The Penal Colony (40 page)

Almost as he reached the edge of the crazy
paving, the big shutters fell or were pushed forward from the doors
and hit the ground with a crash. The glass had been slid back: the
furnished interior of the room was suddenly laid open, with figures
in the background and some at the front, holding what appeared to
be some sort of nozzle, enclosed in perforated metal, connected to
a hose and then to a steel tank. At the mouth of the nozzle
Martinson glimpsed a subdued and faintly sinister glow of heat,
like the resting flame of a blowlamp; among those in the room he
saw Franks, and among those with the nozzle he recognized Jenkins,
and before he could twist and turn aside the glow exploded and
blossomed into a roaring nimbus of flame. The blast pushed him off
his feet and he was on the ground, half on the stones and half on
the lawn. Everything had become orange. The grass blades before his
eyes were shimmering slivers of bronze; heat, not air, was what his
lungs now breathed. For that long, floating moment he became a
salamander. The moment ended with a choking stench of paraffin and
the realization that he was on fire. His beard, his hair, his
clothes, were burning. Rolling over and over, away from the heat
and across the dew-soaked turf, he beat at himself and managed to
put out the flames.

It was then that he saw the huge silhouette
of the helicopter overhead. Without his knowledge it had arrived
and was hovering above the bungalow and garden. As it passed above
him he glimpsed a crewman leaning out, directing another
nozzle-like object downwards, black and small and threatening; in
his confusion Martinson half expected this to spout more
destruction, but it was only a camera, a harmless video camera.
Louder even than the scream of the engines, he heard an amplified
voice shouting unintelligible orders to those below.

He had been fortunate. The men who had been
on his right were lying where they had fallen, islands of blazing
coal. He saw Jenkins and the others bringing the nozzle and hose
and tank out of the bungalow and into the garden. The fire roared
again, engulfing a knot of running men. From the side of the
bungalow, from the kitchen door, there came another roar and
Martinson knew they had a second flamethrower there. Maybe one at
the front as well.

The helicopter had slid sideways and was
hanging twenty metres above the precinct. “Stop fighting!” its
voice was saying. “Stop fighting or we’ll use gas! Stop
fighting!”

Martinson could not see Franks among the
group with the flamethrower, which now was being dragged across the
lawn towards the workshop under the trees. That meant he was still
in the house.

As if in slow motion, as if in a dream,
Martinson examined himself and found that he was whole. There was
an iron bar, not his, lying on the charred surface of the grass. He
picked it up and, to the blaring helicopter’s refrain, started for
the open bungalow doors.

“Stop fighting! Stop fighting!”

Mixed with something bright yellow to make it
visible, the TK-6 began streaming from outlets in the helicopter’s
flanks, driven down into the precinct and dispersed by the wind
from the rotors. The pilot descended even lower and flew above the
bungalow roof.

Martinson had almost reached the doorway when
the gas hit him. The effect was instantaneous: an acrid burning in
the sinuses and throat, a feeling of needles jabbing at the eyes,
disorientation, weakness, loss of control. He wanted to fall to his
knees and cover his head, but he kept on, up the step and into
Franks’s office. He stumbled, put out his hand to steady himself on
the tapestry-covered wing of an armchair, and sought in these last
few seconds to find his enemy’s face among those in the room.

Some of them were concealed by damp
handkerchiefs. None belonged to Franks. None belonged to his
brother, his counterpart, in whose name and for whose sake solely
he had remained alive. Too late Martinson saw, from the right, the
downward swing of the morningstar, a rock dressed in barbed wire;
he could not avoid it, but rather it seemed as if he were drifting
upwards into the blow. The blow that nothing could withstand.

The impact caught him squarely on the head.
There was a fleeting bitterness, a sense of loss. The mystery had
no conclusion yet. It remained unfinished. And because it would be
going on, because it would continue hereafter, he knew at the last
that he was wrong.

He had not been forsaken after all.

The four helicopters which arrived that
afternoon were not at all like the familiar Prison Service M55
which at midday had returned to gather pictures of the aftermath,
and which, before leaving, had ordered the Village to prepare for a
visit from the deputy governor.

