He climbed the steps and entered.
At the Reception desk a perky young lady in a National Party suit read through his cover letter. She pressed a thumb nail under a reference code at the top and consulted another list behind her desk.
“Amnesties are through there in the Banner Hall,” she said.
He passed through double doors into a hall about the size of a gymnasium, with a line of desks across the top end and a lot of glory troopers milling or loafing about on benches. These fellows were in poor condition, thin with haggard faces, their uniforms ill-fitting and poorly kept. They looked like released Night and Fog, which would explain the reference to amnesties. The hall reminded Lawrence of the recruitment centre of General Wardian where his career had begun a decade ago; a blank teenager had signed on the dotted line without a clue as to the gates of hell opening before him. The system here was the same: you took a numbered ticket and waited. About half an hour passed before his number got called out and he approached a fat sergeant, who stretched an arm across his desk to take the ticket. He frowned at the cover letter and consulted a list of names. Against the name Lawrence Morton Aldingford was a red asterisk.
“Okay, you go upstairs and report to the cabinet office of the president.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Very sure, deary.”
Fear rippled throughout Lawrence as he ascended concrete steps to the upper floor. Everyone else up here—both men and women—wore the National Party suit and trousers. A few glanced up and down at his plus fours and crottle pullover, obviously taking him for some kind of bumpkin.
“Can I help you?” one young lady asked him, without ceasing her clacking away on a typewriter.
“I’m looking for Sarah-Kelly Newman.”
“Down that corridor, second door on the right, that’s the cabinet office of the president.”
The corridor ran along the back of the building. Its windows looked down into a yard of one of the industrial complexes, a place of mud, logs and heaps of coal. He turned into the second doorway and stopped, having to squint into the low sun blazing through the windows. It was a large room divided into sections by banks of filing cabinets. Because of the filing cabinets, Lawrence had to take a few paces in before he spotted Sarah-Kelly sitting at a desk with another man, rather a fine-featured and well-groomed fellow with good shoulders. The sight of her shot a bolt of shock through him—or was it the man with her that prompted this reaction? Sarah-Kelly was thinner and her face more serious than the young woman he had known until four and a half months ago. He thought about his own middle-aged face. They had both lived hard in the months since the summer.
It seemed so banal to just amble across the office to her desk. In doing so, sweat poured out of him into his shirt. He could feel the drips under his armpits and down the arch of his back.
“Hello lead statement manager,” he said.
Both she and the well-groomed chap jumped, annoyed by the interruption of what had obviously been an intimate discussion. Despite Lawrence’s having tried to prepare himself, the encounter with this new man of hers filled him with a nauseous resignation.
“What do you want?” Well-Groomed said, frowning. He straightened up slowly, face stiff as a mask and not friendly. Lawrence had noticed this type elsewhere in the building: implacable creatures of committee rooms, their eyes as remote as their empathy.
“God, I wouldn’t have recognised you,” Sarah-Kelly said. She flew back in her chair with shock. “Is that Byron’s pullover?”
“Who is this?” Well-Groomed turned to stare at her.
“It’s Lawrence—don’t you know your own brother?”
Now Well-Groomed got to his feet, eyes flickering over Lawrence’s face and shoulders. He gazed with as much unabashed shock as Lawrence felt himself.
“I am Donald, your elder brother.”
This was a different man from the Donald of memory. Or was it that memory slowly distorts according to the derision inspired by the face in question? No—this was a different man. Long gone was that tight smirk common to the servants of power. Behind the eyes glowed anger, the jaw was set with a rigid purpose. Lawrence grasped the hand and shook it warmly, smiling. Donald was reserved, frowning as if his younger brother were a species not normally encountered on the Island of Britain.
“Pull up that seat,” Donald said finally, pointing to a nearby chair.
Lawrence did so, tucking up awkwardly against the front of Sarah-Kelly’s desk to keep the passage clear. His mood rose to a tentative optimism. This was not the reception of a man to be arrested, even if it was less than enthusiastic.
“Do ultras ever come here?” he pressed.
“No,” Donald said. “They’ve gone to ground.”
This at least was good news.
“How did you two get involved in the National Party? Especially you, brother. Some kind of social cataclysm must have inverted your life.”
“To put it mildly,” Donald said.
“It’s not possible for a thinking person to stay out of the National Party,” Sarah-Kelly said. “We’re finally wrenching the new world into existence, even if at the moment we’re only holding the baby.”
“How big is this republic of yours?”
“The frontier is the Great Ring Drain at the moment,” Sarah-Kelly said. “Once we’ve consolidated within the London basin we’ll spread north through the industrial asylums up the Grand Union Canal. They’re sending enthusiastic gestures of friendship—they hate the dozing cat of sovereign rule just as much as we do.”
“What do you have for armed forces?”
“Most of the glory garrisons from the Central Enclave swore into to our National Army.”
Lawrence was highly sceptical about the “most”—not that it made much difference.
