Futuretrack 5 (27 page)

It left me weak-kneed with excitement, which I promptly crushed.

Emotion makes bad Techs.

“All loaded, Kit?”

“All aboard, Pete!”

“Let her roll, boy!” He and Joan scrambled up beside me in the cab, already dressed for the play, bubbly as kids on a day out. Joan wound down the window, ready to wave to her mother, six sisters, five aunts, and twenty-two cousins, who would be clustered at their garden gates, ready to give us the big send-off as we passed.

I swung out of Pete’s yard cautiously; it wasn’t easy to see ahead, because of the big framework of welded girders that covered the front of the cab.

“You certainly built that to last,” said Pete. “Must weigh a ton. You could knock down a barn with this old lorry now and never get a scratch.”

Oh, Pete, Pete, if you only knew.

I’d hung a lot of flags and bunting over every inch of that framework, to hide it from prying Paramil eyes; we looked infinitely festive, and I kept the speed down to thirty, in case it all blew away.

Through my rearview mirror, I saw Keri close up on Mitzi. Mitzi, too—was hung with rosettes, a glory of Fenland folk art. She could have been an old AJS, except she ran so silently. Then Razzer joined her on his Norton Commando, and that made noise enough for two. Tommo and the rest of the actors joined in, as we passed their cottage gates. Soon Mitzi was safely lost in the middle of a roaring, blue-smoking mob.

We passed over the Old Bedford River at Welney. Timing was crucial. Brightly festooned lorries were joining the main road all the time, all heading for Cambridge. If we got too near the front of the procession, the Paramils’ eyes would still be sharp when we tried to pass the Cambridge gate. If we were trapped too far back, we wouldn’t get our choice of site on the recreation field.

Passing through cheering, waving, frantic Littleborough, I thought we were just about right: quarter of the way back down the line.

I’d better explain how Laura defended herself. She lay like a princess in a medieval castle, within five concentric rings of defence. First came the Cambridge Wire, the most terrible in Britain, set inside a hundred-yard-wide belt of bare earth on which nothing was built, grew, or walked alive. That earth was scanned by radar, infrared cameras, listening devices. Buried in that earth were people-sniffers, pressure pads, and live wires which electrocuted anything passing over. It was always littered with dead birds and cats. Heads of Cambridge colleges were constantly complaining about the smell of decomposing bodies.

Within Cambridge, the Centre, married quarters, and recreation field were cut off by a Wire of near-equal ferocity.

The Centre and Techs’ Hostel were surrounded by an old obsolete Wire electrified to 20,000 volts, with floodlights, TV scans, and Arcdos towers.

The Centre itself had doors of two-inch armoured glass that only opened in response to the correct code, dialled on a Tech’s clipboard.

Lastly, Laura lay buried in her own maze of lifts, passages, and false doors that I knew so well.

She was safe as computer logic could make her. It wasn’t her fault that today computer logic had gone by the board, because the Ests wanted to have fun.

We approached the gate in the first Wire. The Paramils on duty could hardly see our lorries for the Est mayor of Cambridge, grand in his chain of office; the Est masters of colleges, gay in scarlet robes and black floppy hats; and a consort of viols and krumhorns sawing and tootling merrily away. One psycho-radar was also pinging merrily away. I was frightened it might pick up Keri, but she was dicing with death again, on her beloved bike: in my rearview mirror, she looked blooming.

We processed down King’s Parade in bottom gear. I kid you not, dons were dancing in the streets; lusty, young graduate morris men slapping their thighs, waving their ribbons and tinkling their little bells like Santa’s sleigh. Their wives, sprightly in wimple and cloth-of-gold, plastic variety, were busy throwing basketfuls of rose petals over our lorries. And no doubt weighing up the lustier Fenmen for a night of the old Lady Chatterley.

We waved back, laughed gaily, blew kisses, and approached the second Wire. The Paramils there looked bemused, embarrassed, as if afraid their lords and masters might suddenly land them a smacking great hug. You could tell their disciplined little Gurkha minds hated the whole business; were just dying to have it over.

We burst onto the recreation field. The first lorries were just turning and backing up. I picked out the spot I wanted, smack up against the third Wire. Got it, but I had to fight for it. The other guy gave way, but not till our wings had touched with a crunch of breaking glass. Still, the other guy knew me, was in a holiday mood.

