The Penal Colony (19 page)

“No, not yet.”

“You wouldn’t have seen Mr Foster, anyway. He
went up Old Town. He’s our undercover agent. Anything going on
among the outsiders, Mr Foster knows about it. This might interest
you, Mr Routledge, seeing as you had a run in with him – the rumour
is that Martinson’s dead.”

“Really?” That would certainly explain why
Martinson had not pursued Routledge to get the crossbow back.

“You know about the fighting? Yes?”

“Mr Sibley told me yesterday.”

“It seems Martinson was hurt pretty serious.
Mr Foster’s gone to find out how serious. Totally serious, we hope.
That’s an evil steel-plated bastard if ever I saw one.”

A man who had been approaching across the
shale-covered precinct now reached the steps and began to climb
them. “Who’s an evil steel-plated bastard?” he said. “Are you
talking about me again, Mr Talbot?” Like Talbot, he was dark and
bearded, but was considerably older, wearing fawn twill jeans and a
black teeshirt whose sleeves had been removed. Routledge noticed
that Talbot did not stand up: his rank was evidently greater than
the newcomer’s.

“Hullo, Mr Daniels. Met Mr Routledge yet? He
got in last night.”

“Yes, I heard. How do you do.” Daniels
extended his hand; Routledge, returning the greeting, also returned
the calculated firmness of the grip.

“We was just talking about Martinson,” Talbot
said. “They reckon he may have checked out at last.” Talbot
suddenly put his feet down on the boards and sat upright, allowing
his eye to range over the shacks opposite, where two more men had
just arrived from the direction of the fields. The younger was
dressed in ragged shorts and a loose out-at-elbows blue sweater;
his companion was wearing blue jeans and a white short-sleeved
shirt. They waved and entered a doorway. Talbot’s vigilance
relaxed.

“Of course, you met our friend Martinson,
didn’t you?” Daniels said to Routledge. “What happened? And more to
the point, how did you get the crossbow away from him?”

Talbot interjected. “You just asked, didn’t
you, Mr Routledge? You said: ‘May I kindly borrow your most prized
weapon, Jim, the one what you took personally from your most hated
foes?’ To which Jim, with his customary olde worlde charm, at once
replied, ‘By all means, Mr Routledge, be my guest, why don’t
you?’”

Talbot’s impersonation of Martinson’s
Birmingham accent was deadly accurate and Routledge found himself
smiling. He did not know what to make of Talbot, or of Daniels for
that matter. To judge by his speaking voice, Daniels came from a
much better background than Talbot, whose normal utterances were
littered with glottal stops and elongated vowels; but everything
else, from Talbot’s clothes to his confident mien, proclaimed his
superiority over the older man. His vocabulary, too, was unusually
rich and varied for one who spoke with such an accent. It was as if
this, like his own opinion of himself, had been allowed to blossom
now that he was free of the artificial constraints of mainland
society.

Talbot turned amiably to Daniels. “What do
you want?”

Daniels took a piece of paper from his back
pocket. “Yesterday’s beach collection. Mr Stamper’s copy.”

“Leave it with me.” To Routledge he said, “Mr
Daniels is in charge of beachcombing.” He turned back to Daniels.
“Where next? Outside again?”

“This afternoon. We’ve got up quite a big
group. We’re doing Fossett’s Rock and Porth Thomas. With this wind
we’re hoping for quite a bit. Mr Skinner saw some drums coming in
there yesterday.”

“Many?”

“Three, for sure. Aniline, they looked
like.”

“Great.”

“Did you hear about the light-bulbs at
Trellick Cove? Dozens of them. And oranges.”

“Just loose?”

“I’m afraid so. They’re quite inedible.”

“The best we had recently,” Talbot said,
addressing Routledge, “was this crate of Swiss cakes. The theory is
a deck container broke open, else they got chucked overboard in a
storm. They must have been in the sea for six months.
Marzipankuchen, Kirschtorte, all that, sealed in foil. Bloody ace,
they was.”

“For those who got any,” Daniels said. “For
those with a winning raffle ticket.”

“You win some, you lose some,” Talbot said,
smugly. “See if you can find us another lot this afternoon.” He
raised the piece of paper. “I’ll make sure Mr Stamper gets
this.”

