Manalone (21 page)

Suddenly the unreal old film was unreal no longer. The observed effects of gravity and momentum made a new and scary kind of sense. Here too was the reason why the past
had
to be obliterated. Without that precaution, Manalone’s world could not have existed. The statistics on pollution, population and the protein famine lost their paradox. The doomsday had been both inevitable and yet had not arrived: and the reasons why were cruelly plain.

‘
And the teapot handle, Manalone, you even recognize that now. How many times did you turn it over, only to miss the obvious? There’s no blindness so absolute as a preconception of what you think is true. You didn’t see it for what it was, because you didn’t want to think it possible. You don’t want to think it possible now, but you don’t have much choice in the matter.’

He closed the book and blew out the candle. One drama was finished, but he knew a greater one had already begun. The advancing light of morning was brightening the windows, and the bare shack with its solitary table seemed a fitting prelude to the tragedy whose terrifying plot was starting to unfold, even though the exact words remained to be written.

‘Well,
you’ve got your answer, Manalone. Now what are you going to do with it? You have to find the Masterthinkers – because they’re the ones in charge. Effects like that have to be supranational. No single government could tackle it alone. And for some reason the Masterthinkers wanted you to know …’

He sensed that finding the Masterthinkers was going to be the greatest challenge of his career. He would have welcomed an end to the gnawing in his stomach, but his mind was crystal clear, and his imagination fully receptive. He recognized, however, he was not starting this new quest with a headful of clues. He would have to pick up his leads as he went along – and if he missed any or failed to recognize them, he was lost.

‘This room, Manalone, what does it tell you? It’s a set-piece designed to bring you to the point of understanding. The interesting thing about set-pieces is that someone has to set them. Who? Kitten was involved, certainly. Men just move things about, they don’t go round and clean up the cobwebs after.’

He retreated to the wall and walked right round, viewing the table from all angles.

‘Somehow the design of the setting also has the feel of the hand of Colonel Shears. Kitten for sure didn’t own a candle-holder like that. Nor would she have left it if she did. There’s an attribute they share which you’ve not associated before. Both of them give you the feeling of being significant people. So what’s the significance of that?’

Manalone removed the candle and took the candleholder over to the window. As he had guessed, it was solid silver. It was old and fully hall-marked and had been lovingly and carefully preserved. He wrapped it in his handkerchief and dropped it into his pocket. It lay there uncomfortably heavy and bulky, but he retained it in case it might yield a clue or else could be sold to buy food.

Nothing else about the shack seemed to offer any further information, and nothing indicated which way he should start to go. The hint of a connection between Kitten and Shears was his only lead, and the more he considered it the more sure he became that Kitten herself was a special kind of MIPS agent. The MIPS, or at least some, like Colonel Shears, appeared to be functioning as the effective working arm of the Masterthinkers. Kitten’s precise role was not obvious, but it was clear that this phase of her job was now ended.

‘Ended? Manalone,
how blind can you get? How long before you arrived do you think that candle was lit? Not more than half an hour – and by that time you were already on the raft. She was probably waiting for you to come, and may well be waiting for you to leave. If she’s as involved in this affair as she appears to be, she must know some of the answers, perhaps all of them. For a start, find Kitten.’

He left rapidly then. The MIPS activity which must have taken place in and around the shack earlier in the night should have attracted some attention from the other occupants of the raft. This was especially likely because the police blockade would have rendered everyone nervous and suspicious. Somebody was sure to have seen Kitten go, and would know the circumstances of her leaving. Manalone decided to ask questions of a few of her neighbours.

To his surprise, even at this early hour the raft was alive with people. Most were clad in their outdoor garments, and were struggling to carry as many of their personal belongings as they could hold. Slowly and complainingly they were all making their way towards the shore.

Emerging into the centre of this unexpected exodus, Manalone stopped in amazement. At first he was unable to explain why he should meet so untypical a scene. Then his eyes followed theirs towards the east, where, under the grey lead of the sky, vast clouds of black smoke billowed landward from the fringes of the raft. His heart sank with helpless anger as he now realized the purpose of the police cordon along the seafront. The Authorities were forcing the evacuation of the raft, and burning it as soon as they gained possession, to prevent re-occupation.

What, he speculated, would happen to the thousands of families who had made their homes on the raft? He feared that no alternative provision had or could be made. The local bureaucracy had always resented the raft’s poverty and its autonomy. Now they had grown strong and bold enough to make a determined attempt to end the raft’s existence. They had a doubtful chance of completing the job. It was a manoeuvre which had been tried and had failed several times before. Sheer population pressure always brought about the raft’s reinstatement. In the meantime the wastage of even substandard accommodation was enormous.

‘It’s all so
futile, Manalone. Why bother to persecute a few unfortunates when civilization itself is falling apart? Why deprive men of their shelters now, when a few generations will see the last of mankind fighting over caves clawed in the hillside? It can only be that those responsible haven’t been given your perspective, and if you tried to tell them, they’d think you were a liar or else that you were mad. The irony is that those best adapted to the primitive conditions of the raft are those best fitted to survive when the machines stop.’

The long trail of refugees moved slowly past. Theirs was a fatalism he could not share, being able to see the larger scene.

‘So what are you going to do, Manalone? Watch the people who will inherit tomorrow be crushed by the tail-end of a faltering machine today?’

Part of his new dilemma was the passive acceptance of their plight by the great majority of this displaced population. In a way he could understand their resignation. They were mainly people who had been pushed and ignored by the Establishment all their lives. They had committed the cardinal sin of not being able to obtain or hold one of the nearly unobtainable jobs. They lingered on the fringes of society like a bad conscience, an embarrassing reminder that society itself had failed. For this crime they were again to be persecuted.

