ChristopherPriest-DarkeningIsland, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 1, pobierz pdf

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DARKENING ISLANDby Christopher PriestFlyleaf:War has devastated the African continent. Millions of homeless, hungry refugees have fled to other lands. In England, as more and more Africans arrive and set up communities, normal life soon begins to disintegrate, with the entire population irrevocably factionalized into the Afrims and their supporters; the right-wing government and its supporters; and the ever-growing British civilian refugee group, ousted from its communities by the Afrims.Forced by violence to leave their home in London, Alan and Isobel Whitman attempt to drive to Bristol with their daughter, Sally, to seek shelter with relatives. But the car breaks down and the Whitmans find themselves at the mercy of roving bands from the various factions. Separated from and reunited with his family, forced to suffer from indignities and dangers, torn by loyalities and sympathies, Alan is unable to give his allegiance to any of the three warring groups until a final brutal decision is made for him.In this, his second novel, Christopher Priest dramatically explores the inevitable outcome of human prejudice and hatred. This is an engrossing, frightening and irresistible story.to friendsFirst published in England under the title_Fugue for a Darkening Island_.DARKENING ISLAND. Copyright (c) 1972 by Christopher Priest. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 49 East 33rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10016.FIRST U.S. EDITIONSTANDARD BOOK NUMBER: 06-013407-0LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 71-181660I have white skin. Light brown hair. Blue eyes. I am tall: five feet, eleven inches. My mode of dress tends to the conservative: sports jackets, corduroy trousers, knitted ties. I wear spectacles for reading, though they are more an affectation than a necessity. I smoke cigarettes to a moderate amount. Sometimes I drink alcohol. I do not believe in God; I do not go to church; I do not have any objections to other people doing so. When I married my wife, I was in love with her. I am very fond of my daughter Sally. I have no political ambitions. My name is Alan Whitman.My skin is smudged with dirt. My hair is dry, salt-encrusted and itchy. I have blue eyes. I am tall: five feet, eleven inches. I am wearing now what I was wearing six months ago, and I smell abominably. I have lost my spectacles, and learned to live without them. I do not smoke at all most of the time, though when cigarettes are available I smoke them continually. I am able to get drunk about once a month. I do not believe in God; I do not go to church. When I last saw my wife, I was cursing her, though I have learned to regret it. I am very fond of my daughter Sally. I do not think I have political ambitions. My name is Alan Whitman.I met Lateef in a village ruined by an artillery bombardment. I disliked him the moment I saw him, and it was evidently reciprocated. After the first moments of caution, we ignored each other. I was looking for food in the village, knowing that as the bombardment had finished only recently it would not yet be in a totally plundered state. There were several houses still intact and I ignored these, knowing from experience that the groundtroops habitually ransacked these first. It was more fruitful to sift through the rubble of partially destroyed buildings.Working methodically, I had filled two haversacks with canned food by midday, and had stolen for future barter three road-maps from abandoned cars. I did not see the other man again during the morning.On the outskirts of the village I found a field which had evidently been cultivated at one time. In one corner I discovered a row of freshly-dug graves, each marked with a simple piece of wood upon which were stapled metal dog-tags bearing the name of the soldier. I looked at each of the names, and deduced that they were African troops.As that part of the field was the most secluded I sat down near the graves, and opened one of the cans. The food was odious: half-cooked and greasy. I ate it hungrily.Afterwards, I walked out to the wreck of the helicopter that had crashed near by. It was not likely to contain food, though if any instruments were recoverable they would be suitable for future exchanges. I needed a compass most of all, though it was not likely that the helicopter would have carried one that would be either easily detachable or portable. When I reached the wreck I saw that the man I had seen earlier was inside the smashed cockpit, working at the dashboard with a long-bladed knife in an attempt to remove an altimeter. When he became aware of my presence he straightened slowly, his hand moving towards a pocket. He turned to face me, and for several minutes we regarded each other carefully, each seeing in the other a man who responded to a situation in the same way as himself.We decided we would have to abandon our house in Southgate the day the barricade was erected at the end of our road. The decision was not implemented at once; for several days we thought we would be able to adjust to the new mode of life.I do not know who took the decision to erect the barricade. As we lived at the far end of the road, near to the edge of the playing-fields, we did not hear the noises in the night, but when Isobel took the car down the road to take Sally to school she returned almost at once with the news.It was the first concrete sign in our lives that irrevocable change was taking place in the country. Ours was not the first of such barricades, but there were few others in our particular neighbourhood.When Isobel told me about it I walked down to see it for myself. It did not appear to be very strongly constructed -- made mostly of wooden supports and barbed-wire loops -- but its symbolism was unmistakable. There were a few men standing around, and I nodded cautiously to them.The following day, we were at home when the noise of the eviction of the Martins disturbed us. The Martins lived almost opposite us. We had not had much to do with them, and since the Afrim landings had allowed them to keep to themselves. Vincent Martin worked as a research technician at an aircraftcomponents factory in Hatfield. His wife stayed at home, looking after their three children. They were West Indians.At the time of their eviction I had nothing to do with the Street Patrol which was responsible for it. Within a week, though, all men in the street had been enrolled, and every member of their families was given a pass-ticket which had to be carried at all times as identification. We saw the pass-tickets as potentially the most valuable possessions we had, as by this time we were no longer blind to the developments around us.Cars were allowed in and out of the street only at certain times, and the barricade-patrols enforced this rule with absolute inflexibility. As the street opened on to a main road which government regulations kept clear of all parked traffic after six in the evening, it meant that if you arrived home after the barricade had closed, you were required to find somewhere else to park the car. As most streets quickly followed our example and closed their entrances, the effect of this was that you were obliged to leave your car at some considerable distance from home, and walking the rest of the way at such a time was hazardous in the extreme.The normal strength of a Street patrol was two men, though on a few occasions this was doubled, and on the night before we finally decided to leave there were fourteen men. I was part of a patrol three times; sharing the duty with a different man each time. Our function was simple. While one man stayed at the barricade with the shotgun, the other walked up and down the Street four times. The positions were then reversed, and so on through the night.While I was at the barricade, I was always most frightened of a police-car coming along. Although I did see their cars on many occasions, none of them ever stopped. During meetings of the Patrol committee, the question of what to do insuch an event was often raised, but no satisfactory answer, at least to my mind, was ever given.In practice, we and the police would leave each other alone, though one did hear stories of battles between the occupants of barricaded streets and riot-shielded police. No news of these ever appeared in the newspapers or on television, and the absence was more noticeable than the news itself would have been.The true purpose of the shotgun was to deter illegal squatters from attempting to enter our street, and secondarily to show as a form of protest that if the government and the armed forces were unable or unwilling to protect our homes then we would take the matter into our own hands. Such was the essence of what was printed on the backs of our pass-tickets, and was the unspoken creed of the men on the street patrol.For my own part, I was uneasy. The burnt-out shell of the Martins' house opposite ours was a constant reminder of the violence inherent in the patrols, and the never-ending parade of homeless shambling through the night past the barricades was disturbing in the extreme.The night the barricade on the next street fell, I was asleep. I had heard that the patrol was to be enlarged, but it was not my turn of duty.Our first awareness of the fighting was the firing of a shot nearby; while Isobel took Sally downstairs to shelter in the space beneath the staircase, I dressed h... [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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