Daniels turned to go. In Talbot’s expression
Routledge detected the germ of his own dismissal, and perceived at
once that he too was meant to leave: for if he were to stay
chatting, that would be a presumption that his status was higher
than Daniels’s. Talbot was trying to make him feel like a new boy
at a public school, the lowest of the low, frightened of
unwittingly transgressing complicated and ill-defined codes of
dress and conduct. Indeed, Talbot had almost succeeded. The rules
of etiquette here were a minefield which he must rapidly, for the
sake of his own advancement, learn to negotiate.

His glance at Talbot produced a farewell nod.
Routledge’s summary of the situation had been correct.

Routledge descended the steps just behind and
to one side of Daniels, not certain whether it was his place to
speak.

“I’m recruiting for this afternoon’s
beachcombing,” Daniels said. “Do you want to come along?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. Mr King is giving me a
tour of the Community.”

“Yes, of course, I did know that. New men
always get one. What I ought to have said was, do you want to come
along with me now and meet a few people?”

“By all means. I’d like to.” Although the
misunderstanding had not been his fault, Routledge had not failed
to notice the lack of an apology. Daniels appeared to be testing
him. Daniels also appeared to be a jerk. Routledge had taken as
great a dislike to him as he had to Talbot.

“It won’t be much good calling on any houses.
Nearly everyone’s out. I think we’d better try the root fields
first.”

Beyond the precinct they joined a dirt track
which passed directly south, through and beyond the main cluster of
dwellings. At intervals, side tracks led off to join up with other
tracks radiating from the bungalow, forming a grid system. There
were no formal boundaries, but it seemed that each building stood
on its own proportionately sized plot. Most of the houses were
simple shacks, like King’s, with stone walls and roofs covered with
spars and slate-like slices of rock, often with a covering of turf.
The standard of workmanship varied greatly. The more elaborate
edifices had polythene sheeting, transparent or coloured, plain or
bearing the trademarks of fertilizer companies, tacked or otherwise
stretched across the window apertures. Some even had little gardens
with salads or vegetables. By one threshold a bright display of
cornflowers and nasturtiums caught Routledge’s eye.

“You didn’t say about the crossbow, Mr
Routledge.”

“Well, Martinson had one idea about my
future, and I had another. They weren’t compatible.”

“Did he catch you, then?”

Routledge was about to improvise, but
remembered that to lie would mean breaking one of the Community’s
cardinal rules, and if he were to keep his place in the Village,
still more achieve one with any rank, he could not afford the
mental effort needed to sustain falsehood. It was safer and less
trouble to tell the truth. “Yes, he caught me. But I got away, and
here I am.” Routledge tried to convey by his tone that he did not
wish to discuss his experiences outside, a message confirmed by the
fact that he now changed the subject. “Do you use any special
techniques for your beachcombing, Mr Daniels?”

Daniels’s slight hesitation showed that he
had understood: and almost imperceptibly, by one or two points,
perhaps, Routledge felt his status had begun to rise. “Not really.
The weather and tides are important, but mostly we just
search.”

“How many men?”

“I have fifteen allocated, though you can
usually get volunteers.”

“What sort of things do you find?”

“Rubbish, mainly. Deck waste. Waxed paper
milk cartons: we find plenty of those. Plastic canisters, bottles,
really anything that floats. Wood of course, sawn, planed, or as
tree trunks and branches. Particle board, ply, polyboard. String,
rope, lifebelts, lifejackets, buoyancy bags, expanded polystyrene.
Carrier bags. Sacks. Wellington boots. You name it. We found a
trombone last year. Everything is collected, even the milk cartons.
Mr Varsani uses them as flowerpots. He’s our man for saplings.”

“How do you mean?”

“For hedges, especially the border hedge, and
for growing trees. The Father plants as many as he can, for future
timber. Currently we’re putting in about ten thousand thorn
saplings a year, and a thousand trees. With milk cartons the pot
can go straight into the ground. The paper rots away, so growth
isn’t checked. That means the planting season is extended by
several months.”

“Clever,” Routledge said, trying to make the
right response.

“Not really. You know what they say about
necessity. We must have something to enclose the pastures with. Dry
stone walling is hard graft, as I expect you’ll find out. Hedges
build themselves. All they need is an annual trim.”

“What animals do you keep? I’ve seen sheep
and goats.”

