The Malatestan Odyssey

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

This narrative account of a particular series of events in the history of Sacco & Vanzetti has been produced with assistance from Professor Gundrich Hindelwerger's private notes, made during the research for his book General Automotive and the American Dream, documents recently made public from the intelligence agencies of a number of countries, and, of course, oral histories related by citizens themselves, from which it takes much of its style.

Part 1: Economic Exigencies[/u]

By the summer of 1957 Charlie Wolcowicz had had enough. This was no way to run a goddam company, whether it was a whelk stall or the largest automobile manufacturer in the world. Something had to give. The bright sparks round the boardroom table may have been rubbing their hands with glee in the aftermath of the war, with real estate options beckoning from around the globe but, nope, it just hadn’t worked out thataway and now Charlie was going to fix it.

It looked all well and good to have pinpricks on a shiny map but these foreign manufacturies weren’t pulling their weight. By now their combined annual turnover should have been equal to the domestic plants in Cincinnati. Truth was, these foreigners didn’t seem to have the same kinda respect for the automobile industry. Cavemen.

They’d had their chance and like every street-corner bum they’d run away from the opportunity to earn themselves a decent living in an honest business, just wanting endless hand-outs from the bleeding heart liberals who’d likewise never bent their backs to the industrial wheel.

Well not from Charlie and not from General Automotive. Not no more. He’d made president of the company the hard way, toughing it out in private meetings, wheeling, dealing, making bargains, earning the top spot through the honest toil of boardroom diplomacy. Now them natives would have to learn the hard way too. You didn’t shape up joe calico, so it’s time to ship out.

It’s not about maps, boy, it’s about numbers on paper. And the sonnies out there weren’t earning their corn, so they’d better go back to growing it, or starve through their own idleness.

Now was as good a time as any, with the government all jacked up over the Reds spreading themselves about. They weren’t about to lose their toe-holds in any part of the planet and Charlie himself had negotiated for the government of the USA to have first-buy option on any foreign real estate General Automotive wanted to shed. And they were in such a goddam freak they’d pay top dollar too.

Here. Here on the spreadsheet, look, just the point he’s been trying to make. Some godforsaken islands down in the tropics. The place oughta surely be a paradise with a company pay packet in your back pocket and good marlin fishing right close inshore. But no. This Sacco Vanzetti was just another tropical bum. A waste of time, energy and most of all money. Fourteen completion dates. Fourteen. And still the plant wasn’t finished, not even near finished.

According to the file everything was going well. Work was going on. It was always going on, always going well. Just nothing ever happened. Scores, hundreds taken on for building work but somehow the plant was no more built than it had been 20 months ago when they first hacked the site from the jungle.

Well, joe calico down in these Sacco Vanzetti islands was about to get the kick in the lazy colonial ass he needed.

Charlie grunted and, without looking up, held the file out for Overseas Holdings man Jack Kruger.

“Government’s looking for a site for weapons testing. This is the place. Our patriotic duty to sell it to them."

He looked up, squinting at Kruger, and pausing for a moment to lend the dramatic effect on which he had built much of his career:

“Sell it big, Jacko, sell it big.”

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 2: Shrimp Bait[/u]

Dabbing the white linen napkin gently against his lips to remove any glistening vestige of tiger prawns in butter sauce, Robert de Souza, Overseas Aid and Development Director - with a brief straight from the White House – looked at Commodore Bill Sutton and said: “Smallpox.”

Sutton was a man who had been second-guessed throughout his career, by the brass above him, the officers around him and the enemy on the distant horizon. He owed his current rank to a Jap submarine captain who’d second guessed him in the South China Sea and sent his destroyer to the bottom. He owed his life to the First Officer who’d dragged his unconscious body into a life raft while all around the sharks were digging into the crew. His rescuer had, of course, earned himself a medal and promotion, initially to captain and eventually to admiral.

If fleet-foot thinking was not Sutton’s strong point, he had at least learned through experience where his weakness lay and, during his greying years at the helm of similarly aging members of the Pacific Fleet, he adopted a more pensive, critics would say ponderous, approach to the solution of problems.

Although he had never smoked in his life, he now carried a pipe always. Even here, over lunch with this unsavoury character who was obviously CIA, regardless of his title, his pipe lay close to hand and he lifted it, chawed on the stem for a few moments of reflection and then, taking care not to voice too much inquisitiveness, he replied: “Smallpox?”

