The meandering lane started to climb, the toy houses came to an end and the lane simply stopped at the edge of bushland. Lawrence knew what this meant. He took one long, large stride and rolled forward, disappearing into the long grass. He had departed the asylum into wilderness land. It might be a few acres or it might be square miles. It might be claimed by a local ‘gangster’ warlord, who would crucify Lawrence for trespass if some lackey discovered him. Well, let them come. Lawrence still had his slingshot, which the troopers in the stinger had puzzled over and stuffed back in his pocket. After a little cautious exploration, he acquired six rounds of ammunition. He found a little brook too. It smelled clean. He drew long and deep from it and relaxed, all his muscles becoming liquid on the soft underlay of decades of dead leaves. Nothing could have prevented him from dropping clean off into a sleep of utter depletion of mind and body.
*
Thunder woke him in the night. He lay staring up at the lightning on the clouds. It was a minute or so before he realised lightning does not flash under clouds like that, nor does thunder arrive with such an abrupt concussion, nor is it led by a hollow whistling. The Naclaski guns were firing from the Grande Enceinte. He stood up as the guns blasted off another salvo. For a micro-moment, the compress of chimneys and cramped roofs of Camden industrial asylum shone in the photo-flash of the guns. He reached a count of six before the boom arrived. So, the Grande Enceinte lay just over a mile away. It was not such especially valuable information for one whose prime concerns were shelter and food. He was shivering, his knees quivered weak from hunger and he had no means of moving far from where he was. His situation was not promising.
What he needed was a plan.
He quickly dismissed any notion of moving at night. It would be far too dangerous to go back into Camden asylum in the dark. Any stranger caught blundering about lost in those back lanes would get pinioned and handed straight to the ultras, who were bound to be on the alert for a six foot two blond man in brown overalls with a pierced left ear. He could scarcely make their task easier.
Hopefully with daylight he would be able to see the lie of the land from this vantage point, especially any public drains leading out of Camden. He should also be able to view the marketplace. If it became busy, he would go down to it and use his wit to get food. He simply could not go on without sustenance. Beyond that, he needed friends. No one could survive in an asylum without a home. Somewhere amongst the scores of young men he served with in his teens there must be at least one who came from Camden.
It was while he was dozing in and out of sleep, huddled into a ball trying to wrap grass around himself for warmth, that a name dropped into his mind.
Yes of course. Section Leader Kalchelik. The man who had demonstrated to Probationary Basic Aldingford the entertainment value of a 20mm rifle called Long Tall Sally. Kalchelik came from Brent Cross industrial asylum, where his family ran a business. He was always gloating that his twenty years were nearly up and he would soon be back home with a nice pension and a not-too-stressful place in the family business. Truth be told, Kalchelik was something of a lag. If he had not enjoyed killing surplus, he would never have got anywhere in General Wardian.
So that was the plan. Get to Brent Cross and find the Kalchelik business. It was a dead cert. they would help. Despite some initial squeamishness, Lawrence had become a dedicated and courageous hygienist. Kalchelik’s appraisal had brought promotion to leading basic after only six months’ service.
A plan makes all the difference in the world for a man wandering the wilderness. Lawrence strode with confidence down to the market place, where he earned a breakfast of a chunk of sugar beet, half a turnip and a pint of clean water for helping a stall holder unload coal from a wagon. Lawrence feigned a severe speech impediment to avoid revealing his public-school accent. A couple of ultramarines with a team of six Night and Fog haulers turned up to reclaim the coal wagon, at which Lawrence slunk away behind a pile of barrels. It was not hard to vanish here. The market place was a constantly intermingling, noisy place of auctions, bawling traders amidst sacks of grain, rice, apples, crates of eggs, live piglets, chickens, ducks, rats, dead seagulls, rooks, sparrows and other birds. The more prestigious traders sold guard dogs, horses and leather goods to buyers in black suits and colourful bow ties, who probably worked for the factories of Camden. Lawrence would love to have known whether the Value System goods reached these parts, but dared not attract attention by browsing.
With his breakfast finished he started to work his way out of the market place towards the north end of the asylum. He guessed this was the most likely place to find a public drain to Brent Cross if there was one. While he was crossing the central road of the market place, he heard a motorcycle approaching. Private motor vehicles were a rarity in the asylums. Perhaps it was owned by some factory director. The breakfast and the anonymous melée of the market had cheered him up enough to linger a few moments to get a look at