“That’s it, pretty well. We’ve also got some
donkeys, a few cows and pigs. Chickens. And two horses.”

They had almost come to the edge of the
Village, where the shacks looked the most recently built; ahead and
to either side spread undulating gorse scrub, beyond which, a
hundred metres along the road, the fields began.

In the third field Daniels took him to,
clearing potato haulms, bare to the waist and already sweating
under the morning sun, Routledge found King.

* * *

Martinson dead. Franks prayed it was true.
But there was nothing different about this morning. He had received
no intuition of the other man’s death.

When he was particularly troubled, when his
head hurt so badly that he thought it would burst, when the ringing
in his right ear grew unbearable, Franks sometimes came to sit here
for half an hour, unguarded, alone on the low cliffs at Star Cove.
Above him and to his left, across the water of the cove, rose the
intimidating crags and bluffs of Pulpit Head. To his right the
cliffs ran almost straight, due south-west to the end of the
peninsula and the twin stacks called, on the perspex-covered map in
the bungalow, Mare and Foal. This map had furnished him with all
the island names, some of them darkly Celtic, making him think of
Sert as almost part of the ancestral territory of his race.
Illislig, Helly, Mencaro, Angara: what had these names signified in
the old language of Sert? Most of the others were more easily
understood. Spanish Ledges were doubtless the graveyard of a ship
from the Armada. America Point faced west, towards that continent.
Beacon Point, Crow Bay, Half Moon Bay, Pulpit Head: these too were
self-explanatory. But who was Fossett, and why had that awesome,
solitary rock been named after him?

And this vantage on the cliffs, in other
times, might even have come to bear the name of Franks. Or perhaps
just the cave below. It lay directly beneath this spot, his mental
solace when the pain grew too much to take.

He had known about the cave for a long time.
He had known it during the war with Barratt, long before the
Village had been founded.

As caves went it was nothing special, not
even particularly large. There were others on the island of greater
size or geological interest. But this one was uniquely, especially
wonderful. In the first place, it was the biggest cave on the
Village headland. And more important still, it was only a metre or
two from the sea at high tide. And yet more important: the interior
was entirely suitable for the project he had been nursing
consciously for the past two years, and unconsciously for at least
a similar period before that.

“It’s perfect,” Thaine had said, complicating
the echoes, shining his torch from ceiling to floor.

The cave would indeed have been perfect, had
it not been for the reefs guarding it for a kilometre out to sea.
Much of the coast was like this: in places the reefs were even more
jagged and treacherous, thrashed by the combers and creating
complicated currents and undertows. Beyond the reefs there was the
Magic Circle to contend with – the radar, the infrared detectors,
the image intensifiers and computer-controlled pattern scanners,
the network of electronics run from the two lightships and from the
land station near Trevose Head. Protecting the Circle were the
Prison Service helicopters and at least two hydrofoil patrol boats,
and reinforcing the Prison Service were the combined resources of
the Coastguard, the RAF, the Royal Marines, and Her Majesty’s Navy.
Eighty per cent. Against. Those were the most optimistic odds
Appleton had been able to calculate.

The Village boundary ended at the mouth of
Star Cove: outsiders had ready access to Pulpit Head and the cliffs
opposite. They might well see the components being carried down the
cliff path; they might hear, faintly from the mouth of the cave,
the sounds of assembly and construction; and at night they might
make an attempt at sabotage or, in the final stages, theft. But
then again, the outsiders were idle and careless and none too
observant. The nearest point in their territory was at least four
hundred metres from the cave mouth. Furthermore, the anti-satellite
precautions – taking the parts down only in bad light, under thick
cloud, and, most of all, during fog – would equally reduce the risk
of being seen by the outsiders.

Franks grimaced as a new onslaught of pain
sliced at his head. He snatched off his glasses and clutched his
skull with both hands, gripping as hard as he possibly could,
trying to force the pain downwards and back: a moment later the
worst was over, leaving only a blaring new clangour of tinnitus. He
was now virtually deaf in that ear. The hearing was going in the
left ear too. Yet more disturbing, his vision was deteriorating
also, although, mercifully, much more slowly. Sibley could tell him
nothing, give no prognosis. All he could say was that, yes, it must
have been caused by a blow on the back of the head that he had
received from Martinson in the wars. And, yes, if he did not get
mainland treatment he might end up blind as well as deaf.