These four machines were much bigger and
heavier, twin-engined Chinooks liveried in the black and grey
camouflage of the Royal Marines. With a clatter that had emptied
nearly every building, they had approached the island from the
south-east. Franks, standing now in the precinct with Appleton and
Routledge and thirty more, had heard them coming in over Beacon
Point and Pulpit Head, passing directly above Star Cove where
Thaine and Chapman were yet trapped with the ketch. Above the
Village the helicopters broke formation and for half a minute
hovered, making a formidable and effortless show of strength.

Franks did not want to look at Appleton. He
felt too sick, too deeply exhausted. The Village had lost sixteen
of its men. Twenty-three more were injured, some critically. Among
the dead were Tragasch, Wilson, Flagg, Daniels. Among the worst
wounded were Bryant, Phelps, and Fitzmaurice. Sibley and his
assistants had already performed several emergency operations in
the laboratory. He was still in there, covered in blood, working on
Fitzmaurice, who had been speared while trying to defend the
electronics workshop. Franks had been with him when the helicopters
had arrived. So had Godwin, holding him down, comforting him as if
he were his own son. But, despite all Sibley’s care, it looked as
if Fitzmaurice was going to die too.

The fire in the workshop itself had gone out,
although some of the larch trees had caught light and their remains
were still smouldering. At several places on the peninsula isolated
columns of smoke, more or less dense, continued to rise into the
warmth of the afternoon. The windmill had been torn down and thrown
over the cliff, the hut there set on fire. The chapel had burned
away completely, as had two barns. The cows and horses and donkeys
had been killed. Sheep and goats had been clubbed to death. The
outsiders had stolen many more. Luckily they had not penetrated the
precinct workshops, nor had more than one or two houses suffered
any great damage. It could have been much worse. Without the gas
attack it might have proved impossible to drive the invaders back,
ragged and undisciplined as their onslaught had proved. And without
Thaine’s flamethrowers, Martinson would certainly have won.

But then Martinson, his body now lying on the
lawn with the others, had won anyway. The Village would never be
the same again.

Converging on the springy turf above Vanston
Cove, four hundred metres away, the helicopters prepared finally to
land. The point had been made. The authorities were all-powerful.
Everything, but everything, was on their side.

As, one by one, the Chinooks touched down,
Appleton said something and nodded out to sea, where, previously
unnoticed, both the grey, lean, Prison Service hydrofoils were
waiting offshore.

On landing, each of the helicopters
immediately disgorged thirty-five or forty marines in combat dress.
When he saw how many had come, Franks felt his heart sink still
further. There were more than enough to conduct a search of the
Village, of the whole island. If they used metal-detecting
equipment they would find evidence of the ketch; they would find
the craft itself.

Even before this morning’s attack, he had
given orders for the workshops to be cleared of all tools and
materials related specifically to boat-building. Any tools whose
presence could not be explained in terms of land-based work had
been sealed in polythene and buried in the compost heaps, as had
the construction diaries, schedules, plans, tide-tables, and copies
of the charts Appleton had prepared of the reefs and currents in
Star Cove. The fins and suits had been too bulky to hide in this
way: there had not been enough watertight plastic sacks to
accommodate them. Some had been concealed in the clothing shop,
mingled with the goatskins, while the rest had been distributed
among the Village houses.

The advance warning of the deputy governor’s
visit had given Franks time to double-check these precautions. It
had also given him some degree of assurance that a search was not
being planned.

As the marines disembarked he looked
anxiously for signs of the equipment boxes which might have
contained sensors. He saw none. The marines were carrying only
machine guns.

One group remained to guard the helicopters.
The rest advanced on the precinct. In their midst walked a civilian
in a green army-style windcheater.

Franks went forward to meet him.

“Is anyone in charge here?” the civilian
said.

