If Then by Matthew De Abaitua Page B

accent. “My father is a painter. My mother is dead. Her father was a Magyar so I have Romany blood. Father’s from Quaker stock. I didn’t sign up right away. We argued about it. I wanted to serve so that my beliefs would be witnessed by the misguided men who fight. I wanted to show that I’m not afraid.”
    “Of what?”
    “Of shipping out. We’re under orders although who knows where to. They issued us with pith helmets so perhaps Egypt. Or India. Joe Smith heard a rumour about Japan. What do you think?”
    James did not know whether to play along with the delusion or to confront the soldier with the reality that he was out of his time.
    “The Dardanelles,” said James, remembering what Alex and Omega John had told him about John Hector’s service record.
    “The Turk? I must read the Koran. But you didn’t answer my question: are you afraid?”
    James thought of his old life. “I was afraid for so long because I believed fear was a way of controlling the future. But it’s just a way of holding onto the past.”
    “You sound like my father,” said Hector.
    “If your father is a pacifist, then I am nothing like your father. Did you see the armour?”
    “The ironclad? I did. Like something from HG Wells. Does it go?”
    “It goes. I can’t exactly think straight when I am connected to it.”
    “I don’t imagine any of us are thinking straight. What is its purpose?”
    “It’s our weapon.”
    “Why does the town need a weapon?”
    “The armour replaces the police. It responds to the will of the people. It is a kind of democracy.”
    “Democracy is a swizz,” said Hector. A disc of river light glinted within each of his pupils.
    James went to check the thawing of the tallow. He turned off the armour engine, swilled the fuel around with a stick to aid the melting of the fat crystals, then climbed down into the cage and felt the armour hum around him. The vibration of the engine made his teeth chatter and the mechanical noise was annihilating in the close underground chamber. He slid his arm into the exoskeleton and twitched a fingertip but the mechanical finger did not respond, and that was how it should be. The armour was not his to command. It was the instrument of the will of the Process. He checked the coolant levels, the ventilation and the heat sink, ran diagnostic tests on the electrics and picked brick from out of the pedrails. Maintenance complete, he shut the armour down, slid the roof back into place, and secured the bunker.
    Hector was still at the river’s edge. He stepped lightly around the frozen mud to peer into a drainage ditch.
    “See, down there, a pair of gadwall ducks!” He squatted down to get a better look at a wading bird with long red and orange legs. “And a red shank. The floodplain is a good breeding ground for them. Look at his great dipper’s beak!”
    From his pack the soldier took out a flat tin of watercolours, a sketchbook, some HB pencils and a nimble sable brush.
    “When we were out in the Clare Mountains on training days, I’d always find something picturesque to paint. I could stalk a heron for hours.”
    He sat cross-legged on the snowy bank, overcoat underneath the seat of his trousers, sketching the red shank as it walked alone through slime and the buttery mud.
    “Why is democracy a swizz?” James asked.
    Hector concentrated upon his drawing. “I simply do not believe in the idea of the nation. Democracy invariably leads to war because politicians stir up patriotic feeling to get elected. I will serve my fellow man but I will not serve the nation.”
    The young man drew nature deep into his lungs.
    “This will be your first time in combat?” asked James.
    “Yes. My soldiering has been endless drill at Basingstoke and Limerick. This will be my first time out.”
    “Do you remember the day that I found you on the wire?”
    The soldier did not respond. The question was not part of the pattern.
    The men walked upriver. Hector enthused about the