“You’d better come down an’ fix that, Monday morning, young Kit!”

“I’ll do that small thing!”

Ha, ha. What Monday morning?

But I threw myself into getting the proscenium erected, facing the field, back to the Wire. When we nearly had it finished, a Paramil strolled up and measured its height with his eye.

Then he measured its distance to the Wire…

My heart was in my mouth. But he only made us move it a foot further forward, and he didn’t make a great fuss about it. I assured him the steel guy ropes would hold it safely erect. I even hammered in one peg within a foot of his patrol car.

That car was hung about with loudspeakers and spotlights; it was obviously going to be a permanent feature of the fair. A control point with radio; a place for weary Paramils to rest their legs.

As an afterthought, I let the end of the steel guy rope curl along the grass till it rested on the back wheel of the car. We wouldn’t have much bother from that source, once the balloon went up. The Paramil didn’t seem to notice anything amiss; by that time there were coils of rope and stuff lying all over the place.

Pete bustled up and again pronounced the proscenium a good piece of craftsmanship. But what were those oil drums full of oily rags and pitch for?

“A special effect,” I said. “A surprise.”

He looked worried, but calmed down when I told him the special surprise wasn’t till after the play.

“Oh, well, I suppose you’re entitled to your bit of fun. Just as long as it don’t spoil the play.”

“I
promise.”

He wandered off again, having still a lot of things to do—like sampling the medieval mulled wine. I drove the lorry away, down the grass access road. Parked it a hundred yards back from the Wire, where I could get to it quickly. The lads parked their bikes beside it, Keri keeping Mitzi to the middle, where she wouldn’t attract attention.

Then all we had to do was wait till dark. And enjoy ourselves.

Oddly enough, we did at first. That medieval fair was quite a thing. The Fenmen’s big day, and they’re still medieval peasants at heart. They were staying the night, had erected rough little tents behind their booths, lit wood-fires to cook on. So you walked down grass alleyways through blue sweet-smelling hazes of cooking and wood-smoke. The men worked stripped to the waist. Their children wandered about near-naked, sucking their thumbs, flaxen-haired and big-eyed with wonder. Sacking-hooded wives stirred bubbling stews in huge iron pots, and their dogs roved, barked, and peed just like they must have done a thousand years ago.

In the booths, all kinds of work was going on, inside the drapings of medieval flags. Men turning goblets of beechwood on treadle lathes, goblets so thin that if you held them up to the sun you could see the light shining through. Others plaited corn dollies under notices inviting you to “Buy a fairing for your love” in straggly Gothic lettering. I bought one for Keri and she twisted it into her hair; she was still wearing it when we started the attack…

There were a dozen kinds of old-fashioned bread on sale: sultana, poppy seed, suet. Mulled wine done the proper way; chickens roasted on a spit over a mound of white wood ash, in a shaft of sunlight. Silversmiths and sword-swallowers, fire-eaters blowing out yards of flame and even a man inside a bearskin, pretending to be a dancing bear and bear-hugging all the Est females while he had the chance and no one could see his crafty, leering face.

I must say the Ests entered into the spirit. I saw fifteen Henry VIIIs and at least ten Richard Ills, and from the looks they were giving each other, the Wars of the Roses were just about to break out all over again. But a lot of the women and children had formed medieval bands, and the sweet, sharp sounds of shawm and tabor followed us wherever we went.

A blissful time. Keri hung on my arm like any village girl, her fair hair streaming down my black shoulder, face so bright it put the sun to shame. Only, suddenly, I would see her remember what we were going to do, and then her eyes would go to pinpoints.

Then I did something stupid. The Cambridge Chess Club were lounging on bales of straw under a spreading oak, playing on rough wooden boards with perfect reproductions of the Isle of Lewis chessmen. Luring half-tipsy Fenmen into a game and taking the mickey out of them. One lad sat in the middle of a giggling crowd, staring from face to face, half-grinning, wanting to please; half-terrified. As we passed, he leaped to his feet amid hoots of laughter.

“I can’t get the hang o’ they, maister, honest I can’t.”

He fled. His tormentor looked up and saw me.

“Come and have a game, there’s a good chap!”

