“Get him over the side, value—and you watch your step, that’s a floating pier. If you fall in, your anchor will drag you straight to the bottom, and there you shall remain.”
Lawrence pulled Gnevik and his anchor across the deck to the gunwale. A rope ladder dangled to a narrow pier about six feet below, on which stood a couple more heelers, one holding a lantern. Lawrence made the descent quite safely himself. Alas, when he pulled Gnevik over the gunwale, the little man wailed and dropped into the black water, yanked straight to the bottom by his anchor. Lawrence merely observed, with a detached interest, almost the full length of rope gone into the depths. He could feel struggles from the far end, like a hooked fish.
“Better hoik him up, value,” one of the heelers said. Lawrence stooped to brace and reeled Gnevik in, accompanied by laughter and cheers from those on deck, who had crowded to watch after hearing the great splash. Little Gnevik emerged whooping and sobbing, pouring off freezing water.
Now big Pezzini came down the ladder, moving like an elephant, slow, monumental and dignified. With the three value together on the pier, the heelers shooed them ashore and over the top of some kind of banking. On the far side, the heelers brought them to a halt and shuttered the lantern, leaving all five of them in complete darkness. Lawrence suspected the bank they had come over was a dyke built back in the Public Era to keep the sea out, so the land could grow crops for the Fatted Masses in their great illuminated cities. They waited in silence, surrounded by the soft rush of distant surf and occasional clinks of their anchor chains. Lawrence could taste the crisp freedom of the night. Not the slightest dot of habitation glimmered anywhere out there; this place was indeed a long way from anywhere.
The rest of the ultramarines and the barge crew came pounding over the bank, breathing hard. None of them offered any explanation for the haste, nor did the two heelers ask questions. It appeared to be part of the routine.
“From now on we follow blackout drill,” said the ratty master sergeant from Camden. “That means left hand on the shoulder of the man in front, marching steady time. You, big man—” He laid a hand on Lawrence’s back. “—will go at the back. If the locals grab that useless runt, just let go. He isn’t worth a fight with a bunch of savages.”
They formed a line, the master sergeant at the front and Lawrence at the back, towing Gnevik.
“Shutter the lantern. OK, three, two, one… march.”
The master sergeant obviously knew this landscape like his bedroom, as he never had any difficulty keeping the tail of men on the gravel path. The little bastard Gnevik kept tripping and whining, until Lawrence simply dragged him and his anchor along the gravel. The ultras had not executed Gnevik, as they would have done at Chatham. Perhaps this place was not so bad…
At about that moment, the wind dropped. In the peace, Lawrence could have sworn he heard a dreadful moan from behind them, like doomed cattle far down in hell.
“Right, let’s keep it sharp,” the master sergeant shouted. “Left, right, left, right, nice and steady, no bunching.”
Their boots crunched, the wind picked up again, that appeal from the doomed was lost, or perhaps it was just a distortion of breakers carried across mud flats. Who could say?
Lawrence reflected on his situation. It was necessary to be realistic. He alone out of all the hundreds at Chatham camp had been called out at parade for transport to this place. Why? He must be worth more in this place than he was at Chatham. But why?
The march could have lasted an hour, or several. Lawrence was past caring. The one mercy was that the path was flat as a plank the whole way, tending to harden Lawrence’s suspicion this place was somewhere lost in the vast marshes of eastern England. Finally, they were in calm and their paces sounded hollow, as if they were in a tunnel. Lawrence could make out white squares—window panes. The ratty master sergeant with the accent of Camden asylum called a halt.
“Get ready to meet The Captain,” he said.
Chapter 2
Lawrence was at first blinded by something he had not encountered in months of Night and Fog: electric light. Gradually, he made out a polished floor and a broad desk with the Euclidean perfection of a machine-made Public Era heirloom. Behind it sat a lean man—clearly an officer—in the black uniform of the ultramarines. This uniform caught the light with a purple shimmer. The collar tabs and cuffs each bore an eight-pointed silver escarbuncle, which Lawrence knew to be the motif of an ‘owner’, that is, one without superior; a member of the Ultramarine Guild.
The officer relaxed back in his chair, which had a high, encircling back, no doubt to suggest a throne. His entire form was surrounded by gleaming, dark brown leather.
“Good evening The Captain. Master Sergeant Ratty presenting three new head of value.”
“Excellent. And the load?”
“Nature has taken its course, The Captain.”
Lawrence absorbed some first impressions of The Captain, being careful to avoid eye contact. He was roughly mid-thirties, a big-shouldered athletic fellow. The head domed over an impressive capacity of brain, accentuated by receding black hair swept straight over into a short back and sides. The nose was slender and noble. Yet this aloof intellectualism was contradicted by a thin-lipped mouth and taut cheeks. The eyes were thin and projected a scathing militancy. Lawrence sized this man up as a shit, first class.
“Welcome to my Value System,” The Captain said. “Please relieve them of their anchors, Under-sergeant Brummie.”
The under-sergeant with the Soho accent released the padlock about Lawrence’s neck, freeing him to lower the steel piston to the
