Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text Part 13

Another helicopter came by overhead. It was so low that, beneath its engine and the thrub-thrub-thrub of its blades, they could just faintly hear the crackling of its ground-link radio.

Dr Rajman drummed his fingers impatiently on the table.

Joy Frost glanced at her watch.

'Do you often give seeds back to shifters?' Charles asked, as they drove back from Weston in Fran's immaculate car.

'No, not often, but I've done it a couple of times. Some of them are so scared of these dead worlds. It just seems cruel not to let them have one little seed as a back-up. I mean I hate slip you know I do! but what difference does one lousy seed make? I know Mike has done the same. And Rami too. They don't tell you about it because you're such a stickler and they're worried that you might feel duty-bound to snitch on them. But surely even you've done something like that at some time or another?'

'No. I can honestly say it's never even occurred to me.'

'Haven't you ever met a shifter before who was terrified of dead worlds?'

'I have, yes, several. And I can remember at least one who begged me to give him a seed just like Andrea did there. But I never thought it was an option. It just seemed like one of those lines you don't cross. I mean if they don't end up using it to get out of a dead world, then they could give it to someone else, couldn't they? Or, if the stories are true, they just could keep it by them and wait for it to divide into two or four or eight. So we'd be helping the stuff to spread and in the end we'd be bringing more shifters back to us.'

Fran clucked her tongue.

'Yes, but when they're so desperate.'

The world loomed strangely out at them. Trees, animals in fields, a stone house, a young woman with a child: everything was pregnant with mysterious significance, like objects in a dream. And within the car there was a similar intensity. Slip eroded the boundary between one individual and another. Each of them seemed to have almost direct access to one another's minds and there was a feeling of deep connection between them, different though they were in age and outlook and background.

'Sometimes I feel that there's something about this world that's obvious to everyone but me,' Charles confessed. 'It seems a straightforward thing to you that you should sometimes bend the rules and, now you tell me about it, I can see why. And yet in another way you lot stick to the rules, the basic spirit of the rules, and I...'

He broke off, realising he couldn't go any further without telling her about the stolen slip in his sock drawer.

'I'll tell you what your problem is,' said Fran shortly, 'You spend far too much time talking to yourself inside your head and not enough talking with other people.'

They drove on for a few minutes in silence. Suddenly, and at the exact same moment for both of them, the face of a sallow surly-looking young man with a little wisp of a beard came into their minds, incongruously accompanied by the most intense feelings of love and longing. They both knew at once, without even having to think about it, that they were looking at Andrea's boyfriend Tim as Andrea herself saw him.

Fran pulled over into a lay-by. Tears came streaming from her eyes. She s.n.a.t.c.hed at a box of tissues on the dashboard, blew her nose.

'I can't drive anymore. I'll kill us both.'

She looked rather soppy and foolish, her mascara running in black smears down her face, and Charles felt embarra.s.sed and even a little repelled, though in his own mind too an intense grief was welling up.

'It's the slip,' he told her, reluctantly putting an arm round her shoulders.

She turned on him angrily.

'I know it's the b.l.o.o.d.y slip you stupid boy. I've been in this job as long as you have, remember? Do you think it's only you who feels and understands these things?'

'No, I...'

'Other people have minds too you know, Charles!'

'Yes, I...'

'Other people suffer as much as you do!'

'I know. I just...'

Fran leant over and planted a moist kiss on his cheek.

'Sorry my darling, you didn't deserve that. You try so hard. And it wasn't just the slip anyway. It was thinking about that silly girl Andrea on her own, and her losing her One True Love.'

She blew her nose again.

'Well I suppose if she'd stayed with him,' Charles offered, 'he would have turned out to have feet of clay like the rest of us. At least now...'

'At least nothing! Now she'll never find that out. She'll spend the rest of her life creeping about through the worlds, mooning over her lost love and thinking that if only she could have been with him, everything would have been wonderful. If she hadn't lost him, perhaps she would have discovered for herself that he was just a big baby like her if not more so, seeing as you men are all big babies anyway and about as capable of making a commitment as...'

