Marcher: The Author's Preferred Text Part 15

'Sling that lot on, mate,' said Gunnar, indicating a heap of work clothes and some boots in the back of the van. 'We don't want you to go home looking all muddy and that do we? Your mum would moan at you.'

While Carl changed, Gunnar rolled up a spliff. He pa.s.sed it across when Carl had finally got the boots on and Carl drew in the rich and oily smoke as Gunnar led the way into the wood. The black trees, choked with creepers and ivy, seemed somehow intense and limitless to Carl, like the black worms he'd seen in his mind dividing and dividing as he lay on the floor in the shifters' hideaway. More sinister still, there was a deep silence which was completely new to him. Apart from that one night when Laf first took him to Erik's hideaway, he had never in his life been anywhere where the sound of traffic couldn't be heard. Here there was only the rain.

And then a strange cry came suddenly from straight above him.

'f.u.c.k!' Carl cried out. 'What the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l's that?'

'An owl, me old mate. Just a harmless little old owl.'

Gunnar snapped on a powerful torch.

'So what is this job exactly?' Carl asked.

It was the third time he'd asked the question.

'Like I say, a nasty little job,' Gunnar told him. 'A sort of disciplinary matter, I suppose you'd call it.'

The torch made a tunnel of pale tree trunks, surrounded on every side by darkness.

'Disciplinary?' Carl was alarmed. 'You're not saying I done something wrong or nothing are you, only I...'

'Oh no, mate. Not you, bless you! No it's Slug. You remember Slug? The little Scotch geezer? He's done a silly thing, I'm afraid. Poor fella, he wishes he hadn't done it now. And I wish he hadn't either because then we wouldn't be in this position he's put us in. But you've got to have some discipline, eh Carl, or where would we be?'

There was more torchlight through the trees ahead of them.

'Here we are then, mate. Soon get it over with and then we'll get you home in time for cocoa and telly with your mum.'

A small group was waiting for them. It proved to consist of skull-faced Laf, Erik, two young men who Carl hadn't met before called Jod and Micky, and Slug himself. Slug was naked from the waist up, gagged, and tied hand and foot with rope. He was shivering violently.

'Ah Carl!' purred Erik. 'Carl, Carl, Carl! Carl of the pithy phrases. Good to see you again, my friend. Glad you could make it.'

'Yeah, right,' muttered Carl, glancing furtively at the terrified eyes of Slug and then looking quickly away again.

'There's a little stream running by just over there, Carl,' Erik warned, 'so careful you don't fall into it in the dark. It's a bit late in the year for swimming.'

'Yeah, cheers mate.'

'Now then, let's get down to business. Jod, can you put up the noose, please? Micky, can you light up the branch so Jod can see what he's doing?'

By torchlight, Jod threw a rope over a thick branch that thrust out over the stream. Slug made desperate noises through his gag.

'Oh come on, Slug,' Erik said. 'You don't deny you were trying to sell us out to the authorities do you? You don't pretend you didn't know the price of treachery?'

He turned to Carl.

'I even told you that, Carl, didn't I? I told you at our very first meeting what I'd do if you betrayed us.'

'Yeah,' Carl muttered.

'And we've only met once, haven't we? Whereas Slug, well, we go back for some time, don't we Slug? We're old companions. So, after all this time, you really can't claim you didn't know. It just doesn't wash.'

'MMMMMM!' went Slug.

Erik laughed and turned back to Carl.

'So remind me, Carl, my friend. Remind Slug here. What did I tell you about the penalty for treachery?'

Carl ran his tongue round his dry lips.

'Hang... hanging. And... a spear...'

'That's it. Well done, Carl. I knew you were on the ball. Hanging and spearing. The traditional form of sacrifice to Wod. Wod once even sacrificed himself to himself in that way, would you believe, sacrificed himself to himself and so found a new and deeper knowledge. Or so the story goes. Who knows, maybe you'll find it too, Slug? Maybe you'll find the wisdom that has so spectacularly eluded you thus far.'

He lifted his torch to illuminate Slug's face, glanced back at Carl.

'Slug's big mistake was to underestimate me,' Erik said. 'I'm something of a "techie", as Laf likes to call me. I'm rather good with electronics and the like. I had Slug here wired and he didn't know it. I had a little bug sewn into that greasy jacket of his. I'm afraid it's embarra.s.singly easy to bug someone who never changes his clothes. I had him wired and I heard everything he said to the police. Everything. Childish I know, but the first thing I did was send him a little text message to let him know I was listening.'

He turned to Jod.

'Next job, I think, is to tie the bag of stones to him, if you don't mind.'

