‘If any prisoner here tonight harbours resentment, then rest assured any unpleasant behaviour will be instantly obliterated. You have been sentenced for crimes against the good citizens of this land and are now the property of Angole. Accept your lot in life and go about your duties with a smile.’
Bastian noticed the militiaman wearing goggles through the window. He lit a spliff and leant against a fence by the stables.
In the banqueting rooms, a small Siberian orchestra began to play the traditional waltzes. The wives whirled around the ballroom in their finely embroidered silk gowns, serenaded by commissars with swords and whips hanging from their belts. Bastian had been warned not to look up too often from his tray of champagne glasses but could not resist searching for Wildflower.
‘I saw you looking at me,’ she whispered in his ear.
She was Chinese with straight black hair and a gap between her two front teeth. Her frame was slender but still curvaceous and no doubt the delight of many a taskmaster.
‘I was merely checking everyone was alright,’ he replied.
‘Then you don’t wish to pleasure me?’ she asked.
‘It’s forbidden,’ he replied.
‘But you haven’t said no,’ she laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Or are you like 12? He shames us all by gallivanting with the new male arrivals.’
‘Meet me by the orange grove at midnight,’ said Bastian.
The peppered gorilla steaks were barbecued on the veranda alongside marinated liger ribs and the exotic smell wafted inside through an open window before mixing with smoke from the cannabis spliffs and opium pipes. It wouldn’t be long before the revellers were too intoxicated to worry where everyone was.
‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ said Wildflower, peeling an orange with her long nails.
Her hands were still soft, not having laboured in the nearby towns digging for petrol.
‘Holroyd sent me,’ said Bastian.
He was disappointed not to see her smile.
‘Prove it?’ she asked.
‘He begs forgiveness for turning your parents in and asks you to join him.’
‘And what was my parents’ crime?’ she asked.
‘Questioning the STP.’
‘You’ll have to do better than that if I’m to believe you.’
‘Holroyd said they opposed forced retirement.’
‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘I have seen what happens to runaways, the thought terrifies me.’
‘And staying here is a life worth living?’
‘There is no less freedom here than in the villages.’
‘And in Norway?’
‘Are we to fly away like birds?’ she laughed.
‘Perhaps.’
‘Let’s get back before someone notices we’re missing,’ she said.
‘Ah, there you are Bastian,’ said 12. ‘Give me a hand taking the brandy and cannabis spliffs to the upstairs drawing room. And keep your eyes to the floor once inside.’
Bastian carried the silver tray with two glasses and a brandy decanter whilst 12 held an inlaid turtle shell box in black velvet gloves and full of the plantation’s finest spliffs.
Bastian saw the commissars’ reflections in the brandy glasses as 12 lit their spliffs from the candle flame. One was the head of Angole, a brutal man with a scar down his left cheek from a Liger claw, and the other an African in full whites whom he had never seen before, at least not in the flesh.
12 poured their brandy with Bastian invisible. Once outside, the old man rushed ahead, thankful to have completed his task efficiently. Bastian slipped back along the jaguar skin carpet and placed his ear to the door.
‘How was your ride, Edward?’ asked the plantation commissar, a fakir with a white turban.
‘The view was splendid as always but the pilot is a dunderhead. He almost began our descent above the prisoners’ huts,’ replied Edward.
‘Don’t worry, they would never believe a balloon was here. But tell me, how is London?’
‘Full of intrigue as always,’ replied Edward.
‘And has the Party changed its position on retirement?’
‘You seek to grow old?’
The commissar laughed and Bastian could hear him drawing on his spliff as he reclined in his chair.
‘I intend to bow out on top and will do the decent thing next month.’
Commissars believed that to die in an elevated position as opposed to a prone one put you in good stead in the afterlife.
‘So soon?’
‘I lost out on promotion to Edinburgh, this is as high as I go.’
‘I’m sorry. I did recommend you to the Party bureau but my own influence is waning.’
‘It’s been a good life. But what of you, Edward?’
‘Many years ago, my parents were brought here to turn the aged in bed and clean their dentures,’ said Edward. ‘It was the new slave trade called nursing the elderly that the natives refused. I remember my parents’ disgust at the care-plans they had to write.’
‘I have heard of such things, feeding others as they dribble down their shirts and much worse.’
‘It was sad to see my parents leave for Scotland, pointlessly checking the luggage when they knew what to expect more than most. But, of course, their dreams of going home were destroyed by global warming.’
‘Did they ask you to stay?’
‘No, they knew it was my duty to send them. And I was happy to do it, but I never considered I would get old too.’
‘The years have flown by, my friend,’ said the commissar.
‘There is talk that those who have served the Party well might avoid retirement.’
‘How?’
‘Canada has agreed to take some of us who never discuss the past or their role in Scotland.’
Bastian could hear footsteps approaching and crept back along the landing. It was Jambit.
‘Where have you been?’ he whispered.
‘Lost.’
‘We’re all being summoned outside.’
In the courtyard, a bruised and bloodied prisoner was being shoved along by two trustees with clubs.
‘He dared to taste the champagne,’ said a commissar.
‘Let him meet the iron-maiden,’ shouted one of the wives high on drugs.
‘I have a better idea, the ligers can have him for supper,’ laughed the commissar, and another wife put a handkerchief to her mouth.
Bastian caught a glimpse of the man’s terrified face as he was pushed towards the liger farm with clubs striking
