If Then by Matthew De Abaitua Page A

boots crunched through it until they arrived at a concrete bunker half-buried in the earth. Snow curled over the edges of its slab roof like a layer of fat. Through his gloves, James felt the stinging cold of the iron padlock.
    The men walked down rough concrete stairs and ducked under a low ceiling to reach an inner chamber forty feet deep, a dark cylinder lined with shelves from the bottom to the top. The torchlight revealed – suspended in the centre of the cylinder – an enormous hand with three sharp, flat, iron fingers. The hand was attached to a rusting girder that in turn ended in a ball-and-socket elbow joint. The beam flashed up. The heart of the armour was a harness with a porthole or colloid for visibility. The beam flashed down. The armour was mounted on two extendable legs.
    James hoisted himself up and climbed over the central cage to the shoulders of the armour, about thirty feet up, and started its diesel engine. The engine whimpered, turned over, whined and knocked. Spotlights set high on the armour flared then died off. James cursed, hitched a torch between his ear and collar bone, then dug out a drill bit and a spanner. The pump was off by one timing belt groove. He tightened it and tried again; the engine started without knocking. Climbing over the head of the armour, he released the bolts on the bunker roof. It was frozen shut. He tried to force it but it was no good. He climbed back down and went outside to clear the snow and chip the ice from the hinges so that the roof would shift. Nothing mechanical worked first time.
    With the roof off, he could work by daylight. The engine ran on biodiesel brewed by the town engineers and came in two varieties, viscous rapeseed oil or the tallow made from animal fat, which crystallized well above freezing. The central body piece of the armour was created in the factories of the Process: it was a structural battery, a mould of nickel-based battery chemistry and steel. It was waterproof, which was vital as sometimes the armour had to lunge through rivers to extract people reluctant to be evicted. With the engine running, the armour could power its hydraulics and any appliance he plugged into it – in this case, a heating coil to thaw out the tallow.
    While he waited for the fuel to liquefy, he tried to engage Hector in conversation. The soldier was biddable if not responsive; he understood speech but his manner was dilatory, drifting in a state of mind somewhere between trauma and narcotic daydream.
    “I want you to talk to me, Hector.”
    The soldier shifted his boots in the snow. The fumes from the juddering exhaust smelt of popcorn.
    “On the bowling green, you said that you would not fight.”
    The soldier removed his balaclava. The way the tip of his long nose hung over an ironic curl of his smile was a sign that he was prepared to speak.
    “I will not fight,” said Hector.
    “Who are you?” asked James.
    “I will serve,” said Hector. “I must bear my share. But I will not fight.”
    “Who are you?” James repeated his question.
    The soldier squinted at him.
    “Sergeant John Hector. Have we met before? Yes, in Limerick. You were one of the fellows in the barracks. Give us a coffin nail.”
    James did not know what to say.
    “Do you have a smoke?” continued Hector. “You are dense, old man.”
    James fetched an old pouch of Terry’s homegrown tobacco stashed among the tools. Hector rolled himself a cigarette and offered the pouch back to James. He shook his head.
    Hector coughed, stirred his boots in the snow and walked across the yard toward the river. The Ouse was muddy and low, the bank slick and treacherous. His reflection swayed on the brown river, a thin neck and narrow head atop the overcoat. This stretch of the Ouse was tidal and the clay colouring deepened with the shallowing of the river through the afternoon.
    “Where do you come from?” asked James.
    “The Westmorland Dales, in Levens,” said Hector, and James could hear the