Jod fastened a bulging knapsack round Slug's waist. Erik nodded.

'Right. I think we're all set now. Laf and Gunnar, will you do the honours please.'

With a m.u.f.fled wailing sound, Slug sank to the ground and curled up into a foetal position, but Laf and Gunnar simply dragged him along the ground. Spotlit by the torches of Micky and Jod, Laf fastened the noose around Slug's neck and Gunnar pulled on the rope until he was firstly lifted back up onto his feet and then forced to stand on tiptoe right at the edge of the stream. Gunnar tied the other end of the rope securely round the tree trunk. There was a moment of stillness, and then Carl became aware that Erik had produced a long spear from somewhere and was creeping slowly forward, like a leopard, if rather a stiff and ungainly one, creeping towards its prey. The spear had a large metal head, maybe two or three inches across at its widest part, and almost a foot long.

'Right?' asked Laf.

'Right,' said Erik.

Laf pushed Slug so that he swung out over the water, threshing and gagging horribly. And at once Erik came rushing forward to thrust the heavy spear into Slug's belly, twisting it and then pulling it back out. A great gout of blood and intestines slewed from Slug's body and slopped down into the stream. Carl vomited profusely.

'Cut him loose,' ordered Erik.

Gunnar took out a knife and cut the rope so that Slug fell into the water. Weighed down by the bag of stones, he sank immediately to the bottom. They all went forward to look down at him, clearly visible by torchlight through the limpid water. He was still kicking and threshing away down there, his pale guts waving in the current like some grotesque kind of waterweed, the dark blood pouring up from him and off down the stream like a trail of oily smoke.

When Carl vomited again, Erik turned on him.

'Are you shocked by what you've seen, Carl? Do you disapprove?'

'No mate, no,' Carl hastily wiped his chin, very very anxious indeed to dispel any impression of disapproval. 'It's just, you know, I've never seen a bloke killed before. I'm not used to it. I know he deserved it, if he gra.s.sed you up and that. I know he had it coming to him.'

Erik didn't seem to hear his answer.

'It is brutal I agree,' he mused. 'It is in fact a crime, not only in the legal sense but in the moral one. But at least it is a crime of heat and violence, not of timidity and coldness. Those Inclusion Zones are a crime too. Those cold DSI offices with their pine furniture and their priggish mission statements are a crime, of which the beneficiaries and perpetrators are the prosperous and comfortable folk who live outside, far, far away. That's a crime too. But here's the thing, Carl: you can't avoid committing crimes. Like animals we humans have no choice but to transgress against others if we are to live at all. Look at a hawk, Carl, hovering in readiness for the kill! Look at a lion about to pounce! We have no choice but to commit crimes. The only choice we have is the kinds of crime we commit: the crimes of coldness and bloodlessness or the crimes of blood and heat.'

'Yeah,' said Carl, who had turned away from Slug's corpse and the obscene white ribbons trailing from its belly. He didn't understand what Erik was saying, but he knew that Erik was one of the coldest and most bloodless people he had ever met, including even his icy aunt Liz Wheeler, Tammy Pendant's mother.

The others too seemed to have grown tired of looking down at Slug. They stopped shining their torch beams into the water and swept them this way and that while they waited to be told what would happen next, conjuring out of non-existence the ivy-choked shapes of individual trees and then surrendering them back again to the darkness. Each tree was different, each one a unique and separate hieroglyph, alien and utterly opaque.

'Turn off the lights,' commanded Erik. 'I would like to say a few words about the late departed Slug. Or Steven Kenneth Patrick McIntosh, to give him his real name.'

It had stopped raining. Ragged openings had appeared here and there in the cloud above them, and bright stars were shining through.

'There is a story,' said Erik into the darkness, and he sounded just like a vicar at a funeral. 'There is a story that when Wod's son Baldur died, everyone and everything wept in each and every one of the many worlds of the Tree. Not only the people and the G.o.ds, not only the giants and the demons and the trolls, but even the animals, even the fishes in the rivers and the seas, even the plants and stones. Some versions of the story even suggest that the world still weeps for him with each new day, and that what we call dew-drops are really the earth's never-ending tears. A rather charming notion, I've always thought.

'But something tells me that no one will weep for Steven Kenneth Patrick McIntosh. There will be some squeamishness, some distaste at the manner of his pa.s.sing. There will be some sense of shock and fear among the brutish and degraded creatures that it pleased Steven to call his friends. But I feel rather confident that no one will feel the slightest pang of grief for Steven himself, for the world made no room for poor Slug. All his life he beat on the cold stone wall that excluded him and he tried everything, including, finally, treachery but it never yielded to him, never let him in. He was always utterly alone.'