“The glory garrisons of the Central Enclave amounted to about fifteen thousand troops if I recall my advanced cadre courses correctly,” he said. “That’s less than the garrison of just one large sovereign land, and there are seven of them around the Great Ring Drain... If you don’t mind my saying so, I don’t think you’ve got—”
“No rubbishing!” Sarah-Kelly snapped.
Lawrence noted the light of a true believer in her eyes—she had become a genuine radical fanatic, exactly the sort he had learned about in his Securitician A training. This was not the same person he had known in Oban—but he was not the same person either.
“What did you call me here for?” he asked.
“You’re a free man,” Donald said. “Krossington recognised an injustice had been done and corrected the situation. You have been reinstated at your old rank with full privileges and all obligations to the Night and Fog cancelled. Welcome back to the world.”
Lawrence stuttered in spasms of relief, sobbing twice before he regained control of himself, breathing more smoothly, his eyes flooded by a sense of blessing. He had forgotten that Life could strike with fortune as well as doom.
“God bless His Decency!”
“You can sign up with the National Army if you wish, or you can go back to sea with your Master’s Certificate, or drive a lorry with your driving licence.”
“How do you know about all those things?”
“I checked your service file to make sure the court martial had been revoked—we’ve captured all the headquarters buildings of the three glory trusts along with the personnel archives within.”
“Those archives make interesting reading,” Sarah-Kelly said.
“Are you certain the ultras will stay off my back?”
Neither of them replied for several seconds. Then Donald said:
“Bartram told us by letter you escaped from the Value System of Nightminster—so don’t expect a warm welcome from him. I don’t know about other ultramarines. I suppose it depends on whether they think you’re at large in London, which in turn depends on where the Value System is.”
Lawrence took a lit
tle time to step back from this conversation he was having with the woman he had once intended to marry and a brother he had not seen in ten years. It was a pretty cool affair, not much more engaged than if they were functionaries.
“Tell me about your life, Donald. I see you’re married. Have you any children?”
“This isn’t the time, Lawrence,” Sarah-Kelly said.
Lawrence held his temper, although he could feel his face starting to pulse.
“Neither of you have the faintest fucking idea of the special hell from which I have extracted myself. Under the circumstances, I find your attitude just a little bit sullen. You must be aware I couldn’t have answered letters about Father’s death. I was in a slave labour camp of a quite abominable nature.”
He paused. How much could he say? If he started claiming Nightminster ran a factory that slaughtered, skinned and butchered thousands of human beings every year and sold the production as, amongst other things, the boots Lawrence was wearing at this moment… He could imagine what Sarah-Kelly’s reaction would be. The secrets of the Value System were shut up inside him unless he could produce corroboration—and a hell of a lot of corroboration at that. Ranks and ranks of it. Feeling lamed, he finished:
“Bearing in mind your cute new allegiance to the National Party, brother, I think you might be interested in my secrets. They would blow the whole sovereign system sky-high.”
The bait drew no interest.
“I’m aware you could not have known about Father’s last illness,” Donald said.
“What did he die of?”
“A form of brain cancer called glioblastoma. The illness was quite short.”
“We have so much to catch up on, old brother, the vital years of our lives! I can see you’re busy… Why don’t we go out tonight in the Central Enclave? We’re family again.” He put all his enthusiasm into the invitation, in the face of their officious remoteness.
“Lawrence.” Sarah-Kelly said, leaning forward. “I’ve been working with the Atrocity Commission. Do you know what that is?”
“You mentioned that in your letter. It’s an investigation of crimes by glory officers.”
“My job is to manage the office that collects and collates all the statements coming in from the field teams. It’s far too senior for me. The core of the old Party got murdered at Bloomsbury College, that means folk have had to step into boots that are far too big for them. Fortunately, I’ve got Donald to help me.” She slid an arm across Donald’s back and gave him a squeeze.
“That’s nice,” Lawrence said. Mention of the Commission had rammed a stab of fear up through his diaphragm. He lowered his hands from the table as they had begun trembling.
“We need to ask you some questions,” Donald said.
“Why? Because I reached cost-centre lieutenant?” His voice had softened. He wanted to clear his throat, but dare not so coughed instead.
“There were officers who achieved senior rank without committing atrocities,” Donald said.
“But loads did murder folk,” she said.
“Oh I understand. This is a trial. Sort of. Donald promoted to judge like Father. Well, ask away then.” After the initial shock, he was gathering back his confidence, even growing angry at their assumptions.
“Have you read any of the Party’s bulletins?” Donald asked.
“No.”
“Allow me to assist you in catching up. Could you take a look at this one, please?”
He passed across a bulletin. The paper and ink were of excellent quality, more in line with an invitation to a May Ball than a pamphlet. Lawrence turned it over various ways, looking for anything of relevance. It seemed to be just speeches by the big shots.
“The interesting bit is on the reverse side,” Donald said.