Feeling a flash of rage that should have blown the fuse of the nearest psycho-radar, I sat down. Oh, how I clowned! Calling the Queen the Duchess, and the King the Gaffer, and the knights “they fellers on hosses.” How merrily they laughed.

But I had the guy in trouble, bad trouble, in six moves. He started to sweat, tried to cheat. But I told him I thought he had made a mistake “with they little castle, zur.” I was really loving it, till I realised he was a much worse player than I thought. All his mates gathered round, giving him advice. They’d long since stopped laughing. They were pondering longer and longer between moves. The atmosphere was getting ugly.

I gave him an opening; they were by now too upset to see it. I gave him another, and they actually managed to turn it to my advantage. Now I was sweating more than them. I was making myself far too conspicuous.

Then a big fellow with a bony forehead and formidable chin turned up. The rest sort of backed away to make room for him. This one knew his game, and I’d already made the last deliberate mistake I could, without giving the game away. His eyes looked at me like flint. “You’ve played before,” he said.

“No, zur, no.” His eyes drilled into me, across the table.

“Ere, Kit,” whined Keri, grabbing my shoulder, mimicking the Fen accent like a master, “ee a-goin’ to be here all day? Ee said ee was a-goin to buy me somethin’ pretty. C’mon, Kit. …”

“Oh, shut up,” I roared, turning to glare at her, wriggling her hand off my shoulder.

“C’mon. Ee buy me something, or I do be going wi’ that Tommy Melpash.”

She turned away. I grabbed at her wrist. She gave a heave to break free that pulled me backward off the bale of straw. I felt my boots kick upward at the chessboard, and send the whole thing flying.

There was a great roar of laughter from the Ests. I let her drag me away, yelling at me nineteen to the dozen. As we went I heard the big man say, “Ugly bugger, that.”

“A natural, though.”

“Except they’ve got no intellectual stamina.”

“You bloody fool,” whispered Keri. “You come to blow up that computer or
not?”

The other moment was much worse. Keri, all woman suddenly, dragged me in to see a fortune-teller. An apple-cheeked Fenwoman, ordinary as an aunt.

“You’m a-carryin’, dear, aren’t you?”

“Ere, it don’t show yet, do it?” yelped Keri.

“It’ll be a son, and ee’ll be right proud of him, for what he’ll do.”

The woman turned to me, took my palm between her old, soft, dry fingers. I felt her stiffen; then she dropped my hand as if it was red hot. She reached into her bowl of change and gave me back my two credits. Gathered up her belongings with shaking hands and said she was finished for the day. Panic made me cruel. I grabbed her wrist with such force she winced.

“What do you
think
you saw, Gran?”

She took her hand back with great dignity. “I do have two things to say to you. You’ll regret what you’ll do tonight for the rest of your born days. An’ you’ll have plenty of time to regret it. They’ll never let you go, till the day you die.”

Then she was gone.

I think I gave a mad sort of cackle. “Well, at least she didn’t say I wasn’t a-going to
do
it!”

Night. Flickering torches and fires among the booths. The perimeter lights of the Wire shining outward, making it as bright as day.

A vast crowd watching. In the front, a ring of Est families, changed now, for comfort. The men in cashmere sweaters and cravats, the women with cardigans draped across their shoulders against the chill and dew. Most were holding glasses of something strong, in that typical Est way that makes a glass into a barricade, a sceptre, and a social weapon. Below, the staring, mesmerised faces of the Est children, and, behind, the frantically bobbing heads of the Fen people as they struggled to get a view.

All watching us.

The play was ending. I glanced at my watch. Bang on quarter to nine. Up at the Centre, they’d be getting ready to change shifts. I’d delayed the play’s start just right.

Keri had already slipped away, to start the engines of the lorry and Mitzi, in the empty, quiet dark behind the crowd. I heard the lorry’s starter whine once, twice, thrice; then its old engine chugged sluggishly into life. Damn the wretched old thing; I’d serviced it till I was black with grease. … I wouldn’t hear Mitzi start. She’d be idling silently as a ghost.

I’d finished my lines, slipped inside the shallow shadow of the proscenium, reaching for the ends of certain ropes. Razzer stepped forward toward the crowd, looking gigantic in the firelight and his scarlet coat.

“For now our play is ended, we can no longer stay, But with your kind permission, we’ll call another day; It’s a credit to Old England, and the boys of the Manea gang.”