Edward Llewellyn - Prelude to Chaos

“The object of our lives isn’t going to be avoiding attention! We—I mean my friends—can read the future as well as you can, Mister Gavin. And we don’t plan on waiting around to be grabbed as living loot when outsiders move into the Cove. I hear you don’t intend to wait around for that either! Sine, we’ve thought about the Pen as a possible hideout.” Judith said quietly, “It wouldn’t do any harm to scout the place.”

I looked at the two. “That’s what you both had in mind when you suggested this trip up the Bay, wasn’t it? You know’ what Council would say—”

“Shuck the Council!”

“Okay—if you’re willing to risk a row! Ease in slowly so we can see if there’s a guard on the place.”

“There isn’t any guard. The dockers who unload the containers go out with the Howard and come back in her.”

“So Midge says! I don’t trust bedroom information! Stay offshore until dusk. Then we can take a closer look—if you still want to.”

“Mister Gavin—this is my boat!”

“Miss Barbara, it surely is. But it’s my neck you’re risking!”

“You’d rather chance grounding after dark than being seen by people who aren’t there?” demanded Barbara, the wrath of a Skipper overridden aboard her own boat adding to her normal resentment of me as a person.

“Barbara, I have complete confidence in your, seamanship! We know the channel’s clear right up to the dock because the Howard’s been going alongside for years. And I know your radar and depthfinders are accurate because I calibrated them myself.”

“Then dusk it is, Boss!” She swung the wheel hard over, the Eagle heeled sharply, and I went floundering across the wheelhouse. Then she snarled at Judith, “Doc—you take over! I’ll fix supper.”

“I’ll fix the supper!” Judith seized her chance to escape.

We lay offshore while we ate, watching a summer sunset spreading over the forests of Maine. As I mellowed Barbara slowly thawed and began to talk, showing me a new aspect of life in Sutton Settlement. The attitude of the generation who were growing up there.

They were a type almost extinct elsewhere in the Affluence. Born and brought up in a seafaring community where the strict discipline of nature outweighed the prejudices of parents and the whims of pedagogues. Educated by an ocean on which they either learned to do the right thing the right way or they drowned, Barbara and her fellows had come from the same mold as had those earlier Americans who had spread out to conquer a continent.

Superficially the generation gap seemed narrower in Sutton Cove than in any place I’d known. But I was discovering that many things in the Settlement were not as they seemed. What the youngsters did share with the midders and oldsters was an ability to avoid confrontations while still achieving their ends—a convoluted approach to decision making. The final outcome of a discussion was often the one to which most people had seemed initially opposed.

Their parents, the founders of the Settlement, were neither unintelligent nor uneducated, but they lived in a world governed by their faith and worked too hard to worry about problems which were neither practical nor spiritual. They had rejected the Affluent Society twenty years before, and most of them were still uninterested in what was happening in it.

The youngsters were educated in the basics, in the peculiar theology of the Teacher, and in practical skills. The Settlement had a large library of teaching tapes covering most areas of higher education, for those who wanted it. The way of life was neither restrictive nor oppressive; the rules were fair and obviously for the general good. Most of the founders had been pacifist liberals who had never made any particular issue of sex, so one major cause of conflict between parents and children was reduced.

Anyone could leave the Settlement at any time, but those who did usually came back. Children who had grown up in a close society with the vastness of the Atlantic always before them, did not take kindly to anonymous crowds, vertical boxes, and scented deodorizers. Most Affluent occupations tasted insipid to youngsters who had fished Fundy, where their success had depended on the correctness of their decisions and the exercise of their skills.

Neither did the professions attract them. Judith had not really been a Settlement child and Barbara’s mysterious elder sister was an exception, but most Sutton youngsters could not endure the prolonged adolescence a professional education demanded. In the Settlement a junior was treated as responsible from the time he or she was judged fit to handle a boat. They did not slip back into semi-literacy because the high technology of boats and gear required theoretical as well as practical knowledge. Most important, for youngsters with the idealism of youth, was knowing the real value of their work. That in a good day’s fishing a boat could produce sufficient carbohydrates, fats, and proteins to feed fifty families for a week. In a world where millions were starving that was a reward few members of the Affluence enjoyed.

They tended to be prigs like their parents; something I could accept. Without a leavening of prigs people behave like herds of swine. But until that evening I had not realized their awareness of reality. If the Settlement survived long enough for juniors like Barbara to become leaders, then it could survive for centuries. Although, like most survivor communities, it might not be the easiest place in which to live.

At dusk we crept into the loom of the land. The Pen hung black above us. “No lights—so there’s nobody there!” said Barbara with the smug satisfaction of a junior who has been proved right.

“There are no lights because there are no windows or doors in the outer walls,” I snapped. “Inside it could be lit up like Times Square. See if you can coast up alongside the pier. It’s the last of the ebb, so if there is a watchman the boat’ll be hidden.” The tides around the Point averaged five meters.

She put us alongside so gently that I hardly knew we had arrived. “Make fast!” I whispered, and went scrambling up the ladder to go flat on the wharf with my gun ready.

I lay listening. Only silence. A few meters away was a cluster of rectangular silhouettes, containers which had been offloaded but not yet moved into storage. The rest of the pier was dark and deserted. I went back to the ladder and hissed down, “Wharf’s clear. Judy, come on up!”

Judith arrived, and then Barbara. I caught the girl’s shoulder. “Not you! You stay and watch the boat.”

She said nothing, but I sensed her anger. Slowly she started to lower herself back down the ladder.

I relented. “All right—come on. But keep quiet and don’t use your flash!”

We slipped between the containers, heading for the main entrance. I had assumed that it would be closed and our exploration would be confined to the wharf, but Judith whispered, “I think the tunnel's open. There are containers lined up the whole length of the ramp.”

Her night vision was better than mine and she was right. Dodging from container to container we found ourselves moving through the outer walls and under the inner courtyards. Then we rounded a bend and froze. There was a light ahead.

“See that! I warned you!” I hissed at Barbara.

“It’s the inspection station,” murmured Judith. “Stay here. I’ll go take a look.”

Before I could stop her she had disappeared into the shadows of the tunnel. I reached out to locate Barbara and felt a rifle. The kid had come armed! Foolishness or good sense? I didn’t know, but crouching in the dark I was glad I was not the only one of us with a gun.

Judith came slipping back. “Nobody there. But there was somebody earlier on. Somebody who left gum wrappers. There may be watchmen around.”