Underkill, page 7
“I’m glad,” said the man in a stronger voice. “Too many nice, stupid people here as it is. They shouldn’t have been allowed together in the car…Safe on an empty stretch of motorway and…so sure of themselves they didn’t think I would listen…Damn them, why had it to be me…?”
Both Ann and himself had recorded a great many last words in their time and had heard it all before, the last concerned, encouraging messages to loved ones; the confession of some grievous or petty crime, and even a comparatively few like this one who simply railed against an unkind Fate.
The driver was still talking clearly despite the pain the effort was costing him. Malcolm should have felt sympathy for the man’s condition, and he did—but he was sure that the sympathy would have been much greater if the driver had not insisted on blaming the accident on the people in the green car who had, after all, been in the correct lane and heading in the right direction!
“…Norton should have guessed what was happening,” the driver was saving. His angry, accusatory tone was the same but the subject seemed to have changed during Malcolm’s temporary absence of mind. “He deserves dropping a full grade for that. But those two stupid Johns were really…Are you sure they’re dead?”
Perhaps the subject had not changed. Feeling confused, Malcolm said, “You are the only survivor, friend.”
“They planned to tell the locals everything,” the man went on. His voice had grown weaker although he had managed to control the coughing. “Everything, even about Bea. It was to be a last try at doing things their way. Selected locals for indoctrination…scaring them into behaving sensibly. It couldn’t work at this late stage, but embarrassing to us…if the locals really knew what was going on…Too late for politics now…Guardian…must report…soon as…”
The tension lines around the driver’s mouth and eves were beginning to ease as the steady drop in blood supply brought diminished sensitivity to pain. But he was fighting desperately to speak and. for a few seconds, he won.
“Stop me from dying, damn you,” he said angrily, “I haven’t finished talking…”
But he had.
Malcolm closed the man’s eyes and spoke the date, time, cause and circumstances of the death into the recorder. As he rose to his feet Ann said something which he did not catch because of the raucous braying of an approaching police tender.
The vehicle stopped in unnecessarily dramatic fashion a few yards short of the wreckage. Its siren died and an officer, moving awkwardly in full riot armour, climbed out. He inclined his head towards the two wrecks.
“Survivors?”
Malcolm shook his head. “Tapes?”
“One,” said Malcolm, pointing. “His.”
While he was giving it to the officer, another armoured figure carrying a cutting torch climbed from the tender and approached to begin separating the human from the metallic debris. The few early cyclists, with anything up to twenty miles between them and their work blocks, wheeled past on the unpowered lane without any show of interest.
The officer said, “Thank you. Were any of the casualties related or otherwise known to you?”
They both shook their heads.
“We’ll handle it. then.” he said. His mouth was the only feature visible behind the riot visor, and it smiled briefly. “Enjoy the rest of your rest day.”
Malcolm scarcely heard him. He was thinking about the words of the dying driver. Guardian, the man had said, and stupid Johns. Had he meant Followers of John, perhaps, like young Tommy’s Big Mary? Malcolm remembered what some Guardian or Guardians had done to old Hesketh and to his living block. He knew that he should tell the police officer of his knowledge and of the possible connection with the dead driver. But Sergeant Telford had been so very insistent that they keep everything that they had learned from the old man’s tapes Strictly to themselves…
The sun was still low in the sky and the city quiet at this early hour. As they remounted and rode away the air was filled with the sour smell of the discharged anti-fire cartridge and the sweet strings of Scheherazade coming from the green wreck.
They had ridden more than a mile before Ann broke the silence, as she usually did when in her opinion he had had more thoughtful silence than was good for him, by giving him something physical to think about. On this rather too public occasion she had to be content with giving his horse a slap on the rump and shouting “Giddy-up!”
Obviously her theory was that it would be impossible to think morbid thoughts while trying to hang on to a galloping horse.
For several minutes they indulged in a spell of illegal racing, passing a trio of meticulously casual executive types walking their dark grey mounts. One of the animals had a white flash on its forehead, indicating that its rider was pretty high on his company’s ladder—another rung and he would rate a car. He would then be in a position to spend half of his salary buying fuel for it so that he could tear about the country’s virtually deserted road system, and be the envy of all his friends until he ran over a mugger mine or became an RTA fatal like the people in this morning’s smash…
He shook his head angrily. It was possible to be morbid on a galloping horse.
A major road junction, containing the usual TV traffic monitors overlooking a weaving, shouting and bell-ringing whirlpool of cyclists, was coming up just ahead. The watchers on traffic duty at police’ headquarters would not be too concerned about an innocent, early morning race in which nobody was at risk. But if a Mid-Upper mounted like Ann or himself was to knock over and injure a worker cyclist or pedestrian, that would be an altogether different matter.
Incidents of that kind, like the distribution of counterfeit alms to extricate oneself from the attentions of too-persistent beggars, or public lying to avoid personal inconvenience, were considered to be serious crimes of psychological violence against one’s less fortunate fellow man. Such crimes in the past had been the direct cause of city-wide rioting, and Mid-Upper culprits would be lucky if they were merely reduced to spending the remainder of their lives as walkers on the wheel.