The other side was a grid of twenty ID photos of glory officers. It was an arrest list. These were officers wanted by the Atrocity Commission to stand trial. He scanned the names and faces without concern. Had he been listed for arrest he would have been arrested, not invited for a chat. When he saw a name he recognised, he was so startled he twitched with shock.
“Dick Haighman? I served with him in Oban.”
“What!” Sarah-Kelly folded over the full width of the desk “Did you say you served with one of them?” She was so close her hair brushed his cheek and he could smell her perfume of cinnamon and lemons. He underscored the photograph with his thumbnail.
“Him. Richard Haighman. I’m astounded. I would never have guessed—”
“Are you saying you served with that Richard Haighman?” Sarah-Kelly stared at him from six inches’ range. He could feel the force like a hot lamp.
“We served together in Oban, he left before you arrived. We were good friends, that’s what I can’t get over. Are you certain this list can be trusted?”
“Oh absolutely, Lawrence,” Sarah-Kelly said. “Believe me when I say only guilty bastards get onto this list. Banner was determined our process would be meticulous. To qualify for arrest requires at least three independent witness statements with high corroboration.” She added pointedly: “There’s hundreds on file with just one or two statements.”
Lawrence surprised himself by the smooth manner in which he continued. By sheer will-power, he had driven back the panic and now found himself rising on a swell of confidence.
“We served on different barges, I had no idea he was involved in atrocities up in Oban. Do you think people commit mass-murder and yell about it? It says here he’s wanted in connection with the shelling of Brent Cross. Jesus! Who’d have thought he would get involved in something as crass as that?”
Donald said: “The interesting thing is, I met Haighman in the Central Enclave on the day of the Bloomsbury Massacre. He recognised our family name and spoke very highly of you. He implied you would have approved of the Bloomsbury Massacre.”
Was that all they had to go on? Lawrence’s response verged on caustic.
“I can’t answer for what other people say about me, Donald.”
Sarah-Kelly slowly retracted back to her seat.
“What did you do on those patrol barges?” she asked.
“We patrolled a sector allocated to us in the flotilla’s responsibility, which is to say, the sea between the island of Tiree and Malin Head. The exact sector varied from patrol to patrol. Some were busy and some were dead.”
“Looking for what?”
“Pirates.”
“What about folk trying to cross the sea?”
“You mean tramp schooners and steamers?”
“No. I mean homeless folk looking for a place to live; they build a boat and cross the sea.”
“You mean surplus?”
“Don’t use that word. They’re people.”
“I’m sorry. It’s the word I am accustomed to using. When we found people we picked them up and took them back to Oban for despatch.”
How smoothly the lies came now.
“What do you mean, ‘despatch’?” Donald asked.
“Freighters came in and took them away south.”
“To where?”
Lawrence raised his arms, growing exasperated.
“I never needed to know. I think they were released in Glasgow.”
“Who told you that?”
“I don’t recall.”
“What’s a ‘brush’?” Sarah-Kelly asked.
Lawrence almost dropped into flippancy. In some quarters a ‘brush’ was slang for a woman’s pudenda.
“In the context of barge patrols? It means the interception of a boat or raft loaded with people.”
“Why did you do it?”
“It’s what I was paid to do. If the people reached our client’s land they would trespass. We picked them up and put them on a boat to the nearest open city—a free ride. We never charged them a gram of gold for our service.”
“What I meant was, why were you a dedicated glory officer? It’s a dull life. You
’re intellectually inclined, Lawrence, not a dullard.”
Lawrence froze. A split in time and space opened back to The Captain’s walled garden, facing exactly the same question two weeks previously. What kept him going all those years? When he refocused on the pair of them, their attention was as fixed rigid on his face as if he was a window into the afterlife.
“Job security.”
“That’s a load of cock,” Sarah-Kelly said. “You have a big mind, Lawrence. That was what impressed me—all those theories about the sovereigns having arranged the Glorious Resolution to save the beauty of Nature from the Fatted Masses. I must admit it was you that first got me thinking about the way the world is. So why would this brain waste its life on a tippy old barge trying to catch folk just looking for a home? What a waste of time! You weren’t allowed into this precious wilderness you protected, so why bother? Did you really have nothing better to do with your life than—?”
Lawrence’s jaw moved, chewing words he could not articulate. What did drive him? Just craving for promotion? No, it went deeper than that. It was recognition of the alternative—the appalling exposure of the whole world to public knowledge and public use, the forests swept away, the landscapes sliced by public highways jammed with the repugnant Fatted Masses, the skies roaring with airliners, beautiful coasts scabbed by hotels—and for what? An ideal that postured as égalité but was only cowardice. A slovenly expedience by which the common became as deserving as the excellent, because no one had the guts to say it was not. However, to express this anguish proved beyond him.
“What interested us,” Donald said, “is this question: what was in it for you? No matter how much surplus you... prevented… you could never enjoy Krossington’s wilderness. So what was the point of it all?”
Sovereigns of the Collapse Book 2 Page 25
