“Dad, please. It's really bad. I can't fix this sort of damage. You have to go to hospital. And quickly.”
“I will not. Do not ask me again.”
“Andy?” Eleanor appealed.
“Your brother's faith is strong, unlike yours. He respects all we have achieved, all we have built. Ours is a simple life, my dearest Eleanor. We live, and we believe. That is all. It is sufficient for any man. Everything else—this fast, plastic, electronic existence you have chosen—is the road to your own destruction. You can learn no values from it. It teaches you no respect for His glory.”
“I value your life.”
“As do I. And I have lived it true to myself. Would you take that dignity from me, even now? Would you punish me with your chemicals and mutilate me with your surgeon's laser scalpels?”
She turned to Greg, miserable and helpless. He put his arm around her, holding her tight. Noel was badly wrong about his own son, Greg sensed. Andy was desperate to intervene. There was a layer of fear and uncertainty running through his mind that was struggling to rise and express itself, held in check only by ingrained obedience. When he let his perception expand, Greg could feel a similar anxiety suffusing the entire kibbutz. It wasn't just shock and worry that their leader was harmed; some other affliction was gnawing at them.
“Well, I'm giving you some treatment anyway,” Eleanor said defiantly. She bent down to the first-aid case, and began selecting vials for the infuser. “You can't run away from me.”
Noel lay back, a degree of contentment showing. “The absence of pain is a strong temptation. I will succumb and pay my penance later.”
Christine woke up and began her usual gurgle of interest at the world all around. “I'll take her out,” Greg said. “Andy, could you give me a hand.”
Andy gave his father an uncertain glance. Noel nodded permission.
Outside, Greg turned so that Christine was shielded from the bright rising sun. The kibbutz had resumed its normal routine of activity, interest in the visitors discarded. He looked across the collection of worn buildings with a kind of annoyed bemusement. Ten years of his life had been spent in active rebellion against an oppressive government, a decade of pain and death and blood so that people could once again have a chance to gather some dignity and improve their lives. And here on his own doorstep this group strove to return to medievalism at its worst, burdened by everlasting manual labor and in thrall to evangelical priests who could never accept anyone else was even entitled to a different point of view. A community where progress is evil.
The irony made him smile—something he would never have done before meeting Eleanor. A freedom fighter (now, anyway—after all, they were the ones writing the history files) appalled by the use to which his gift of freedom had been put. People…they're such a pain in the arse.
“He's gonna die, isn't he?”
Greg bounced Christine about, enjoying her happy grin at the motion. “Yes, Andy, I think he is.” The young man knew it anyway, just needed to be told by someone else. As if saying it would make it so, would make it his fault.
“I can't believe it. Not him. He's so strong…where it counts, you know.”
“Yeah, I know it. I had to face him down once. Toughest fight in my life.”
“That's my father.” Andy was on the point of tears.
“What happened?” Greg scanned the kibbutz again. “There's no cars here, no traffic.”
Andy's arm was raised, pointing away over the fields toward the road. “There. We found him over there. Helped carry him back myself.”
“Can you show me, please?”
They tramped over the sun-baked mud tracks, moving along the side of the tall fences, a long winding route. Andy was quiet as they walked. Nervous, Greg assumed, after years of being warned of the demon who had captured his big sister.
“This is where we found him,” Andy said eventually.
They were on a stretch of track running between two of the fences. Two hundred meters away toward Oakham was a gate which opened onto the tiny road linking Egleton with the A6003: a hundred meters in the other direction it led out into a paddock with other tracks and footpaths spreading off over the kibbutz land, a regular motorway intersection.
Greg knelt down beside the fence where Andy indicated. A herd of cattle on the other side watched them idly, chewing on the few blades of grass they could find amid the buttercups. The three lower bars of the fence were splintered, bowing inward; and they were thick timber. It had taken a lot of force to cause that much damage. They had some short paint streaks along them, dark blue; a dusting of chrome flakes lay on the mud. Greg stood and tried to work out the angle of the impact. The car or whatever would have had to veer very sharply to dint the fence in such a fashion. It wasn't as though it would be swerving to avoid oncoming traffic.
“Was he right up against the fence?” Greg asked.
“Yeah, almost underneath it when we found him.”
“Did he say what happened?”
“Not much. Just that the car was big, and it had its headlights on full. Then it hit him, he got trapped between it and the fence.”
“Headlights? Was it nighttime?”
“No. It was early evening, still light.”
“Did anyone else see it happen?”
“No. We started searching when he didn't turn up for evening chapel. It was dark by then; didn't find him till after ten.”
“What about the car?” Greg indicated the gate onto the road. “It must have come from that direction, where was it going?”
“Don't know. Didn't come to us; haven't had no visitors for a while. We're the only ones that use this bit of track. It's the quickest way out to the road.”
“What do you use on the road?”
“We've got bicycles. And a cart; horse pulls it to market most days. We sell vegetables and eggs. People still like fresh food instead of that chemical convenience packet rubbish.”
“Okay, so the car must have reversed away and got back onto the road afterward. So was your father on a bike?”
“No.” Andy shook his head ruefully. “He didn't even like them. Said: God gave us feet, didn't he? He always walked into town.”
“Do you know what he was doing in town that day?”
“Gone to see the solicitor.”
“What the hell did Noel want with a solicitor?”
“It's a bad business been happening here. A man came a month or so back. Said he wanted to build a leisure complex on the shore, right where we are. He offered us money, said that it wasn't really our land anyway and he'd help us find somewhere else to live. What kind of a man is that to disrespect us so? We built this place. It's ours by any law that's just and true.”
“Right,” Greg said. Now probably wasn't the best time to lecture Andy on the kind of abuses which the local PSP Land Rights committees had perpetrated against private landowners. Nevertheless, expelling a farmer from his land so it could be handed over to a tribe of Bible-thumpers was a minor violation compared to some of the practices he'd heard of. The Party had been overthrown in one final night of mass civil disobedience and well-planned acts of destruction by underground groups, but the problems it had created hadn't gone with it. “So what did Noel want with a solicitor?”
“He kept coming back, that man, after we said we wouldn't go. Said he'd have us evicted like so many cattle. Said everyone around here would be glad to see us go, that we were Party, so we'd best make it easy for ourselves. Dad wasn't having none of that. We have rights, he said. He went and found a solicitor who'd help us. Seeing as how we'd been here so long, we're entitled to appeal to the court for a ruling of post-acquisition compensation. Means we'd have to pay the farmer whose land it was. But that way we wouldn't have to leave. It would cost us plenty. We'd have to work hard to raise that much money, but we ain't afraid of hard work.”