“Yesterday at evening parade, I informed you of a deserter, Value Zeta727. I am pleased to report that he has been returned by the marsh people.”
SMS London shouted to bring up the remainder. A couple of heelers pulled a cart up through the gang blocks and parked it before The Captain. On it rested a small, white form. It looked hardly more than a seal pup.
“You will pass the remains and learn once again the outcome for those who steal my future value. That is all.” He swung around and swept back inside, the door thrown shut by some unseen flunky.
SMS London ordered the gangs to file past the remains, rank by rank. Lawrence began to swear. This was only the beginning of a day that stretched out ahead like unending mountain ranges. When it came to his rank’s turn, they looped out to the front and then dispersed into groups to get breakfast. No one missed breakfast, despite the unappetising condition of the ‘lesson’.
The object appeared too small to be Gnevik, more like a plucked turkey. The hands and feet had been hacked off, leaving stumps of dark red meat bound with tourniquets of a black twine Lawrence learned afterwards was spun from human hair. Where the genitals had been was just a ragged cavity of fat and dark flesh. The eyeballs were gone, leaving the lids collapsed in. The lips had been cut away, revealing gums with horse-shoes of red holes where the teeth had been dragged out. They had not spared the poor bastard much. Needless to say, the remains had been de-tagged to keep the books in order.
Lawrence hurried away, curving towards the Dining Hall, lacking appetite but knowing he had to eat. He had to eat to work hard, work hard to stay alive. It was brutally simple. In the Dining Hall, he was looking for value to sit with when he noticed big-tits Pezzini gazing into space, his porridge untouched. Lawrence sat opposite him.
“Wake up, Pez… Zeta728 and eat! You have to eat to work, work to stay alive. You understand?”
He scooped up porridge, washing it down with dandelion tea. Pezzini frowned at him. Lawrence reached across, pressing a dollop of porridge against Pezzini’s lips.
“Eat! Eat to live.”
Pezzini finally took half of it in his mouth, where it remained, rolling around his tongue.
“Porridge reminds me of boyhood in Brent Cross.”
“You think death tastes any better?”
“I will not be here much longer.”
“You plan to kill yourself?”
“This posting is an error. Krossington will extract me when he learns.”
“Learns what?” Lawrence was amused by his, well its, optimism.
“It’s a secret.”
“You’re fooling yourself.”
“No. I was his appointed regent. It is out of the question he would condemn me to this.”
“People at your level don’t get fogged without a reason—one hell of a good reason.”
Pezzini treated him with silent contempt for a few minutes.
“A guy hanged himself in our toilets last night,” Lawrence said.
“They hang themselves all the time. I have already made enquiries concerning mortality,” Pezzini said. His spoke on in a didactic tone as he expounded in his element. “The principal causes are suicide and wounds, which get infected in this working environment. There is also what I at first thought was diabetes, although I now believe is a sexually transmitted disease. I strongly advise against homosexual behaviours. Death by assault is also common. Then there are the escape attempts. Several value have told me the marsh people are descended from lunatics released from prisons during the Glorious Resolution. That is probably true; it would certainly explain the bizarre rituals.
“The Captain’s numbering system allows some calculations. Bearing in mind my own tag of Zeta728 and the omission of epsilon from the sequence, it is evident that more than 4,700 head of value have arrived in this system. Life expectancy is about six years, although the survival curve is quite skewed, with a long upper tail. The system is much larger than it was in the past.”
“You’re a natural born statistician. Krossington probably sent you here for depressing people. Well, see you ‘round, Zeta728.”
SMS London announced the morning’s allocation of duties. Gang 4 was on ‘carrying’. This turned out to be the hardest work, physically, Lawrence had been asked to do. On the plus side, it did not involve pleasures of the flesh. They lugged fresh water from a lake about a mile from the Square. Lawrence counted an average of 1,430 paces from the Square to a wooden jetty by the lake. The gang filled casks and hauled them by wagon to the Square, where other value hoisted them to the roof and replenished the fresh water reservoir. Lawrence made a note to get into the roof party. There must be a good view from up there.
The afternoon duty of Gang 4 was ‘bating’.
Bating happened in the Factory, in the next bay along from the Separation Shop. Human hides from separation were mixed with pig hides. Both were laid in shallow tanks, which were then flooded to about six inches’ depth with sea water. A couple of value arrived with a bucket of pigeon droppings. These they spread evenly about each tank. Then the ‘bating’ began. In bare feet and with the trousers of their overalls rolled up the value got into the tanks and kneaded and worked the hides in the obnoxious brew underfoot.
After they had been treading for an hour or so, Spiderman started grousing about being bored out of his flippin’ mind. Yip-Dog tried to tell a joke in his halting, clumsy way and bungled the punch line. He got roundly cursed.
Lawrence grasped all too clearly how being funny was a safety feature—it could save his life. He yarned them an old one about a boss dragged by his tie into a carpet-weaving machine, how the carpet was cut up and one bit was laid in a bordello, another bit in a wealthy young lady’s bedroom, another bit in the toilet of an exclusive London club, another bit in… It provided Lawrence ample
