Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 2

by Malcolm J Wardlaw

  Lawrence did not need to be told what to do next. He slung the bow over his chest and turned his back, walking off with a steady, calm gait, his back stretched taut in anticipation of an arrow through a lung. He knew he was finished here in Brent Cross. Not even the marginals would accept him. That was not really what caused him to drift on in a blind daze. It would be an abomination to massacre people like that. Is it not strange how one’s own voice can be the bitterest critic? The words had torn the guts up his throat as he said them. He was still trembling, in mind as much as in body. The crack of doubt was now a gap through which he could see the guilt on his bloody soul. No amount of dodging, writhing denial could obscure a simple truth; in the big wide world beyond the officer cadre of the glory trusts, right-thinking people would be horrified to learn of the preventions done in the name of their safety.

  How many head of surplus had he killed, directly or indirectly, in his life? He could only make a guess based on the number of patrols he had completed, of which he had kept a mental tally. Seventy-eight patrols as a commander, forty-one as executive officer and twenty-two as a leading basic. Say an average of one brush every two patrols, twenty-five head prevented per brush, which was probably being kind to his guilt… Almost two thousand head. No, almost two thousand people. No again, it made double that, since most sea-borne surplus were young adults in their most fecund years who would have issued more children had they survived. Strangely, the number calmed him. It was too big to relate to. A single head of surplus with a face and a voice would have been a greater number.

  But not every brush involved prevention. For appearances’ sake they would take aboard small loads of surplus and store them in a forward hold. These would be lagered in Oban and exported by ship—Lawrence believed the surplus got released in Glasgow, although that was just hearsay amongst the barge crews. Thinking about these saved loads did not ease his guilt, on the contrary, he was pinioned by disbelief that he could have exhibited such cynicism and not even given it a second thought.

  Was he guilty or not? Or was he just afraid of what others would think? How much guilt can a person hold? Can you feel guilty for the murder of thousands of people, not one of whom you can remember? Preventions happened at a distance, never close enough to make out individuals. It was just a mass, a jostle, that vanished behind sheets of spray and afterwards was gone. It was not Lawrence personally who did it. He worked within a greater system for which these actions were normal operating procedure. Again and again across a decade of service, that system had told him he was doing the right thing.

  This whole bloody business was exhausting him. It was as if the vitality of his brain was being sucked down a straw. This kind of pre-occupation could kill a man who had such immediate priorities as getting out of this asylum before dusk. He had to get control of his own mind and think the practical matters of survival, or he would not survive. He knew of no way out of this place but the way by which he had arrived. It was not a route he planned to retrace.

  He came onto Brent Cross market after striding through the workers’ districts with a mean expression. It deterred any attempts to baulk his progress. He noticed immediately how crowded the market was. What alarmed him was the large number of glory troopers milling about or standing in big groups—some large enough to be whole companies. He found a discreet copse of birch trees from where he could gather details. It was some time before he appreciated not one ultra wagon was on the market place, nor were there any ultramarines on foot. Glory troops and working people—some in servants’ uniforms as footmen or butlers—intermingled, sustaining a roar of discussion. It was difficult to accept this was a typical Saturday afternoon. Glory troops normally never appeared on the commons in uniform. Something strange had occurred, somewhere. Lawrence began to scout around, passing close to groups, picking up scraps of chatter. Something had happened in Bloomsbury, the district of his parents’ house. It involved the National Party and Bloomsbury College, which was just five minutes’ walk from the family home. Ambitious servants and craftspeople took night classes there. He had once done a chambermaid with accounting aspirations in that general vicinity.

  Outrage united the market place into one society of friends. The news did not surprise Lawrence, in fact, what baffled him was the astonishment of everyone around him. A force of glory troops from the Euston depot of General Wardian had attacked the National Party offices in Bloomsbury College. They had killed scores. Rings of listeners heard witnesses who told of whole streets strewn with the dead like so many twigs after a gale. No one knew where President Vasco Banner was. Some said the glories had killed him. Others that he was in the notorious Basement of Euston depot. Lawrence presently learned that Vasco Banner was the president of the National Party, the man who had drawn it from the back rooms of zealots to public existence here in Brent Cross.

