The Penal Colony (39 page)

The soft noise of the blow, the victim’s
quick writhe, seemed to have registered with Houlihan, who uttered
a dreaming groan. Being careful not to touch any blood, Martinson
pulled out the knife and quickly positioned it over Houlihan’s
breast.

This was the bit he had been looking forward
to. He paused, savouring the moment, before he struck.

Now that it was done he knew he should get
out, but he remained there, crouching by the mattress, feeling
curiously empty and unsatisfied. He wanted something more,
something else: he did not know what.

In the heap of clothing by the mattress he
found a pair of cotton underpants which he wrapped around his knife
and placed in the spreading pool of blood on Houlihan’s chest. When
they were soaked, Martinson went to the wall. He was about to write
a message, smear it in red, a cryptic message for Pope and all the
world to see.
Eli, Eli.

He stayed his hand. There was yet a part of
him which would not allow it. If he were to commit that sacrilege
he knew he would be condemned, finally, irredeemably, to the
damnation which he already believed was his. He did not care about
that; but still he did not write.

Instead he let the underpants drop on
Houlihan’s face, and wiped the knife clean on the bedcovers.

It was good to get outside once more into the
cleanness of the night. Martinson climbed down as rapidly and
quietly as he could, keeping especial watch on the window in the
fourth floor. Pope did not appear.

“Anyone see us?” he whispered to Obie,
pulling on his dark trousers and sweater and then, having removed
one of the two pairs of socks, his boots.

“No.”

“Sure?”

“I’m sure. You was gone a long time. What
happened?”

“Santa delivered the goods. Don’t he always?”
Martinson glanced at the mess window, just above them and to the
right. “Now let’s get back to Toytown and cut off Dave Nackett’s
balls.”

Who would lead the Village when Franks had
gone? How would the new Father be chosen? At last Friday’s Council
meeting these questions had again been raised and again been left
unsettled.

As to the means of choosing, some sort of
election seemed the likeliest, contrary as this went to the way the
Community had been operated hitherto. But then many changes – such
as the abolition of the initiation procedure – had overtaken the
Community in recent weeks and months, and many more were bound to
follow Franks’s departure.

Of his councillors who would remain, none
possessed anything remotely resembling his personal magnetism.
Godwin, or Sibley, the most senior, were nonetheless improbable
candidates for an election. Routledge had already decided he would
not put himself forward, even if pressed to do so, which he thought
so unlikely as not to be worth further consideration. He was the
most junior councilman. If Stamper and Mitchell held no chance,
which common opinion had already agreed, then he could hold no
more. Besides, he had no taste for leadership. He simply did not
want the job.

That left only one councilman: Foster. Given
his views on the outsiders, he would be a most popular choice. If
Foster became the Father he would immediately declare war on the
outsiders and do his best to kill them all, regardless of whatever
reaction this would have on the mainland.

Routledge was too worried and frightened to
sleep. It was not so much the prospect of Foster as Father that he
feared; that was only a contingency and could for the moment be
pushed out of mind. There were far worse, far more immediate
problems facing him, facing everyone. The alliance of the two
outsider camps had at last taken place. Obie had met Johnson,
Foster’s deputy, this morning to deliver the news: the attack on
the Village would be coming tomorrow afternoon. Martinson had
personally killed Nackett and Houlihan six nights ago, on 21 April.
On that same night there had begun a violent realignment of Old
Town and the lighthouse, fought out over the succeeding days and
now concluded. Although Martinson was the guiding spirit, the new
leader was ostensibly a man called Wayne Pope. Pope had been one of
Houlihan’s most trusted advisers, a member of his brain gang, all
but one of whom had eventually sided with the traitor. According to
Obie, the exception was being held prisoner in the lighthouse,
awaiting death by crucifixion. Martinson was planning the same fate
for Franks.

Had Routledge not met Martinson and spent
time in his company, he would have dismissed such hideous talk out
of hand. But now he took it seriously, as did Franks and the whole
Council. And he took seriously the warning by Obie that he himself
also featured prominently on the list of those for whom special
punishment was being reserved. It seemed that Martinson had
forgiven neither the theft of the crossbow nor the damage Routledge
had done to his house.