The starlight reflected in the smooth surface of the stream created the illusion that this small dark tangled place was surrounded on all sides by a glittering sphere, and Carl tried to persuade himself that what was happening here wasn't real, that real life was still going on somewhere else, far away outside.

'Was that the test then?' he asked Gunnar on the way back. 'Have I pa.s.sed the test?'

'Oh bless you, Carl! That wasn't a test, my old mate. I mean, being fair, you didn't really do anything yourself did you? You just watched, didn't you? If we're honest, you just watched. No, we'll have to sort the test out for you later, mate.'

He sighed.

'It's a busy old time at the moment though, mate. We've got a lot on. A lot of tests, a lot of stuff to get together, a lot of plans. It might be a little while before we get back to you. But we will do, mate, don't you worry about that. We'll get back to you as quickly as we possibly can.'

Chapter 11.

A small ceremony was held in the DSI office in Thurston Meadows to mark Cyril Burkitt's departure. Janet Richards was there. So was Janet's boss, the regional director Peter Silver. And about twenty or thirty DSI staff social workers, administrators, policemen, teachers had come to say goodbye, including Jazamine Bright.

Janet Richards said a few words about Cyril's long service and his encyclopaedic knowledge of the people of the Bristol Zones. Peter Silver, as was traditional, read out a few amusing extracts from Cyril's personnel file. Then Cyril was presented with his farewell card, a book token, a stainless steel garden spade and a tearful kiss from his secretary Alice, who had organised the collection envelope and bought the token, the spade and the card.

When it was his turn to make a speech, Cyril talked about the families he had worked with, first as a social worker, then as a social work manager and finally as a registration manager, and he spoke about the names that had kept recurring over his whole career the Wheelers, the Pendants, the Delaneys, the Blows, the Tonsils... With each name he mentioned everyone laughed and gave a cheer of recognition. They'd all worked with members of these families. They all had tales they could tell.

'...And it occurs to me,' Cyril said, 'that these are the Great Families of the Bristol Zones, the famous old bloodlines. If I'm going to say goodbye to my job properly, I should say goodbye to them as well as to all of you. So what I've decided to do is to hire a room in that conference centre up at the Zoo and throw a party for the Pendants and the Wheelers and all the rest of them, as well as for as many of you as can make it!"

Everyone laughed, loudly and generously, not quite getting the joke but a.s.suming that a joke was what it was, for Cyril was known for his off-beam sense of humour. And Cyril just stood there and smiled and waited until it dawned on his colleagues, one by one, that he wasn't joking at all.

'I've sent the invitations out this morning,' he said. 'You're all invited. I'll provide the food and drink.'

'You should have seen Janet and Peter's faces,' Jazamine told Charles later. 'You should have seen those frozen smiles!'

No one had ever invited the dreggies to a retirement do before and Janet Richards tried all kinds of tricks to prevent it from happening. She suggested it posed a security risk and that Cyril would be in danger from the group of shifters who'd tried to kill him, but when Burkitt pointed out that the event would be invitation only and that he'd hired some bouncers to mind the door, she changed tack and suggested that it would reflect badly on the Zones if there was any trouble of disturbance.

'I don't mean reflect badly on our Department,' she explained. 'We've got broad shoulders after all! I mean reflect badly on the people you really care about, Cyril, the Zone residents themselves. Do you see what I mean? If there was any kind of problem at the Zoo, it might feed into the "dreggie" stereotype?'

She even offered free use of a DSI community centre as an alternative, and food and drink at the DSI's expense, but Cyril politely batted these suggestions aside. Janet might not like it but, at the time, in that particular world, there was still no law that could prevent Zone residents from crossing the line, unless they were under a restriction order.

Jaz invited Charles to go with her to the Zoo party, but he was working late that day and didn't arrive until it was already well under way. Burkitt had clearly spent a lot of money. There were long tables piled with food. There were gla.s.ses of champagne set out in rows with a team of catering staff at hand to replenish them. There was a DJ playing records on the stage. There were dozens of tables with white tablecloths and silverware and a vase of flowers on each.

Most of the hundred-odd guests were residents of Thurston Meadows and the other Bristol Zones. Many DSI staff had stayed away. Those, like Jaz, who had turned up, found themselves not only in a minority but also having to relate to the Delaneys and the Pendants and the rest in a way that was completely different from what they were used to. However egalitarian their political convictions, however much they'd tried in their daily work to treat everyone with respect, the fact remained that when they'd met these people before it had always been in connection with problems financial problems, housing problems, legal problems, problems with their children or their elderly relatives, problems with their neighbours and always in a context where the deskies had the power: the power to give or withhold at the very least, but often also the power to compel.

