The Penal Colony (15 page)

There was no need for the machete. The tip of
the bolt had emerged between two vertebrae. The man’s spinal cord
had been ruptured. The bolt would have continued on its upward path
and gone right through him had it not been arrested by the vanes,
which, as it was, had sliced into the musculature of his chest to a
third or half their depth. He was quite dead.

Routledge came to his senses and surveyed the
hillside. No evidence of another one: the man had been working
alone.

Close to, the primitive nobility lent him by
his beard was revealed for the illusion it was. His face had a
rather ugly, stupid cast. His ears were large and angular, pierced
in both lobes; the eyes, staring blankly, were bulbous and blue.
His open jaw betrayed a mouth filled with dental amalgam. Tattooed
on his shoulder Routledge read the five blue letters, entwined in
red, of a girl’s name.
Karen
. Routledge examined his hands
and feet and the development of his limbs, intrigued by the changes
that living wild had wrought in one of his own countrymen.

The birds on the shore resumed their piping.
He stood up. The corpse was beginning to bleed. He would not waste
time or risk contaminating himself by burying it, or by putting it
over the cliff. He would let it remain where it had fallen, food
for the gulls, perhaps, or the buzzards. There was nothing on it he
wanted: the skins, the necklace of rabbit bones, were worthless. He
would not bother with the spear, but Martinson’s waistcoat, and the
hat, both of which the man had left lying at the base of the
outcrop, he would retrieve.

Before climbing down, Routledge allowed
himself one last look round, making sure of the hillside and the
more distant scrub to the north and west.

And, turning his eyes across the bay, he
studied, at his leisure now, the pattern and appearance of the
fields and walls and buildings spreading across the cloud-shadowed
slope of his destination, the Village headland.

“Bend over, please.”

Routledge felt his buttocks being parted.

“All right, Mr Routledge. I’m sorry about
that last bit.” Sibley switched off the torch and replaced it on
his table. “You can put your clothes on now.” He stood up, went to
the far side of the room, and washed his hands in a polythene bowl
from which issued the smell of pine disinfectant. “We have to make
sure, you understand.”

“What would have happened if …”

“Well, you’d have been out, I’m afraid.”

“Does that happen often?”

“Quite often. But not in your case, I’m
delighted to say. In fact, as far as I can tell, you’ve got a clean
bill of health.”

Routledge pulled on his brand new trousers,
grey corduroy, with a broad canvas belt. Like the socks and
underwear, the wool-and-cotton shirt, the blue lambswool sweater,
and the workman’s boots, they fitted him perfectly, part of the
issue the Prison Service had sent over with him from the
mainland.

Sibley’s room, in one of the shacks annexed
to the bungalow, was equipped as a kind of surgery, with a
glass-shelved cupboard containing probes and forceps and seekers. A
pressure lamp illuminated the table and the file containing
Routledge’s papers. On these Sibley, an apparently absent-minded
Welshman of about forty, had scribbled notes at various stages
throughout the examination.

Routledge buckled the belt. “Are you a
doctor?”

“Of sorts, now. I was a vet before. And you?
A quantity surveyor, weren’t you?”

“Yes. I was.”

Sibley closed the file and put it under his
arm. “I’m to tell you the Father will see you tonight. Hurry up and
finish dressing.”

To put on clean, new clothes was a pleasure
more luxurious even than the showerbath they had allowed him, with
soap and real shampoo and tepid water gushing from an overhead tank
improvised from a plastic drum. They had offered him a razor too.
This he had declined: he had never grown a beard before, and was
beginning rather to like the idea.

So far he had been astonished by the courtesy
and hospitality they were showing him. One of the men at the gate,
the one who had escorted him to Appleton, had said “Well done, Mr
Routledge” when he had appeared, promptly, a few minutes after the
bell.