“Prine?” Routledge said. “Are you awake?”

No answer. How could he be sleeping?

Prine had completed his probation. At the end
of last week he had been made a full member of the Community. He
knew as much about the attack as anyone outside the Council, and
yet here he was, fast asleep.

If the outsiders were repulsed at all, the
man responsible would be Thaine. Routledge wished Thaine were here
now, in the Village; but for the past ten days he had been in the
cave, alone or with one or more of the carpenters, finishing the
ketch. Today the sky had been clear and no one had been able to get
down there to warn him. Thaine did not know the date of the
attack.

The preparations for defence had been stepped
up. Almost everything that could have been done had been done.
Foster and Johnson and their helpers had put both outsider camps
under full-time surveillance; a system of relayed signals, using
Morse-flashing torches in the darkness and semaphore by day, was
keeping the Council informed.

Routledge pressed a button on his watch and
read the display. Three forty-eight. Less than an hour till dawn.
He had not slept at all, but it was no use trying any more. The
night for him was over. Besides, he was due at the bungalow at
five.

He climbed out of bed and slipped his feet
into his boots. Taking his pocket lighter, he moved to the door and
let himself out into the cool, sweet air drifting in from the
cliffs. Except for the faint noise of a quiet and distant jet,
passing westwards at high altitude, and except for the whisper of
waves in Vanston Cove, he could hear no sound.

Tonight it seemed there were more stars than
ever. Mainland skies were always polluted, both with industrial
haze and with the reflected glare of sodium streetlamps. Here the
atmosphere was pure; here the full extent of the heavens was
revealed to view. He looked over towards the east, towards the
place where the sun would rise. The horizon there was still
black.

Entering the latrine, he lit the candle,
lifted it on its driftwood sconce and checked for earwigs. In
spring and summer especially, the latrines attracted large numbers
of these insects, active by night and the quarry in the sport of
“wig-frizzling”. Much too sadistic for Routledge’s taste, this
involved using the candle to burn them alive. His use of the candle
consisted merely in making sure there were none on the seat or
likely to be swept into the bag and drowned.

Rescuing the fourth or fifth earwig with a
folded sheet of lavatory paper, Routledge’s formless flow of
thought was interrupted by a remote sound of shouting. An instant
later the gong at the main gate was frenziedly struck, over and
over again; there was fresh shouting, much nearer at hand, and the
frantic ringing of the gate gong was taken up by the deeper tone of
the gong on the bungalow veranda.

He blew out the candle and, shouting now
himself, shouting to his neighbours in their beds, ran back to his
house and lit the lamp.

“Prine!” he cried, pulling on his outdoor
clothes. “Get up, for Christ’s sake get up! Get to your station!
The outsiders are coming!”

The precinct was already alive with activity
when Routledge stepped up to the veranda, dodging the buckets of
water with which the woodwork and floorboards were being doused. He
noticed that the emergency shutters, specially prepared during the
preceding weeks but kept concealed from the outsiders’ view, had
already been screwed into place, and the front door had been
reinforced with a steel panel. Little was being said. Everyone knew
his allotted task; the work was proceeding with a smoothly ominous
efficiency. As he approached the doorway, Routledge almost bumped
into Appleton, who, with a clipboard, was just coming out.

“We’ve nearly an hour yet,” Appleton told
him. “Johnson’s signal said they were massing at the
lighthouse.”

“How many?”

“Worse than we thought. Two hundred plus. In
one group. It looks like Foster was right. They’re probably coming
straight for the bungalow.”

So much for Obie’s warning. He knew he
wouldn’t be getting a place on the ketch. “Obie’s betrayed us,”
Routledge said.

“I doubt it. He doesn’t want Martinson in
charge of the island, especially when any one of us might live to
tell the tale. He had no choice but to be straight. Martinson must
have switched the plans at the last minute. Maybe he smelled a
rat.” Appleton held out his clipboard and brushed past. “Oi, over
here with that cart!”