But here the dreggies were equals. Many of them in suits and ties or party dresses, they were simply fellow guests. Some were interesting and attractive, some tedious or hard to like, as the people at any party might be. They were just people, and so were the deskies, and this came as a surprise to both sides.

Cyril himself moved from deskie to dreggie to deskie with a manic delight, introducing people to each other 'John, you must come and meet Harry here! He shares your obsession with old vinyl records. His whole front room is full of them!' embarra.s.sing people by telling stories at their expense 'I know Rhoda has a reputation as one of the fiercest deskies in the business, but do you know she is absolutely terrified of spiders?' and launching off at the smallest pretext on long stories about the events of his life, whether long ago or very recent indeed.

'It's a cliche I know but it was as if time stood still. There I was, hanging on like grim death to this chap and thinking that in few moments one of them would beat my brains out, and yet I seemed to have all the time in the world. It wasn't until it was all over and I was halfway home that I sort of rejoined the normal flow of time. It was as if I'd been underwater and had finally reached the surface. Oddly enough that was when I first got the idea for having this party at the Zoo....'

'Poor Cyril,' said Jazamine.

'Why poor?' Charles asked. 'He looks like he's having the time of his life!'

'Yes I think he is. But tomorrow the time of his life will be in the past and then what will he do?'

But at this point Cyril got up on the stage at the top of the hall, tapped on the microphone and asked everyone if he could have their attention.

It was a long talk, rambling back and forth across time and between the various Bristol Zones, and moving from jokes and anecdotes to reflections on the changes he'd seen.

'Of course when we started out,' he said, 'we didn't have Zones, and we didn't have a DSI. But even back then, when my job was protecting children, not managing registration conferences, I used to wonder why we worked almost entirely with people who were hard up or on benefits. Did rich people never hurt their children? Were families in Clifton incapable of neglectfulness?'

'Of course they b.l.o.o.d.y are,' growled someone in his audience.

Cyril nodded.

'Of course they are,' he agreed. 'I'm sure better-off families have plenty of those sorts of problems, but I suspect that nearly all of it goes unseen by public agencies, because well-to-do people have this thing called privacy, while poor people have always lived under surveillance. Social workers have meetings with their children's teachers, schools talk to their doctors, doctors have chats with the police. It's as if dreggies remain children all their lives and need grown-ups there to watch over them.'

There was a small rustle of anger across the hall. It seemed extraordinarily insensitive to use the derogatory term 'dreggie' to an audience in which dreggies were the largest group, and many of them had understandably taken exception to it.

But Cyril went on as if he hadn't even noticed.

'All my adult life,' he said, 'there have been a million or more unemployed people in this country. Sometimes the figures go down and the government claims the credit. Sometimes the figures go up and the government blames either its predecessors, or the international economic situation, or both. But, regardless of these fluctuations, there have always been a substantial number of people without a job. It's always seen as a problem, and something is always being done about it, but the fundamental fact remains unchanged.

'And now of course, we have the DSI, the latest scheme in a long line that goes back to the days of the workhouse and the Poor Law. All you lot would be gathered together, that was the plan, and given a special status. And all us lot social workers and health professionals and police and everyone, working together as one big team would help you organise your lives, sort out your problems and get you back into the economy again as useful and productive citizens. That was the idea, and at one time I believed in it myself.

'But then one day, quite suddenly, it came to me! We're supposed to keep on battling but we're not supposed to win. The government needs you lot to be out of work. That's how they keep some sort of discipline in the labour force! That and immigration. You're a warning to the working population not to shirk and not to demand higher wages. Everyone knows they've got to behave themselves or they'll lose their job to someone who'll do it for less, and end up living in dreg estates like you.

'But here's the complicated bit. The government might need a bunch of people out of work but it can never admit to leaving a million or two people on the sc.r.a.pheap on purpose. Quite possibly its members can't admit it even to themselves. So they always have to be seen to be doing something about it. Hence the DSI. Hence the new policy initiatives every second week. Hence our fine slogan: "Let's tackle this together!"'

Cyril laughed as he looked out at the uncomfortable faces.

'Probably most of you have worked all this out long ago. It's not an original thought there are books by the dozen that'll tell you exactly the same thing but, as some of you may have noticed over the years, I've always been a bit slow on the uptake. Slow or not, though, once I had realised this was the case, I began to see that most of what the DSI does is just for show. What looks like moving forward, turns out, again and again, to just be a fancy way of staying in the same place.