Halthrop and his young novices were being presented with a reality that had only previously existed in the videostories of history.
‘Are there any questions now?’
Terry piped up, ‘You made it sound like we’re competing against other posses to catch this fugitive. Shouldn’t we work with them?’
Halthrop’s lips flickered slightly, almost a small smile, but it was quickly gone. ‘All for the benefit of all?’ Half quoting the Second Covenant, he looked up a little, over them towards the back of the room. ‘Yes indeed you’re right. However, I really do think that we are the best outfit, and that too much collaboration with others will hinder our progress. Especially as the armulets aren’t functioning — the time that we would have to spend liaising in person would be wasted. We aren’t in competition with other groups, but I think it would benefit all for the Bristol Brigade to go for capturing Smith without those distractions.’ Jane nodded vigorously throughout this answer.
The major asked, ‘Anything else?’
‘Where are we going to start? And when?’ Jane was poised to type on her armulet screen.
He nodded and turned to point at the blackboard. It had a chalk map outline of the area from Bristol up to Cheltenham, including Highnam village marked on it. The old road connections and Gloucester were marked, along with some points of particular interest. Using a one-metre wooden ruler that he had found in one of the building’s science laboratories, Halthrop pointed to a star marked near the circle he had drawn to represent the Doughnut then slid the pointer down slightly.
‘We’ll go to his home first, edge of Cheltenham, and see if there are any clues left there. Unfortunately, as there are several posses engaged on this, I suspect at least one of them will get there before us but we don’t have a better starting place. The only other link we have is Highnam itself. He is their sifter, and he grew up in his grandmother’s farmhouse.’ The metre ruler rapped the blackboard at a picture of a house. The three jumped in their seats at the sudden sound.
Darren came to life. ‘I’ve never heard of Highnam, where is it?’
He slid the pointer slightly to the word Highnam and looked at Darren. ‘You can see I’ve marked it on the map here. It’s a farmland Kangaroo to the west of Gloucester. It’s about sixty kilometres from here up the old M5. Population of about four thousand, and pretty fertile land, I believe. If you think back ten days, you may remember that we went there to get that boy to take to prison.’
He looked to Darren for recognition of this memory. The young man’s face was red, but Halthrop could not tell if it was any different from his normal appearance. He was always rosy cheeked and sported a rustic, haymaking countenance. The major hoped Darren was blushing with embarrassment.
‘From Smith’s house, we’ll probably follow the old railway line, which I’ve marked here. The old A40 is shorter, but the floods have washed it away in some places near Cheltenham.’ He waved the ruler along a line drawn with hatch marks to indicate railway line. Darren was looking at the board, eyes flicking back and forth across the symbols, but did not appear to be comprehending.
Jane’s arm was vertical again. ‘When is departure time?’
‘We will meet at 0800, at Brigade HQ, where I will issue kit. You will need to bring your bikes, and your rucksacks, plus a change of clothes. We may be away for several days, so make sure that your families are aware of this. And remind them that communications are currently not functioning, so you will not be able to update them on your expected return date and time.’
‘The reward money must be pretty big for this guy?’ questioned Terry again.
Major Halthrop scrutinised him for several seconds. ‘All for the benefit of all, eh Terry?’ He paused, and his audience shuffled a little in their seats and looked at the ground. ‘We will get paid our normal stipend. We have been contracted by three different Kangaroos though, and they will each pay if we capture Jack Smith. Actually, I should say that they will pay when we capture the actual bomber: at the moment Smith is simply our prime suspect, albeit our only suspect. But also, all acting for the benefit of all means that the other posses will get paid by their contracting Kangaroos whenever the bomber is caught, be it by us or somebody else. As will we.’
‘Very nice,’ Terry commented, and the three junior members looked at each other, nodding and pushing out their bottom lips.
Chapter Five
Vicky walked slowly from the small vegetable field, a casual stroll. Her hand remained at her forehead, the index finger moving in a small slow circle, winding her hair. This idiosyncrasy was Jack’s strongest memory of the girl he had once known. She appeared to sashay away towards the Truva family farmhouse. Jack could make out the building but it was mostly obscured by woods.
Jack crept out from his hiding place and moved to where she had been sitting. He had watched Vicky pull up a radish and mimicked the actions she had used to do so, finding a radish that was also so beautifully formed that it could have been entered in a competition at the Highnam summer fair. The small area also offered up tomatoes and a beet, and he doubled his collection of carrots. At that point, Jack decided he had enough to eat and some spare to carry away, but would not have room to carry any more.
He collected his rucksack from the dense bushes at the eastern end of the Truva farmland. The sun had disappeared below the horizon. It would be dark in less than thirty minutes, and Jack had changed his original plan, deciding that he would spend the night in the rusting barn that towered over the field to the southeast.
Decades earlier, the building had been an industrial milking shed. It was now derelict, and the doorway, wide open at the east end, had a pair of trees growing out of the threshold. They were at an angle to the vertical, leaning towards the outside, reaching for the sky. The barn stood thirty feet high, and in places the metal roofing sheets had fallen through, leaving large, rectangular openings.
Inside, one half was an open space with a mud floor. The centre had a raised platform running the full length, and against the north wall were a number of open rooms that reminded Jack of large stable booths. Everything was made of metal, some galvanised and still quite shiny, but most parts pitted and holed with rust. One strong windstorm might cause a collapse.
He started a fire in one of the side rooms. Jack chose one that did not have a hole in the roof above, in the hope that the smoke would disperse more diffusely if it had to find its way out of the roof some distance from the fire. He was unsure how well the vegetables would cook on an open fire.
During the cooking procedure, Jack determined that he would stay in the barn for twenty-four hours and make for Leckhampton Hill the following night. He told himself that this delay would give any pursuers more time to follow him in the wrong direction, before he made his real getaway.
He also decided that he should talk with Vicky Truva to gauge another’s view of the revolution he was starting. He had always found that she could be relied upon to think intelligently. As Ellie had died before he had come up with the plan to reintroduce privacy by destroying the audiopt feeds, Jack had not had an opportunity to discuss the idea with anyone.
Jack had picked up a survival knife from an abandoned shop in Cheltenham almost three months previously, in preparation for this moment. In spearing a carrot with it, he felt like an action hero from any number of old Hollywood videostories. He aped what he had seen in them, hunkering down in a corner and giving furtive looks around the space, before biting into the carrot from the knife. Jack grinned at his own parody. ‘Who says I’m just a crazy idiot?’
*