“That was a totally different situation—there are no czars any more, Donald. Banner was not Lenin and Farkas certainly isn’t Stalin.”
“Better hush up, they’re coming back.”
Mr Ascetic strode over to them and struck a nonchalant pose, tapping their IDs against his thigh.
“The car is here. Follow me.”
Chapter 19
In Donald’s eyes, the ‘car’ looked more like a fish. Its sleek, sheet-metal bodywork enclosed everything, including the wheels and all but the glass of the headlights. The windscreen swept back at an absurd angle like a dog’s head instead of being upright, and it had no means of opening. The rear end sloped down like the back of a cockroach. There was no luggage trunk. There was no chimney stack.
“Meet the future from the past,” Mr Ascetic said. “A genuine Public Era relic, donated for party use by one of the factory owners. Pure sheet steel beauty. Just listen to that engine.”
No mechanical clatter accompanied the rhythmic panting of the exhausts, which Donald now identified as neat pipes low down at the rear in lieu of a prominent stack at the front. He recognised the sweet, almost narcotic odour as petrol. So this was how the Fatted Masses travelled... Mr Babyface opened the door to the rear cabin. Donald hesitated; he would have to stoop nearly double to get down into a space only a few inches above the ground.
“Get in there, sought person,” Mr Babyface said. Donald ducked and swivelled around into an extremely comfortable leather seat. It accepted him with a long hiss. The cabin smelled of beeswax. A large notice stuck to the glass partition forbade smoking by order of the National Party Health Committee on pain of one black mark in the offender’s party record. Sarah-Kelly sank beside him with another hiss, the door slammed shut. The closeness of the gravel disturbed Donald. This felt more like being in a rowing boat.
Mr Ascetic passed over the bundle of their documents to the driver and said:
“Straight to headquarters—you’ve got ten minutes.”
“Yes sir.”
The driver wound his window up. Something clunked. A muted roar swelled at the front. The seat shoved into Donald’s kidneys and the gravel blurred as the car dived into a funnel of light as if falling down a brick-lined shaft. The gates of North Kensington basin flashed behind. Donald’s stomach lifted as the car cleared Duddon Bridge, siren howling. Figures on the turnpike ahead dashed for their lives out of the path of the careening thunderbolt with its blinding eyes. Only at the customs barrier of Brent Cross did the machine slow, and only then because the ground was badly rutted on the market square.
“I feel sick,” Sarah-Kelly said.
The lurching of the old car did not assist Donald’s digestion either. The madcap trip had taken just over five minutes to cover four and a half miles. The National Party certainly had ambitions to compress time—even an express charabanc had taken an hour. He had been counting on that time to compose the story he would tell his interrogators, time that velocity from the Public Era had just snatched away. The driver stopped in the splay of light from a two-storey building on the periphery of the market place. He ran out and grabbed a telephone from a kiosk by the steps of the building.
“This is the new Party headquarters,” Sarah-Kelly said. “The place is mobbed. The Party must have abandoned sleep.”
“I doubt many are sleeping soundly this night,” Donald said.
The driver was sweating but obviously relieved when he returned from his phone call. He led them inside and left their documents at the Reception desk, departing back to the night without a word. For some time they might as well have been invisible. Party officials and former glory officers brushed by, leaped up and down the stairs, ran in from the night and ran back out gripping leather packs of officialdom. They all shared the same grim preoccupations and exhausted eyes. Donald watched, thinking about the freedom of the night outside and his unchanging condition of being restrained by an invisible leash. Why the hell could he never get away from that?
“Shall I go for a wander?” Sarah-Kelly asked. “I’m bound to know someone here.” She had barely said that when she called out: “Andrew! Over here!”
“Skay! Oh it’s fantastic to see you.” A man in his forties with a pronounced limp and beaming teeth closed in and bear-hugged Sarah-Kelly off her feet. “We were so afraid those glory barbarians had got you.”
“This is Andrew Kalchelik, he worked with me on the Atrocity Commission,” Sarah-Kelly said. Donald smiled and shook his hand. “This is Donald Aldingford. He’s… a friend of mine from town. He’s helped me a lot.”
“Skay’s friend is my friend. So pleased to meet you.” Donald sensed a pair of cold, hooded eyes lingering on him longer than a casual summing-up. Instinctively he disliked the man. This was a false creature; a dissimulator of bureaucracy.
“We’ve been hanging around here for about twenty minutes,” Donald said. “I was told I’m on the Sought List, which I assume means that someone here is seeking me. Maybe I should see President Farkas? At least I know him.”
This news had a strange effect on Kalchelik. He became rubber-legged, swaying about with an inane grin on his face.
“I should think the president is not the least of the people who will want to see you.” Addressing Sarah-Kelly, he patted a leather file under his arm and said: “We’ve caught seven from the first Arrest List. They’re in the Basement at Euston—it’s amazing to just pick a handpiece up and talk to people five miles away.”
“Oh my God! It’s actually happening. I never believed this day would come.”
“I was on my way up to the president to tell him, so—” The cold, hooded eyes lifted to Donald’s face. “By all means come with me.”
“Our ID papers are behind that desk, there—will they be safe?” Donald asked.
“I’ll take them up. Cathy—could you toss me that bundle?”
The forbidding, middle-aged