  This murderous action had backfired. Once news went around Euston depot, thousands of the troops marched straight out in protest. Others threw away their uniforms for civilian clothes, fearful that anyone in glory uniform would be SOS: Slaughtered On Sight. This mass exodus had finished up pooled here on Brent Cross market place (and probably on other asylum market places).

  Dusk passed into night. The market became a swirling foment of torchlit speeches, chants and bloodthirsty rants. Lawrence felt safe deep in this dark sea of people. His bow marked him as a rodent hunter without further explanation. The square eventually settled in the early hours, thousands sleeping out on the open gravel huddled under tarpaulins. Lawrence snatched dozes under a line of abandoned wagons with a huddle of others.

  The next morning, black-suited officials of the National Party were out in force, gradually setting to order, stretching out cordons guarded by hard-faced ex-glory troopers. They started checking passports. A large marquee tent was erected where glory deserters were issued armbands bearing the flag of the Republic of the New Nation, a tricolour of deep blue, yellow and dark green. Mills in the asylum were churning out mountains of these armbands. The new troops stood in hundred-blocks and swore allegiance to the Provisional Cabinet of the Republic of the New Nation, thereby becoming the National Army. The National Party was being reinstituted under a new president called Theodore Farkas, formerly a passed-over team lieutenant of General Wardian. Presumably he was one of the angry, passed-over officers who had pushed for investigation of glory crimes. In a brief but punchy inaugural address, Farkas promised the issue of an arrest list of glory criminals identified by the Atrocity Commission.

  So, there was an Atrocity Commission? Lawrence picked up more details in the crowd. Kalchelik had been broadly correct. The Commission was hunting officers, not troopers. Witnesses who came forward would have immunity. At least three independent statements with corroboration were required to place an officer on the arrest list. Lawrence thought back to all the basics he had dismissed because they lacked the stomach for prevention. Well, did it really matter if he turned up on an arrest list issued by the National Party? Decent society would just laugh at such impudence. Lawrence had always felt the strongest arguments for the glory trusts came from the feeble reasoning of the radicals. After his crisis of the previous day, he felt he was regaining some confidence that his own past was justified, even if he was glad it was behind him.

  In all of this drama, never had it occurred to Lawrence that the guarding of the turnpikes had been disrupted. It was wariness of the National Party cordons that gradually pushed him down to the south end of the market. From there he saw that the toll gates were lifted and the blockhouse shuttered up. Traffic was wandering south towards Duddon Hill bridge in the distance. Lawrence cursed himself for not having taken advantage of the wide-open turnpike sooner. He adopted a simple plan: to reconnoitre the frontier of North Kensington basin, find a way in and contact Sarah-Kelly’s family. There was no point in thinking any further than that.

  However, after clearing the summit at Duddon Bridge he gained a fine view down towards the Grande Enceinte. He was
astonished to observe that the gates of Ladbroke fort were completely open and touristic opportunists were flowing in and out. To join them was a magnetic temptation—but suppose the glories came back while he was in the Central Enclave? He would be trapped like a rat.

  While he was wrangling over these risks, a deep and languid throbbing distracted him. He looked around, expecting to see some enormous glory vehicle breasting Duddon Hill. However, the noise was coming from above. It was a flying boat, a large and graceful bird with slender wings like a seagull and a sleek fuselage reminiscent of a dogfish. Lawrence was more accustomed to the chunky mail planes operated by the glories and the sovereigns. This machine was by comparison an exotic creation of gleaming silver. It descended in a languid spiral over Brent Cross, its great size scaling its speed to the drift of a kite. Just before it dropped from sight below Duddon Hill, it banked and swung its nose at Lawrence, provoking an absurd sensation that he had been spotted. The magnificent machine floated closer, its engines dropping into a kind of primeval snorting. The wings canted into another steep bank only a couple of hundred feet above Lawrence offering a direct view of the cockpit. There was a single pilot, with a profile so uncannily like that of The Captain that it fired an electric thrill of alarm across Lawrence’s chest. Of course, it was just a coincidence. The flying boat glided down out of sight behind the frontier of North Kensington basin. Lawrence wondered how long the pilot would risk his beautiful machine there, once he learned he had descended into an insurrection.

  His attention returned to the tempting open gates of Ladbroke fort. It would be a great risk to enter the Central Enclave, but it was the chance of a lifetime, he had to take it. He continued down the hill and joined the flow under the arch through Ladbroke fort.

  The warren of lanes in the compressed lower-class quarters of the Central Enclave confounded him. After night fell, he could only feel his way about, bumping into others. Sometimes he came into streets alive with dancing and bands and bars—yet one step off them and all was pitch dark. He blundered about for hours. Later, he was walking for a long time in deep grass, tripping over tree roots. This could only be Hyde Park. Apsley House at Hyde Park Corner was the first land mark he recognised. He walked straight through the unguarded district frontier into Mayfair and up an unlit Park Lane to the district gates of Bloomsbury at Marble Arch. The district frontier was a bubble of sunlight under floodlights. Again, the frontier was unguarded and Lawrence could walk straight through.

  The security of the Central Enclave had totally broken down.

  Now as he approached his parents’ house his caution rose, his senses intensified. He crouched beside a plane tree at the edge of the gravel and took some minutes to gather in the scene. What baffled him was the large traffic of people in the streets. He judged from the accents that the little groups passing were household servants. This was strange, as the streets would normally be deserted on a Sunday evening. Big tides of servants happened on Saturday morning and Monday morning. This drifting population around him was therefore a mystery, however it was a welcome mystery, as it gave him cover he would not otherwise have had.

  Lawrence felt it highly unlikely The Captain had any kind of full-time watch on the parents’ house. It was not possible for a stranger to hang around the streets without getting picked up by a glory patrol. It was far more likely a member of the household staff had been bribed into keeping a watch from the inside. On a Sunday evening most servants would be off-duty in their quarters in the house basement. It should be possible to get in and ‘invigorate’ Father by walking into the library, where he would be reading Galsworthy and listening to Haydn on the heirloom gramophone player, if it still worked.

  Lawrence possessed an ace. He could get into his parents’ garden by way of tortuous back alleys. What was more, he could do it at night, from long practice as a miscreant teenager, provided he could locate the entrance to the right alley. This proved to be frustrating in the dark streets. After a certain amount of retracing his steps up and down the main boulevard near his parents’ house, a lone limousine emerged from a side lane and shone its headlights across a water trough and peculiar-shaped tree he recognised. This gave him an exact fix to the alley he was trying to find. From there, his memory proved accurate. So many paces, feel for a corner with a brick missing at waist level, follow the wall to the smell of cess tank, cross and take the passage, running hands along both walls until the end. Here he had to push his way through a thick hedge with an iron fence in it. Evidently, no one had used the secret route since he last had as a teenager, for it proved to be a tough squeeze, even after leaving the bow outside. He stood up inside the garden of his upbringing. In silence, he removed his boots, tied them by the laces and hung them around his neck.

  Not a glimmer showed from the main house just twenty yards in front of him. From the summer house nearby came a smell of coal fire, which he thought peculiar. Who would use a summer house in November? After several minutes of gathering the scene, he advanced with toes out to test the surface ahead. Stooped, his hands out sweeping ahead, he edged up the lawn until he came to flag stones and then a brick wall. This was wall of the Annex, a bungalow built on to the rear of the sandstone main house for his grandmother, who had died when he was eight. It might now be used for servants’ quarters, so he crept to the right, towards the front of the house.

