Earthworks (9 page)

When it was all over, and the last echo had been wrung from under the grim roof, I was marched into the darkness outside. A hovercar waited there with another officer beside it. I remember seeing his face and thinking that he looked more scared than I. My hands were clipped together and I was bundled into the hovercar.

I cannot recount in detail the madness of the succeeding weeks. I have always thought of them as weeks, though they may in fact have been days or months. In the heart of the Under-city, to which I was taken, it was hard, even under the best conditions, to tell the difference between day and night. I underwent three prolonged interrogations, and was otherwise left alone in a solitary cell. The cell was without windows, although it had a lavatory and a bunk and was heated — just as well, since I was stripped naked and allowed no stitch of clothing. No means that I know of is so effective in reducing a man’s morale and nerves to pulp. Yet I must have been lucky; I was not tortured.

They
did not torture me. In the circumstances, I was able to do that easily enough for myself, wondering how I had acted the betrayer so casually... There was a pile of pages here I wrote about mind, but we had better keep to body.

One day, a guard came for me. He threw me a pair of trousers and prodded me immediately out of the cell, so that I had to put the garment on as best I could as I went along. Instead of going to the interrogation room as I had done before, I was marched out of the building and handed over to another guard, who eyed for me — that is, gave up a print of his retinal pattern as was sometimes done in the cities; in an earlier age, he would have signed for me, I suppose.

He bundled me into the front of a small scooter-thing, which moved off at once. I remember looking up and seeing overhead, instead of sky, a great black and brown shield on which moisture gleamed. At first I mistook it for a lowering storm cloud. My mind was sluggish from misery; it took some while before I realized that this was a view of the city respectable citizens never saw: its mighty metal underbelly. In my low state, the sight completely demoralized me; I was crushed by it.

I was taken before the Farmer.

At the time, I thought that this was the most terrible thing that could happen to me. The Farmer was a legend; he was the begetter of all our troubles; he was Evil Incarnate...and I found myself shivering in a small bare office confronting him.

“Sit down on that chair and stop shaking,” he said.

What had I imagined he would look like? Had I imagined fangs, a mountainous body? He was small and neat and tense. Although his hair was white, he wore a small black beard, and his eyebrows were also black. His nose was sharp and aquiline and his mouth firm. These features instantly became the characteristics of death in my mind.

He observed me steadily and then pressed a buzzer under his hand. A woman appeared; he asked her to fetch a blanket. Until she returned, he sat silent, observing me without saying a word. I hung my head and could not meet his gaze. When the blanket came, he stood up and tossed it to me.

“Put that round you,” he said.

When I had done what he told me, he began to speak.

At first he asked about the Travellers, as my interrogators had done earlier. Then he asked about life in the village. Slowly, I began to talk more freely. It even came out that I could read and found books in the ruined town.

“So occasionally you went to that ruin, where you had a secret meeting with — books,” he said.

“I did not go there often, sir. That was why I missed seeing the Travellers before, sir, when they passed that way.”

“But you went there as often as you dared, Noland.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll never have come across a book called ‘1984’, I suppose?”

“No, sir.”

“There’s a young man in that book who is regarded as an enemy by his rulers. He also goes to a secret meeting-place. There he meets another human — a woman with whom he is in love. But you met only books. Weren’t you ever lonely?”

I did not know what he was talking about. I could not answer. He changed his tack then, saying sharply: “You’re just a fool, Noland, nothing more harmful than that. You should never have become mixed up with the Travellers. Also, I have a report from a doctor who says you suffer from a form of hallucination. Is that so?”

Since I could not tell whether he wanted me to say yes or no, I replied that I supposed so.

“Yes, or no, you fool? Do you or don’t you have hallucinations?”

“Yes, sir, thank you.” My brain was numb.

“I’m going to let you go free, Noland. If I don’t do so, you’ll spend the rest of a short life festering somewhere down under the city because nobody will know what to do with you. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t suppose you do. In this case, I can intervene because you are on record as being the man who betrayed or almost betrayed Gipsy Jess. You did, didn’t you?”

“I didn’t mean it, sir. I — ”

“Silence immediately! As his betrayer, you are entitled to a considerable reward. I am going to see that you get it, and with it will ensure that you buy a job I shall provide. Do you have a family?”

“Yes — no, sir.”

“Have you no parents?”

“I come from an orphanage.”

“Have you any idea what sort of a job you would be good at?”

“No, sir.”

“For God’s sake, man, I know you’ve been ill-treated, but try and get a grasp of your faculties now that someone’s trying to help.”

“I didn’t mean to betray Jess, sir, really.”

“The less often you say that the better. In fact, you’d be better out of the country. Ever been to sea?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“You’ll soon get used to it.”

“Yes, sir.”

He summoned the woman again. It was then that I heard the name
Trieste Star
for the first time. After that, I was taken back to the Under-city. I rotted there for more uncounted days before I was dragged into daylight again, given clothes, and sent to join the freighter in a northern port.

I never saw the Farmer again. But I kept the blanket with me that he gave me during the interview; it was still with me when, twelve years later, I ran his ship aground on the Skeleton Coast.

Chapter Six

Stars shone in a paling sky. Soon they would all dissolve as the light increased. I lay on the bridge of the
Trieste Star,
staring up at the sky. I had been dissolved myself.

Slowly I rolled over and stood up. The freighter was sailing on, though with a heavy list to starboard, ploughing in through the heart of Africa, following the Tropic of Capricorn across the land, our keel cutting through bedrock, our screws churning deep through a sullen sea of clay. My head cleared, and I saw the situation as it really was, the wrecked ship lying in shallow water, the beach ahead — the beach that, merging into desert, was still beach a hundred miles inland.

