The Penal Colony (18 page)

June 1-15 Mr Reynolds

" 16-30 Mr King

July 1-15 Mr Wilson

" 16-31 Mr Carter

August 1-15 Mr Wouldham

" 16-31 Mr Rothstein

September 1-15 Mr Flagg

" 16-30 Mr Ojukwo

Routledge read it as he stood there,
conceding to himself that Mr Carter was indeed doing a sterling job
in keeping the place clean. There was even a new roll of the
familiar iron-hard Prison Service lavatory paper, hanging from a
loop of string.

He returned to the shack to wash and to eat
his breakfast, leaving the door open to provide more light. Except
for the two men at the bungalow, there was still no one about. The
settlement of shacks seemed to be deserted, its inhabitants long
since up and busy with their chores. Directed by the Father or not,
the thought of emptying latrines or working in a potato field held
no great appeal, especially at this hour of the morning.

Using King’s old kitchen knife to spread the
butter, Routledge tried to re-examine the conclusions he had drawn
from last night’s interview with Franks. However compelling the
man’s personality, however well camouflaged his motives, he had
nonetheless been handing out the same old message, the one
regurgitated by politicians everywhere. This society was no
different from any other. It ran on self interest, with the biggest
and greediest bastards at the top of the heap. “You might end up as
leader in my stead.” What a joke!

While still at Exeter, Routledge had imagined
that these island colonies would have no social structure at all.
He had imagined each one in a state of perpetual anarchy, a
veritable hell on earth for those not strong enough to resist the
continual assaults and outrages of those even more deranged and
criminal than themselves. Yet now that he was here, he saw that
such a view took no account of human nature. The population of the
island had in essence divided itself into three predictable parts.
The men who were so far gone that they could tolerate no society
whatever had taken to living wild. These were probably in the
minority. Old Town and the lighthouse settlement represented an
interim stage, and probably accounted for the largest group of the
population, those who were prepared to accept certain restrictions
on their behaviour in return for a modicum of security. The
Community was this idea taken to its civilized extreme, and as such
would appeal most greatly to those who were not so much hardened,
lifelong criminals as victims of circumstance. This last category
would be likely to include most of the men with any of the
customary social skills, automatically increasing the stability of
the Community. Taken together with the ever-present threat of
expulsion, this would produce a pliant population consisting of a
disproportionate number of the more intelligent and disciplined
convicts. Such a population was ripe to be exploited by the most
intelligent and disciplined of them all: Liam Michael Franks.

It appeared that Franks had entered into some
sort of pact with the authorities whereby the safety of the
helicopter was guaranteed. In return, he had gained control of all
the benefits the helicopter provided. This alone would make it
difficult to set up a rival village elsewhere; but it seemed he had
also appropriated the most suitable peninsula on the island, and
only a peninsula could be successfully defended against the
outsiders.

There was little alternative but to do it
Franks’s way. Routledge had no intention of digging potatoes for
the rest of his life. If he wanted even a degree of comfort and
ease, he would have to climb the ladder as quickly as he could, and
that meant conforming to the rules Franks had laid down last
night.

Like King’s whisky, the bread was better than
he had expected. The butter tasted rather strong and he guessed it
was made from goat’s milk; the jam seemed to be of bilberries or
something of the kind.

He ate the egg, which was excellent, made
himself a jam sandwich with the two remaining slices, and embarked
on a more thorough examination of King’s personal effects. Going to
the mantelshelf, he bent his head first one way and then the other
to read the thirty or so book spines. The only hardback was an
ancient volume of poetry: the collected works of Spenser, much
thumbed and repaired with sticky tape. Most of the other books
concerned practical or technical subjects – vegetable gardening,
do-it-yourself, knitting, an illustrated guide to seashore life. A
battered German dictionary had lost its covers. Beside it stood two
books of chess theory. There were a few fiction titles, in French
and German, none in English. Holding the remains of the sandwich in
his mouth, Routledge briefly examined a couple before sliding them
back. He read neither French nor German, but from what he had seen
had managed to advance a little further in his divination of King’s
personality.

