He faced a choice: either become a party fanatic or get away from the rebellion. The question was, get away to what?
Donald had no idea. However, being reunited with a brother who had been a successful glory trooper and had the resourcefulness to escape from the Night and Fog did look advantageous. Maybe they could hide out in the eastern marshes of the Republic towards Dartford Crossing until the rebellion was over. According to rumour, many glory troopers had sought this refuge to avoid being drafted into the National Army. Sarah-Kelly could hide with her family in North Kensington basin.
“I want you to send an official summons to one Lawrence Morton Aldingford at North Kensington basin,” he said.
“Why?” Sarah-Kelly said.
“There’s no other way we can speak to him. We certainly can’t wander in to the customs house and ask to see Bartram Newman. It would be around the basin in a flash that the Newmans are in some private business with the Republic. They’d be lynched by their fellow bargees.”
“Sending an official letter from here will do the same thing.”
“I shall send a general communiqué as minister for trade to the Basin Council—nothing radical, just some fluff to follow up on the meeting I had this morning. Bartram will get a copy along with the other two members and it won’t excite any suspicion. We’ll put the summons for Lawrence inside the copy sent to Bartram.”
“Well... It’s ridiculous. He’s just four miles away over Duddon Hill and he might as well be on the moon.”
“I’ll get something drafted. I suggest summoning Lawrence for 5 pm so we can go into town afterwards to celebrate.”
Sarah-Kelly looked wary.
“What are we going to celebrate?”
“Happy families!” Donald smiled.
*
A flash in the sky to the east caught Donald’s attention as he was settling back at his desk. After several seconds of staring at the sky beyond Duddon Hill, he made out a faint trail of smoke ascending led by a silver speck. The flash must have been the sun on the wings of a banking aircraft. Gradually the speck grew into a dogfish-shaped fuselage beneath long, thin wings. It could only be Nightminster’s flying boat. It rumbled directly over Brent Cross and made a long swing to the north, turning back on itself to fly west out towards the Thames Estuary. Donald watched it, furious with envy at the freedom of that glorified pig-farmer relative to his own condition buckled into the leash of the National Party.
The Party had abolished Naclaski and Frite within the Republic. Any aircraft was at liberty to fly across the Republic of the New Nation, provided it displayed no hostile intent. It typified the breathless idealism with which the old was being slung out. No one had stopped to consider that while glory and sovereign aircraft could overfly the Republic, the Republic had no aircraft with which to return the favour.
The glory garrisons of the Central Enclave had simply dissolved after the Bloomsbury Massacre. In effect, they had handed London to the rebellion. It was a disgraceful record their corporate masters could only repair through a stunning counter-attack against the Republic. General Wardian alone employed one hundred thousand people, General Parrier and Guards to the People would each be just as large. Together they could easily field a counter-attack of tens of thousands against the Republic. Then there were the Night and Fog held within ultramarine compounds scattered all over the Republic. If the Ultramarine Guild swung against the Republic, thousands of Night and Fog could be amnestied and armed to join the fight. Farkas could ban rubbishing all he liked, any realist could see the Republic’s position was hopeless unless it could pull a political rabbit out of the hat. The wise developed their own escape plans in such circumstances.
That afternoon, Donald had to focus on an idea Farkas had dreamed up. The Republic needed gold. It could not touch the balancing houses because they were heavily defended by fanatical garrisons and the Ultramarine Guild would have declared war. Instead, the Party was going to confiscate the gold and silver of the residents of the Central Enclave and issue new wealth in the form of fiat paper i.e. Free Dollars. The Party was also going to open the doors of the Central Bank to offer low-interest loans. The residents would then be encouraged to go on a spending spree to fill the order books of the industrial asylums. Farkas was a fan of getting the professional classes into ‘proper’ motor cars, rather than the lumbering oil-fired chuggers they currently used. It was true the petrol-fired, sheet-metal cars used by Party big-wigs had attracted great admiration due to their sleek looks and amazing speed. A campaign to get the townies ordering new cars would certainly fire up the factories.
Donald had grave doubts about the whole scheme—quite apart from personal objection to losing his treasury to the Central Bank. Already two citizens had been killed by Party cars. The bashed wrecks were outside, the irreplaceable windscreens and headlights smashed. He had no idea where the cadavers were—taken for rendering? If hundreds of people started tearing about in these things, it would turn the Republic into a butcher’s yard. He now recalled his father’s economics books had discussed at some length the absurdly powerful motor cars of the Public Era. These vehicles had caused more deaths than all the wars of the Public Era combined, yet extensive study of the free press and government documents revealed little objection, or even much concern, about a wartime scale of killing going on every year for well over a century. Modern historians had developed a
