Реджинальд Хилл - Matlock's System

“Hardly. The penalty shall be loss of years and any superfluity in the penalty shall be carried out, at the discretion of the court, on the wife and or children of the offender.”

“And you could lose up to one hundred years, Matt. You can afford only six. That leaves a possible superfluity of ninety-four to share out. A stem measure. It had to be stem, remember, to make this law for all people, all classes.”

“I remember saying it, Prime Minister. It was a foolish thing to say, but at least you cannot turn it to use against me. My wife has been dead for eighteen years. We had no children. It is me you must deal with. Alone. Good day.”

Matlock was almost through the door this time when Browning’s voice made him turn again.

“Look at the screen, Matt. Just once more.”

The entire wall was filled with the picture. Projected on it were two documents. The lights in the room were too bright to let the writing on them be immediately legible.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Browning. “Can’t you see properly?”

He waved his hand and the lights dimmed once more.

“There we are. Can you see now?”

Matlock could see, but he could not understand. The blood seemed to be bubbling through the veins at the side of his forehead and a line of sweat arched across his upper lip.

The top document was a certificate of marriage, dated three years earlier, between himself and Lizzie Armstrong, Spinster.

The lower one was a birth-certificate dated forty years previously. The parents were named as Matthew Matlock and Edna Carswell. The child was a boy. Named Ernst.

The documents faded and were replaced by two faces. Lizzie and Ernst, smiling out at him.

“They can afford about seventy between them. That’s what we’re bargaining about, Matt,” said Browning. “Off you go now. Just think things over. See you soon.”

Matlock stumbled through the door.

By the time he had reached the lift, Matlock had recovered sufficiently to remember the reporters whose attention he had so efficiently drawn to his arrival. They would be waiting below, eager for some meat to clothe the bones they had already given their editors to gnaw.

Matlock had no desire to be faced with a barrage of questions at this moment. His mind was still disorganized by Browning’s threat. He knew that this particular section of the Age Law had not been acted upon more than a dozen times since it was passed, and then only in cases when the man concerned had got clean away. The first three times, the escapee had returned and the family had been released. People had begun to call it a bluff.

The fourth time, the man had not returned. His wife and son were executed.

Painlessly, quickly, but killed by law for all that.

Matlock had finger-stamped the execution order.

“Christ, I was certain in those days!”

He had spoken aloud. The sound of the words cut through the turmoil in his mind. He was standing in front of the open lift. Turning away from it, he set off up the corridor to his left.

About fifteen yards along, he hesitated in front of a plain unnumbered door. He glanced back up the corridor and counted the doors he had passed. Three.

This was it. This had been his room for those powerful years.

He turned to move on. But something (not sentiment, he thought) made him press the handle. The door slid silently open.

A man turned from the ebony-inlaid kidney-shaped desk which dominated the room. He wore uniform.

“Good-morning, Mr. Matlock, Sir. It’s nice to see you again.”

“Hello, Jody,” said Matlock with relief. “It’s nice to see you too.”

The grey-haired figure came towards

him with a pleased smile. A Messenger of the House, already old when Matlock had occupied this room, he must be in his nineties now. He was a peculiar case, a man outside the Age Law. He had a very rare blood disease, one of the few conditions beyond the reach of modem medicine. His doctors had certified that an operation would kill him. They were doubtless right. They had also certified that he had at the outside a couple of years to live.

Matlock, with a single finger stamp (life and death in my finger! he thought) had put him outside the Age Law. But the doctors this time had been wrong. Jody thirty-five years later was as hale as ever. He rarely left the House now, partly because his advanced years were not so noticeable in the one place in the country where old men abounded. Partly because in the straight, smoothly padded corridors of the House which he knew like the back of his hand there was less chance of his meeting with the accident which could mean his death.

“Visiting the Minister, are you, sir?” asked Jody.

“Not really, Jody. Just looking around.”

“Oh,” said the old man.

“I’ve been with the P.M.,” added Matlock, sensing the Messenger’s uneasiness.

“Oh, that’s all right then,” said Jody brightly. “And you’re just having a look-see for old time’s sake, eh? Changed a bit since you was here, Mr. Matlock.”

Matlock looked at the huge desk, the white nylon-tread carpet, the lazer-cut sculptures welded to the wall.

“Yes, it has. My desk was a bit smaller, eh Jody? And we didn’t have these works of art in those days.”

“No indeed, sir. We did not. The Minister says they represent the sexual rhythms, sir. I know I’m getting on, but they ain’t like what I recall of it, sir. Not a bit. Eh?”

He cackled away to himself. Matlock joined in.

“You’re not that old, Jody. And with some of the new drugs, you could go on for ever.”

Jody winked wisely.

“So you’ve heard about them, sir? Are you coming back to join us then? They said you would.”

Matlock, who had been preparing to disengage himself from the conversation, now gave his full attention.

“Did they? Who was that, then, Jody?”

He was as casual as possible. Jody was like the Vicar of Bray. Old acquaintance was old acquaintance, but he belonged to the man in power.

“Why, the P.M. was just telling my Minister the other day.”

Something in Matlock’s expression must have warned the old man for he suddenly became very alert.

“You did say you was coming back, sir?”

“I’m not sure, Jody.”

Jody tried to move him to the door, talking quickly and genially, but Matlock stood fast.

“It won’t do, Jody. Tell me more. If you won’t, I’ll go back and ask Browning. Quoting you as my informant.”

It was cruel; Jody could not risk official disfavour, but even then for a moment he did not seem able to make up his mind.

Give him another reason, thought Matlock. It’s worked with better men for worse deeds.

“Remember, Jody, you’re alive because of me. You owe me something.”

It worked.

“Look, Mr. Matlock, I’ve got nothing to tell really. Nothing at all.”

“What did you hear, Jody?”

“Nothing really. It was just that I was clearing up some things of mine in the store-cupboard yonder when I caught a few words between my Minister and the P.M. Well, my Minister…”

“Sedgwick.”

“Yes. Mr. Sedgwick. Well, my Minister said, ‘If you don’t get Matlock you’re in trouble,’ or something like that. And the P.M. said, ‘Don’t you worry about that. I’ll get Matlock back. He’ll be with us within a fortnight’.”

“What were they talking about before they mentioned me?”

“I don’t know. Really I don’t. I didn’t hear that. You’ll not say anything will you, sir? Not to Mr. Sedgwick or Mr. Browning.”

There was a pathetic fear in the old man’s eyes which made Matlock turn away.

Will I cling on to life with such little dignity? he wondered. Or am I clinging on already?