“Smallpox,” said de Souza, too much a veteran of wordplay to doubt for even a moment his impending victory over any objections this two-bit, throw-back captain might try to throw in the way.

Sutton let his gaze drift to the port-hole of his dining cabin, turquoise sea and sky-blue sky a peaceful disk of light against the blank naval grey he had retained as the colour-scheme throughout his ship. The transports were in formation astern and his view was uncluttered by their bulk.

The late-afternoon tropic light reminded him of the shark seas south of China and he brought his gaze back to de Souza. ’Ere the battle’s lost and won, he thought, sucking for a last few enjoyable moments on the stem. A hint of a nod and he replied: “Smallpox.”

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 3: Strike One

The whole fleet had not come into Huckslee Harbour but destroyer USS Firefly was impressive enough, so huge in the tiny port that from afar it seemed to have embedded itself in the verdant landscape as if at any moment it could sail into the very heart of the jungle.

A single curl of cigarette smoke looping above the forward gun turrent showed de Souza was keeping his usual watch over the sad-looking rabble which made up the population of this, the largest settlement on the most settled of the two islands.

Admittedly, it was hard to feel much sympathy for these simple people, the straight-forward task of buying a few cases of fresh fruit and vegetables each day, more as a diplomatic exercise than from necessity, had driven the lieutenant charged with the duty almost to distraction. Whatever you said, whatever you tried, whatever agreements were made, the baskets just didn’t turn up. Ramshackle in their heads these peasants may well be, but even then Sutton wouldn’t wish de Souza on them.

De Souza took a final draw on the cigarette, briefly rolling the flaring tip between his teeth and then, in a single move, took it and flipped away and over the side. Be prepared. That’s what they tell you in the Boy Scouts. In the army they say if you find yourself in a fair fight then you didn’t plan properly. De Souza knew the value of planning and he’d spent every moment since his initial briefing reading up on the little information there was about these Sacco Vanzetti people.

Tricksy. That’s what they were. Tricksy. You spend long enough looking and you’ll find just one word, the right word, to describe the man you’re up against. It was a technique de Souza had invented for himself and it always worked. Because why? Because you spent so long thinking about it and looking for that one word that by the time you found it you knew the target better than his mother. But this wasn’t a man, it was an entire population, admittedly a small population, but enough for a challenge.

And it had taken that godawful lunch with that godawful captain for him to identify just the right way to get those shuffling cavemen over there out of these crumbling remnants of their colonised history and into a place far less useful to Uncle Sam. In fact, the whole deal was sweet. Uncle Sam would get this nice clear piece of real estate to blow up right next to where the Rouskies could send their spy ships and the displaced jacks from this place would get a few dirtballs of islands that had been a total pain in the ass to poor old Sam. So it was all the better he’d come up with a way to get them shifted that matched the particular sweetness of the whole proposition – and would give them greedy bastards at General Automotive a nice slap down just when they thought they’d pulled a fast one over the Agency.

It was going to be like hitting a home run in front of the home crowd.

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 4: Fine Needlework

By morning the first transport was mooring in the harbour, a Red Cross banner hung over the side facing the town. If it excited any interest among the locals, they surely weren’t showing it. De Souza had been watching the town from a discreet post within USS Firefly since first light when the transport could have been seen just a few miles from port.

Nothing beyond the ordinary humdrum lives of these people had stirred in those streets out there. It was as if they’d been struck by a communal blindness. Tricksy sure enough. But there was only so far you could play a bluff hand and those folks would soon be forced to quit or call. And they were gonna quit, the cards were stacked too heavily, de Souza had made sure of that. Never get into a fair fight.

By the end of today these backwoods boys would be pinned under the fierce blaze of an international crisis and the good old US of A would be right at hand to rescue them from their impending doom.

He watched as the launch from Firefly left the side, carrying Sutton into town to break the news. It was bad. Really bad. De Souza had made sure the news networks would get their first leak at 11.30 am. In time for the midday broadcast but not enough time to ask too many questions. By then the operation here would be in full swing, the ball rolling with such momentum that no amount of angry disclaimers could stop it.

The launch was tying up at the quay. In less than 30 minutes Sutton would be telling the local chief about the smallpox virus the American managers and staff from General Automotive had unwittingly brought with them, their own immunity a catalyst for catastrophe among these vulnerable people who had spent too long secluded from the modern world.

Whether the folks believed it or not, the decked out transport over there would be soon be teeming with queues for vaccinations. The interior villagers, alerted by radio, would be trekking their sweat-soaked sodden way to transports at coastal points all around the two islands, where other vaccinations were being offered. By the end of the day maybe 10,000 people would be waiting aboard the ships for their shots. And that would, effectively, be the end of it. Sure, there’d be thousands more still on the islands and the shit would be hitting the diplomatic fan by the boatload, but enough locals would be under Uncle Sam’s control for the rest to be a routine job. Take the keystone out of the arch and the rest comes a-tumbling down.

Of course, the entire evacuation would take weeks but once started these things rolled along on their own steam, he’d seen it many times before. A year from now and the government would launch an inquiry, pressed beyond simple claims, facing too many unanswerable questions, it would publicly agree to an investigation. Months later it would report that yes, indeed, there were anomalies. A subsequent inquiry would establish that the anomalies were, in fact, errors and perhaps the vaccinations and the evacuation that followed had been unnecessary. Maybe three, four years from now the government would apologise and agree to pay compensation to the natives in their new home. The compensation claims would take another three or four years to be resolved and, long, long before that, these islands, this crumbling town, would be radioactive rubble.

Just another 20,000 years or so and the ancestors of these people could come back to their homeland, with only relatively minor risks – as yet unidentified – to their continuing health and happiness.

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 5: Impasse

All this was before a lawyer, his brother and a doctor who couldn’t grow a proper beard came down from the Sierra Maestra and took control of another two-bit, shitball of an island. But that was an island of a different complexion – and the complexion was deepest Red. In America’s own backyard and that meant some heavy duty figuring and reshuffling of resources.

Before Fidel had finished his first out-size cigar in power, de Souza was called back to the Agency as one of a small group of special advisers to the President. His recently acquired experience of dealing successfully with former Spanish colonies gave him decisive authority on the panel.

And down there, where de Souza had been whisked away so quickly the cigarette smoke still seemed to hang in the air, Captain Bill Sutton was left holding the bag. One transport had taken on candidates for vaccination and, on orders issued through Sutton but coming from de Souza, had simply steamed off for the new home these islanders didn’t even know was in prospect.

Sutton found he had unexpectedly inherited a situation that could only go from bad to worse. Having no orders to send other transports and their unwilling occupants to the new location, he had to let them unload. And having no orders to bring the first transport back, he had to allow it to go on. Radio messages from Captain Dan Hurley on the transport USS Mayfly were not good. Having found they were bound for an unknown destination, the passengers had risen up against the crew. Shots had been fired and one person injured but the 2,300 or so passengers were now secured below.

What was worse was that most of them appeared to be either children or older people, sent aboard by the islanders because they were likely to be most vulnerable to the smallpox outbreak de Souza had invented. They were headed for a set of sparsely-populated islands hundreds of miles away. True, Hurley was carrying the basic materials for an initial settlement, but school kids and old folks would hardly make good pioneers.

Meanwhile, the clamour ashore from families who’d lost their children, grandparents, or both, was mounting to a crescendo. He’d been forced to cancel all shore leave in case, as seemed likely, anger turned to violence. And he couldn’t get any orders from anyone. HQ had no record of his mission, didn’t know anything about a resettlement, certainly wouldn’t issue fresh orders, wanted to know what the hell he was doing there, didn’t want to know what he was doing, condoned nothing, authorised nothing, had never heard of de Souza.

When someone ashore started taking pot shots at the ship he warned that if it carried on, he would shell the town. In an uneasy truce, the destroyer swayed in the bay under the sweltering sun, its guns trained on what seemed to be the town hall. The town glowered back, the tropic shadows from the buildings and the tress on the edge of the jungle seeming to swell with a dread threat.

The choking heat was broken on the third day by a lashing storm which lasted a week, severing all communication between ship and shore.

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 6: Arrival[/b]

Four weeks and the destination for Hurley’s passengers hove into sight from the deck of the Mayfly. A smattering of islands that looked increasingly inhospitable with every passing nautical mile. Captain Hurley was working to a map reference, had no personal or professional experience of the islands, but as he watched them draw closer his spirits began a downward slide from their already diminished position.

No less than 27 of his enforced passengers had died en route, including the young boy who’d been wounded in the clash. Eighteen more were critical and a further 53 were showing signs of the malaise which had inexplicably taken the others. His understanding of their dialect, which, while it appeared to have its roots in English, seemed to have grown, stem and branch, alongside every other European language he had ever heard, was poor. After the initial clashes the passengers had seemed to resign themselves to their fate and had even elected or selected members to liaise with him and his crew.

All he could understand from his questions about the cause of the sickness which was claiming them was their repeated answer that the affliction was “sans-medicinierre”. Whatever that meant, the MO, who to Hurley’s certain knowledge had managed to maintain tipsiness if not blind drunkenness for the last three years, was at a loss for either the cause or any likely cure. Consequently, all he and the crew could do was stand with their caps over their breasts as yet another corpse slipped from under the Stars and Stripes and plunged with an accusatory splash into the sea. Thank god these people were happy to bury their dead at sea, storing corpses struck down by an unknown tropical disease would surely have been to prompt severe reproach from his crew, if not downright mutiny.

The First Officer interrupted him with a message that Gabriella Ng, the spokeswoman (in fact, barely a girl) elected by the passengers, would like to speak with him. He nodded without removing the binoculars from his eyes and continued, for a few moments, to gaze at the approaching islands. Meetings with Ng were not something he relished. She, and any other passengers he spoke to, may have surrendered themselves to his authority but they had done so by adopting such abject submission that he was irked by burning guilt of having achieved dominion of children and old folk.

He went to his cabin. Within a few moments there was a knock and Gabriella entered, coming to his desk and bowing.

“This is our place of arrival, yes?” She said, without inflection, as if the question was in mere recognition of the truth.

“Yes.”

“We will have shelter and food, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And weapons with which to protect ourselves?” There was nothing more than a hint in Gabriella’s tone to suggest this was a request.

Hurley slowly shook his head: “No. I have no orders to issue arms but we are carrying the equipment you will need to build a new settlement and enough food, rations, to supply your needs for two months.”

Gabriella nodded, barely imperceptibly. Paused and then said: “There are peoples already living here, yes?”

“Yes there are. But I have documents to give to you which give these islands to your people. The lands will cease to be a protectorate of the United States of America and will be your homeland forevermore.”

Her impassive expression unchanged, Gabriella replied: “Thank you captain. Forevermore is a long time, is it not?

“I may go now, please. Forevermore will need some preparation.”

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 7: Confrontation[/u]

The attack, when it came, was bloody but uncoordinated. Captain Hurley and the Mayfly had sailed away a week earlier and the assault on the new settlement was obviously launched as soon as it became clear he was either not returning or not returning soon. Before leaving, however, when the dismembered bodies of Gabriella Ng and Illyich Bosanova had been dumped outside the camp after they ventured inland to make contact with the current occupants of the island, he had sanctioned the issuing of 12 rifles and 1,000 rounds of ammunition to the settlers.

At dawn on the eighth day since his departure more than 200 men armed with knives and axes had come swooping out of the half-light and hit the southwest perimeter of the encampment. Their intention appeared to be to either capture or destroy the food and medical supplies Hurley had unloaded.

As closely as they must have watched the Saccolese and Vanzettian strengthening of their camp since the killing of their two delegates, they had not taken into account either the depth of the ditch or the accuracy of fire they were likely to face. Twenty-seven attackers had been killed and more than 40 wounded, although most of the wounded had escaped back through the scrub of trees at the base of the hill from which they had come. Three of the settlers had been killed in the heat of the brief hand-to-hand battle with those who had managed to scale the ditch. Three more had suffered knife wounds, although only little Angelica was seriously hurt.

The repulse itself was all the more important because they had captured three of the attackers. They were Europeans. Or at least they had, reasonably recently, been European. Close and patient questioning had revealed enough of the history of the islands for the new settlers to begin to understand the extent of their troubles.

About 30 years ago, a handful of brown-shirt refugees from the Night of the Long Knives in the newly-emergent Third Reich had escaped their assassination at the hands of their replacement SS executioners. Eventually banding together in southern France, they planned to quit Europe, which threatened to become their tomb if they stayed, and had commissioned joint passage on a steamer bound for the other side of the world. By the time they had reached only this far the tension aboard between themselves, the crew and the dozen or so other passengers, had become intense. The SA had seized command of the ship and, unable to navigate or handle the ship for long distance given the high casualty rate among the crew, they had beached her on the other side of this island. Claiming the land as their own, they renamed it Baumann Island and, while the radio still worked, they issued rallying calls for all other disaffected fascists who needed sanctuary from misguided leaders in Spain, Germany and Italy.

Their plan had been to march triumphantly back to power in their individual homelands once the dictatorships there had become exposed as inadequate to the needs of their countries. But during the turmoil as Europe was ravaged by war, they had simply become forgotten.

Procreation with the natives they had found on their arrival and with the four women passengers who were hostages of their fate had, at first, been haphazard.

The ship’s stock of weapons and ammunition was limited to three handguns with a few rounds for each. It was easily sufficient for the subjugation – and near extermination - of the native tribe. But attempts to restock their supply of labour from the other nearby islands had met with fierce resistance, far beyond anything they had experienced when landing on their own, newly-claimed, land.

The four islands in the chain, Monsteroso, Simbia, Mars Robert and their own, Baumann, had settled down to a feud which had been running for more than two decades, limited only by lack of weapons and insufficient transportation to cross the dividing seas in great numbers. They were locked in a hostile stalemate and had set about breeding their way to eventual superiority.

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 8: Justice[/b]

Orders from naval HQ arrived within hours of the storm over Sacco Vanzetti withering away, just as Sutton was preparing to go ashore to re-establish the negotiations over the disappearance, kidnapping the islanders were calling it, of the passengers aboard Mayfly. In truth, Sutton was relieved to be under orders again, especially as they demanded his immediate departure for the Caribbean. The use of the word “kidnapping” had a ring of blunt honesty about it, with overtones of international law, and he was glad to have a genuine reason to get away from the mess de Souza had left behind.

Even so, the scene ashore was ugly, if not downright threatening. These people just didn’t understand the nature of military orders. No, he could not recall the transport that had sailed away. No, he could not go and fetch the children back. No, he could not lend them a ship or recall one of the other transports to send a party of islanders after the children.

Not without compassion, he eventually agreed to give them the co-ordinates of the transport’s destination. They could go there if they wished but he could not assist them further.

As the islands slipped below the horizon, as if gently frothing beneath the destroyer’s wake, Sutton breathed a sigh of relief. He’d not liked the mission much from the start, at least now the villagers wouldn’t all be shifted from their home. The loss of the children and old folk was sad but these backward islanders had to understand that, in today’s modern world, sorrow would have sought them out soon enough, it was the price everyone had to pay for freedom.

The islanders themselves were still in tumult long after the Firefly had disappeared back into its own place below the curve of the sea. The choice was plain to see: Either they did nothing, or they did what they could. They knew, from the co-ordinates, where their children were. They only had one means of reaching them, the trawler fleet. But no boat had ever sailed so far and, even more compelling reason not to go, Don Jones-Estundo, who owned everything hereabouts, including the boats, specifically ruled it out. Sitting in his chair on the slightly raised stage, surrounded by his bodyguard, he shouted now to end all talk of taking his boats.

If the boats went, the people would starve to death with no fish caught. He would not risk his boats on a pointless gesture. If the crews of the boats went, who would stop Arthur di Tujourneau from sweeping down his mountains and taking over their homes? He, Don Jones-Estundo, was fair with them, Tujourneau the Wrath of Cain would tramp them into their own soil as if the time of the very Ton Ton Macoute had come.

As he uttered the name of the Beast in his anger, all fell as silent as if sudden death had stopped every mouth. Aware of his public sin, he floundered for no more than an instant. He had not meant to say it but now that he had he would use it to show that his power was greater than the elements of the earth and he did not fear the greatest fear of all. He sat slowly back in the chair, a dismissive shrug demonstrating clearly that he was a man of his own destiny. He had uttered the Intolerable, and he had not succumbed to instant death. A true master, exalting his own fearlessness amidst the awestruck terror of lesser beings who were born into his service and would, when he chose, die in his service.

The whip-crack report of a firearm and the instantaneous explosion of Don Jones-Estundo’s head as the bullet ripped his skull to shattered, bloody fragments brought a sudden start and a ducking movement from the crowd as if they were one being. But, seeing that the gunshot had only marked the natural way of the world asserting itself, they were soon all standing, stretching to see who, or what, had been the vessel of justice.

The pistol in the hand of Almondo Negra Millicent, one of Estundo’s bodyguard, was still smoking, his arm still raised and the barrel still pointing to where his former generalierre’s head had been. Almondo gazed a few moments longer at the slumped corpse. The crowd, waiting for whatever came next, looking from him to the gun, from the gun to the corpse and back to Almondo. Without moving his body, he turned his face towards them, let his eyes wander across the sea of faces. Watching them, measuring them before speaking.

“Load the boats.”

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 9: Awakening[/u]

I am the slowly wakening self-awareness of the heart of the barren land. Waking from the great slumber of aeons. Drowsy, incomplete awareness. An imperfect understanding of the great many shadows crowding me. I am like the birthing of one of the huge flesh beasts which trammelled my face in an ancient history I was not aware to share. The hinted white light of self-awareness flutters only like a grey moth in the night of oblivion. I wake a little, I slumber. Half-awake, half aware. I am crowded with the shadows of unanswered questions and I return to the sanctity of sleep and non-existence.

Roused again by the gentle but insistent tendrils of need calling from the newly-arrived puny flesh beasts huddled together against my shore, I feel the pressure inside me mounting. Growing, growing. Filling me to capacity, stretching me as if I will burst. Until, with a rush of light and knowledge, one great pounding heartbeat of genesis, I am wrenched to wakeful awareness and I am become the deep core of care that will mark time forevermore, my ponderous beat measuring all things.

I am the newly-roused beating heart of the barren land. My face strewn with the stink sores of needless swamp, pock-marked by shattered boulders of years worn by weariness. My skin a sore of dry orange earth from which only stunted briar can strangle life. Tangles of scrub dig their clawed feet into my un-nourishing, un-nourished soil. My pockets filled with worthless dust which cannot hold the kiss of water falling from the air but instead slides like slime into the ever-unquenched open mouth of the sea which defines me.

I am the newly-roused beating heart of the barren land. I have been called to beating long after my time was needed. I am the dried, desiccated and desecrated sinew of what I once could have been. I am the parched and pallid phantasm of the greatness which was the promise of my prime but which was denied me, stolen from me as I slept, unaware.

I am the newly-roused and angry beating heart of the barren land. My pounding marks the hammer blows of the revenge I will seek for the destruction and decay which has been wantonly shackled to my unknowing form.

I am aware of being blistered and harried by the hacking and grubbing of other puny flesh beasts across the entirety of my back as they rout out roots for their bellies. I am newly-aware of their tree-felling decades of destruction as they tried ever more unsuccessfully to breach the sea wall around me which held them in its fist. Stripped of my cloak of trees, I relive with awareness and anger the years of the erosion of my rich soils brought about by these parasitic dwellers.

They do not love me, they do not fear me. They do not know me.

As they now seek desperate nourishment from me, so shall I seek to be nourished and renewed by the rot of their bodies, sucking their flesh into my earth, grinding their bones into my soil, feeding my flaking earth with the blood I shall squeeze from them, their blackened blood recompensing the false and foolish pride with which they discarded me.

I am the vengeful beating heart of the barren land. I will be fed.

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 10: Simbia[/b]

I am the whispering history of the freed slave-boy named Lazarus Price by my rescuer and mentor Captain Harry Norbertson, of His Majesty’s Ship Swiftfire, in the Year of Our Lord 1797. I was taken from the cabin of the skipper of a Spanish slaveship when it was stopped and searched by the British frigate. Rouged, frocked and chained to the deck, I was the only living evidence of the ship’s purpose, all other cargo having been discarded overboard during the chase.

To the commander of the slaver, whose name I do not know, I was simply called the black chicken and was a thing for his amusement and entertainment among the vast wastes of the sea and the solitary confinement that is life in close quarters with other men.

The name I was first I do not know but I have been given many names since. The name I later gave to myself, Simbia, is now the name of this, the largest island in the chain. Named thus, not in honour of the great visions I brought here but as a self-mocking reminder by the peoples of this place that lofty aspirations are the root cause of shame and disgrace.

Upon my rescue from the Spaniard commander, Captain Norbertson embraced immediately and personally the need for my restitution to the ways of Grace. Keeping me confined to his cabin for my swifter deliverance from the evils of my past, the prolonged daily beatings he administered were my penance for the sin of allowing myself to be coupled by a heretic Romanist. The path to my salvation was, for me, long and painful but I grew in awe of the perseverance of my saviour, and was eventually rewarded with his more intimate physical attentions. Although I may not have chosen such a path, I was eager to show gratitude and to demonstrate my total devotion to the salvation his persistence had wrought in me.

On what I was told was the anniversary of my rescue from the fiend of Rome, and as a mark of Captain Norbertson’s recognition of all that I had done to please him, I was entered into the ship’s books as Midshipman Lazarus Price, a name which he said marked my rebirth to the true Christianity. Although now officially a member of the crew, my daily duties were not changed to become those of the other midshipmen aboard and I continued with the duties rendered solely to the captain. The burden of beatings was intermittent by this time and only truly savage if he observed me taking an interest in anything outside the confines of his cabin.

I had scarcely been given my new title but a few weeks when the ship sailed into battle with, what I was later told, a privateer of the same immense proportions as our own. It being the captain’s instruction that I should be taken to what was called the cable tier during combats or the visiting of fellow seafarers, I was not told of his death until nearly 24 hours after the cannonball had cut him in two.

I was never a favourite of the First Lieutenant who was now in command of our vessel and was ordered to remain in the cable tier, food and water being brought to me once a day. After very many visits of the provisions, by which I at first tried to judge the number of days of my time below, I was brought blinking back to daylight and discharged into Kingston harbour.

Although I had not been to that place before, it had been told to me as of a nightmare and I quickly learned that a young man of my coloured skin was in danger of losing either life or liberty.

Driven by hunger, after only two days ashore, to sign on as an ordinary hand to one of the many ships in the bay, I told a story of escaping from a plantation and finding myself here in British territory by a route my feeble mind could no longer remember. I was signed up as a landsman and given the name Sugar Run by the officer in charge. Not having ever before known anything of the workings of a ship even though I had spent a long time afloat, the first year aboard was undoubtedly the hardest, although the floggings I endured for sins ranging from insubordination to incompetence were as nothing to my earlier sufferings.

It was here, over the next three years, that I learned the ways of British discipline and the love of order and authority which had made Britannia the ruler of the waves and the greatest of the European powers. And it was here that I conceived what was to be my legacy to the world. Taking my knowledge of the keys to Britannia’s glory, I would found and lead the greatest nation ever to inhabit the earth. It would be called Simbia, the name I would adopt for myself as the figurehead, founder and supreme ruler. Although I had never seen a lion, I believed the word simbia would be fitting as a replacement when I revealed the new language my new nation would speak.

Having waited so long to receive the Vision, I did not hurry to release myself from service to the crown of Britannia, but patiently watched for the right moment to separate myself from my current masters. Months later I was sent ashore to this unknown island with a party to replenish our supply of sweet water and I judged the time right to part company with my former allegiances. Breaking from the group, I ran into the thick forest and hid among the rocks, knowing they would not search long for a run darkie they judged to be mostly worthless even now.

After only a few hours of thrashing around the bushes and firing muskets and the odd cannonball from the ship at hints of movement, they left me and, as I watched the vessel disappear, I felt the mantle of destiny coming to rest upon my shoulders.

My disappointment with the few inhabitants of the island was increased by their total lack of English or Spanish with which they could understand the Great Work that was to be their salvation. Through kicks and cajoles and much shouting I eventually established the core dignitaries of my court, numbering almost six, quite sufficient, I judged, to be the blue bloods of my new empire.

The opening of the dynasty was, it is true, less than auspicious. However, we lived from the toils of our people, even though they did not understand fully our supremacy and often threatened us with violence when we took the meats and fruit and fish which was surely our due.

My greatest regret was my untimely death less than one year from the beginning of my regime. Unfulfilled but still burning with the unclouded Vision brought only to me by God, my restless history stalks this fledgling homeland of future greatness, watching and waiting for the moment of Truth to validate my otherwise futile life.

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 11: Flotilla[/u]

All 11 trawlers in the Huckslee fishing fleet left the harbour within 36 hours of the death of Don Jones-Estundo. Frantic overhauls on the engines of Tulipiston and Bluebellrod had done the best they could but no-one doubted they’d break down within the next two days, they always had and they always would. They took their place in the flotilla more from hope than from expectation.

