The Penal Colony (43 page)

“We’re through. All half. Anyone touch?”

When there was no response, Thaine said, “No
touch.”

The sky was so dark that Routledge could see
nothing at all. Looking back towards the beach, the bulk of the
cliffs seemed to form a blackness denser even than the night
itself.

“All forward! Reef ahead! All slow!”

That reef passed; and another; and yet
another. At the fifth there was much difficulty and delay. The
swimmers had to reverse direction several times before Franks was
satisfied. “Range nine metres,” he said. “All half.”

As Routledge began kicking again he heard a
curious noise, a ventriloquial chirping, with squeaks and chatters
apparently coming from several directions at once.

“What the hell?” Franks shouted. “The bloody
sonar’s gone haywire! All stop! One two nine ten reverse! All stop!
All stop!”

The chirping grew louder, became closer, and
closer still.

Routledge felt something large and insistent
pushing against his flank, investigating, nudging.

“No!” Peagrim screamed, suddenly hysterical.
“No! No! Keep away!”

“What’s happening?” Thaine said.

Routledge extended his free hand. Beneath the
goatskin palm of his mitten he felt an inexplicably smooth, gently
curving surface. In the moment before he realized what it was he
was still in control of himself, still a rational human being. His
brain had not yet had time to understand.

And then it did.

His hand was exploring the receptively
stationary snout of a killer whale.

There were at least half a dozen, possibly as
many again.

Blackshaw, the chaplain, began gibbering
prayers.

“Shut up!” Ojukwo said, several times.

Blackshaw took no notice.

What was it Talbot had said? Killer whales
never attacked people. Not unless provoked. It was imperative not
to upset or excite them.

“I told you to shut up, Creeping Jesus!”

Routledge heard a dull thud; Blackshaw was
silenced. “For God’s sake, Ojukwo! Don’t do anything sudden!”

Why didn’t killers attack people? The taste,
Talbot had said, or the strange feel of human skin. But the
dry-suits smelled of pig grease and tan-liquor, and would make
their wearers seem like nothing so much as some new and possibly
edible sort of marine mammal. Were the whales waiting to strike?
Were they puzzled? Did they think the ketch was one of their own
kind, sick, perhaps, or injured, in need of rescue from these ten
strangely finned creatures? In need of an escort ashore, to the
beach?

O Holy God.
It was back again,
nuzzling his arm, his chest.

The chorus of chirruping had grown. There was
an occasional soft report of air and spray expelled through a
blowhole.

Thaine managed to say, “They’re this side now
as well.”

“I can’t tell where we are,” Franks said. “We
could be moving onto the reef.”

The pulse length and frequency of their sonar
emissions had to be interfering with the receiving transducers. For
as long as the whales remained in the vicinity of the ketch, Franks
and Appleton would be blind.

There was a grating bump and Routledge felt
his legs lightly touching rock. Ojukwo cried out.

“Carr and Gunter reverse,” Thaine said.
“Slowly. Very slowly. Now Peagrim and Redfern. Appleton, keep the
pump going!”

The ketch drifted backwards. The whales
squeaked and chattered.

“Are you all right, Ojukwo?” Routledge
said.

“Yeah.”

He didn’t sound it: he sounded as though he
were hurt.

“Has your suit been torn?” Thaine said.

“No.”

Blackshaw began again. “Holy Father deliver
us from evil! For thine is the kingdom, the power and the
glory!”

Go on, you old bastard,
Routledge had
said, all that time ago, flinging his challenge up into the
thunderstorm.
Do your worst.
It seemed the old bastard had
been clever, biding his time, waiting his chance to answer such a
challenge as it deserved.

He was here again tonight, among the whales.
He and the whales were one. There was no distinction between them.
None at all.

Blackshaw didn’t understand. The whales were
not evil. If they attacked, it would be because they had decided
the flippered, leathery creatures could be regarded as meat like
any other. But somehow, despite his brain-numbing terror, Routledge
began to know that they would not attack. They were just curious.
Highly advanced, gregarious, playful, they had simply been
attracted here by something new in their environment. Their power,
their supreme potential for aggression and speed and mayhem, was
being held in check by a consciousness that was essentially benign.
The selfsame consciousness that inspired the whole world; the same
that had plucked Routledge from suburbia and brought him here to
this point of darkness. Errant, bumptious, obnoxious children
occasionally needed to be reminded exactly who was boss.