'Why the anti-man stuff all of a sudden?'

'Because... because those two men have gone and left her all on her own,' she began, then started crying all over again.

Charles knew that Fran's husband had left her for a younger woman and he dimly remembered her telling him once that her father had abandoned the family when she was a child. Things connect together, he thought. Life is like a piece of music with themes that repeat themselves over and over in different keys and arrangements and tempos. It wasn't a particularly original thought, but it sort of struck him. And it occurred to him that if he understood this truth a little better, he would finally know how to answer Jaz's question.

'But you, Charles,' she said. 'You're not like them at all. You're so brave and proud and you're so... so lonely.'

She drew him to her and gave him another kiss on the cheek. Suddenly Charles found himself pulling her towards him and pressing his lips against her mouth, her neck. They were both panting and she slipped her hand round his waist under his jacket. He'd undone the top three b.u.t.tons of her blouse before he finally pulled himself back.

'We're in a right state aren't we?' he said, attempting a laugh. He opened the car door and climbed hastily out.

He realised as he spoke that his erection was clearly visible and he turned away hastily to hide it. He got out his phone to call for a taxi.

'It's ridiculous that we're even expected to drive when we've just been dealing with shifters,' he said, 'let alone just after someone has actually vanished in front of us. It's just ridiculous.'

His hand was shaking so much that he could hardly punch the b.u.t.tons on the phone. With an equally wobbly hand, Fran b.u.t.toned herself up and pa.s.sed him a tissue to wipe off the tears and make-up which she'd smeared across his face.

Stacey Rugg had her hair shaven off in parallel stripes from front to back in order to allow the closest possible contact between dreamer moodpads and her scalp. Many people on the Zone did the same thing, often also using souped-up dreamer units which gave double or treble the legal voltage in order to maximise the fear, the l.u.s.t, the thrill... Stacey's hands were tattooed with names and knives and hearts and her arms were cross-hatched with self-inflicted scars. All her front teeth were missing and her ears were riddled with holes from which hung bones, hearts, tear-drops and hammers. Imbedded in the skin of her forehead was an ornament called a Soulfire currently popular in the Zones, a fake gemstone containing a hologram that supposedly changed colour to match your mood. On her hip was a little scabrous feral child, his face smeared with something sticky and red.

Everyone went quiet, as they always did in these moments when they had finished picking over a 'case' and were confronted with the real human being. d.i.c.kie remembered, with a tiny pang of discomfort, an amusing but completely unfounded suggestion he had made earlier that Stacey was 'on the game'. Karen Stimbling hoped that, in his summing up, Cyril would not repeat that she had called Stacey 'obviously a complete and utter disaster', which now seemed to her a little excessive, given that she had never met or heard of the woman until today.

Only Joy and Cyril looked Stacey in the eye.

'Welcome, Stacey,' Cyril said with old-fashioned courtesy. 'Do have a seat. Let's start by checking you know everyone here.'

The child, little Kaz, reached out across the table for one of the carafes of water that stood there. Stacey smacked him, hard, and everyone winced while Kaz began a pale thin sobbing.

'Well, I know Miss Frost of course. I've known her since I was a kid. And I know him,' Stacey looked at Dr Rajman. 'He sorts out Wolfie's inhalers and that.'

She suddenly treated them all to a smile of dazzling sweetness.

'Yes and I know her,' she went on in the incongruously rustic accent of the Bristol Zones. 'I know Lisa Finch.'

WPC Stimbling was introduced.

'And I'm Harriet Vere-Rogers,' gushed the lay representative. 'You don't know me, Stacey, but I'm not a professional person like the other people here. I'm just an ordinary Bristol person like yourself.'

There was a moment's silence while everyone absorbed the preposterousness of Mrs Vere-Rogers' claim. Then Cyril cleared his throat.

'Now, Stacey,' he continued, 'we understand that you don't want to be registered as a Social Inclusion Status citizen. I wonder if you could tell us a bit about why?'

'Well, not being funny or nothing, but, like, I don't want to be a dreggie no more, know what I mean?'

'I'm sure we all understand that, but I wonder if you've thought where you would live if you weren't on the Social Inclusion register? Because of course you'd have to give up your tenancy here on the Meadows within six months.'

His tone was gentle and sympathetic but in reality his mind was far away. He had been here so many times before.

'Well I hadn't really decided about that yet, know what I mean? I thought I'd look in the papers and that, and try and get a place for me and the kids.'

'What about money, Stacey? You know, don't you, that only registered citizens can claim Social Inclusion Allowance? Able-bodied people don't get benefits outside, except for very short periods in exceptional circ.u.mstances, not unless they've subscribed to a private scheme.'

Kaz, who'd now stopped crying, reached out again for the jug of water. Stacey distracted him by taking out a family-sized packet of fruit gums, ripping it open and giving him the lot, which he devoured in handfuls.

'I could get a job,' Stacey said, without much conviction.

'Good for you, but then of course there'd be the care arrangements for the children...'

'Wolfie's in the nursery now and I been trying to get a place for Kaz.'

'But you mustn't forget, Stacey, that you only get subsidised daycare in the Zones. Outside you have to pay the market rate which is, oh...'

Finding that he had absolutely no idea, Cyril looked for help to Alice, and she suggested a figure which clearly startled Stacey very much. The Soulfire on Stacey's forehead changed from a gentle green to a smouldering red, and a death's head appeared in the middle of it, staring out from its depths.

'I hate f.u.c.king meetings,' Stacey muttered, 'they do my head in.'

'You see, Stacey,' Cyril explained, 'before you came in we were talking a bit about your circ.u.mstances and we really do think that it isn't the right moment just now for you to drop your Social Inclusion status. Of course you are perfectly ent.i.tled to disagree and, if you want to, you're quite free under the Act to go to court and challenge our decision. But I'd like you to think carefully about what is right for you and see if we can't come to some agreement. Will you do that?'

'Yeah, all right. I'm not being funny or nothing,' said Stacey humbly.

Most people were humble at this point in Cyril's experience. Only a minority erupted into rage as they saw the net closing around them.

Joy Frost stepped in.

'Stacey, I think you and I get on pretty well don't we?'

Stacey nodded.

'Well, listen. You used that silly word "dreggie" just now. Well there are silly words for everything. People call the likes of Lisa and Cyril here "deskies", don't they? They call me an old battle-axe, so I've been told, and I bet you know much worse names which I haven't heard about. But what I always ask people to remember is this: Social Inclusion status doesn't mean that you are being thrown on the sc.r.a.p heap. It means that society recognises that you need special help to sort your life out. I for one happen to believe you need that special help and I happen to believe you deserve it. By keeping you on the Social Inclusion Register we are simply making sure you get it. A time may come, Stacey, when you don't need those things and when that day comes, you get back to us and I can promise you that Cyril and I and Dr Rajman and Lisa and everyone else round this table will all shout "Hooray! Well done! Let's get you off that register straight away!" But we do think that just at the moment, you still need that help.'

Cyril smiled with affection and genuine admiration. Joy really believed what she said. In spite of everything she still believed in it, or believed at any rate that, by sheer commitment, the deskies could make the rhetoric real.

'So what do you say, Stacey?' Joy said. 'You must admit that it does make sense for the moment doesn't it?'

Stacey nodded reluctantly, crestfallen but resigned. Kaz meanwhile took the opportunity to empty the carafe across the table. Dr Rajman swore. Alice fetched some paper towels. Karen Stimbling had a fit of the giggles. Mrs Vere-Rogers dabbed at Dr Rajman's sodden notes.

