“When did this happen?”
“Sometime during the summer.”
In all the disruption caused by a disciplinary process, it was possible recent correspondence about their father had simply got lost. Otherwise, Lawrence had simply not cared enough to reply.
“Who was his superior officer?”
“Account-Captain Turner.”
“I could write to him.”
“Don’t do that. He won’t want mail for an officer he’s got rid of. It might set Corporate Audit sniffing down the trail of how you found out. They’re a bunch of bastards. Even as a civvy, you don’t want them on your back.”
“Why are you telling me this, if I can’t do anything?”
“I was hoping you could do something, actually,” Haighman said. “You must have friends in high places.”
“Haighman, if I ever get back home I’ll do bloody well to dodge bankruptcy. I married a sovereign when I was young and foolish—it’s a miracle I’ve lasted this long. Most commoners who marry a sovereign self-execute because they can’t pay the bills. So the last thing I’m going to do is to spread rumours my brother has been disgraced.”
They sat in silence. Privately, Donald did appreciate learning a bit about his long-lost brother’s life. Lawrence was the only family he had left in the world. What he now knew was an enormous advance over what he had known of Lawrence’s life since 2096, which was precisely nothing.
“To return to the main topic, what happens to me now?”
“We hang on instructions from Dasti-Jones.”
“Do I have to go back to that bloody cell?”
“It’s regulations.”
“Can’t I at least have something to read?”
“Well… I suppose so. This place is such a pish-hole it doesn’t have a library. I’ll see what I can arrange.”
Later in the afternoon, a leading basic unlocked Donald’s cell and deposited a handful of paperbacks. They were trashy erotic novels of the type his wife Her Decency Lavinia consumed in remarkable quantities. Apparently, the only reading matter Haighman could lay his hands on came from the reading club of the garrison’s typing pool.
*
More days passed. Donald explored the world of erotic novels. The works of Titty Titterington and Samantha Saucifield dominated the genre. The plot would typically centre on a glamorous and wilful daughter from a sovereign clan never named but recognisable as the Krossingtons. The book would open with her frustrations in the uptight manorial society of her sovereign land. Whilst on a lone flight to a sex-party in the Central Enclave, engine failure or some other misadventure would force her down in the petty domain of a gangster. After astonishing the gangster chief with her expert horsemanship, she would proceed to exhaust not just his loins but those of his henchmen too in the course of leading raids against rival gangsters. Having become too powerful for her own good, she would escape crucifixion only through a desperate escape up the public drains to the Central Enclave.
The sex scenes—which occurred about every five pages and in some cases lasted for five pages—were described with such a livid frankness that Donald’s ears burned. It was, after all, more than a week since he had even set eyes on a woman. His imagination wondered to the other survivor of the crash, the dark-haired young woman with the gorgeous backside and... Damn, the memory of her commando state was torture in the night waiting for sleep. It was like tossing and turning back at public school… But there was a useful aspect to these erotic books. They provided a great deal of hard data about the gangsters, their petty domains and the public drains that ran through them.
During the Glorious Resolution of 2038-40, the Public Era financial system of national currencies collapsed. Fiat legal tender vanished into thin air—unsurprisingly, as it had been conjured out of thin air in the first place. This left hundreds of millions of the Fatted Masses stranded in the cities of the world. They had no power, no water, no money and before long there was no food. The great flows of surplus began. Most flowed out to the countryside, where it either gained asylum working the land as natives, or else it disappeared into the Nameless Gone; by starvation, dysentery, influenza or violence. Other surplus flowed into the city centres and gained asylum in the factory districts that sprang up to make luxuries for the new sovereign élite—hence the term ‘industrial asylum’.
But between the countryside and the industrial asylums was a wasteland of abandoned suburbs amounting to hundreds of square miles in London alone. Enterprising thugs quickly took over this vacuum, bullying gangs of natives to rip out railway lines, strip out metal pipes and wires, gather wood from rafters and floors, in effect to glean everything of value that could be sold to the industrial asylums or the sovereign lands. These enterprising thugs came to be known as gangsters. When the endowment of metal and wood was exhausted, they directed their natives to demolish the shells of houses. Bricks were always useful. Frontier walls could be built with bricks. So could glory forts. Hence the red brick construction of the Broadstairs fort in which Donald was incarcerated. After the houses were cleared, the land could be worked to grow crops and breed horses. The gangsters became masters of countless petty domains between the industrial asylums and the sprawling lands of the sovereign caste.
So this was all very interesting to Donald. It was also frightening. The one absolute truth was that the public drains were jungle. A lone man without at least a pistol had no chance. If it was not a pack of wild dogs, it would be a troupe of travelling players whose leading man would kill for pleasure with his bare hands. If not that, a stealthy shot from