The slow movement of the raft occupants towards the checkpoints was already well advanced, and Manalone found to his dismay that those who had been resident near to Kitten’s shack during the night had already joined the drift and thus become unidentifiable. With his only plan thus thwarted, Manalone thought about his own position. He considered picking up a few pieces of discarded belongings with which the decking was littered, and posing as a refugee himself. However a calculation of the pace of the evacuation cautioned him that the police were probably being systematic at the checkpoints, and that without his CI card he was almost certain to be detained for further enquiries. He needed to find another exit rout.

A shout behind
him provided a completely new idea. Five or six men from the raft, each carrying an improvised weapon, were forcing their way through the passive ranks, obviously intent on making a stand against the police. This was the sign of rebellion for which Manalone had been looking, and contained an incidental chance of making a breach in the police cordon. Manalone’s decision was immediate. Though he had never been in a fight before in his life, he looked around for a suitable weapon. He found a piece of spiked metal rod, and trailed after the rebels. So ready was his acceptance of an active role that he suspected he had tapped into some fund of repressed aggression. Whatever the truth, he was caused to smile wryly at catching himself in introspective analysis at the same moment as he ran forward like a barbarian, brandishing an iron spike.

The direction the rebel force was taking, was eastwards and towards the point of intersection between the shore and the advancing tide of the fire. As they raced towards the shore, their movement gained strength; and many who would otherwise have capitulated quietly, threw down their bundles and broke pieces off adjacent timbers or seized anything which promised to make effective weapons. Though the police were probably anticipating trouble around the checkpoints, they seemed completely unprepared for the angry rabble which waded on to the mainland out of the smoke at the edge of the fire. One officer appeared to think that he could repulse the rebels by shouting at them through a loud-hailer. He became the first real casualty.

Then the fight was on. Scrambling ashore, Manalone found himself engulfed in a confused mixture of lung-searing smoke and running bodies. Each time he saw a uniform, he swung at it with his bar, and each time he saw a civilian garb, he desisted. Sometimes he was right and sometimes he was not, and it was doubtful if he actually killed or injured anyone. Nevertheless the course of the mêlée left his group in possession of an increasing length of the seafront, and the occasional bullets which ricocheted from the buildings seemed to lend no more than atmosphere to this most unreal of mornings.

It was during
a slight lull in the fighting that Manalone and his comrades came across the yellow engine. Deserted by its crew, the large manu-drive was an all-purpose pneumatic platform hoist on which had been mounted the flame projector which had been used to fire the nearer reaches of the raft. Gleefully the rebels surrounded it, and Manalone, full of curiosity, mounted the platform and tried out the controls. Fortunately the functions of the levers were clearly marked, and it took him but a few moments to learn to manage the operation of the hoist. The nozzle of the flame projector was fixed to the platform. He turned it away from the raft towards the nearest mainland buildings, and experimentally tried out the fire control.

The results were more violent than he had imagined. With a crash of shattering glass, the whole building took fire, and the cheer which was raised by his comrades was scarcely diminished by the hail of bullets which came in their direction. Slightly aghast at the scale of the havoc he had caused, Manalone began to descend. However, somebody had climbed into the driving cab and started the engine, and many of his comrades had boarded the superstructure and were shouting encouragement for him to fire again. The vehicle began to move jerkily westwards along the seafront. Manalone, crouching low to avoid the increasing accuracy of the police marksmanship, found his survival depended on burning the fronts out of the buildings as they approached, in order to discourage snipers. Whether he liked it or not, fate had cast him in a very destructive role.

As the yellow engine
emerged from the smoke of the burning raft, the sun broke through. Suddenly it was possible to see the road clear ahead as far as the next checkpoint. Beyond that, the seafront was mottled with the figures of refugees all now halted and watching the direction in which Manalone and his comrades had staged their rebellion. Halfway along the clear area a police squad in the centre of the highway was engaged in setting up what was probably a gun of fairly heavy calibre. It required no trick of imagination to appreciate that, if the weapon was fired, both the yellow engine and the rebels on its back had no possible chance of survival.

Realizing there was nothing he could do about the situation, Manalone concentrated on doing as much damage on the landward side of the seafront as his remaining seconds would allow. His mood was one of fatalistic spite rather than bravado. He had some idea of the quantity of inflammables in the tanks strapped below him, and, if his life was not ended by an explosion, he could make an educated guess about the type of inferno in which he would probably die. The thought was not pretty, and it lent a cold viciousness to the hands which manipulated the dreadful flame projector.

When the firing began, Manalone missed the fact that there came to his ears only the sound of small-calibre fire. He cringed, and was mildly surprised after a few moments to find the yellow engine still intact. Looking along the road, he discovered that most of the police gun squad were dead. The bullets which had killed them had been fired from various places, including the unburnt section of the raft. The rebellion was gaining ground.

A sniper opened up from an upstairs window in one of the larger buildings, and his bullets came uncomfortably close. Manalone saturated the area with fire, and burned the door-front out of the building when a further squad tried to emerge. He then concentrated on the area ahead, trying to suppress the cross-fire which came out of the minor turnings as they passed.

As they approached the
checkpoint, the police gave way and ran, not without considerable derision from the refugees they had so recently been herding. The crowd on the road beyond opened up to let the vehicle through, and cheered it as it passed. Already many of them were moving determinedly back to regain their pieces of the raft.

Then the yellow engine stopped. Manalone climbed down to find the driver in a faint through loss of blood. Several bullets had penetrated the cab, but, though severely injured, the man had continued to drive until his senses slipped away. He was probably dead before the solicitous hands eased him from his seat and laid him on the ground. In the excitement that followed, Manalone managed to slip away. With perhaps thirty buildings fired or damaged by his morning’s exercise, he was less keen on a hero’s reception than he was on returning to his former anonymity.