“I’ll work now.”
“Get down in that hold and load pallets… No, take off your overalls and boots, it’s filthy down there—and do not touch your ear tag or you’ll infect the wound.”
Lawrence stripped down to his shorts. Tricky Fingers openly leered at his chest and muscular arms. Lawrence ignored him. He jumped off the coaming of the hatch.
The impact nearly broke his ankles. His feet hit a surface like a pile of logs. Under the wrappings of dark robes were hard ribs and limbs, just as hard as timber. He paired off with Yip-Dog, who told him to drag, not lift, or he would bugger his back.
“Don’t touch your face, these cadavers are plastered in filth, and work on your knees, it stops your legs sinking in and freezing.”
Sliding about on his knees, Lawrence sank into soft bellies, slid off the hard balls of skulls, winced at sharp edges that must be teeth. Mostly he worked by feel. Many of the shapes were small, more like dogs. These were children. When he accidentally pulled their clothes off and then sought to preserve their modesty, Yip-Dog yelled at him to stop bloody wasting time, the dead don’t blush. Christ what a place, Lawrence thought. I’m going to see more kids’ genitalia in one shift than Gnevik did in his entire life.
Apart from shouting at Lawrence to do this or that, they worked without speaking, six of them, in a hold about the size of a big bedroom. Clearing the area around the ladder was the toughest part, as the cadavers were snarled like kelp about a propeller. They had to be loosened through a combination of untangling limbs and brute force. Many had gashed hands and torn fingernails. These ones must have fought like desperate animals in their last moments. Others lay in peaceful heaps, confident of welcome at the gates of the Beyond.
The value heaped pallet after pallet. The level of cadavers gradually fell. Lawrence’s knees registered hard domes, biting edges and now and then a large mound that could only be the abdomen of a pregnant doe. His hands were also coming across bags, suitcases and rifles. Undoubtedly in all these robes and jackets there must be pistols. Lawrence merely registered the point without being tempted. This was a mature prison camp, with a population long in the habit of docile complicity. If others made no move to arm themselves, there was definitely a good reason for it.
He uncovered a small bundle that on exploration contained a baby. He carried it to the pallet and laid it there, to the jeers of Yip-Dog and the others.
“You’ll be howling like a baby next,” Yip-Dog said. “And don’t touch any of the guns or bags.”
“Not long now, lads, good work.” Tricky Fingers leaned over the coaming of the hold, squinting into the shadows.
Lawrence began to tire. He had a physique like a wrestler’s from the months at Chatham beating gravel roads with a thirty-pound timber pile. Yet a deep ache of weariness dulled his arms and legs and down his back. When he tried to stand up straight, he fell over. Finally, he had to admit to Yip-Dog that he was all done in.
“You work like a horse, I’m impressed. On my first shift, they had to carry me out after an hour. It’s the shock, you’re quickly over it though. Now get on deck and clean up…” He pointed to the steel ladder up to the hatch. “We’ll finish off. I’ll make sure Ugly Toes puts in a good report about you.”
“Thanks, Yip-Dog.”
Lawrence had to clutch his way up the ladder one rung at a time and crawl out flat onto the deck, where he lay soaking up the sun. Someone dragged him to his feet. It was Ugly Toes. He told him to stop lazing about—get down to the sea and wash. As he was pulling his boots on afterwards, someone gripped his shoulder. It was Tricky Fingers. He pulled Lawrence’s arm out and pushed the sleeve back, to reveal the meaty, swelling muscles of the forearm. His knuckle stroked up and down the smooth, white skin.
“You’ve got beautiful hide. You really are a very lovely young man. Tell me, in the outside world, did you prefer men, or women?”
“Women, Tricky Fingers. Only the ladies.”
“It’s only men here.” He patted Lawrence’s forearm. “So get used to it. Life is hard enough without being uptight. By the way, have you a moniker yet?”
“I’ve been called Big Blondie, Mighty Whitey and Big Silver so far.”
“How about Perfect Princess?”
The radiance of thinly-restrained fury indicated this was not a good suggestion.
“Wee Larry will do,” Lawrence said. That was his nick-name as a low-ranking trooper in General Wardian.
“Perhaps.” Tricky Fingers changed his tone. “Now come with me. I will show you how this operation works.”
With an arm around a wary Lawrence, he ushered him forward up the deck.
“What do you think is going on here? What is the operation?”
“I don’t want to think about it,” Lawrence said.
The dreadful, cattle-like moan of the previous night had not been some echo of distant breakers, that was clear enough.
Tricky Fingers beckoned him over to four steel hand-wheels just aft of the main mast. They were each about as big around as a dinner plate, arranged in a square. The axles passed through the deck to perform some duty in the hull of the barge.
“These wheels are connected to valves on the bottom of the hull. Last night the barge came in on the rising tide. The crew opened these valves and buggered off down the floating pier, leaving the barge to flood. Inside, it’s pitch-dark as the freezing water creeps up the load until the sea closes over the deck and water cascades down through gaps between the hatch covers. The load will feel the bump as the keel settles on the bottom. It will be aware of what is happening. It will know death