The pitch and intensity of the chirrups
increased. Routledge heard a clear, bird-like whistle, repeated
several times. The chattering grew louder. Again he felt the force
of a blunt snout, pushed into his flanks, driving the lesson home.
Then it was withdrawn.

“They’re leaving!” Thursby said.

It was true. Abruptly the chorus of chirps
died almost to nothing. Two, three, four blowholes sounded, moving
away, parallel with the shore. The whales had gone.

“Is everyone all right?” Thaine said.

“I’ve cacked myself,” Redfern said.

“Me too,” Carr said.

“That doesn’t matter,” Thaine said. “You
won’t lose any heat because of it.”

“Extra insulation, in fact,” Routledge said,
close to weeping with relief.

“Hey, Blackshaw,” Ojukwo said. “Sorry I hit
you. But when you come it with that God jazz you make me want to
puke.”

“My prayers were answered,” Blackshaw
said.

Routledge smiled and shook his head in the
darkness.

“And mine,” Franks said, from his place at
the sonar. “Let’s get back on it. Range eleven metres. Nine ten
half. Eight half.”

Routledge began to paddle his legs once
more.

“Gap depth two point five metres. Three four
five half! All slow! All stop! Range four metres! Two!”

After this there was one last reef, easy to
pass. Franks relinquished the helm to Appleton and took over at the
pump.

For some time the men swam in silence.
Routledge found himself becoming almost warm with the effort. He
could not believe that the escape was working. The flavour of the
moment was so unreal that, with the regular, easy motion of his
fins, he began drifting into a sort of reverie, his thoughts about
the whales growing fragmented. He started thinking of the men left
behind, of King and his awkward, embarrassed farewell; of the
prospects for the future now that Foster looked like becoming the
new Father.

He heard Ojukwo speaking, using his name.

“What was that, Ojukwo? I didn’t hear.”

Ojukwo’s voice sounded feeble and very odd.
“I said, it was you, wasn’t it? It was you put that note in my
pocket.”

Routledge was on the verge of lying. “Yes,”
he said. “It was me.”

“We appreciated that, Routledge.”

“Ojukwo? What’s wrong?”

Ojukwo did not answer.

“You’ve torn your suit, haven’t you?”

When Ojukwo again failed to reply, Routledge
knew that the attempt would have to be abandoned. The cockpit hatch
would have to be opened, the lading changed: and for that to happen
the ketch would have to rise and make itself known to the Magic
Circle.

“Answer me, Ojukwo! Thaine! Thaine! Ojukwo’s
torn his suit! We’ve got to get him on board!”

“Did you hear that inside?” Thaine said.

“Yes,” Appleton said. “I’m shutting the inlet
valve now. Try to get him out of the water. We’ll break the hatch
seals just as soon as we can.”

The handgrips were so spaced that the
swimmers were set far enough apart not to interfere with one
another’s movements. Ojukwo’s handgrip was about two metres along
from Routledge’s.

“Can you help me, Blackshaw?” Routledge
called out. He checked his safety line and began groping his way
forward along the hull.

Even before he reached Ojukwo’s empty
handgrip he had guessed the truth.

Ojukwo, the dying Ojukwo, had cast himself
adrift.

* * *

It was no use searching. They had no ropes or
lifejackets, no means of finding or retrieving him. They did not
know how far away he might be, or in what direction. There was
nothing to be done except open the valve, work the pump once more,
and continue, guided now solely by the compass. Reynolds, who had
occupied the position on the starboard side corresponding to
Ojukwo’s, unfastened his safety line and with great caution moved
back, past Thaine and Redfern, to the stern. Taking up a position
between Carr and Gunter, he tied his line to Gunter’s grip.

At midnight, after two hours of paddling, the
swell grew noticeably rougher. Franks said they had emerged from
the shelter of the Village headland and were probably about level
with the Mare and Foal. From now on they would be in open
ocean.