He was middle-aged, with spectacles and
thick, brush-like grey hair. Under the windcheater he was wearing
an office shirt and a tie striped in blue and red. This morning he
had probably put on his suit as usual. His trousers looked like
suit trousers. The windcheater was new, perhaps supplied by the
military. His shoes were ordinary black lace-ups. Franks resisted
the urge to stare at him, at his tiepin, at his flat, pasty,
mainland features. And he resisted the urge to stare at the
marines’ boots and caps and machine guns, their grimly fascinated
expressions. For them this was an afternoon out of the usual
routine, something to talk about in the mess.

“Are you in charge?” the civilian said.

“We’ve got wounded men. You must take them to
hospital.”

“You would be Franks? Liam Michael
Franks?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still in charge here?”

“Yes.”

“Then I want words with you, Franks.” He
peered beyond Franks, beyond Appleton and the others, who had
slowly approached, and briefly let his eye dwell on the bungalow.
“My name is John Yates. I am the deputy governor. You wouldn’t
remember me. You were before my time.”

“Did you hear what I said? We’ve got wounded
men. Some of them are dying.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“Will you evacuate them?”

“You know as well I do, I haven’t the
authority to do that.”

“Radio the governor.”

“No one has the authority to take any
prisoners off the island. You are in Category Z.”

Franks felt himself close to physical
collapse. “Help them,” he said. “For pity’s sake, what sort of
people are you?”

Yates’s face said “Not like you: not
murderers and rapists and terrorists,” but he made no reply.
Instead he turned to one of the marines. “Would your medics be
prepared to have a look at them, Captain?”

“Might they have AIDS or HVC, sir?”

“Quite possibly.”

“They have neither AIDS nor HVC,” Franks
said, with all the dignity he could summon. “No one in the Village
has AIDS or HVC.”

“Where are they?” the officer asked
Franks.

“In the house.”

“Bring them outside. Into the open
there.”

“But —”

“We’re not going indoors to treat them.”

“Mr Appleton,” Franks said. “See if you can
find some stretchers.”

“We have stretchers,” the officer said, and
told two of his men to bring them. The stretchers were given to
Appleton and Routledge, who, followed by several others, ran off
towards the bungalow.

“Well?” Yates said.

“Well what?”

“I’m waiting for an explanation. Where did
you get the flamethrowers?”

“We made them, of course. What else did you
expect us to do? Sit there and wait to get killed?”

“Where are they?”

Knowing full well that the flamethrowers
would be confiscated, Franks had left them on the veranda in
readiness. With the marines in close attendance, Yates sternly
advanced and climbed the steps. As the wounded men were brought
outside, he bent to examine the workmanship and manner of
construction, the valves and hoses, the air-vents, the action of
the stirrup pumps. Although each of the three flamethrowers had
been built to the same pattern, only one had a purpose-made
pressure tank. The other two tanks had been improvised from oil
drums.

“So this is what you’ve been using the
metalwork tools for, is it?” Yates said, straightening up. “You
realize you won’t be getting any more paraffin, don’t you? Ever.
And by way of punishment all other requisitions and privileges will
be suspended for two months. That includes mail delivery.”

“I would remind you that the European Court
—”

“Watch yourself, Franks. You’re in more
trouble here than you can handle already. My God, to think we even
placed some trust in you. Well, from now on we stick to
regulations.”

“In that case I take it you were mistaken a
moment ago and that you will continue to deliver paraffin. I also
take it that you will be delivering the full quota of medicines we
have never received, the vitamin supplements, the bedding and
building materials and all the other supplies specifically itemized
in Section Two of the Penal Colonies Act, 1991.”

Without hesitation, Yates said, “You clearly
misunderstand the law.”

“Time-serving bastard,” Franks thought. But
what angered him most was the motive for this visit. Previous
fighting among the outsiders – even the original wars – had
attracted no more than a single helicopter taking video pictures
for the governor’s private consumption. Gas had never been used
before, and there had never been a landing by troops. That was
partly because the earlier fighting had been on a smaller scale,
but mainly because none of it would have shown up on the routine
satellite scans of the Americans, the Russians, or any of the EU
countries besides Britain, a number of which continued to oppose
the penal colonies. The sudden appearance today of flamethrowers
operating at several hundred degrees centigrade must have plunged
the Home Office into paroxyms of political terror: the fireballs
would have been detectable far out in space.