Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text Part 12

Fran pulled into the car park of Weston police station. The two of them climbed out.

'Someone's done a shift already,' Fran said immediately.

Charles nodded. Like her, he could feel the agitation in the air, the sense of rupture. The spooked faces of the desk staff, and their effusive welcome, only confirmed what the two of them already knew. (Who were they really? n.o.bodies, minor civil servants at the bottom end of the great chain of government. And yet their work had exposed them to psychic experiences which most people had no inkling of.) 'Just vanished,' said the custody sergeant, a fat Welshman with a handlebar moustache. 'Two of them. Vanished just like that. No one's touched the lock. No one's moved the bars on the window. I can't understand it. They've disappeared from a locked cell.'

'No one can understand it, dear,' Fran said soothingly. 'No one can. It's just one of those things. Fish swim, birds fly, shifters shift. But you've still got one left, haven't you? Take us straight to him, and we'll see if we can get some sense out of him before he disappears in a puff of smoke as well.

'You'll want these won't you?' the sergeant said, producing a plastic bag and two tobacco tins, each containing slip. 'Only I'd really like to get them off my hands.'

Fran dropped them into her shoulder bag.

'We'll give you receipts a bit later if that's alright,' Charles said. 'We ought to go and see this chap before he disappears.'

'Certainly,' said the custody sergeant. 'Only it's not a chap, it's a girl.'

Andrea was a pale willowy creature with huge grief-stricken eyes, a ma.s.s of wispy red hair and a long wispy greenish dress. Her face was innocent as a tiny child's and she wore facial jewellery in her nose, her ears, her lips and her eyebrows. She was about eighteen.

'You're the DMO are you?' she asked. (DMO. Charles noted the term with a certain stamp-collector satisfaction: it was another one he hadn't heard before.) 'I don't think you can pump me out now, it's too late. It's been in my system for a good three hours. I'm going to go any minute. Tim and Gary have gone already haven't they?'

'Yes they have,' Fran said. 'You felt them go did you?'

She nodded. Tears sprang to her eyes. Fran reached across the desk and squeezed her hand.

'Were you good friends?'

Andrea covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

'Oh dear,' said Fran, stroking the girl's hand. 'A bit more than just friends, eh?'

Charles had one of those flashes of insight that you got around shifters, not a big one, not a great chunk of memory or anything, but just a sense of what sort of being it was that looked out of Andrea's eyes. She was a pa.s.sive creature. She had always looked for someone else to take charge and give her direction. From the beginning of adolescence, when adult responsibility began to loom, she had been searching for a source of purpose in her life which wouldn't require the exercise of will, for independent will was something she simply didn't possess. Conventional illegal drugs had been her first haven ecstasy, acid, speed conventional drugs and the people that came with them, people who told a story about themselves which transformed an essentially pa.s.sive and escapist activity into a romantic tale of rebellion, heroism and victimhood. And then she'd met a shifter called Tim who said that drugs were only fit for children.

'All they can give you is daydreams,' he told her. 'Like children's fairy tales. That's why druggies are into elves and gnomes. But slip is for grown-ups. It doesn't give you illusions. It lets you shake off the world itself.'

'Tim was my one true love,' Andrea told Fran, wiping her face with the tissue that Fran had given her. 'My only love. The love of my life. We promised we'd always stay together.'

'Oh dear,' said Fran, still holding her hand. 'You poor old thing. That is hard. That is very hard.'

Charles always had difficulty understanding the complex relationship between people's public personas and their inner selves it was another question which troubled him in a way that it didn't seem to trouble other people and he had never quite got Fran. She held ferociously right-wing views and, back in the office, she was vociferous in her contempt for shifters, who she liked to describe as 'overgrown babies'. But he'd noticed before that, when actually face to face with shifters, she could often be much more gentle and understanding than he was.

'I wish you could pump me out,' Andrea said. 'I'm really scared.'

'I'll go and see if we can get a doctor then,' Fran said. 'It might be worth a try.'

She went to the door and called for the custody sergeant.

'Because you're on your own this time?' Charles asked Andrea, trying to emulate Fran's humanity. 'Is that why you're so scared of doing a shift?'

'No it's not that. I'll be on my own whether I do a shift or not.'

'So what is it then?'

