He was confident most of his fellow town professionals would agree with him when they heard about it. This thought stirred the beginnings of an escape plan.
*
At just before three o’clock, President Farkas tapped Donald’s shoulder and beckoned him follow. General Yelcho fell in with them as they left the office. This man Yelcho had all the swagger and brashness of a sixth-former just appointed as a prefect. Donald considered all the ‘generals’ buffoons. They had appointed themselves to a rank that had not even existed in the glory trusts and still had no formal definition.
“You’re about to see a real treat,” Yelcho said. “This is something I’ve been looking forward to for years.”
Farkas led them down the main stairs, past the Reception desk and out through the front doors. He got in the front passenger seat of his motor car and Donald sat with Yelcho in the back. Rather than the vroom and surge of speed, the driver took them on a languid trip through the gates of a nearby factory premises. They drove down a narrow lane between towering warehouse walls. The lane opened into a dirty yard surrounded by gantries, industrial tanks and the impersonal walls of brick sheds. In following the others getting out, Donald noted that a trench had been dug across the top of the yard.
“I’m aware you had a disheartening morning, Donald,” Farkas said. “We’ll talk about it later. First, I thought it would cheer you up to see that our Republic can be decisive.”
They waited for several minutes. Donald’s attention wandered. During the afternoon, he had picked up some angry talk over the stubbornness of North Kensington basin in refusing to use Free Dollars. He was worried there could be a plan to attack the basin.
An account-captain of the National Army walked into view from a nearby warehouse leading a shabby-looking man with his hands tied behind his back. He wore nothing but his underpants. He had been beaten all over, leaving one side of his face swollen with an eye shut and his back covered in bruises and gashes. He shambled along on the verge of collapse. Another officer—a grade lieutenant—followed with an easy gait, swinging a pistol. There was a gruff order, which Donald did not hear clearly. The beaten man kneeled at the edge of the trench. The grade lieutenant stood behind him, aimed the pistol and fired into the back of his neck. A quiver and the body flopped from view with a rattle of stones. The two officers walked back through the doorway. They emerged with a second, taller man in underpants. This one had a gashed forehead and dried blood splashed down his chest, his shins had swollen white knobs on them. He too kneeled, got shot in the back of the head and disappeared into the trench. Yells came from within the doorway. A couple of basics walked out backwards dragging a flabby character by the ankles writhing and shouting he was innocent. The account-captain got sick of the racket and shot him in the jaw and then in the forehead as he was still being dragged. The basics threw the body heels-over-head into the trench. A fourth man, skinny and round-shouldered, stared at the sky in wild hope before getting kicked to his knees and shot.
It went on and on. The executioners shifted the location of shooting along the trench as it became filled with cadavers. Some men went with defiance, yelling curses and promises of vengeance from beyond the grave. A few carried themselves with an ethereal dignity and left in silence. Not a few had to be dragged out screaming, some so violent in their terror that the basics had to beat them with steel cracker pipes to shut them up. Donald watched with clenched teeth, pinioned by the invisible cage of the hierarchy around him. To run forward yelling at them to stop this foul work would have been idiotic and pointless. He was not armed, he could not have achieved anything even if he had been armed. He was locked into the hell of witnessing a stream of executions that went on for almost an hour. By that time he had passed beyond his endurance of horror and was simply numbed, fighting off waves of faintness from having stood for so long.
“It’s a shocking thing to see instantaneous justice for the first time,” Farkas said, turning to him. Donald was white with a green tinge like mould. He tottered back to the car and sank inside it. Yelcho was full of spring and gusto.
“Nothing like a little execution in the afternoon—fifty less social vermin in the world. My men combed them out of Camden asylum this morning.”
Farkas joined them in the car and turned himself half about, laying an arm over the back of his seat.
“Honest glory officers reserve a special hatred for corruption, Donald. All of our careers we’ve watched coteries of reprobates enrich themselves plundering the stores of the corporation and the lands of clients. Anyone who tried to expose them would themselves be framed up by senior officers and sent to the Night and Fog—often never to return.”
“How did you court-martial fifty men in one morning?” Donald asked in a voice thinned by stress.
Farkas just shook his head, rather dreamily.
“It would not be responsible use of our resources to put such people on trial. I lay poison against rats, I do not put rats on trial—what a terrible waste of time!” He affected an imperious voice. “How do you plead, little rat?” Eyeing Donald, he continued:
