The Palace

by D.G. Compton

Genres: Science Fiction; Alien Contact; Dystopian; Genetic Engineering

Synopsis

The palace was several hundred years old, a sort of haphazard medieval city containing church buildings, stables, army barracks - and the offices and homes of the ministers of the Revolutionary Government, in a Communist satellite country somewhere in Europe. The palace rose starkly and threateningly out of the marshes, its three great gilt domes reminding observers of the glittering monarchies that once resided there. But all was changed, all was forbidding. "We stand too high to be human, Katarin", says the President of the country to his tempestuous, unloving wife. The revolution, which made him absolute ruler, has also taken him away from Katarin, dehumanizing him and his power-ridden ministers. Katarin, in defiance of the restrictions that bind her life, takes a lover, finding herself liberated even as she senses that the consequences are sure to be disastrous.

Release date: October 2, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 240

Sample

APPROACHING ACROSS THE barren plain on the eastern side of the river, especially when the sun had just risen above the Yahla mountains behind one, it was possible to see the Palace from a distance of twenty kilometres. It would first be distinguished from the wooded ground rising behind it by means of the three great gilded domes: one on the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin, and two situated at either end of the former King’s Residence – now drably called the Government Building. The motor road across the plain took two near right-angled turns to avoid large areas of marshland, and thus for three kilometres of its course lay parallel both to the river and to the outer wall of the Palace. Accidents on this stretch of the road often occurred by reason of the motorists’ eyes being drawn away to the left by the magnificence and improbability of the view presented.

For six months of the year the intervening marshes would be frozen, sharp grey ice showing occasionally among wide expanses of rushes and blackened moss. At road level the dividing river would be out of sight, so that the outer wall of the Palace would seem to spring straight from this pitiful terrain, a wall in no place less than twenty metres high, surmounted with towers and inhumanly gigantic battlements, its grey granite sallow in the early morning light. Now, at a distance of scarcely six kilometres, the windows of the Palace buildings themselves, behind the outer walls, would gleam blackly, and also the gilt along the mouldings of the neo-Classical pediment which was one of the few tasteful additions made by Gustav III. The other turrets and towers and domes and spires would be clear now against the black-green forest, their colours, brilliant blues and greens, muted in the thin sunlight. Winter sunrises were usually clear, for the bitter marshes retained nothing of the day’s tiny heat from which to spin mists against dawn’s coming. In this pale clarity every eastward-facing feature of the Palace would be visible from the road: the huge blank bulk of the Arsenal, the Eternal Flag of the Revolution that was never lowered, the balconied Royal Walk from which George I had watched the execution of the Princess Irene, even the outline of the River Gate walled up in the siege of 1740 and never reopened. On a winter’s morning the details of the Palace were cruelly precise, a structure showing fearful solidarity, a mass that grew like a fantasticated mountain out of the frozen plain. It was harsher by far than the successive regimes for which it had served as outward symbol. Even the present administration, pledged to outlast mankind itself, seemed weak and ephemeral by contrast.

Even to a man who knew and loved every smallest detail of the Palace, this view on a grey November morning was disturbingly malign. So heavy was the weight of menace that settled over Major Kohler as he approached and turned the first corner to bring his car parallel to the Palace’s eastern wall, that he drew in to the side and stopped. Making the forty kilometre drive back after a week-end pass in the neighbouring city of Dorlen, his explanation to himself for having stopped was that he needed to stretch his legs and relieve himself. Nevertheless, these two tasks completed, he still found himself lingering in the bitter air, staring gloomily across the marshland at his destination. With no sun to help them, the walls were the colour of dull lead. The red flag above the Guard Barracks seemed not red but black. And above the northern end of the Palace a heavy cloud of dark smoke rose slowly from the unseen chimney of the Palace bakery. They burned straw in the early mornings to raise quickly the temperature of the ovens, straw from the Palace stables. Major Kohler thought of other fuels that had gone into the oven furnaces, the bodies of those who had displeased Royalty, and in the end the body of Royalty itself.

As an army engineer, a graduate of Orstak University, Major Kohler was accustomed to the grey look of barracks, of prison blocks, of the dark local stone that was used in official buildings all over this part of his country. Nevertheless, the Palace depressed him. He lingered by his car, hunched his shoulders to light a cigarette, stamped his feet, smoked his cigarette through, tossed the stub away onto the thin crust of snow that had fallen three weeks before and frozen as hard as sugar. Only then, his mind concentrated on his duties in the day ahead, did he climb back into the car, start the engine, and drive on.

He was not a man who practised analysis, either of himself or of others. His intellect was at its best when calculating stresses, turning moments, coefficients of expansion. He reasoned now that his week-end in Dorlen had been good, that no man liked the prospect of returning to work, especially to the unpredictable rages of the Engineer Colonel. The Palace, he thought, was like a good whore – the exterior might be a bit rough, but once you got inside … well, you were probably in for a hell of a surprise. So he drove steadily neither hurrying nor dawdling. His short break out in the morning air had chilled him, and he eased his fur jacket open as he drove, letting in the warm air from the car heater. There was another chill, however, that remained.

After the second right-angled turn the road to the Palace ran as straight as a gun barrel. This last section was lined with large notices: warnings of traffic restrictions ahead, Party exhortations, brief summaries of Palace history for the benefit of tourist bus-loads. Major Kohler knew them all by heart. He had been stationed at the Palace now for seven years. As he approached the river he slowed – he did not recognise this action, nor the reason for it. The river represented freedom to him, and dignity: the freedom of nature. His life went on within another, perhaps more limited, level of freedom – the freedom of man with man, of socialisation, of conscience, of respect and love and duty, the freedom man’s mind constructs and at the same time controls. Which has its own dignity. For the river none of this irksome structure existed or was necessary, so Major Kohler would slow each time he crossed it, and snatch quick glances to left and right, up and down its yellow water. When in the depth of winter its surface froze, he never joined his fellow-officers in their skating or riding motor bicycles across it. He gave no reason and knew of none: the sense of violation he felt remained unshaped, denied even.

This particular November morning he drove even more slowly than usual: the river was still in spate from recent snowfalls on the foothills of the Yahla mountains, swirling through the reddish sticks of the willows, its surface broken here and there with tangles of brushwood and occasional tree trunks that had eluded the hooks and poles of the vigilant peasants. Major Kohler slowed his car to walking pace. Downstream his eye was drawn to the new section of embankment whose construction he was supervising. The temporary shuttering was holding well – the army divers had done good work under particularly difficult circumstances. He engaged a lower gear and drove on. His mind was looking ahead now, to the details of his morning’s work. At the Mantua Gate he stopped and showed his pass to the guard. The Cathedral clock had just finished striking seven.

In the Officers’ Quarters he washed and shaved again and changed into the fresh uniform his batman had laid out for him. A very dark-jowled man, the shave he had had three hours earlier before leaving the brothel in Dorlen would never last him through to the end of his duty tour. The Engineer Colonel was quite capable of calling him out in front of the men to account for his unshaven appearance. The Engineer Colonel’s batman had told his batman (who in his turn had passed the information on) that the Engineer Colonel set a no higher standard for his subordinates than he did for himself.

Major Kohler breakfasted in the Officers’ Mess. The food was good: a spiced liver pâté spread thickly on black bread, peppered with turmeric, and grilled. The coffee also was good: black, and pleasantly gritty. He finished his meal with a green Thai orange. Messing in the Palace was like nowhere else in the service. In compensation for the other rigours of Palace life, perhaps.

His fellow officers were not communicative. For those not on duty the previous night there had been the usual drinking party, the songs and the toasts lasting till most of them could no longer stand. A few of the younger subalterns came in chattering, still needing to prove their resilience and manhood, but they soon hushed under the silent disapproval of their superiors. The chandeliers were unlighted. Except on Mess Nights the hall was illuminated by wall brackets of post-Revolutionary simplicity.

At eight o’clock Major Kohler reported to the Engineer Colonel. The older man never drank with his subordinates. None the less, his condition that Monday morning was worse than theirs. It hushed the stridency of his voice and made it painful for him to lift his eyes from the fine morocco surface of his desk. The Engineer Colonel was an old man, his liver even older.

“Back from another of your week-ends, Kohler?”

Major Kohler had had no leave of any kind for nine weeks previously. He stood stiffly to attention and waited.

“Well, Kohler, and how were the bright lights? You did go to the city, didn’t you? How were the bright lights? Squander all your money, did you?”

“A pleasant week-end, thank you, sir.”

“And now you’re ready to get down to some work, eh, Kohler?”

“The new stretch of embankment, sir. I was gratified to see how well it –”

“I have under my command lunatics, Kohler. Worse than that, they are interfering lunatics.”

The Engineer Colonel eased a short memorandum out of his tray at his elbow and flung it across the desk at Major Kohler.

“For a few hours this morning, Kohler, the embankment project will have to get along without you. That is possible, you know. Send Lieutenant Dzek – he can keep the men busy grading ballast for the filling. From you I want a negative follow-up report on that damnfool memorandum.”

Major Kohler read the five lines of neat typing. They were signed by Lieutenant Mandaraks and described cracks and signs of stress that the young lieutenant had found – or thought he had found – in the ceiling of the Paul VII Passage. The memorandum was dated the previous Saturday: indeed, its presence on the Engineer Colonel’s desk at all depended on its bearing that date. On any other day Lieutenant Mandaraks would have come to him, Major Kohler, and none of it need ever have been committed to paper.

Pieces of paper were intransigent – they did not disappear when the Engineer Colonel shouted. Worse than that, they bred carbon copies that circulated to other departments, that brought back queries from other sources on the action taken, that caused flutters of general excitement around the Palace and resulted in too many right hands knowing what too many left hands were up to. The Engineer Colonel hated pieces of paper and feared them. Officers even nearer to retiring age than he had been discredited, lost rank, reputation and pension on account of injudicious pieces of paper. One of Major Kohler’s duties, therefore, was to protect the Engineer Colonel from all such. Hence the heavy comments on the subject of the Major’s week-end pass. If he had not been away in Dorlen none of this need ever have happened.

The Major folded the piece of paper carefully, put it in his pocket and returned to the position of attention.

“Mandaraks is full of ill-informed notions,” said the Engineer Colonel. “Most of these youngsters are. Two years at some provincial college and they think they know it all.”

Major Kohler recalled that the young lieutenant had attended the finest Mining Institute in the country. He remained silent.

“I’d go myself,” said the Engineer Colonel, “if my day weren’t so fully booked.”

He thumbed vaguely through his desk diary, careful not to open it at the right page. He lifted his eyes laboriously up to Major Kohler’s face.

“Your lanyard, Major Kohler, is a symbol of rank, not a whore’s shoulder strap.”

Major Kohler remained at attention.

“Five copies of your report, Kohler. And see they’re circulated. Rumours like this need scotching. I rely on you, Kohler, to investigate thoroughly. Your report must show a complete grasp of the technicalities involved. This foolish business might come to the attention of the Minister. I want no doubt to be left in his mind whatsoever.”

Major Kohler saluted and turned to go.

“Is there something the matter, Major Kohler?”

“Sir?”

“I asked you about the bright lights of Dorlen. I don’t remember that you answered.”

“They were bright, Engineer Colonel.”

In private Major Kohler could be pushed so far and no further. In public his concern for the shows of discipline was so great that he made no such limits. The Engineer Colonel was aware of this quality in the man and treated him accordingly.

“Bright, were they, Major Kohler? I’m glad to hear it. Glad to hear it.”

Major Kohler went out, closing the door quietly behind him. In the mirror beside the door – a mirror placed so that all subordinates could check their turn-out before going in to see the Engineer Colonel – he inspected the lie of his major’s crimson lanyard. It was, of course, immaculate.

The Engineer Colonel’s offices were on the ground floor of the building that had housed the Cathedral clergy during the old regime. The niches along the bare corridors that had once contained gilded icons and holy water stoups were now occupied with fire extinguishers and buckets of sand and water. Throughout the Palace the danger of fire was always present. It was the frequency of disastrous fires in the past that had given the Palace its rich variety of architecture, each king rebuilding in the highest mannerism of his reign.

Passing along cold corridors floored in contrasting octagons of indigo and green and white marble, Major Kohler made his way to the Orderly Room where he instructed the sergeant to send a runner for Lieutenant Dzek. Then he sat down and glanced through the papers that had come in over the week-end. Looking steeply up out of the window of his office it was possible to see the red onion dome of the Prince’s Tower, and a patch of heavy grey sky beyond. If the temperature rose sufficiently, snow would fall.

Lieutenant Dzek was not pleased by his change of duty. His previous detail for the morning had been to measure the comfortably warm kitchens for the new equipment soon to be ordered. This whim of the Engineer Colonel would cause him to stand for several hours in the open, fully exposed to the rising easterly wind, as he watched a platoon of pioneers from some barbarous province shovel stones monotonously through coarse wire sieves. They would at least have their work to keep them warm – for him the only exercise possible was to bully them without cease. He felt sorry for the poor bastards, but what else could he do? All this he confided to the Orderly Sergeant while Major Kohler was in his office making out requisition forms for the equipment he would need in his inspection of the Paul VII Passage. The Orderly Sergeant tactfully advised Lieutenant Dzek to hurry – the men paraded at eight fifteen and he was late already.

For his assistant on the tour of inspection Major Kohler chose a young sapper, Fasch, who worked in the Engineer’s Stores. He knew about Fasch from the Personnel Officer – as a student he had missed going to university through an unlucky illness, and he was now working for a degree in his spare time. Among the barely literate soldiery his life could not be easy. Major Kohler was in the habit of taking Fasch with him whenever he thought the journey was likely to be instructive.

They went together to the Drawing Office and Major Kohler signed for a photostat map of the catacombs. The map was incomplete and in places frankly conjectural – the Engineer Colonel had once begun to organise a complete new survey of the passages and storerooms under the Palace, but the scheme had met with such a lack of enthusiasm from higher quarters (on the grounds of more pressing priorities) that he had tactfully shelved the matter. But the Paul VII Passage was in a well-used area and the photostat would indeed hardly be necessary. As they came out onto the steps in front of the old Archbishop’s Residence there was a commotion in the courtyard below. Two motor cycle outriders roared by. The heavy black limousine behind them carried presidential pennants. Fasch stood to attention as well as he could beneath his various burdens, and Major Kohler saluted. Through the windows of the car they had a brief glimpse of the President’s wife and two or three other Central Committee wives. The second car contained food baskets, a pile of extra clothes, and a neat rack of skating boots. Behind it came two further outriders, their intercoms rasping unintelligibly. The courtyard cobbles had been swept clear of snow two weeks before and the tyres of the small convoy left damp black lines.

“A skating party to Novellnyi,” said Major Kohler, watching the last motor cyclist turn sharp left in the direction of the northern Partiot’s Gate. “The snow must be going to hold off then. For the women’s sakes I hope the forecasters are right.”

“They usually are.” Fasch stood at ease. “I didn’t notice Comrade Korda, did you, Major?”

Kohler looked at him sharply.

“The Minister of Education is a busy man.” Major Kohler wondered if he should pursue the matter further. “You have inside information, Fasch, that makes you surprised that Comrade Korda is not a member of the skating party to Novellnyi?”

“None at all.” Fasch busied himself clipping the map onto the map board. “Central Committee members do sometimes take a morning off to go skating. Perhaps my remark was caused by a little jealousy.”

Major Kohler walked quickly away down the steps. Of course the soldiers gossipped – it would be ridiculous either to pretend they did not or to try to stop them. The closed life of the Palace made such talk inevitable. If it did not interest him personally this was probably because he felt safer with things than with people. He led the way to the Judiciary Building, in the foyer of which was the most used entrance to the catacombs. At the head of the staircase down he identified himself and his companion, and told the guard their business.

Sections of the catacombs were open to conducted tours, thick white ropes on brass staunchions fencing off the more exclusive parts. Other areas were used for movement about the Palace during bad weather. Every entrance was carefully guarded, however – when the ground beneath a centre of government is honeycombed with passages of doubtful extent it is wise to take every possible precaution. At one time secret tunnels from inside the Palace had emerged at several places in the surrounding countryside. These had been found and sealed, or so it was generally believed. Major Kohler suspected otherwise. He had read the Palace histories. Certain events – the escape of the Bulgarian spy in 1951 for example – could only be explained by the presence of tunnels as yet undiscovered. One day he would re-open the question of a comprehensive survey. One day, when the political moment was right. But Major Kohler was a soldier and an engineer, and nothing more. For him political moments were a closed book. The comprehensive survey would never be made in his lifetime. But at least in a few weeks’ time he would understand why.

The Paul VII Passage was to the left of . . .