Malcolm had learned discretion over the years and he had never ever been valorous. They reduced their horses’ pace to a walk and prepared to enter the maelstrom.
Traffic on the roundabout, which had four entry and exit points for unpowered traffic, had still to reach its rush-hour peak. Malcolm eyed the whirling mass of cyclists for a moment, then urged his horse forward to get on the inside of a tandem which had an infant’s saddle mounted between the two adults seats. Even the worst-mannered cyclists were inclined to give way to a family bike. But not today.
He had been right in thinking that the tandem intended leaving the roundabout by the exit Ann and he wanted to use. But the family bike was forced towards the central reservation by a solid stream of cyclists entering from the lane just before their intended exit. A few yards behind him Ann, who had been using a heavy delivery bike as a traffic buffer, succeeded in leaving at the correct exit, but Malcolm and the family tandem had to go round again. And again.
Malcolm dropped behind the tandem, searching for a spot where the traffic was porous. But every time he found a gap, a cycle would rub its front wheel against the hind leg’s of his mount or hurtle suicidally across his bows. He added a few choice epithets to the cacophony of bells, hooters and screamed curses all around him, he nudged his horse towards the safety of the central reservation.
He felt, and he knew that he looked ridiculous standing on the circle of grass while the traffic whirled around him. But his horse was trembling despite its inbred docility and traffic training, and it was much better to feel temporarily embarrassed than to suffer the results of losing control of a mount in heavy traffic. He had never before encountered this type of traffic situation with so comparatively few cyclists using a junction, and suddenly he saw the reason.
A steady stream of bikes, three or four abreast and with wheels overlapping, was using the roundabout as if it was a crossroads with the lights at green for them. The result was that one of the turn-offs was effectively closed to cyclists already on the roundabout and anyone trying to leave, by that exit was being forced to circle endlessly.
The number of trapped cyclists and the emotional temperature was rising steadily at what was without doubt one of the most blatant acts of traffic intimidation that Malcolm had ever seen. He wondered why the traffic monitors had not already sent a police vehicle to deal with the situation. Something would have to be done quickly or there would be serious trouble.
A few seconds later, it happened.
There was a tinny crash and metallic scraping noises as two cyclists locked front wheels together and nose-dived over their handlebars. Following cyclists who braked or swerved to avoid the obstruction hit other bikes and added to the pile-up. In no time at all there was a large segment of the roundabout carpeted with overturned cycles and groaning, cursing people and traffic was at a standstill.
Skirting the fringe of the pile-up, Malcolm rode across to join his wile using the clear area in the lee of the jam. Ann had already dismounted and was tugging angrily at the fastenings of her medical bag.
“The next time I go for a picnic,” she said, “remind me to paint my horse black…”
She broke off as a police siren announced the arrival of the law. The cyclist casualties had not heard it, evidently, or they were too angry to care.
Malcolm had seen it all before on his living cubicle TV—the minor traffic incident which grew within a few minutes into a major riot situation. This one was following the classic pattern for rush-hour traffic rioting. There was the few minutes’ immobility while the casualties lay bruised or bleeding beside their cycles. Because of the low speeds involved the injuries were usually superficial, and many of the casualties were already struggling to their feet and holding their precious bikes above their heads while they stepped over, but more frequently on, the other cyclists who were still too dazed or too entangled in their machines to get up.
Tempers flared and kicks were exchanged as the people on their feet tried to extricate themselves and their cycles from the pile-up and resume their journey.
The uninjured cyclists who were simply immobilised by the jam got impatient as well and tried to do the same. The people on the ground objected to being walked on, and violently.
Men and women, supposedly responsible citizens, began tearing into each other with fists, feet, teeth or fingernails. Some of them were battering at each other with their bicycles, using the machines like great, awkward, ludicrous clubs. The screams of pain and abuse, the murderous savagery and the features of the young, old, pretty and plain distorted by hatred made Malcolm’s teeth clench painfully together and every muscle in his body tighten up. It was as if the insanity of the rioters was an airborne contagion which was spreading to everyone within sight or hearing.
Stop it! he screamed silently to them. Think! Don’t be so blasted impatient…!
There could be no doubt that impatience was the root cause of such riots, reinforced by frustration, hunger, short temper, pride and a stubborn insistence on a cyclist’s rights of the road. To arrive a few minutes early at factory, cyclists would willingly risk life and limb. They considered themselves to be the working e lite, members of the semi-skilled trades whose position entitled them to live away from their factory complex instead of in a thousand-bed dormitory in one of the pedestrian hives adjoining their places of work. The first step up the ladder was always the most satisfying, Malcolm thought, and corporals were invariably more insufferable than sergeants.
It was a police sergeant who brought him back to present time by tapping him on the shoulder with his club while he proffered a set of masks with the other hand.
Malcolm fought down a sudden and completely senseless flare of anger, then nodded his thanks. He said, “I suppose you have to use gas…?”
The sergeant’s tone was impatient as he replied, “This is the fifth such incident this morning, Doctor, and rush hour hasn’t officially started yet. If we tried to he gentle the casualties would be even heavier. But you of all people should know that.”