The end of his ordeal had been unexpectedly
easy. From the monastery peninsula he had made his way, without
encountering anyone, back to the Village boundary and the western
gate. Having ascertained that Martinson was nowhere to be seen, he
had selected a hollow in the bracken a few hundred metres away and
had sat there, clasping his knees, watching the sunset yielding to
darkness. An hour or two later the bell – to be exact, an oil drum
struck with a length of steel pipe – had sounded. The caution with
which he had covered the remaining distance to the gate had been as
immense as it had been unnecessary.

Appleton had given him hot, sweet tea and a
plate of cheese sandwiches, followed by a dish of yogurt flavoured
with fresh raspberries. Then he had commended Routledge to the care
of Sibley and his assistant.

In the shower Routledge had been able to
appreciate how much weight he had lost. The slight paunch which,
with each succeeding year, had been becoming almost imperceptibly
more pronounced, had all but vanished. There was less fat round his
waist, too. His arms, and particularly his legs, had become more
rangy-looking, as had his fingers and toes. There was an empty,
sick feeling in his abdomen; he had suffered another diarrhoea
attack on the way to the gate, and wondered whether he had poisoned
himself by eating Martinson’s none-too-hygienic rations. When
asked, though, Sibley had told him this was quite usual in the
circumstances and nothing to be concerned about.

Sibley conducted him to the bungalow veranda.
The guard, different from the one Routledge had seen on his first
visit last week, announced his arrival and summoned Stamper, who
ushered Routledge to Appleton’s small office. Appleton was not
there.

“Right,” Stamper said. “You’ll be going in
now. Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to. When Mr Appleton gives
you the prompt, get down on the green mat. Lie on your face and
say, ‘I for ever renounce all rights except those invested in me
hereafter by the Father. I formally recognize his absolute
authority and in this recognition beg for admittance to the
Community.’ Got it?”

Routledge, his unease growing, needed hurried
coaching before he could repeat the words without error. He was
right: he had thought his treatment thus far was much too good to
last. As he had suspected from the start, the Father, whoever or
whatever he might turn out to be, was plainly a megalomaniac.

There was no time for further thoughts along
these lines.

As soon as Routledge was word perfect,
Stamper led the way to the large reception room or laboratory in
which Routledge had been interrogated on that first night. “Ready?”
Stamper said.

Routledge nodded.

“Good luck.”

Stamper’s words took him by surprise. He
neither liked nor trusted any of the triumvirate who had
interviewed him, but he saw that he could afford to alienate none
of the inmates of the Village, especially those in power, and would
pretend at least to return any small gestures of friendship.

“Thanks.”

Stamper knocked lightly at the door, opened
it, and motioned Routledge inside. Stamper did not follow.
Routledge heard the door closing quietly and unobtrusively behind
him.

As before, the room was lit by three pressure
lamps, but tonight the trestle table had been pushed back to the
wall. In its place stood an old-fashioned wing armchair covered in
tapestry, predominantly fawn, with a repeating panel depicting what
the designer had imagined to be a typical eighteenth-century scene:
a bewigged man in a frilled coat, wooing his beloved under a rose
arbour. Even more unexpected and bizarre, Routledge saw immediately
that the oblong piece of green carpet in front of it was of
precisely the same colour and pattern as the hall carpet belonging
to Louise’s parents. The pattern had been unobtainable for ten
years or more. During all that time, during all those unsuspecting
Sunday afternoons, this companion-piece had been patiently awaiting
him here on Sert.

Appleton was standing behind the chair and to
its left. Every bit of the authority he had possessed at the first
interview was relinquished to the clean-faced, humorous-looking man
who now entered by the second door, went to the chair, and sat
down. Crossing his legs, he began subjecting Routledge to a keen
and searching appraisal through the rimless lenses of his
gold-framed spectacles.

Routledge had expected someone older,
heavier, more intimidating, than this fellow with his freckles and
reddish blond hair. Indeed, he was no older than Routledge himself.
And yet his every movement, his very bearing, gave an unmistakable
impression of physical self-assurance and self-containment; the
calm, refined cast of his features gave an equally vivid impression
of a strongly incisive intelligence unlike any that Routledge had
ever known before.