'Before we came to this world we went through a dead world.' She looked into his face with her haunted, innocent eyes. 'Do you know what that is?'

'Yes of course.'

'It was horrible. Horrible. There were... There were skeletons everywhere. Skeletons, but with dried skin still on them, in cars and on the streets, and... Well, it was hard to find a place where you could be away from them. Everything was in ruins, everything dead. There was no gra.s.s, no plants. Even the trees were dead. And the sky was dark, even in daytime, full of these big black oily clouds. I wanted just to go, but Tim and Gary insisted on looking around. I hated it, but we had spare seeds then and we were all together, so I could just about cope. I knew we could get away and I knew I couldn't end up there on my own. '

She began to weep.

'I couldn't bear to find myself in a place like that and not be able to escape. I just couldn't bear it. But it could happen, couldn't it, because I don't have a spare seed? The police took them all off me, all except the one I swallowed. Can't you just give me one seed back? Just one?'

'A dead world, eh?' said Fran as she sat down again. 'We've heard lots about them haven't we, Charles?'

Charles nodded. It was one of the many things that they had found out (these n.o.bodies, these minor civil servants). It was one of the many things that the world didn't seem to want to hear: the fact that on many different branches of time the human race was already extinct, and in some of them not just humans but life itself.

'They're getting the doctor for you now, dear,' Fran told Andrea.

'That won't help,' the pale girl said. 'The slip's got into my blood now. It'll only be a few minutes. I'm beginning to hear the whispering...'

She s.n.a.t.c.hed at Fran's hand.

'Please!' she pleaded. 'Just one seed. I promise you that if I get to a world where there are people I'll bury it, I'll flush it down the toilet, whatever you want. But just in case I wind up in a dead world, please, please, please let me have just one.'

'I'm sorry,' Charles said, 'I can see why you're worried, and I don't blame you, but we can't give out seeds. Our job is to...'

'Oh come on Charles, lighten up,' said Fran, reaching down for her bag and taking out one of the tobacco tins. 'You can see how frightened she is. What's one seed here or there going to matter?'

She opened the tin, took out a seed of slip and pushed it across the desk to Andrea.

Andrea grabbed it, tears filling her eyes.

'Thank you,' she said, 'you are really kind. I could see that as soon as you came in. I know it's...'

She broke off with a soft moan. There was a popping sound, a sudden rush of air across the room, and she had gone.

'Oh Jesus,' Charles muttered.

Fran ran her hands over her face.

'No sleep for us tonight,' she sighed. 'Pictures and voices all night long. What do we do this for, eh Charles? What on Earth do we do it for? Why don't we just transfer to Avonmouth docks or somewhere like that, proper immigration work dealing with sensible things like stowaways on boats. That's what I signed up for.'

She picked up her bag and stood up. They smelt the familiar electrical smell and felt the familiar yearning.

'It's like a hole opening up in the ground in front of you isn't it?' she said.

He nodded.

'Let's get out of here, Charles. I need a cigarette.' Fran rapped on the door of the interview room. 'That poor, poor silly girl. But at least now if she winds up in a dead world, she'll have a chance of getting away.'

'Good morning everyone,' Cyril Burkitt said. 'It's 9.30, so perhaps we should make a start. Most of you know me but for those who don't my name is Cyril Burkitt and I am the Senior Registration Officer for the Thurston Meadows Social Inclusion Zone. This is a Contested Initial Registration Conference within the meaning of the Social Inclusion (Citizenship Categories) Act 2001. It concerns Stacey Rugg of 34 Lilac Flats, Rose Way. Ms Rugg will be joining us in ten minutes.'

He'd been through this routine so many times that he could do the introductions pretty much on automatic pilot, thinking about other things while his mouth still talked. And what he was thinking about right now was the threatening voice on the phone. He was trying to place it, trying to work out exactly what it meant.

All of sudden, it came to him. Of course! I know who that was!

Into his mind had come the vivid image of a smart young man who only a few weeks ago had been the subject of a meeting such as this. His shirt was beautifully ironed, his hair immaculately combed and he had watched Cyril constantly. All through the meeting, whenever Cyril looked his way, there were the man's blue eyes, watching him when he was speaking, watching him when he was listening to others speak. And when the man himself was talking, though he referred repeatedly and obsessively to law books bulging with post-it notes, his eyes still constantly returned to Cyril, and to Cyril alone.

