George Turner by Drowning Towers (epub)

Author:Drowning Towers (epub)
Format: epub
Published: 2024-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

2

Squaddies raced into their civvy clothes, grabbed their bags and paused only for the regulation scan of the noticeboard. Then the small group of us who did not go home, for one reason or another, strolled to the board to see what might be new, and found nothing.

But there was a street map on the board, a big one with City Centre lined in red and the names of major buildings marked for reference. I examined it with a sting of old fascination, for in our fourth year City Centre had at last been declared ‘in bounds’ to us. (Permission to be grown-up!)

As kids we had talked of mysterious City Centre and its fabulous corridors of power. In time we had learned that it was just an antiquarian’s delight of old buildings preserved through lack of funds to tear them down and rebuild, haunted by Small Sweet planners and programmers and secretaries and runners of messages for the Top Sweet who made the State’s decisions. Longer in dying were the rumours of Swill robber gangs erupting from the sewer systems; we didn’t really believe those, but you could never be sure…

Those who had actually seen the Centre said that nobody in his right mind would go near the musty place – ‘Crummy buildings and almost nobody about’. They were probably right but the glamour persisted. I wanted to see for myself.

As I peered at the map a Swill voice whined in my ear, ‘Y’ wanna gwin, Teddy?’

It was Arry, who could forget his Sweet speech at a fingersnap. He repeated, with apologetic care for trained elegance, ‘Do you want to go in, Teddy?’

Of course I did, but civilian dress was obligatory for a City leave pass and I had none. I had outgrown my enlistment clothes and found no way to replace them; the State saw no reason to supply clothing coupons as well as uniforms.

I said briefly, ‘No clothes,’ hiding the hurt. Then passed the hurt to Arry. ‘And where would you get city clothes?’ The gear the Swill kids wore to go home in would not do for the Centre.

He shot me the most curious sidewise look of benevolence and complicity. ‘Can get. Can borrow some for you, too.’

I didn’t trust a word of that. Training or no training, Swill was Swill, and devious. But I wanted badly to see the Centre. He took my silence for assent, or pretended to. ‘Twenty minutes,’ he said, ‘in your dosser.’

In less time than that he appeared in my cubicle with two complete outfits – trousers, shirts, belts, berets, the throatbands that were ‘in’ that year and two brassards identifying us as cadets. I recognized the stuff he gave me and knew it would fit, just as I knew its owner would be absent for two days and that he was a snot-nosed Sweet from whom Arry could never have cadged a loan of anything.

‘Skeleton keys?’

‘A loan,’ Arry insisted, his grin openly conniving. ‘But he’s the type who wouldn’t appreciate thanks.’

I had qualms.

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