Lawrence set his lips tight shut. They could do what the hell they liked, he was not answering that question. One never spoke to outsiders about matters like that, not under any circumstances.
“I know what a brass-muncher is,” The Captain said. “Four machine guns in a powered turret. Designed for the old wars of the Public Era to destroy armoured fighters half a mile away. Fired into hapless flesh at point blank range… You spent three years blasting surplus flow? You must enjoy that kind of thing.”
The Captain had to have been a glory officer once—and not just an average time-server but a top killer. He simply could not have known such details otherwise.
“The deaths are legitimate. The Captain,” Lawrence said. “The Safety Theory of History states that hierarchy is sustained through violence—the testing of safety features. It is a principle as old as society. Consider the Public Era—millions killed on the roads testing safety features, boundless slaughter when nation states tested their safety features. Think of their nuclear weapons.”
“There is really a comparison?”
Incarceration in the Night and Fog had not altered Lawrence’s principles of life.
“I have nothing to be ashamed of, The Captain. Everything I did had the full support of the senior cadre. All land oozes surplus flow, just as skin oozes sweat. The blunt reality is that humanity over-fucks, so there is surplus. Most of it flows north, the whole world knows north means empty—and empty it shall remain. The surplus flow is an instinctive migration, no different from the birds, I did not create the situation and I can’t change the way the world is.”
“And what would your grand family think if they knew? Or your girlfriend? Shall I write to her?”
The Captain laughed at the shock on Lawrence’s face. The worst dread in his life had been that Sarah-Kelly would become curious about his work on the patrol barge. Fortunately, she had never enquired with any determination. Apart from senior officers, whose support was axiomatic, no one outside of the barge crews really knew what went on.
“I think not, The Captain.”
“I also think not. Now answer the question you keep evading: how did you end up here? Submitting a complaint against a superior officer might get you a reprimand, but I cannot see how you—a dedicated officer—ended up in the Night and Fog, still less in my Value System. Please explain this to me.”
“It’s very simple, The Captain. The top officers and merchants of Oban ran a cosy little racket. When I lifted the stone, they hung it on me to save their own stinking hides.”
The Captain stared at Lawrence, keenly, looking deeper, his smile tight and cold, mulling over some private insight.
“You are a rare find. Not often can I acquire one with such a robust ideology. I have no doubt that in time you will become a superior and enduring asset. However, I must give you this warning—despite all the direct experiences of your career, none will have even remotely prepared you for the extreme economic logic I have pioneered in my Value System. So take fair warning and brace your soul.”
He dipped his hand in the drawer and passed a tag to Under-sergeant Brummie.
“Value Zeta729.”
“Kneel, value.”
“Yes, The Captain, Value Zeta729.”
Pumped with outrage, Lawrence barely felt the tag pin skewer his ear lobe. The ache came later, lying awake in a cramped dormitory full of strangers, staring at the boards of the bunk eighteen inches above his nose.
He kept pinching the tag and wondering what the morning would bring.
Chapter 3
For the first time in months, Lawrence’s belly was swollen to bursting point. Abundant helpings of porridge and rye bread with butter and honey had left him feeling, if anything, a bit dopey. He was clean and had been shaved by one of the razor trustees of the gang—not that they were fussy about beards here. He wore a complete issue of new clothes, including the best boots and the best waterproof overalls he had ever used in his life. Add to that, the Value System was a place of serene beauty, more like a private garden than a prison colony. Around them spread a plain of wild grasses and foaming eruptions of bush, infiltrated by creeks of deep green and purple. Here and there sprouted copses of willow, all sprawling under an immaculate blue dome of sky. The day was turning out to be a fine mid-October echo of summer.
His ear lobe still ached.
Gang 4, to which he had been assigned, amounted to one hundred and twenty head of value, each and every one tagged by the left ear. The escort was just ten heelers and leading heelers, five at the front and five at the rear, together with Under-sergeant Brummie and Master-Sergeant Ratty. Finally, there was a big, mean-looking bastard with the build of a gorilla, bearing the silver chevrons of a senior master sergeant.
The ultramarines here seemed closer to their value than at Chatham. Lawrence could hear several of the gang chatting with the rear guard, including the gruff, deep voice of the senior master sergeant. Yet this was no holiday camp. What the hell was it? So far, he had seen the Square, a two-storey square of dormitories, stores and offices built around the Yard, a brick-paved yard about an acre in area on which parades took place twice a day. Other than that, he had noticed three brick chimneys about a mile away issuing pale smoke into the breeze. The sight put Lawrence to wonder how many hours it took the breeze to reach the nearest town, where free people led decent lives… He gazed at the inland horizon, trying to distinguish the least evidence of civilization that way.
A blow between the shoulder blades like a lance. He gasped, stumbled forward, writhed around, suppressing the reflex to lash back. The senior master sergeant jabbed Lawrence on the chin
