“You didn’t get this stuff in the Night and Fog, so what have you been up to?”
“It was issued to me in the Night and Fog—not the normal Fog, I was in a special camp where we made this stuff.”
“Oh really?” Bartram frowned. “That complicates things. A lot. Let me explain my problem, Lawrence. Sarah-Kelly and me had a row a couple of weeks ago. Her problem is she’s headstrong, which is fine, except she’s got nothing to be headstrong about. She’s just stubborn. But she’s my sister and a family don’t get nowhere by falling apart, you see, least of all in our business. Barging is a hard business, it’s a fight for everyone. Families that fall apart fail—and that’s the end of them. On top of that, she’s quite big in the National Party now. She knew Vasco Banner quite close—” His eyes flickered down. He clenched his jaw for a moment. “We’ve heard nothing since those glory bastards attacked the Party office at Bloomsbury College. All we can do is hope. The thing is, from the business perspective it would be champion if she got us close to the National Party big-shots to get more deals. I think the National Party is going to be big, at least here in the Thames Valley. I just want to make clear why I’m putting my neck out to help a stranger. Because you are deadly poison to this business if the ultras get the slightest whiff we’re helping Fog on the run.”
“I understand all of this.”
“How did you get inside the frontier?”
“Cut my way through the bushes with pliers and a lot of shove.”
“You’ve no passport or nothing?”
“Nothing. I lost all that when I was arrested up in Oban.”
“You tell me you were in a camp that made those clothes and boots?”
“The less you know about it, the safer you are. Now my father is dead, there is nothing I can do with the secret except live with it and hope it doesn’t kill me.”
“We trade this stuff, The Captain’s Best. It’s our biggest earner. If this secret can kill you, it can kill us too. Maybe we deserve to know.”
Lawrence assumed Bartram was jumping to conclusions. There must be many places that made canvas and leather working clothes. Such garments were in ubiquitous demand in every industrial asylum, in the sovereign lands and in the glory trusts. It was not far-fetched that two brand stamps were similar.
“That I doubt—show me a crate of it.”
Bartram led him back outside and across the yard into one of the warehouses. The interior was well lit with electric lights, revealing an extensive stock of fundamental industrial goods: engine and gearbox castings, steel pipe, truck tyres, stacks of wooden crates. He levered the top off one crate with a crowbar. It was loaded with high quality leather goods: officers’ boots, riding boots, raincoats, finely crafted ladies’ gloves, motorcycle jackets and more. Lawrence reached in and pulled out a jacket: “Style Captain”. There was no mistaking the logo. He straightened up, aware his right eyelid was twitching with shock.
“How does this cargo get here?” Lawrence asked.
“We pick it up from Limehouse basin and bring it over on the Regent’s Canal. We sort it out here and distribute to customers in the north mostly, but a few in the south. That’s our business; distribution.”
“Whom do you collect the cargoes from?”
“Barges come in up the Thames—not inland barges like ours, I’m talking big hundred-tonners; sea-going sailing barges. They have to drop their load at Limehouse basin as they’re too big for inland working.”
“Where do they come from?”
“No idea. You don’t stay in business asking questions like that—you don’t stay alive long, neither.”
“Are the barges extremely smart welded steel ships with black hulls and white rigging?”
“Yup. Pure heirloom quality. The best I’ve ever seen.”
Lawrence sat down on the crate while he tried to think through the angles of this. Sarah-Kelly’s family traded products from the Value System? He struggled to believe that was a coincidence. Yet he struggled to believe it was anything else. What else could it be?
Pezzini claimed he had met Sarah-Kelly on the Neptune. That was a coincidence. As he said, society was no longer a vast, teeming ocean as it had been in the Public Era. Coincidences happened, especially amongst people who moved about a lot. Most of the population of Britain did not move at all. They were fixed to the soil or asylum of their birth.
“Is there something you need to tell me?” Bartram asked.
“I have not changed my mind. The less you know, the safer you are. It would be extremely dangerous for you to know what I know. So, you’re not going to know.” Lawrence was still thinking through the implications of risk. Barges over in Limehouse ten miles away on the far side of the Central Enclave were of no risk to him here in the Newman business of North Kensington basin. No one in the Newman business had any motivation to tell Value System barge crews about him. It was troubling to know the family made a living from Value System products, but it did not in itself create danger.
“This has no relevance to my situation. You are not endangered by this secret. Trust me on that, I’m an expert on risk,” Lawrence said. “The ultras must not find out I’m here. How often do they come into the compound?”
“Never. We pole our barges across the basin and through the tunnel under the frontier to the Grande Union Canal where we pick up the teams and off we go. Ultras aren’t allowed inside our basin, except as special guests. What worries me is that one of the kids might blurt something about you. There’s plenty of folk who’d snitch to the ultras to get in better standing. It’s your