“I know it,” said Malcolm, adding silently, but I don’t have to like it.
Ann already had her mask in position and was slipping the transparent filter-bag over the horse’s head. Malcolm did likewise, thinking that the masks were police issue and dependable, unlike the over-priced and highly illegal kind available on the black market. By the time he was finished, the thumping of gas grenades landing among the rioters was being replaced by the indescribable sound of a great many people trying to turn themselves inside-out.
Within a few minutes the gas had dispersed. The policemen and Malcolm, aided by a dozen or so cyclists who had escaped the worst effects of the gas, began dragging the casualties and their bikes clear of the roundabout. The whole purpose of the minor police action had been to restore the flow of traffic and, ten minutes after the air had been declared by the senior police officer to be safe for unprotected lungs, it was moving again. Of secondary importance was the untidy mass of casualties and bikes at the roadside. They would require much more time to clear.
Surprisingly, there had been no fatalities and only one ambulance was needed to move the people who were incapable of moving themselves—the incident had been sickened out before any real damage had been done. Injuries inflicted by fists, feet and hand-held bicycles could be visually dramatic and undeniably painful, but a few sutures and the indicated medication were enough to put such casualties on the road again.
It was past mid-day when the last one, still sweating and pale from the after-effects of the regurgitive gas, wobbled away. Ann went back to the horses to replace the two seriously depleted medical satchels while Malcolm headed for the police vehicle to return the gas-masks, before he had gone more than a few yards the officer in charge came out to meet him.
“Thank you for the second time today,” the officer said. “You have been seriously inconvenienced and…” he broke off as Ann joined them, then added, “What are your plans for the rest of the day?”
“A picnic in a secure park we were told about in District Eighteen,” said Malcolm. “It’s supposed to have real—”
“No picnic,” said Ann, in the very quiet tone which presaged a blow up of nuclear proportions. “All of the food is gone, plus a few other odds and ends.”
“It is a serious offence,” said the officer, pushing back his riot visor for the first time, “to steal from a public servant during the execution of his duty. Frankly, I don’t think there is much hope of catching the culprits, there are just too many of them these days. But the traffic monitor playbacks might give us a lead, and if the loot wasn’t divided quickly—”
“Forget it,” said Malcolm. Ann’s fuse was burning very short. “Consider the food as involuntary alms.”
“I see,” said the officer, his expression showing too much cynicism for such a young man. “That is probably the wisest course in the circumstances.”
“Yes. yes indeed,” said Ann, in a quietly furious voice. “Much less wasteful of public money, and less embarrassing to us personally and professionally if we were called on, as the offended parties, to remove the right hand of the thief after you had caught him.”
The officer’s face was impassive as he said, “We didn’t make that law, M’am. As for your plans for a picnic, forget them. Food is impossible to buy now in any district unless you are a resident of the area, and if you went looking you might survive but your horses wouldn’t. The food shortage these past few weeks has been that bad.”
Ann was silent for a moment, then she said, “Please excuse my bad manners and unfriendly tone, citizen. It is just that I so badly wanted to escape for a few hours from that…box…we live in.”
“Very often,” said the officer, “it is safer to bring the world into your box, should you be fortunate enough to have a TV, than to go outside and experience it at first hand. Besides, after your experiences of this morning, wouldn’t you prefer to spend the rest of your rest-day resting?”
“Yes, but…” began Ann.
“We can tranquillise your horses,” he went on, “and the tender is big enough to take them aboard. There is ample space in the compartment where we put the five cadavers from this morning’s RTA. We can even offer you something to compensate you for the food which was stolen, as well as giving you a comfortable and safe ride back to the hospital. You have been very public-spirited and co-operative citizens, after all, and we owe you that much at least.”
He added, “I insist.”
Malcolm tried to swallow but found that his saliva had all gone. When a policeman insisted one had to do exactly as one was told.
Chapter Seven Examination
While the tender’s crew busied themselves outside the vehicle, the Malcolms were handed two large-sized, self-heating ration packs and invited to relax and refuel and not to wait, because the officer had to make a few calls on his radio and get out of armour. The man’s interest in them was worrying, but his uncharacteristic hospitality might well indicate that the interest was not professional. Eventually he would tell them what he wanted and, meanwhile, it had been more than six hours since Ann and himself had eaten.
The officer left them alone for nearly half an hour, which was ample time for the Malcolms to finish their meal and begin taking an interest in their surroundings. They were in what seemed to be the vehicle’s dormitory compartment and dining area, an eight foot square box containing six fold-away bunks in two tiers of three on opposite walls and a collapsible table between them. The wall facing the entrance contained recessed lockers except for a clear area near the roof where someone had attached a picture of a seascape.
It showed an old-time sailing ship under storm canvas. The proportions of the vessel were slightly off, there were errors of draughtsmanship in parts of the rigging which indicated that the picture was an original and not a reproduction. Malcolm looked closer and saw that it was signed ‘2JR 2017’. Malcolm returned to his seat beside Ann—the two lowest bunks doubled as three-place dining chairs—just as the officer returned.