This was a man who had fallen in the world. He had grown up outside the Zones, but had tried to make a living with a variety of poorly conceived business ideas, lost all his money, taken to gambling to try and recover it and ended up with no choice but to fall back on the state, even though this put him into the Social Inclusion category which he dreaded and despised. He'd put in an application for de-registration: that was the purpose of the meeting. He'd applied for a rarely granted legal status, in which a person whose financial problems were deemed to be short-term could obtain some state benefits without having to be listed on the Social Inclusion Register. Unable to afford a lawyer, the man had spent days and weeks preparing his case, but he'd failed to convince the meeting. He was too much of a dreamer. No one had been persuaded by his grandiose plans.

'Thank you for clarifying your position, Mr Burkitt,' he had said at the end, still watching Cyril, still looking straight into Cyril's eyes. 'I will have to consider this carefully and decide what action I will take.'

That's who it'll be, thought Cyril, feeling quite relieved. It'll be him trying to spook me, trying to get his own back, trying to recover some control.

Now what the devil was his name?

Somebody coughed and Cyril became aware that a small group of people was watching him, the expectation on their faces just beginning to turn to puzzlement. He cleared his throat.

'Now... Now, as there are a few new people here perhaps we could start with a round of introductions. I'm... No, I've already explained who I am, haven't I? So if we could just go round the table....'

d.i.c.kie Clarke, a jolly man in a blazer and striped tie, introduced himself as the Registration Liaison Officer from the Meadows Housing a.s.sociation.

'Joy Frost, Headmistress, North Meadows primary,' barked out the large woman to d.i.c.kie's left. 'Stacey's daughter, Saffyre, is one of our pupils.'

The young GP, Sanjay Rajman, introduced himself irritably. He had been to the Finance Office but he still hadn't got to the bottom of the problem with the cheques.

Next to him a blushing police officer, who looked to Cyril if she should still be in school, introduced herself as Karen Stimbling and explained that she was on temporary secondment to the DSI constabulary from Avon and Somerset Police. She said she'd come in the absence of Sergeant Walker and had no personal knowledge of the case.

So why bother to come? Cyril thought, but out loud he was courteous as ever. 'Welcome, Karen,' he said.

Then there was the family social worker, Lisa Finch, a round fluffy woman whose body seemed to be a.s.sembled from b.a.l.l.s of wool. Next to her a tall, thin, elegantly coiffured woman wearing a good deal of make-up introduced herself as Harriet Vere-Rogers, a voluntary Lay Representative appointed by Bristol City Council, as prescribed by the Social Inclusion Act. She was a prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party and she sat on the boards of many local charities and worthy causes.

And finally, of course, there was Alice at Cyril's side, who introduced herself as the note-taker and read out letters of apology from the Benefits Agency and from the Criminal Rest.i.tution Service.

'Well, welcome everybody,' said Cyril.

He explained that Stacey Rugg held de facto Social Inclusion citizenship status as a result of having grown up in a Zone and of having a Social Inclusion registered parent. She had been given provisional SI status on reaching her eighteenth birthday, but now that she was approaching twenty-one, a decision had to be made as to whether she should be entered on the main register.

'I don't think there's much doubt about that in dear old Stacey's case,' said d.i.c.kie with his friendly, wheezy laugh. 'Lovely kid. Wouldn't hurt a fly. But she hasn't got a clue.'

Cyril ignored this.

'Stacey, as is her legal right, has indicated that she opposes registration, which is why we are required under the Act to hold this meeting. She'll be here to put her views to us in person after we have had a preliminary discussion among ourselves. A transcript of the meeting will be made available to her and she'll be ent.i.tled to take the matter to court under section 8(ii) of the Act if she doesn't agree with our decision. Alice, I wonder if you could read through the background report for us?'

'Yes of course, Cyril. Stacey's mother is Jennifer Pendant, White British, of 65 Daffodil Drive...'

d.i.c.kie chuckled knowingly as old Thurston Meadows hands were p.r.o.ne to do when a member of the Wheeler/Pendant/Delaney tribe was mentioned.