Routledge had the feeling that, like himself,
the Father had not slept during the night. He was unshaven and his
eyes were dark with fatigue; when Routledge entered his office he
saw a bottle of paracetamol tablets on the desk, a half-empty glass
of water beside it. Conferring with Mitchell and Sibley, Franks
seemed shorter and smaller than Routledge had hitherto believed him
to be, and with a sense of alarm Routledge realized what had
escaped him before: the Father was ill. He had the look of a man in
perpetual pain. Somehow, previously he had been able to keep it
hidden. In normal hours, when everything was under his control,
that must have been possible.

“Mr Routledge,” he said, when Mitchell and
Sibley turned to leave. He looked beyond Routledge’s shoulder: more
men were gathering at the door. “It’s going to be the frontal
assault, we think. You’ll be taking Mr Thaine’s place. You know
what to do. And I want you to assemble Mr Appleton’s squad for him.
He’s a bit busy at the moment. Your men will defend B2 as planned.
Fall back to the gate if necessary. If they get over the boundary
you come back with the rest of us to protect the precinct. I
repeat, don’t open up unless they threaten the bungalow, and even
then not unless there is absolutely no alternative.
Understand?”

“I understand,” Routledge said, wanting to
say something more, to express concern for his health, to convey
some message of loyalty and support, but this was not the moment
for that.

* * *

Before coming to Sert, Martinson, like, he
supposed, everyone else, had been fully exposed to drugs. At
primary school they had sniffed glue and butane; at the
comprehensive and afterwards it had been crack, PCP, ether,
heaven’s gate, reds, grass, shit, uppers, downers, bennies, zoots,
speed, heroin: the list went on and on. He had been friendless even
then, but still the others had offered and cajoled. He had refused
every time, despite the opprobrium and ridicule this had earned. He
had not refused for his grandmother’s sake, but because he had felt
no need of an artificial high. Compared with the supreme, the
antarctic purity of his vision, everything else was mud and shadow.
Later he had become increasingly aware of its order and purpose,
the deeper meanings made manifest in symbols. It had been building
all his life, this irresistible journey into the heart of things,
into the centre of the universe itself. He was a tuning fork.
Closing on the centre, he had recognized the harmony and known it
as his own. And today, this morning, in this mystical April dawn,
the vibrations had coincided and there was no more division between
out and in: he was the centre and the centre was himself. He was a
giant. He was unstoppable.

It did not matter that the first attack had
been repulsed, that his army had temporarily scattered. Some had
fallen, hit by spears or crossbow bolts. Some had been cut down
with axes and scythes. Some had fallen in the tangle of the
boundary fence and been dispatched with hammers. Many had run along
the border to get in elsewhere, and the chapel had been torched;
but most had simply retreated and regrouped. With Pope giving the
orders, they had advanced again, slightly more disciplined, and
driven the villagers back through the gate, back into Franks’s
territory. With the Village force in rapid retreat, the real
fighting had begun.

Bubbles was now in possession of the workshop
under the trees. It had been ransacked; smoke was beginning to pour
from the broken window. Gomm was besieging the other workshops and
the Village houses.

The bungalow too was still being held. Franks
was sure to be in there. The windows and the glass doors of his
office had been protected with wooden shuttering, obviously
prepared well in advance, just like the villagers’ battle plans and
their armoury of spears and barbed-wire morningstars. He must have
known about the attack. Someone, Obie perhaps, had been playing a
double game. Martinson had not seen Obie since the first skirmish
at the gate. If he were not already dead, Martinson would question
him later. And if it turned out that Obie had been responsible for
this debacle he would soon find himself on the top of Pulpit Head,
nailed up beside Franks, Pope and Feely, facing the ocean and the
broad southern sky.

Martinson, Pope, and Craddock had hastily
arranged a plan of attack, taking the bungalow from the side and
rear where it was most vulnerable. Pope had elected to approach the
side. Martinson, leading his contingent of forty or fifty men
across the garden, began making for the rear.