He left unopened what appeared to be a bundle
of letters, held together with a rubber band. The address on the
outer envelope was in a woman’s rounded handwriting:
B. E. King
Z-160551, c/o H. M. Prison, Princetown, Devon, PL20 6SA
. The
letter had been posted in Milton Keynes on the ninth of April
last.

Routledge supposed he too would be getting a
new number, prefixed with a Z. Did “16” mean Sert? Was King the
551st man to be sent here?

There were no photographs on display, and in
the rest of the objects on the mantelshelf there was no real
distinction between ornament and haphazard junk. King appeared to
be a humble, frugal man. From the pile of darning and mending by
the hearth it appeared that he undertook work for others besides
himself. He had already shown a capacity for kindness, and
Routledge decided to invade his privacy no further.

Besides, it was nearly twenty to six, and
Routledge was receiving indications that called for a second and
more prolonged visit to the latrine.

* * *

The interview with Appleton began punctually
at six o’clock.

After lengthy and detailed questioning about
his education, aptitudes and career, Routledge was told how his
first few weeks in the Community would be spent. He was to be
billeted with King for as long as it took for suitable
accommodation to be prepared. This meant a stone and timber shack,
or “house”, as Appleton called it. Routledge was expected to supply
most of the labour himself, although the materials and help with
the heavier and more skilled work would be provided. So long as he
consumed no more than the materials allotted to him, the shack
could be of any design approved by the Father. Once the shack was
finished Routledge could live in it himself; or, if by then he had
been offered a place in one of the larger houses with multiple
occupancy, he could accept it and the shack would become the
property of the Village.

Appleton had shown keen interest in
Routledge’s knowledge of the building trade, but he had been more
interested still in his facility with numbers, and had given him a
test in mental arithmetic, the results of which he had checked on a
solar-powered calculator.

“Sixteen point three four plus ninety-seven
point two one seven. Divided by eleven. Times two.”

“Twenty point six … Twenty point six five. Or
a bit under. Say point six four five.”

“Square root of eight five three.”

“Between twenty-nine and thirty. On the low
side: twenty-nine point two. Something like that. Nine point two
one, near enough.”

“That’s remarkable, Mr Routledge.”

Routledge found nothing remarkable in it at
all. For him, ever since he could remember, arithmetic had been
easy. Both at school and in his adult career, figures, abstracted
quantities, estimates, had been the daily substance of his working
life. Despite the calculating machines and computers at his
disposal, he explained, a QS would not get far on site without at
least a basic numeracy.

“You have more than a basic numeracy,”
Appleton said.

Routledge didn’t answer; he disagreed.
Compared with the mental agility of some of the quantity surveyors
he had known, his own father, for example, his was not very
good.

“What about algebra?”

“I know how to do it.”

“Quickly?”

“Fairly quickly.”

“Calculus?”

“Yes, I know that too.”

Appleton’s notes were becoming copious.
Routledge watched the way he held the pencil, neatly and precisely,
with a straight forefinger, exerting no undue pressure as his hand
travelled across the paper. The writing was equally neat and
precise, pedantic, quite unlike King’s.

This morning Appleton was wearing a
hand-knitted fawn cardigan, made perhaps here in the Village, for
Routledge had already seen sheep. He was losing his hair from the
crown: his beard still retained traces of a more youthful colour.
On closer acquaintance, Routledge liked him even less. In fact, he
disliked all the men closest to Franks, at least, all those he had
seen so far: Appleton, Mitchell, Stamper, this morning’s guard at
the door.

