“The National Party was too extreme,” Donald said. “It simply goaded a response from the corresponding extreme in the glory trusts. There has to be a middle-ground of compromise.”
Sarah-Kelly eyed him for a while. He could not tell whether she was judging him, or so absorbed by some inner conflict as to appear in a trance.
“You’ll find a new job once things settle down,” he said. “Besides, Lawrence will be back with us soon.”
Strangely, the mention of Lawrence did not cheer her up. There was something else on her mind.
“I want you to tell me about the Atrocity Commission,” he said.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It’s important—to me.”
She shook her head.
“The things I heard… I can’t believe even beasts would do such things.”
After a little more coaxing, he got her to talk about the leading basic who was giving evidence when the glories attacked.
“He was garrisoned on a land bordering some drain that goes up to Birmingham. It’s an ancient drain built thousands of years ago by the Romans.”
Donald pulled out an old atlas from the Public Era and laid it across their thighs. He supposed she meant one of the blue lines, the motorways. Sarah-Kelly tapped the page.
“Stalbans. He said a name like that.”
“Saint Albans?”
“That was it! It’s a Guards to the People fortress, built from that old town. He also mentioned Watling Drain. Do you think that’s it?”
There was a Watling Street marked on the map in red. It scored straight across the country, quite distinct from the weaving about of the blue lines. Sarah-Kelly shrugged.
“I don’t suppose it matters very much,” she said. “His section was run by a grade lieutenant who was an absolute tyrant. He fogged people just for having the wrong face. He had a party piece, as he called it. There’s a bit of this Watling Drain where a bridge has gone and the flow has to go down into a ravine where it’s basically just a sodden path through the woods. The section would ambush clots of surplus there. They would lie in wait and blast them with repellent spray—that’s sawn-off shotguns. There’d be kids crying over mothers with brains hanging out… and they’d shoot the kids like they were dogs. Some of the men would race about shooting kids in a kind of frenzy. That’s what he said.”
She trailed off, still stunned by this callousness.
“He said—this leading basic—he said he didn’t want to do it, but you get swept along because everyone else is at it and everyone says they’re just vermin anyway—the surplus. The grade lieutenant fogged anyone who was squeamish. Afterwards, they searched the baggage and split the pickings. One time he got three gold coins from a nation state called Tunisia that were more than a century old. He showed them to us just before you got there.”
Donald nudged her to tell more. There was a cost-centre-lieutenant who liked nothing better than to snatch surplus off the drains and toss them to hungry pigs. He would lean over the wall of the pen, his eyes maniacal, laughing at the screams of the hapless pig fodder. There was a countryman who would wait on a hill overlooking the Great West Drain near the garrison town of Reading. From there, he enjoyed a little sport with his collection of vintage rifles. He didn’t do it too often, or the surplus got wary. The witness complained to his officer about this enthusiasm and for his pains got nine months’ Fog carrying water before resuming his employment one rank down on another land.
“How did the Commission check these tales? They could be just made up,” Donald said.
“The Commission took evidence on a standard form. Any officer named was filed in a central record some place where scores of researchers tried to put it all together to see if patterns emerged against particular people. The system was thorough—at least, it looked thorough to me.”
“There are thousands of glory officers,” Donald said. “In any large human group there will be some callous bastards.”
“It’s not a few, I can tell you that. Banner told me this morning the teams have gathered files on more than eight hundred officers and former officers. This is huge, Donald. That’s why those thugs killed the Party.”
Donald hunched forward, scraping one thumbnail up and down the other. Things were stirring in his mind, things he had just not thought deeply about at the time. For instance, Team Lieutenant Farkas, laughing as the brass-muncher blasted horsemen to twitching pulp—yet Farkas was supposedly one of the good guys! Then there was Account-Captain Turner, Lawrence’s former boss, with his smarmy knowingness. He had to force himself to face the next question. Still looking at his hands, he asked:
“Did you ever get barge crews before the commission?”
She shuddered visibly.
“Oh God, those stories were the worst, the most graphic. The witnesses took pains to be sure we understood just how foul it was. The one that sticks in mind was a sergeant. He was one of the most senior troopers we ever got in front of the Commission. Not one officer ever came to us. Not one.
“Ten years ago, this sergeant was a probationary basic just out of boot camp. He was chuffed to bits when he got posted to the Portsmouth Flotilla of General Wardian. Everyone told him the barges were the fast track up the ladder. On his first patrol, they were out in the English Channel and they came on this group of three rafts in a pitiful state, I mean, the people were standing with the waves washing through their legs. He thought it was a mercy mission, seeing as he had seen surplus brought ashore by other barges. The captain sat him in the turret of one of those awful quad machine guns, he called it an
