“Tell me, Andrew, what made you join the National Party?”
“The nationalists are the future, Lawrence. The sovereigns just sit on the world to keep their privileges. They have to go.”
It was an interesting worldview from Kalchelik the dedicated killer of infestations. Under the circumstances, it would have been indelicate to point this out. After all, Lawrence had served in the same unit.
“What do you do in the National Party?”
“It’s a bit secret, but seeing as you and I are bound by our past, there’s no harm in your knowing. The National Party has finally been persuaded to investigate atrocities by the glory trusts. Even glory officers are joining the Party now and they’ve been pushing for action. You know how it is: if you want rank, you have to be a top killer. The decent ones who never got rank are bitter. They want revenge, that’s all there is to it.”
“What about the things we did?”
“They aren’t after low-grade stuff like that. They certainly aren’t interested in your work against fenland bandits, that was legitimate protection of the cosmos. It’s the big stuff, the massacres on the public drains, bombarding the asylums, the preventions at sea—especially those killers on the barges.”
“That’s all just talk, surely?”
“Ladbroke fort shelled Brent Cross not three weeks ago. Killed more than a hundred folk in their own homes.”
“That would never have happened six months ago.”
“The glories were making a point because the National Party is opening its new headquarters here in Brent Cross. We’ll get the last laugh, though. We’ve got testimony from multiple witnesses of exactly which officers gave the orders. When we track them down, they’ll hang.”
“I’ve been far from the south for years and all of this drama is a shock.”
“Tell me what you’ve been up to then.”
Kalchelik sat back. His dark eyes rested on Lawrence’s face.
“I worked my way up to first sergeant in Peterborough. The account-captain kept pestering me to apply for officer training. I wasn’t all that keen, but on the other hand I didn’t want to be a first sergeant for the rest of my life. So I took the Securitician A at Camberley College and actually did pretty well—”
“You would. You’re a literate chap, Lawrence.”
“I got posted to the Reading Garrison and then went up to a town on the west coast of Scotland called Oban. There my good fortune came to an end. I got fogged—some local merchants didn’t like my face and they put together a scam. Down I went for eight years.”
Kalchelik’s eyes bulged.
“Eight years? What did they get you for?”
“I was set up—”
“We all know the Fog is innocent as charged. What was the charge?”
“Kingpin crook plundering a private garden.”
“That’s not even original.”
“I’m on the run, Andrew. I’m in your hands. What I need is help to reach my family in the Central Enclave. They’ve got connections to get me pardoned. Can you help?”
Kalchelik’s eyes lifted, he stared up at the wallpaper, thinking.
“I have to be blunt and say our family business relies on the ultramarines. It would finish us if they knew I’d helped a fugitive,” Kalchelik said.
This time it was Lawrence who let the silence hang.
“What sort of help had you in mind?” Kalchelik asked.
“A visa for the Central Enclave.”
“Very difficult. You need to understand the lie of the land, Lawrence. This business has two hundred staff who could earn three or four times more with a job in the Central Enclave. Their misfortune is, they don’t have the… pedigree I suppose you’d call it. They’re not good-looking, they never got the education, they don’t have testimonies from their head teacher, district leader and the director of a factory to attest to their roots. The staff agencies only pick maybe a quarter of the folk that apply, which even then doesn’t guarantee getting a visa because the final decision happens in the City Hall of the Central Enclave, it’s not done out here. Do you see what I am saying?”
“I meant a forgery.”
“I don’t know any forgers, Lawrence, and besides, there’s more to forgery than meets the eye. You need to manufacture a whole persona to carry a forgery. You need to have knowledge of real people. It’s something only a big smuggling network could do—and speaking as a dedicated Party man, I am not going anywhere near kingpin smugglers to save my own mother. They’re social vermin. We’re going to exterminate all corrupt glory troops. It’s on the First Action List of the Party.”
“Can you at least give me money to get up the turnpike to North Kensington basin? I know people there who can help.”
“You won’t get into North Ken basin without a passport.”
“What about a Brent Cross passport?”
“They don’t just hand them out, Lawrence. You need a head teacher, a district leader, a factory director and at least one respected person who will attest that they have known you all your life. No! Don’t even think of asking me about forgeries, Lawrence. That’s a capital offense, quite apart from breaching my principles. Documentation is the basis of any decent society. It’s blasphemy to even think of forging a passport.”
“What do you advise, Andrew?”
“Get over to Limehouse or Woolwich and sign aboard a roving buccaneer. See the world—and never come back.” Lawrence’s shock must have been clear. “I’m sorry,