'Her father is Roger Rugg, Mixed Race British of 105 Pterodactyl Way, Hartcliffe North. Stacey attended Knowle South Secondary School and left without any qualifications although she possesses basic literacy and numeracy skills up to Age Level Ten. She has never had a job and now lives on Social Inclusion Allowance. From the ages of 14 to 16 she was accommodated at a group home run by Wess.e.x Family Care. She then moved into a flat at 58c j.a.ponica Gardens following the birth of her first child, Saffyre. Stacey says she is not sure who Saffyre's father is.'

Joy Frost sighed.

'Saffyre is now five years old,' Alice went on. 'Stacey's second child, Wolf, is four years old. His putative father is Archduke Wayne Delphonse Delaney, Mixed Race British, now serving a prison sentence for armed robbery and Line offences. Following the birth of Wolf, she moved to her present address where her third child Kaz was born last year. Kaz's father was one Benjamin Tonsil, black British, now living in the Shotover Farm Zone, Oxford. The child protection agencies have been involved in investigating allegations of child neglect in respect of Stacey Rugg, which Lisa will be filling us in on. Ms Rugg also has a number of Line Offences and other criminal convictions which WPC Stimbling can provide us with details of.'

WPC Stimbling gave a tiny gasp and began rummaging through her papers.

'Thanks, Alice,' said Cyril. 'Are there any questions at this stage? Mrs Vere-Rogers, or is everything clear to you so far?'

'All very clear indeed so far, thank you,' enthused the Lay Representative, 'I can only say I am always amazed by the sheer complexity of the problems you...'

But whatever else she had to say was drowned out by the pounding blades of a helicopter pa.s.sing low overhead. House searches were still continuing on the Meadows and air patrols moved to and fro over the Zone twenty-four hours a day, keeping an eye out for shifters who might try to slip out of the path of the searchers on the ground.

On second thoughts, it wasn't that guy, Cyril decided. He hated me enough, that's for sure, but he was just too law-abiding to issue threats.

He remembered another young man, though, at a meeting a few weeks ago, a tiny little mouse of a man with a bewildered little face that was all crushed up like an old beer can.

'You'll be sorry, mate,' the young man had said to Cyril as the meeting broke up. 'You'll be f.u.c.king sorry. I got friends, mate. I've got friends.'

It'll be one of that chap's mates, Cyril thought, some poor little runt like him.

There was a frantic rustling sound coming from WPC Karen Stimbling, who was beginning to think that the amiable but incompetent Sergeant Walker had given her the wrong file.

Cyril cleared his throat.

'Yes... Now... Before going any further I need to remind the conference of the criteria for registration laid down under section 5 of the Act. We have to be able to agree that Stacey demonstrates what is called in the legal jargon 'substantial f.e.c.klessness' in two or more of the so called 'core areas': Financial Affairs, Family Relationships, Basic Citizenship and Home Management. Secondly, as this is a contested case, we have to demonstrate that non-registration would be, in the words of the Act 'contrary to the public interest'. Now if we can start with the first core area, which is Financial Affairs. Any comments here?'

d.i.c.kie Clarke immediately launched into a long and, to him, hilarious story of Stacey Rugg's repeatedly vandalised electricity meter. He was enthusiastically endorsed by WPC Stimbling who found that she did at least have that piece of paper and was determined to make the most of it. In a shocked, breathless voice, she read out a list of no less than five separate criminal offences against the Western Electric Company.

I am an old man, thought Cyril.

Since his early retirement package had been agreed he had spent a good deal of time looking back at his own life and gloomily punishing himself for the decisions ducked and the opportunities missed. When he had first got a job as a social worker all those years ago he had started out with some sort of vague intention of serving the downtrodden of the world. But ever since then he had taken the path of least resistance, falling into whatever niches became available after each of the many reorganisations of the welfare system that had taken place. Each step had somehow seemed reasonable and defensible at the time and yet he had eventually ended up doing a job that was, if he was honest, almost the complete ant.i.thesis of what he originally had in mind.

He was useless at it too, though whether this should be a source of pride or shame he wasn't sure. He knew he was an embarra.s.sment to the agency. He knew that the early retirement package had been agreed as a means of getting rid of him.

Maybe it was the DSI on the phone there, he thought, with a grim little inner laugh. Maybe they've hired a hit man to b.u.mp me off, so as not to have to pay my pension.

'...and then of course there are the so-called lodgers,' said d.i.c.kie Clarke, 'but that's another whole story...'