“I want to turn now to your physics
background,” Appleton said, looking up and again directing his
brown eyes at Routledge’s own. Routledge had the feeling that his
character was still being assessed, ready to be reported to Franks;
he was still on probation; there was no reason to suppose that his
position was safe or that he would not, on Appleton’s say-so and
without a moment’s notice, be arbitrarily turfed out. This was a
time for the utmost caution.

“How much electronics do you know? Do you
understand the principle, say, of the transistor?”

“Yes, but it’s a long time since I learned.
I’m a bit rusty.”

“Did you ever do any breadboarding?”

“Only at school, and even then not much. We
concentrated mainly on theory.”

“Do you know the theory of piezoelectric
devices?”

“Yes, I think so. Vibrating crystals and all
that.”

“Name some piezoelectric materials.”

“God. I can’t remember. Quartz. That’s one.
Tourmaline. Er …”

“That’ll do. What about acoustics?”

“The same. Only to A-level.”

“Optics?”

“The same.”

“Now you said” – and here Appleton consulted
the notes he had made during the first interview – “you said you
didn’t know how to write professional software. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“I assume you had a home computer.”

“A Mac. My son used it as well, for games and
for school. Uses it.”

“Did you try your hand at any
programming?”

“Not very much. Just for the odd simple
application.”

“Which languages can you use? Anything
structured?”

“BASIC. Just to play with it.”

“C? Assembly language?”

“I couldn’t really be bothered with all
that.”

“Too time-consuming, or too difficult?”

“Both, I suppose.”

“The machines at work. What did they
run?”

“Geos, and Q-Sys. And tailored packages for
the client or contractor.” Routledge failed to see the point of
these questions: surely they had no computers here, no science
laboratories.

“Were you responsible for writing tender
documents?”

“As far as quantities went, yes.”

“And supervising applications for interim
payments?”

“Yes.”

“Using Q-Sys?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever have to do it manually?”

“Now and then, when the computer went
down.”

“What about dayworks? Did you ever measure
those?”

“Yes. I did. Only too often.”

Appleton made more notes. Just before looking
up, he said, “You’re wondering what all this is about, aren’t
you?”

“Well, yes, I am rather curious.”

“What I’m trying to find out, Mr Routledge,
is how much aptitude you have for structured thinking coupled with
a high level of numeracy and fastidious attention to detail. There
is no better training for that than programming computers, but it
seems the life of a senior quantity surveyor might come a pretty
close second. In some respects it’s even better for the work we
have in mind.”

“May I ask what that work is?”

“Until I have conferred with the Father, no,
you may not. The final decision must rest with him. As it is you
will not mention to anyone what has been discussed here this
morning.”

Routledge was immediately on the alert. What
were they up to? An escape attempt? Something to do with
electronics? Were they planning to freak out the helicopter and
hijack it? He wanted to ask more questions; but Appleton changed
the subject and made it plain that this part of the interview had
reached its end.

At the bungalow door Appleton told Routledge
that, after lunch, King would be giving him a guided tour of the
Community; until then, he might like to amuse himself by looking
around on his own account. He was not to go near the bungalow or
the workshop at the end of the garden, and it was recommended that
he should keep away from the border-line, but otherwise he was free
to explore all parts of the Village headland.

As Routledge emerged, the guard on the
veranda acknowledged him, which he had scarcely done before. Dark,
bearded, and about thirty, in green corduroys and a predominantly
white, chequered shirt, the guard was reclining in the usual chair,
his boots resting on the stonework of the adjacent pillar. He was
cradling a crowbar with a sharpened point; on the boards beside him
lay a hatchet with a shiny-edged blade. “The name’s Mr Talbot,” he
said.

“Routledge.”

“Glad to know you, Mr Routledge.” He squinted
up at Routledge, who was standing against the sun. “Lodging with Mr
King, ain’t you?”

“Yes. For the moment.”

“You’ll be all right with him. He’s an
exceptionally nice bloke, is Mr King.” He paused. “Have you met any
of the other men on his street? Mr Foster, for example, or Mr
Ojukwo?”