the door thrown shut by some unseen flunky.
SMS London ordered the gangs to file past the remains, rank by rank. Lawrence began to swear. This was only the beginning of a day that stretched out ahead like unending mountain ranges. When it came to his rank’s turn, they looped out to the front and then dispersed into groups to get breakfast. No one missed breakfast, despite the unappetising condition of the ‘lesson’.
The object appeared too small to be Gnevik, more like a plucked turkey. The hands and feet had been hacked off, leaving stumps of dark red meat bound with tourniquets of a black twine Lawrence learned afterwards was spun from human hair. Where the genitals had been was just a ragged cavity of fat and dark flesh. The eyeballs were gone, leaving the lids collapsed in. The lips had been cut away, revealing gums with horse-shoes of red holes where the teeth had been dragged out. They had not spared the poor bastard much. Needless to say, the remains had been de-tagged to keep the books in order.
Lawrence hurried away, curving towards the Dining Hall, lacking appetite but knowing he had to eat. He had to eat to work hard, work hard to stay alive. It was brutally simple. In the Dining Hall, he was looking for value to sit with when he noticed big-tits Pezzini gazing into space, his porridge untouched. Lawrence sat opposite him.
“Wake up, Pez… Zeta728 and eat! You have to eat to work, work to stay alive. You understand?”
He scooped up porridge, washing it down with dandelion tea. Pezzini frowned at him. Lawrence reached across, pressing a dollop of porridge against Pezzini’s lips.
“Eat! Eat to live.”
Pezzini finally took half of it in his mouth, where it remained, rolling around his tongue.
“Porridge reminds me of boyhood in Brent Cross.”
“You think death tastes any better?”
“I will not be here much longer.”
“You plan to kill yourself?”
“This posting is an error. Krossington will extract me when he learns.”
“Learns what?” Lawrence was amused by his, well its, optimism.
“It’s a secret.”
“You’re fooling yourself.”
“No. I was his appointed regent. It is out of the question he would condemn me to this.”
“People at your level don’t get fogged without a reason—one hell of a good reason.”
Pezzini treated him with silent contempt for a few minutes.
“A guy hanged himself in our toilets last night,” Lawrence said.
“They hang themselves all the time. I have already made enquiries concerning mortality,” Pezzini said. His spoke on in a didactic tone as he expounded in his element. “The principal causes are suicide and wounds, which get infected in this working environment. There is also what I at first thought was diabetes, although I now believe is a sexually transmitted disease. I strongly advise against homosexual behaviours. Death by assault is also common. Then there are the escape attempts. Several value have told me the marsh people are descended from lunatics released from prisons during the Glorious Resolution. That is probably true; it would certainly explain the bizarre rituals.
“The Captain’s numbering system allows some calculations. Bearing in mind my own tag of Zeta728 and the omission of epsilon from the sequence, it is evident that more than 4,700 head of value have arrived in this system. Life expectancy is about six years, although the survival curve is quite skewed, with a long upper tail. The system is much larger than it was in the past.”
“You’re a natural born statistician. Krossington probably sent you here for depressing people. Well, see you ‘round, Zeta728.”
SMS London announced the morning’s allocation of duties. Gang 4 was on ‘carrying’. This turned out to be the hardest work, physically, Lawrence had been asked to do. On the plus side, it did not involve pleasures of the flesh. They lugged fresh water from a lake about a mile from the Square. Lawrence counted an average of 1,430 paces from the Square to a wooden jetty by the lake. The gang filled casks and hauled them by wagon to the Square, where other value hoisted them to the roof and replenished the fresh water reservoir. Lawrence made a note to get into the roof party. There must be a good view from up there.
The afternoon duty of Gang 4 was ‘bating’.
Bating happened in the Factory, in the next bay along from the Separation Shop. Human hides from separation were mixed with pig hides. Both were laid in shallow tanks, which were then flooded to about six inches’ depth with sea water. A couple of value arrived with a bucket of pigeon droppings. These they spread evenly about each tank. Then the ‘bating’ began. In bare feet and with the trousers of their overalls rolled up the value got into the tanks and kneaded and worked the hides in the obnoxious brew underfoot.
After they had been treading for an hour or so, Spiderman started grousing about being bored out of his flippin’ mind. Yip-Dog tried to tell a joke in his halting, clumsy way and bungled the punch line. He got roundly cursed.
Lawrence grasped all too clearly how being funny was a safety feature—it could save his life. He yarned them an old one about a boss dragged by his tie into a carpet-weaving machine, how the carpet was cut up and one bit was laid in a bordello, another bit in a wealthy young lady’s bedroom, another bit in the toilet of an exclusive London club, another bit in… It provided Lawrence ample scope for the preposterous.
“Ah, not a bad one,” Spiderman said, wiping an eye. “Not bad at all. You got any more like that?”
He did. Lawrence was full of shit when he felt like it. He scraped up a mish-mash of One Thousand and One Nights and vulgar jokes picked up as a glory trooper. There was a mermaid, a unicorn and a dragon stranded on a desert island… He could not recall much of the puerile rubbish along the way, but it got a laugh and in this place, if you worked hard and raised a laugh, you were probably as safe as you could be without Tricky Fingers’ cock stuck up your arse.
Just one more shift and Day Two would be under his belt. Already he could sense time had accelerated relative to the creeping endurance test of Day One. Day Three would pass quicker and Day Four quicker still. The weeks would zip by like so
many playing cards. Apathy could gulp a decade in this place.
The gang’s duty of the evening was the Cannery. Spiderman grumbled about this after SMS London left the Dining Hall.
“Those bastards have it in for us. Bating and canning in one day, that’s on top of carrying.”
Tricky Fingers gathered up the playing cards and swept his pile of curved plastic chips off the table into his leather pouch.
“What are those little chips?” Lawrence asked.
“Money,” Spiderman said.
“We get paid on Saturday,” Tricky Fingers said, “and after that it’s party time.”
They were all laughing. The talk of Saturday’s escape cheered them up. They chatted like a bunch of schoolgirls out to the Yard, where the gang assembled around Master Sergeant Ratty. Lawrence learned today was Friday. Saturday was party night. There was no work on Sundays, which created the chance of doing a little exploration. First he had to deal with the immediate challenges of the Cannery, whatever that was. They set off once again for the Factory. The reek of the place still hung about his clothes and hair and his body was greasy and sweaty after two full days without bathing. He would have to risk a shower this evening. Some other bastard could pick up the soap if he dropped it.
The Cannery filled the middle section of the Factory, between the Bating Hall and the Smoking House. The first impression was the engine room of a ship. One stood looking down an avenue of what appeared to be boilers each about the size of a railway shunter. Down the middle ran a single long steel table, on the scale of a Viking long ship, so clean it shone in the light from skylights and tallow lanterns. The gang flowed around Lawrence. Trolleys stacked with glass preserving jars rattled past towards the central table, around which value crowded at the ready. They scrubbed down under streams of water gushing from taps. That done, they each took a jar from a passing trolley and stood waiting. The jars were perfectly familiar to Lawrence, as they had been part of his life in General Wardian. A train of suspicion crawled in his mind. He simply could not believe it true. Not even The Captain would dare… The truth arrived in stainless steel tubs heaped with fresh red meat. His eyes dropped to Spiderman’s.
Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 2 Page 6