  The total silence and darkness of the house unnerved him. Even late in the evening, there ought to have been some clangs from the boiler house, the smell of cigarettes, perhaps a banjo in the servants’ quarters in the basement. The windows of the ground floor were not shuttered, nor were curtains drawn, the rooms were simply dead dark within. What truly shook him was on moving around to the front porch, his probing fingers discovered that the front door was ajar and inside was as dark as outside. It seemed the house had been completely abandoned.

  Lawrence crouched in the porch, trying to think this through. With the gates of the Grande Enceinte and the internal district frontiers all open, decent society had no safety features at all to keep the slummies out. Perhaps everyone had evacuated. Where might they have gone? A breach of the Grande Enceinte left few places to run to. Possibly some would have achieved asylum in the Mayfair estates of their sovereign benefactors. Every sovereign kept a force of marines as an ultimate safety feature.

  This still did not explain why the house had been left with the front door open.

  He edged inside on hands and knees, deciding within a few moments there could be no danger here. The air was cold and lacked any smell of cooking or coal fires. He found the kitchen range dead and the house batteries so run down that the one cupboard light he tried achieved only a feeble orange glow. The dining table was clear. The library informed him of nothing, except its freshness had not been sullied by pipe smoke in a long time. The emptiness of the garage was no surprise, as his parents would not have departed their house on foot like common slummies. Father must have sent the household staff home, leaving the basement was silent. That would explain all the people out in the streets—many houses must have dismissed their staff once the trouble started. Up on the first floor, Lawrence walked into a new mystery. The master’s bedroom carried a slight hint of lemons and cinnamon. That was the smell of Sarah-Kelly. He frowned and shook his head in the dark. It was proving to be a bizarre night!

  He sat on his parent’s bed amid the smell of Sarah-Kelly and considered a dilemma. His father would not return until the Grande Enceinte was secured by glory troops again, however to wait that long meant being trapped inside the Central Enclave. His combat instincts railed against being cut off from retreat. He could—

  He fell back on the bed laughing at the ceiling. It was such a fabulous idea, charismatic in its insolence. He would get over to Bermondsey asylum and hunt rodents. The particular rodent he had in mind was about six foot three and the meanest bastard that ever scuttled from a sewer: Captain Prentice Nightminster. Should he commit himself to an old rumour from the Val
ue System? Well who would have made up the name Prentice for a villain like The Captain? It was too absurd not to be true. Did The Captain sip tea with his old mum in a twee little terraced house? How would that scathing bigot’s face react when Big Stak came at him with a carving knife?

  His levity dissipated, to leave the hard truth that his decision now determined the rest of his life. In fact, the decision extended far beyond his own life. He sensed the hopeless miseries of Spiderman and Mirror-Face still trapped in the Value System and the hundreds of others like them. Lawrence’s escape brought its own responsibilities. The most basic one was to remain true to his purpose to expose the Value System to the world and free its population. His own father was far and away the best chance. It galled him to have to come back home at the age of twenty-seven and fall on his father’s charity. He would never have done it but for the poor bastards still trapped in the Value System, whom he could save by swallowing his pride.

  The options were equally compelling and equally unacceptable. He wandered around the relics of his boyhood life, grappling with the problem. His old bedroom was full of boxes of documents and smelled of damp. Even his old desk bore its load. Christ, the drawers were still full of his wooden armoured cars and glory troopers. He slammed shut the drawers. Mawkish sentimentality was dangerous. The documents in the boxes seemed to be social detritus: letters, invitations to balls and parties, theatre programmes, guest lists, as well as files of invoices from domestic suppliers of oil, coal, water and so forth. These were all signed off by Donald Aldingford. He moved through to his father’s study. He sensed the longer he stayed in the house the less likely he would be able to summon the will to leave it. Whatever the vague risks of the future, the immediate attractions of safe ground under foot, a roof above and beds with sheets, proper toilets and toilet paper were growing ever more seductive.