The Wall(45)

‘South,’ I said. So we had taken the Captain’s advice. There was a compass among the survival kit that we had been left by the Guards. And now here we were, bobbing up and down on a two-metre swell, hiding from lights in the dark. Hughes and I stood looking at them for a few minutes longer and then he patted me on the arm and went back towards the awning at the back of the boat.

I let Hughes duck under the cover and began pulling at the oars to move us in the opposite direction, away from the ship and its lights. We took rowing easy, because it was hard work, especially for the unfit, and because doing it too energetically made you perilously hungry. It was a trade-off, calories for movement. I was rowing backwards so, when the waves permitted, I could see the lights in the distance. The ship didn’t seem to be growing any further distant; then, slowly, it seemed that it was. I must have rowed for an hour, with frequent breaks at the start, and then with longer periods of rest than bursts of rowing. I was using the same technique we used to employ on the Wall, spacing out glances at my watch to try and make it a pleasant surprise when I gave in and looked at the time. When my four-hour shift was over I went to wake James for his turn. In the back of the boat, Hifa and the Captain and Hughes were all deeply asleep, and so was James until I shook him. I stood back to let him wake in his own time.

He got up slowly, rubbing not just his eyes but his whole face, making chewing movements with his mouth. Then he came out from under the awning.

‘I saw lights,’ I told him. ‘A few kilometres away. A ship. Hughes saw them too. We talked it over and decided to leave it. Too late to do anything about it now. I wanted you to know.’

He nodded, thinking about it. I didn’t trust him but he wasn’t stupid. I could see him running through the same calculations we had made.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘I’d have done the same.’ He nodded some more. It was beginning to be light, and I could see how tired he was, but how determined too. Fatigue and his blond stubble made him look ten years older than he had before we were banished. I went to climb into the back and take my turn sleeping, but he stopped me with a hand on my arm. I looked a question at him and he held up a finger. Then he rummaged under his layers of clothing, the layers he never took off except when he had to lower his trousers to defecate over the side of the boat. He wriggled for a moment and then brought something out, as if it were a birthday present. It was an object about six inches high with a circumference about the same size. It took me a few seconds to believe my own eyes, though I knew very well what it was: a high-explosive grenade.

‘Jesus, James,’ I said. He was smiling.

‘The commander of the Guard ship gave it to me,’ he said. ‘In case we run into trouble or in case we, you know, decide we can’t go on any more. In case we want to choose fire over water.’

I looked at him hard and saw something I had never seen before, never even suspected, which was the glint of madness. I said:

‘You can’t possibly be—’ but he cut me off.

‘I’m not, I’m not,’ he said. ‘I just wanted you to know.’ He began putting the grenade back under his clothes. I wasn’t worried about it going off by accident, that was impossible with the design of those grenades; in fact it was hard enough getting them to detonate when you wanted them to. What I was worried about, though, was his state of mind. I decided I would tell Hifa and Hughes about the grenade – the next time I could be with them privately.

I went and lay down and replayed what had happened, not with James, but earlier, with the lights in the distance. Through the next days, through all that happened, I found myself often thinking of those lights; wondering who they were, what boat they had been on, Guards or Others, or Defenders put to sea, even, perhaps, sea ships going about their business, carrying precious cargo or passengers who knew where. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. All kinds of alternative futures bloomed into being when I thought about that boat, who had been on it, where they might have taken us. Friendly brigands, who would have made us part of their crew. Pitying Guards, with the convenient ability to issue us with new chips and fake IDs. Or, more likely, merciless pirates who would have robbed and killed us on sight. I’d never know. In my old life, if I had wanted to find something out sufficiently badly, I could. I would put my mind to it, devote resources to it, find an answer. That was no longer true. There were now many things that I would never know and never be able to find out.

On the fourth day we had our first piece of luck. (Always bearing in mind Sarge’s maxim that if we had truly been lucky we would never have been there in the first place.) Hifa’s seasickness had ended, thank God, as abruptly as it had begun, on the third day. She was washed out and her cheekbones were sharper and her nose pointy under her cap. She looked, if I had to put it in one word, purposeful.

It was mid-morning and she was on watch. I was sitting in the front of the boat because the air in the back would sometimes get stuffy. When the weather was dry and the pitching of the boat not too severe, it could actually be quite pleasant to sit in front, in the intervals when you weren’t consumed with anxiety and apprehension and plain terror. Hifa was standing at the tiller looking forwards and Hughes was rowing, slowly, taking long pauses between strokes. Hifa was looking very fixedly at the horizon.

‘Can you come and hold this for a minute?’ she said to me. I took the tiller. Hifa came right to the front of the boat and stood staring into the distance.