The swimmers rested for ten minutes, rising
and falling, pitching and rolling with the ketch. Routledge
queasily shut his eyes. Sea-sickness aside, he already felt
exhausted, utterly drained, and he began seriously to doubt his
ability to keep up. The other men had been prepared to some extent
with three weeks of special exercises; they had eaten a
high-carbohydrate diet, increased in the closing stages to four or
five thousand calories a day. Routledge had been on this diet too,
but only since Tuesday.

A wave cuffed his face and he spluttered. He
had to keep awake, to draw on his innermost reserves of
strength.

The rain had become less heavy, but the night
was just as dark and there was no differentiation between land and
sky. Intermittently, when the wavecrests allowed, the flash of the
southern lightship could be seen, red from this angle, indicating
danger. Its sister flash, from the northern lightship, was as yet
obscured by the cliffs of the long north-western coast.

It struck him then for the first time that he
was no longer on the penal colony. The sea no longer held him
captive. There was space between the island and himself. Even if he
were dead by morning, he knew that now, at this moment on Friday
night, he was free.

They went on again, and it soon became
increasingly difficult to make effective progress. But then, off
the end of Azion Point, they encountered a tidal stream which bore
them west by north-west, roughly in the direction they wanted to
take, and by one o’clock, when the impetus of the stream faded,
Appleton said they were more or less on schedule. The northern
lightship had been visible for some time. The ketch was at least
three or four kilometres from the coast.

By the time Franks gave the order to use the
rangefinder, Routledge was light-headed with nausea and fatigue.
His whole body seemed to be lagging several seconds behind, yet his
legs had continued kicking, responding to some other command than
mere will. He had become an automaton, a slave to keeping going, to
the forward motion of the ketch.

“Stop swimming, Routledge!” Peagrim said.

Redfern opened a compartment in the transom.
He took out the rangefinder, gave it to Thaine. Just above the
surface of the deck, below the sprinklebar, Routledge saw a faint
yellow glow. It belonged to a miniature penlight, encased in
transparent polythene and taped to the body of the rangefinder. The
bulb was just strong enough to illuminate the white tips of the
crossbar. Thaine’s face remained in darkness.

Routledge waited, his head hanging, his mouth
barely clear of the sea.

After an interminable period, Thaine said,
“We’ve done it.”

“Are you sure?” said the loudspeakers,
Franks’s voice.

“There’s even a bit to spare. We must’ve been
in another current.”

The flow from the sprinklebar continued for a
while longer, pumping out the tank. As the tank emptied,
Routledge’s handgrip rose a centimetre or two, three, four. From
the cockpit came the thumping of a mallet. Franks or Appleton was
freeing the turnbuckles.

“It can’t be happening,” Routledge breathed,
as the cockpit hatch opened, releasing into the rain an indirect
glow from the cabin and sonar lights. The hatch was twisted and
drawn inside. Franks’s head appeared.

Without speaking, he handed out unwrapped
chocolate bars to the swimmers. Routledge could not face his. He
had even forgotten what came next. Then he saw. Appleton was
passing the water-filled goatskins up to Franks, one by one. Franks
rolled each of them over the side. The ketch began rising more
quickly.

Peagrim was the smallest. He was due on board
first. Helped by Carr and Reynolds, Franks pulled him over the
stern and into the cockpit. The flow of goatskins resumed. As the
skins were jettisoned so too were the timber cradles in which they
had been held.

Redfern went inside next. Blackshaw. Thursby.
More goatskins rolling out, rolling into the sea, rolling
submerged, rolling away across the Atlantic to be washed up in
Wales or Maine or Trinidad.

By now the ketch was riding high. Routledge
had lost his handgrip. Only his safety line remained to preserve
him.

“That’s the last skin gone,” Franks said.

Appleton clambered from the cockpit, wearing
a safety harness, a flashlight strapped to his forehead.

Routledge could not go aboard yet. He was one
of the six swimmers who had to wait while the forward deck shell
came off and the mast sections were unpacked and assembled. The
mizzen mast was raised first, then the mainmast. The rigging and
sailbags emerged from the cockpit, were handed forward to
Appleton.