The conversation churned around and around in Lawrence’s mind through shift after shift of the Value System. What else had he muttered in his sleep? His imagination conjured all sorts of permutations, until by Wednesday he was becoming trapped in a psychotic cycle of reinforcing conviction that Sarah-Kelly knew everything and was writing a letter to the Great Judge Morton Aldingford. With his separation knife, he sliced and cut at a cadaver, barely seeing what he was doing, working by pure habit. Sensing someone behind him, he twisted the head off the cadaver and whirled about, shoving the head out to be taken.
He was offering the head to SMS London. The gorilla-like man was making one of his rare tours of the Separation Shop, wandering about with a forbidding expression, tapping his cracker pipe against his thigh. Lawrence’s pumped-up outrage vanished. He threw the head behind him and snapped to attention, shoulders hunched and eyes down.
“I apologise, Senior Master Sergeant London. I was not thinking.”
The seconds ticked away. His eyes fixed on SMS London’s crate-like boots. The cracker pipe ceased its tapping against the thigh and hung still, very still. Lawrence could hear the man’s breathing. SMS London was several inches shorter, in all other dimensions he was a giant. The breathing was slow and steady. Silence gradually fell over the entire Separation Shop. Lawrence listened to that slow and steady breathing.
SMS London cleared his throat.
“Carry on, Big Stak.”
“Yes, Senior Master Sergeant London.”
Lawrence dropped and crawled under the separation table to retrieve the head. By the time he emerged, SMS London had moved on. There was no more surging of outrage in Lawrence’s head for the rest of that shift, nor the rest of that day, nor any other day. He knew he would get no more chances to learn the lesson: staying alive in the Value System meant concentration, discipline. Do not anguish over things in the outside world. You will not last. From that shift on, he became the guardian over his own thoughts; his very own thought police.
He wondered how long he could sustain it.
*
At the end of that week, he had an idea, an exciting, vast idea, the kind of vast idea that captures the mind of a young man in despair.
It came to him on Saturday afternoon when he was waiting in the queue to get paid. What had destroyed him? Liars. A bunch of liars. They succeeded because there were enough of them to be credible. So, he had vanished into the Nameless Gone.
What could destroy the Value System? Telling the truth! All it needed was enough people to say the same things. Suppose five value reached the Central Enclave? Through his father, Lawrence could arrange formal depositions. Five independent statements, consistent in detail, had to convince any doubter that the Value System did exist and really was as despicable as described. Imagine this evidence presented to the Westminster Assembly. It would create a sensation. Captain Prentice Nightminster and his henchmen would be tracked down and hanged. The ultramarines would be shunned. It would change the face of the world.
For a desperate head of value, this dream was narcotic. Lawrence stood in line to be paid, dazed by the audacity of it, barely aware of his surroundings.
To each value Under-sergeant Brummie pushed a pile of curved plastic chips, the currency of the Value System. Some piles were larger than others. Value received bonus payments for greater effort, encouraging others, or being in positions of leadership.
“Your pay this week is thirty-two nails, Big Stak. You have worked hard as usual,” Master Sergeant Ratty said. Lawrence scooped the pile of curved plastic tokens into his pouch.
“Thank you, Master Sergeant Ratty.”
The curved plastic chips were human fingernails, yanked from the hands of the slaughtered. It baffled the mind to imagine the derisive yelp of laughter with which The Captain had dreamed up a currency of fiat fingernails for his Value System. It had his warped, necrophiliac humour stamped all over it. Normally Lawrence blew them buying drinks for others on Saturday night and chucked away any leftovers. From now on, he would save them—fiat fingernails were evidence in a way the ear tag was not. On some sovereign lands, the natives were tagged just as they were here in the Value System.
He could destroy the ultramarines and whoever owned this land. It was not that the sovereigns who made up the Westminster Assembly would give a hoot about the Value System. On the contrary, they would probably admire its quite staggering impudence. What mattered was the façade, appearances. Who turned flesh into gold and was careless enough to let it become public knowledge was a fool who had to be consumed by a convulsion of pious outrage. The fact that this outrage gained land and gold was only an added bonus that left a sweet taste in the mouth.
He got his vengeance and he got his life back. He might even get Sarah-Kelly back. This had to be the way. It all hinged around ‘credible evidence’. Either it convinced, or it did not. There would be no in-between—and no mercy for the loser.
Chapter 9
The Dining Hall jostled with value jumping to the banjos jangling and guitars braying and fiddlers digging and diving into the swoops and arcs of De Stulna, the most popular band in the Value System. Lawrence tap-danced along the edge of the tarted-up ‘gamers’, as the homosexual value were known. Yellow tights and purple mini-skirts spun past his shoulder. The gamers were a turmoil of flailing arms and kicking legs, churning the darkness like sea-weed under foaming breakers. A scrawny-necked figure pressed its face on Lawrence’s bicep, leaving a white stain of mascara. It was Yip-Dog, looking like a bat out of hell. Lawrence strained a smile and slipped away.
A hand tugged his sleeve. It was big Mirror-Face, the man with the looks of a worn-out actor.