The instruments on the bridge still functioned, or some of them did. It was the sound of them, more than anything, that had given me the illusion that we were still at sea. I thought of the decks below me. The automatic things would be down there, crawling about their business as if nothing had happened! I looked instinctively at the gauges on the nuclear power board. Several needles were well over into the red. The delicate servometers that controlled the reactor had been put out of action when we struck; unattended, they would reach critical mass and blow the ship all over Africa.

But that was not my worry. It would take me only a few moments to rejoin Doctor Thunderpeck and the spastic, Abdul Demone. What worried me was how I had got on to the bridge, for the last thing I remembered was settling down exhaustedly by Thunderpeck’s fire. No doubt my hallucinations had entered a new phase, and when I dreamed of the Travellers I had been impelled to travel, and had come back to the ship. But why had I thought the ship was moving?

Then I heard it and knew I heard it. Somewhere, an engine throbbed, and not the freighter’s. I peered forward. A mist lay over the beach, the sort of mist that brings chill to a tropic morning, a mist that forecasts heat and is sucked away with the sun.

In all the still-unlit universe, only there on that stony beach did I have friends. I could see them, Thunderpeck and Abdul. Beside them was a tracked vehicle, the throbbing I had heard coming from its engine. No doubt it had been that sound which woke me. The vehicle was a light tank, flying the flag of New Angola. Six armed men had climbed out of it. In their midst stood my two friends. Their hands were raised above their heads.

Even as I looked, one of the Angolans stepped forward and began to search them. I saw Abdul back away. The searcher struck him across the side of the neck. Hampered by the iron on his leg, Abdul stumbled on to his knees in the sand, and was roughly hauled up again.

I waited to see no more.

This must have been an isolated New Angola patrol. No one else would be about in such a desolate place. Our position lay on the fringe of Angolese territory and near the newly-founded Waterberg State, if I had my bearings right. The patrol looked as if it was in a hurry — which meant that it would be ruthless. And it had something to be ruthless about: the freighter. The
Trieste Star
was a valuable piece of salvage. I found myself regretting that I had beached her.

I guessed what the patrol’s next move would be. They would send a boarding party out to look over the ship.

Although the
Trieste Star
was only a freighter, there was a small armoury in the captain’s cabin. I ran down on to “A” deck.

One of the deck swabbers was at work, mopping away with a crabwise motion against the list. I hated the thing.

My cabin was as it had been. A twinge of nostalgia touched me. I had been the lowest member of the crew when I first came aboard but, because of illness and a case of madness, it had taken me only four years to become captain; since the rank carried almost no responsibilities with it, it was little but a name. For all that, this cabin had been home, and the best I had ever known, for the last eight years. My hand went absently to my breast pocket. The love letters from Justine to another man were still there; they, too, were the best I had ever known.

Using my key, I unlocked the armoury door. It was little more than a locker. Inside were a couple of sasers for use against ship’s robots that might go wrong and prove dangerous, and a tracer-firing gun obviously for use against men. I checked the gun over and collected a can of ammunition. I hurried back with my load to the bridge and set the gun up ready to fire.

I had never worked a gun of this type, although I knew how to do so. What I knew I could never do was aim so that I hit the Angolese and missed Thunderpeck. I set up the gun and then sat there fuming, watching the indignity of my friends ashore.

The tableau changed. Thunderpeck and Abdul were ushered back towards the tracked vehicle by two of the soldiers, while the others came forward. This I could not see clearly, for at that moment the sun rose almost clear of the low mist and shone straight into my eyes.

Even as I cursed the sun and the planet on which it shone, an idea came to me. Shading my eyes, I made out the party of four soldiers at the water’s edge, about to launch the raft on which we had paddled ashore the previous night. As I had surmised, they were about to board the freighter. They would think only of coming to the starboard side, where a rope ladder dangled, inviting them up. Lugging the gun again, I made haste to port.

For my idea was simple. They presented no target now, and would be out of sight in a moment, concealed by the bulk of the ship. Once I gave my presence away, they would be after me. To preserve the element of surprise, I must get ashore and lie in wait for them preferably behind their vehicle. From that point, I would be able to ambush them perfectly when they returned.

Lashing a rope round the port rail, I tied the machine-gun to the other end, lowered it until it slithered down the steep slope of the side and dangled over the water, and then secured it there. Wrenching open one of the deck lockers — I worked in a sweat, I can tell you! — I pulled out another of the self-inflating rafts. Before it was properly distended, I flung myself down into the sea. It opened up on the surface like a grotesque water-lily. Running down the steep side, I plunged in after it, to come up panting close by.

I heaved myself on to the raft, paddled across to where the gun dangled, unslipped the knot that secured it and laid it on the raft; then I was paddling for shore. The bulk of the Trieste Star hid me from the boarding party.

Once I was ashore and moving up the slope of sand, danger threatened most from the vehicle ahead; but I counted on the Angolese inside being too busy keeping Thunderpeck and Abdul quiet to worry about the outside world for a moment.

Certain men are naturally men of action. Perhaps to them my movements would have seemed a matter of course; to me, even at the time, they were a matter of wonder. I was not born a man of action; and yet, and yet — oh, there was an exhilaration, beyond the mere goad of the fear of death, in pelting across that white beach with the gun cradled in my arms! The bullets that spattered at my heels were an added savoury.