第97节
main gate, then left along the road towards Marabara.
For some unexplained reason, the rear gate was only intermittently
guarded. When the Trackers began and ended work they were counted out
and counted back in, but Steve had noticed that people were passing to
and fro during the day without being stopped and, perhaps because he'd
been seen going backwards and forwards with Cadillac, no one challenged
him when he took the shortcut to the pavilion on his own.
It was surprising, given all the hassles he had encountered
elsewhere.
Maybe it was because the privilege of working there - as with the Mutes
who had been selected for the job of roadrunner - meant that security
wasn't a problem. As Simons had said to Jodi and Kelso, no Tracker in
his right mind would do anything to screw up a sweet little number like
this.
Whatever the reason, it suited Steve. The sweet little number was due
to come to an abrupt end. And that could prove tough on the renegade
linemen who made up the original workforce, but Steve found it hard to
be sorry for them. Not knowing who he was, they had treated him with
the same contempt as they would any other Mute errand-boy. And when
they had realized he was smarter than they were and could perform tasks
that were beyond them, they had gone out of their way to give him a
hard time.
Carrying a loaded bucket in each hand, Steve stepped through the arch
and surveyed the interior of the compound. He now had his back against
the north wall.
To his left lay the quarters of the Japs and other dinks that made up
the permanent staff. Ahead of him was an assortment of wooden
buildings - cookhouse, laundry, bath-house, clothing and bedding store
staffed by Mutes.
Set along the wall immediately to his right were the ramshackle remains
of the buildings once used by the horse-soldiers and now housing the
Mutes. Beyond them, in the north-west corner, was the spot where the
compound's collective shit was dumped until it was carted away to
neighbouring farms.
The two long bunk-houses in which the Tracker workforce was now
confined lay side by side, parallel with the west wall. They were
separated from their Mute neighbours by a fifteen-yard strip of raked
gravel which contained four cruciform whipping-posts used for minor
infractions. On the occasions Steve had seen them in use, the victim
had simply been left tied up for a day in a position guaranteed to rack
him with excruciating cramps; most defaulters, whose crime was not
showing a sufficient degree of respect to a passing Iron Master, were
usually made to kneel on the sharp-edged gravel chips with their hands
on their heads for an hour or two.
There was one other building of even greater importance; the
guard-house. This was the first structure that met a visitor's eye
when he entered by the main, southern gate and found himself in an open
area which was used as a parade ground. The guard-house lay facing the
main gate, on the far side of this open space.
Running along the wall on the eastern edge of the parade ground was an
off-duty cantina for the lower ranks, where they could meet wives and
relatives, and where itinerant traders were allowed to offer their
wares. A similar building, against the west wall, offered another form
of relaxation that Steve had never encountered in an institutionalized
form. Cadillac had told him it was a bordello staffed by half a dozen
self-employed females.
The whole business of money and the commercial activity which
underpinned Iron Master society was a totally new concept, which Steve
had found difficult to grasp. The idea of having to work to earn units
of currency which you then handed to the person you wanted to jack up
seemed quite bizarre.
The cantina and the bordello were of no concern to Steve. His target
was the guard-house, but he could not see it from his present position
alongside the archway at the back of the compound. He was also unable
to see the double entrance gates, but guessed they would probably be
open. A handful of the thirty soldiers who manned the guard-house at
any one time would be stat