The Islanders (27 page)

When the boat was upright again, although riding low in the sea, Bradd set a bailing pump going and the water began to jet out of the side. As the flood level gradually fell they went around inside the cabin trying to establish what had been damaged, what might have been lost.

Most of the equipment on the boat was intact, although the navigation gear had been flooded and was inoperable. The auxiliary motors, used for self-righting and pumping, were undamaged. The binoculars were missing, as were most of the food and clothes they had brought aboard. The main inboard motor appeared to be intact, but would not start on the auto-ignition. Bradd kept trying, and after a couple of minutes the engine coughed loudly before running normally.

There was no longer any sign of the patrol boat.

They were intent only on reaching dry land and safety. They removed the sails, which had been damaged in the collision, and headed for Meequa Town under power. They stood together at the wheel, holding on to each other. Lorna could not stop shaking until she was safely ashore.

She remembered Bradd’s house from before. When they went in the familiarity struck her – the piles of books, heaps of old newspapers, the photographs stuck on the walls, his three peculiar cats, the sense of affluent male chaos. The background smell: other people’s places always have a background smell you can never identify but always remember. She was glad to be there, but she went and opened the windows to allow air to move around. It was hot in there – Bradd said his cooling fans were broken. She stood by the window, making herself calm. One of the cats walked over to her and nuzzled her leg. Noise of traffic rose up from the street below; music was playing in the restaurant opposite. Because of the lights of Meequa Town it was impossible to look out to sea: all appeared dark out there.

Bradd put down what he had been carrying and went to stand beside her. He laid a light hand on her shoulder.

‘Your clothes are still damp,’ he said, and ran his hand down her back.

‘Yours are too.’

‘Shall we take everything off?’

So they did and so it happened again. She was not in love with Bradd, but he was familiar and they had gone through something together and survived it. She liked him more now than she ever had. He was making an effort and so was she in her own way. Anyway, she was an adult and he was always good in bed.

In the morning when she woke up next to him, Lorna left the bed and went to stand at the open window, watching the businesses in the town start to open. Traffic was as yet light, and she smelt the scent of flowers on the warm breeze. The sea was silver and glistening in the early sunlight. She could see the dark shape of Tremm, out on the horizon, there but not there.

They made love again, then dressed and went down to the restaurant for breakfast on the terrace, overlooking the harbour. Behind the street where Bradd lived the land started to rise towards the inland heights – because of its view of the harbour, sea and distant islands it was a sought-after zone and many more houses and apartment blocks were going up. It was some time since Lorna had been in this part of the town, and she enjoyed the morning ambience of the shops and businesses, the light in the sky, the clattering noises, the endless sound of voices.

Later they walked down to the harbour to have a close look at the boat, and to work out what needed to be repaired or replaced. In the damp mess of the cabin there was hardly room for them both, so Lorna sat on the boardwalk while Bradd moved around inside. She was wearing a broad-rimmed hat to shade her from the sun. She watched the leisurely activity in and around the harbour, feeling happy for the first time in many months. Every now and then Bradd would emerge and place something next to her on the wooden planks. Once, she leant forward and kissed him. He grinned, then ducked down again into the boat.

A drone went over, its transparent wings glittering with silver highlights in the sunshine.

Lorna stared up to watch it, as did many other people around her. The drones were of course a familiar feature of life on Meequa, but they were rarely seen during the day. This one was flying parallel to the coast, but when it was over the harbour wall it banked steeply and flew out to sea. Lorna shaded her eyes to watch it. After about half a minute it banked again, this time going into a steep turn that directed it back towards the land. Within a few seconds it had passed over the headland and was out of sight.

Bradd emerged into the cockpit.

‘The nav gear is working again,’ he said. ‘I just picked up a drone signal. Did you see it go over?’

‘Yes.’

They thought no more of it, but that afternoon, as they walked through the town, a drone appeared from out of the heat haze, flying parallel to the coast. Lorna was immediately certain it was the same one. She rushed down one of the alleys that led to the harbour and watched as the drone repeated the course it had taken that morning.

Bradd looked up at the mountains and out towards the cliffs that rose to the east of the town. Mountains to be steered around, a complicated, jagged coastline with many rocky tors, other hilly islands in the vicinity. Plenty to avoid.

Later that night the drone again flew across Meequa Town.

By the time Lorna had returned to work at the Institute and was struggling once more to make sense of the photographic traces, the captive drone was a regular sight on Meequa. It went around continually, taking about seven and a half hours to complete its circuit, so that it usually flew overhead three times each day, but every now and then it appeared four times. It flew in the sunlight or in the dark, its iridescent wings refracting the stars or the sun, its motor running silently and faultlessly, the green-glowing LED in its nose sending a brief glimpse of purpose as it swept overhead, the air responding to its passage, and when the place was quiet it imparted a sense of unexplained mission, an unending task, a quiet breath of secrecy.

On Tremm, the nightly explosions continued.

Mesterline

DRIFTING WATER

M
ESTERLINE
was the birthplace of the poet and playwright K
AL
K
APES
, who is widely regarded as one of the island’s most cherished sons. Although he frequently made long tours through the Archipelago, speaking and giving readings of his work, Kapes returned to Mesterline whenever he could. He met his wife, S
EBENN
H
ELALDI
, also a poet, during one of his visits. They maintained a permanent residence on the island, in the heart of Mester Town.