'But before you finally make up your mind,' said Cyril, 'there are some obligations attached to registration as well as benefits, which I've now got to go through with you.'

Although he knew this part of the Act by heart, Cyril had the habit at this point of opening the copy of the statute that lay in front of him and smoothing down the relevant page, so as to remind people and remind himself that he didn't make the rules.

'First of all there are some rules about your movements outside of the Zone. As you know, normally you can go where you like when you like. Your only obligation is to show your ID to the Line Officer. But if you commit offences you can be prohibited for a fixed period from crossing the Line.'

Stacey nodded impatiently. She knew all this. You got caught shop-lifting down in Broadmead, you'd be given a one-month 'Restrict'. You got caught burgling a house in Clifton and you'd have Restrict for six months or a year. Everyone knew that!

'It sounds so awful, doesn't it?' exclaimed Mrs Vere-Rogers to everyone around the table, as if afraid they might suddenly renounce the system that provided their livelihoods. 'But don't forget that in the old days before the Act, a lot of the people who would now be put on Restriction Orders were actually sent to prison.'

'There are some rules about credit as well,' Cyril went on. 'You can't get a credit card if you are on the Social Inclusion Register and you can't take out most types of loan.'

d.i.c.kie Clarke laughed: 'I wish I could get those rules applied to my wife!'

'I wish someone could apply them to me,' piped in WPC Stimbling.

'Absolutely!' cried Mrs Vere-Rogers.

'The only other restriction,' said Cyril, 'is about voting in elections...'

'Oh I ain't bothered about that!'

'All as bad as each other, eh, Stacey?' chuckled d.i.c.kie, and Mrs Vere-Rogers, the prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party, gave a little shout of laughter.

Stacey's Soulfire had returned to a smiling green.

The taxi-driver he was a short, plump Asian man with the strong accent of a recent immigrant kept glancing in the mirror at Fran and Charles, trying to work out what the relationship was between them and what was going on. He could see that Fran had been crying. He could see that Charles was dry eyed but very agitated. He wondered whether they'd had some lovers' quarrel but there was no obvious antagonism between them and they seemed oddly a.s.sorted to be lovers anyway. Perhaps she was the young man's older sister or his aunt? Perhaps the two of them were coming from some family tragedy, some huge row? But then why had they abandoned a new and expensive car?

As he turned into the estate near the M4/M5 intersection where Britannia House was located, it occurred to the taxi driver for the first time that their destination was the offices of the Immigration Service, and he became afraid. Charles and Fran both knew this because the slip let them feel his fear almost as if it was their own. They couldn't tell whether his own immigration status was irregular or whether he was implicated in some way in some illegal activity related to immigration, but for some reason he was frightened, imagining himself to have been caught in some sort of elaborate sting.

Later he would realise how absurd this was. If the immigration service had wanted to call him in for questioning they would hardly need to pose as a couple in distress in a lay-by on the road to Weston. But that was later. Now, when Charles reached over to pay him, his own fingers shaking, the driver too was struggling to get a grip on the notes and coins. There is such a thin line between the everyday life that people try to make for themselves and the things they fear, constantly crowding in.

As he went out to his car after the meeting, Cyril found Mrs Vere-Rogers just about to get into her Volvo.

'Thank you so much, Mr Burkitt,' she enthused. 'I really was very impressed. I only wish some of the critics of the Social Inclusion system could have been there to see it for themselves. What I can't seem to get through to those people is that most folk in the Zones happily choose registration of their own free will when it's properly and sympathetically explained to them, because they can see it's in their own interests!'

Cyril gave a little shrug. 'Well, I do my job to the best of my ability but I must say I have my doubts about the system myself.'

'Oh but you mustn't, Mr Burkitt. You're doing a marvellous job, and not only for the people who live here but for the whole country too.'

'I wish I could share your conviction.'

The Lay Representative looked earnest.