“Good evening, Mr Routledge.” He was softly
spoken, with an educated southern Irish accent. “Congratulations on
passing our initiative test. I hear you came back with a
crossbow.”

“Yes.”

“May I ask where you got it?”

“From a man named Martinson.”

He gave an enigmatic smile. “Is that where
you got the rest of the stuff?”

“I’d rather not say.”

“As you wish.” He smiled again, apparently
pleased by this response. “Now, Mr Routledge. I have a request to
make. The crossbow belonged to the Community. We lost it; it
presently belongs to you. We would greatly appreciate its
return.”

“By all means.”

“That’s very kind. Very kind indeed. I hope
you didn’t object to the test too much. You understand the reasons
for it?”

“To be honest, no.”

“It has two main purposes. The first is to
find out what you’re made of. The second is to give you practical
experience of life outside the Village.”

Routledge said nothing.

“On your first day the rules of the Community
were explained to you. Do you have any questions on that
subject?”

“No sir, I do not.”

“Kindly do not use that word here. Turnkeys
are ‘sir’. Politicians are ‘sir’. In the Village a man is valued
for what he is, or isn’t, as the case may be. Do you
understand?”

“Yes.”

“Get that clear before all else.” Still his
composure had not deserted him; Routledge had to give himself a
conscious order to renew his mistrust. “On your first day you were
also invited to apply for a place in the Community. I will now ask
you what decision you have reached in that regard.”

“I would like to apply.”

“Then there are one or two things I feel I
should explain. Depending on your background and upbringing, you
will find them more or less novel. If you elect to remain with us,
I hope that you will not find them too irksome to live with.”

Against his will, Routledge felt himself
becoming charmed. He had entered the room in a hostile frame of
mind, and yet, as the interview progressed, he was beginning to
feel, despite himself, an intimation that his prejudices were in
danger of slipping away. He was intrigued, fascinated not so much
by the sheer magnetic force of the man’s presence as by the
discovery that such a phenomenon truly existed in the world and
that he was susceptible to its influence.

“We have come, Mr Routledge, all of us, from
a place where hypocrisy reigns supreme. One is not allowed to say
what is, only what is deemed morally fashionable. Lip service is
paid to the notion that all men are born equal and deserving of
equal opportunity. Much is made of people’s rights, without
overmuch attention to the responsibility which accompanies and in
precise measure counterbalances each and every one of those rights.
We have also come from an economy based on the system of money. On
Sert there is no money. The only currency here is respect. Respect
is accorded to those who in turn respect others’ rights and
interests, as well as to those who are deserving in more obvious
ways. Respect automatically generates consideration, which is the
essential lubricant on which the mechanics of our little community
depend. Clear enough?”

“Yes.”

“We are all convicted criminals, abandoned
and left to rot. Yet by coming here each of us is given a
completely blank sheet. If you like, we have become innocents once
more. We have been denied the pleasures of the mainland, but we
have also been released from its demands.”

These words struck a chord: Routledge
remembered his own thoughts in the darkness of the cave.

“Our leader, at present myself, is styled the
‘Father’. It is only a name. The leader is not a patriarch. He is
not God. The men under him are not children. Is that clear
too?”

“Yes.”

“Nor is this a democracy. It is a
meritocracy. Each man has his place in it, determined solely by his
own conduct and character. What yours will be I cannot say. You may
end up plucking puffins, or you may end up as leader in my stead.
Understood?”

“Yes.”

“And you still wish to apply? Consider
carefully now.”

“Yes. I wish to apply.”

Appleton gestured at the floor. Routledge
hesitated before, self-consciously, getting to his knees. Appleton
gestured again, somewhat impatiently. Routledge let himself down
until his face came into contact with the green tufted pile of the
mat.

“Well?” said the man in the chair.

“I … I for ever renounce all rights except
those invested in me hereafter by the Father. I formally recognize
… I …”

Routledge had forgotten the words.

“His absolute authority,” Appleton
hissed.