The nature of Mesterline is that of providing a refuge, an instinct that permeates most of the people who live on the island. The native Mesters are open-minded, tolerant and incurious. They instinctively feel protective towards others, especially those who come to believe themselves cast out by the unreasonable expectations of others, or by pressure from authorities, or by laws they feel unreasonably restrict their behaviour. Although Mester people are themselves law-abiding they are tolerant of those with individual, unfashionable or unpopular ideas.

Ever since hostilities have been fought across Sudmaieure, Mesterline, although relatively distant from the landmass, has become a natural recourse for deserters because of the liberal attitudes on the island. The young men and women, frequently frightened, disillusioned or in some way damaged, drift towards Mesterline all year round. In many cases they arrive only after long and complex journeys, and often with the help of the island underclass.

When shelterate regulations were introduced throughout the Archipelago, a handful of islands immediately opted out. Mesterline was one of the first, although not, of course, the only one. By the time Kapes was born, the tradition of sheltering young deserters was well established, but while he was still a young man there was a sudden surge of deserters arriving on the island, and for a while a few of the islanders wanted a change. Kapes became actively involved in the controversy, maintaining that Mesterline’s great tradition of tolerant welcome should never be allowed to die.

Today, deserters may safely live on Mesterline, never at risk of being turned in by the islanders, nor subjected to pressures to move on to somewhere else. The price the Mesters pay for this lenient attitude has been the frequent searches of the island by the black-cap escouades. The Mesters remain forbearing even of this intrusion, mainly because there is nothing they can do. They have none the less devised innumerable secure hiding places for those deserters who need to use them. From time to time the black-caps inevitably discover one of these refuges, and although a few of the deserters might be grabbed and taken away, because of the existence of the Covenant the islanders themselves are immune from reprisals. Invariably, new bolt-holes are prepared every time an existing one is exposed.

Mesterline is an island with low hills, broad valleys, wide meandering rivers and long beaches of deep-yellow sand. The Mesters have a love of viewpoints, so along the stretches of coastline where there are tall cliffs, the people have built many houses against the sheer faces, with innumerable ingenious means for gaining access to them.

Mesterline is a rainy island with daily showers. It lies in the path of the warm westerly wind known throughout the sub-tropical latitudes as the S
HUSL
, and towards the end of most afternoons a brisk rain storm sweeps in, drenching the countryside and towns. The steep streets in the coastal villages have permanent runnels dug along each side, to drain away the water. The Mesters relish these intense showers. They will often interrupt business or family meetings to go outside to stand in the streets or public squares, turning up their faces and raising their arms, allowing the rain to course through their long hair and drench their lightweight clothes. Everyone is happier after the day’s shower. It is as if the Shusl brings the signal for the day’s routines to an end, because afterwards the bar-keepers and restaurateurs put out the tables and the musicians arrive, ready for the easygoing socializing through the long warm evenings.

The secret of Mesterline is an open one: there is something in the water, some unique combination of minerals, some consequence of the natural filtration beds.

Any new arrival on the island falls under the spell of the beneficent feeling within four or five days, and within a month sees no earthly reason to move to another island.

Kal Kapes, one of the few Mesters who regularly travels abroad, has often invoked the experience as a kind of metaphor for growth: what happens when you sail away, the grinding sense of loss, or fear of imminent death, that steadily increases until one day it vanishes and no longer hurts you, and what happens when you arrive, and succumb happily to the Mester experience, a change for the better, a shifting of earthly priorities, emergence into a higher state of being and understanding.

The two main Mesterline rivers arise from the drainage of precipitation, but both are fed by natural springs close to source. Water taken from either of the rivers has no great impact on the disposition of anyone drinking it, although after filtration and the usual treatment it has a faint but pleasant flavour and can act as a mild pick-me-up. The river water is mainly directed to industrial or irrigation uses, or as inexpensive mains supply to people’s homes.

To feel the full Mesterline effect one needs to partake of the spring water, tapped from only three natural sources inland.

For centuries the water has been bottled at source, two senior families running the business on a not-for-profit basis, themselves as much a product of the Mester outlook as the people they were supplying. One of the springs, indeed, could be freely tapped by anyone prepared to clamber up through the foothills with a suitable container. Mester water can always be drunk in its natural state, a mild aeration giving it a delicious and refreshing sensation on the palate.

Such was the essence of Mester life, but there is always some outside influence ready to try to ruin everything. On most islands it is the weather that comes along, changing the season, bringing a sharp or cooler wind, or in places a tropical storm or hurricane. In other parts of the Archipelago it can be the unwelcome intrusion from one or other of the combatant powers. Mesterline’s interruption was unique to itself. Some hundred years ago the Seignior of the day for some reason felt dissatisfied with the level of tithes he was receiving, and the open secret was turned into a business proposition.

An inter-island water supply company, apparently under contract to the Seigniories of several of the desertified islands to the south, opened negotiations to tap the Mester wells and purchase the water on an industrial scale. It involved the building of a large, mechanized bottling plant, new roads, several storage tanks, and the laying of a subsea pipeline away to the south.

The Mesters, dopily unaware of the consequences of what was happening, sat blithely in their cliffside houses, and sprawled on their beaches, sat serenely in their bars and along the sidewalks, watching the trucks trundling to and fro, and the construction workers spending money in the shops and bars, and the ships coming and going with building and construction materials. The local water became cheaper and more easy to obtain, and the Mesters cheerfully drank even more of it than usual.

Then one day the water was no more. The bottling plant moved into full production and the pumps were daily pouring unimaginable quantities of the precious liquid into a long pipeline that led no one knew where.