The Captain expressed surprise.
“So why did you go back to prevention?”
“That was when I was older, after I had accepted that control of the surplus is an ugly duty. Either one does, or does not, have the guts for it. The people I despise are the hypocrites who wail about glory atrocities whilst enjoying safe lives behind the Grande Enceinte. They should read about the Sack of Oxford.”
Lawrence let the silence hang. A sombre distraction—some tragic old scene—pulled The Captain into himself for a few seconds. He had scoured memories of the deepest privacy from Lawrence. Well, such excavation worked both ways, suicidal though it might be. Lawrence had nothing to lose after all. The thin, cold eyes flickered, came back to the here and now. The shovel chin lifted.
“You were talking about hypocrites.”
“The sovereign class are behind everything that happens,” Lawrence said. “They can’t complain about so-called glory atrocities. It’s obvious they know about preventions. It’s obvious they approve. Why shouldn’t they? Their ancestors created this world specifically to prevent overcrowding.”
“Now you sound more like the National Party.”
“Not everything the radicals claim is wrong. There was a Glorious Resolution after the global money system failed. Why did it happen? There were plenty of money catastrophes during the Public Era. Yet only one brought calamity. No history book will tell you why that is—and believe me, I have read hundreds of history books.”
Lawrence hesitated. At the back of his mind was the caution he was dealing with an utterly evil individual. Since his existence or non-existence would mean nothing to The Captain, there must be another, entirely selfish, motivation for this meeting. Sunday afternoon entertainment for a bored maniac? Play up the hopes of a desperate head of value before dropping him back in hell? Yes, that was probably what this was about. It really did not matter what Lawrence said, or did not say. So, he let his mouth run loose.
“It’s obvious why no historian will tell the truth. The élite of the Public Era could have saved their world in the 2040s, just as they did after the Great Depression of the 1930s and the repeated collapses early in the twenty-first century. They failed to act, for the simple reason they despised the Fatted Masses. The Public Era was eating the planet alive, razing the great forests, annihilating wilderness for tourism, cutting beauty to pieces for the Fatted Masses and their ridiculous little sheet-metal cars. I’ve seen the films—the Great Ring Drain solid with motor cars and all the rest. The Public Era was cancerous. Come the final crash, the élite simply walked off to their land and gold. Nothing planned, nothing formally agreed, by common consent the Haves decided the Public Era should go; away it fell into history. Of course, no one will say anything about this now, because the descendants of those Haves are Tom Krossington and his like. That’s why you will never read any of this in the history books.”
Surprisingly, The Captain smiled and nodded, obviously in full agreement.
“All correct. Your problem, Aldingford, is that you are too intelligent for the career you chose. Your mind is restless. It probes into dangerous places. You slighted too many people. When you needed friends, no one spoke up, so you vanished into the Nameless Gone.”
Amid a ferocious creaking, The Captain jack-knifed out of the deck chair and stood to his full height. He was certainly a tall man, a good inch over Lawrence, with heavy, sloping shoulders and long arms.
“Join me. Be an officer of the ultramarines.”
Lawrence said nothing. The offer neither elated nor angered him. It would probably be most accurate to say that it passed straight through him. The Captain spoke on.
“One day you will be fifty-two years old, that is, my age—if you live that long. What do you wish to have achieved by then?”
“I’m no longer ambitious, The Captain.”
“Do you know your life expectancy?”
“I heard an estimate—from one who is an expert—that it’s about six years.”
“Give yourself some credit, Aldingford. You are a tough young man, you will last twenty years. You might even make it to fifty. Just think of reaching your fiftieth birthday after a quarter century in the Value System—the best years of your life gone. Does this thought please you?”
For a flash, a moment, Lawrence’s imagination did open and he could not so much see, as catch a sensation of the searing anguish of a wasted existence, to marry and cherish death as the greatest, last consummation.
“I am serving you a rare opportunity. You would not believe the river of gold that is to be made in the Night and Fog business. You will have a country house, a motor car, perhaps a genuine E-Type Jaguar, or a Mercedes Benz 280SE, or