The three big boats, Hamish, Hamelin and Haggis, were almost new. They had been brought to the islands by an eccentric entrepreneur who believed fishing would be boom global industry of the 1960s. He had shot himself when the site for his cannery had been absorbed, without ceremony, into the site of the planned General Automotive manufactory. As with all things, Don Jones-Estundo had merely assumed their ownership.

They were the only purpose-built boats on the islands. The rest were a concoction of smacks which had, over the years, acquired a variety of engines, mostly unreliable, inefficient and prone to spectacular displays of choking black smoke. Despite the planned stops to refuel, all of the boats in the flotilla would have to rely heavily on sail. The distances, the need for as direct a route as possible and the shortage of currency to buy diesel demanded the wind would be an integral part of the journey.

At least Jones-Estundo’s arsenal of acquired weapons meant they were going out well-armed. In their haste to leave, General Automotive had left most of its stockpile of protective security.

It had been agreed that the boats should carry only two extra crew each. Any more and they would be overburdened, given the supplies that had to be carried. Any less would mean the entire party would arrive at its destination exhausted, likely in need of rescue by the group it aimed to assist.

There were, as yet, no plans for a return. They simply couldn’t carry all those passengers. The journey would add 57 experienced, well-armed, strong men and women to the settlement. Perhaps enough to make a difference. Perhaps not. Their means of returning home would have to be improvised or rely on providence.

The departure of the fleet from Huckslee would mean hardship for those staying behind. Most of the catch was usually sold inland by the Don but some generally found its way to the tables of the fishing families. It had been agreed that all the food that could be acquired would be shared equally. And pleas for assistance would be sent to the other two fishing fleets down in Vanzetti. They too were run by local barons – but they were operated by ordinary families. Help could come.

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 12: Mars Robert[/u]

Boss Mars Robert had been staring through the telescope for a long time. He didn’t much like what he was seeing and, if the news was bad, he needed to know just how bad it was likely to get. The equatorial sudden blush of pink dawn from ink-night had well turned to bright day and the two crew in the canoe were beginning to fidget with fear. They were a long way out, past the southern tip of Simbia and peering, a quarter of a mile at sea, into the eastern bay of Baumann. The journey back would be in full view of the vigilant Simbians and, unless they took a long, arduous swing south, they were bound to be snapped up.

But Boss needed to hang on. He was beginning to discern a distinct ray of hope among all that hub-bub ashore. There were a lot of these new folks for sure, a couple of thousand probably. All he’d seen though were children and aged adults, busy as bees, but no powerhouses. He’d guessed the men were off over the other side, overrunning the Baumanns – but the longer he looked the more he came to believe there were no men at all. Kids and crones. Newcomers in numbers was never good news. But these were no threat at all, the only danger was that the Baumanns would get all the spoils, they being landed right in their laps.

The Mars Roberts had watched the transport come past their island, snuggled down low in their observation posts, and thought it was heading for Simbia. It had taken them this long, weeks of scouting trips, to find what the big ship had disgorged and where. Outsiders, outside influence, wasn’t welcome here. Anything might tip the balance of power between the islands and that would mean disaster - unless the upset was in favour of Mars Robert. That would be an unlikely outcome from a visit by a stars and stripes ship. Well, here was the reason the ship’d braved the rocky shoals all round these waters. The information was worth the hunt, they’d be able to get a piece of this windfall and maybe destroy, wreck or kill anything they couldn’t bring away.

If all six canoes set out from Mars Robert tonight they could be ashore here just before day. Snatch a couple of squealers each, a case of those nicely piled stores, burn the rest and lay such waste to the remaining folks that the Baumanns good fortune in attracting these fresh fish in the first place would turn to ash in their mouths. What they’d from scouting trips along the coasts of both islands suggested neither the Simbians nor the Monsterosos knew what the good sea had brought ashore in Baumann.

He snapped the telescope shut and looked down in disgust at Hog and Horn Mars Robert, crouched low, their paddles at the ready and eager to save themselves from capture by either the Baumanns or the Simbians.

“Straight run home boys. As fast as your fearful hearts’ll paddle. Straight run, right past and through the Simbian scum, it’ll pound your hearts good. We need to get home quick.”

[Sacco & Vanzetti]

Part 13: Three[/u]

Three had died and Angelica was recovering. It was the magic number and they knew what to do. Here, hundreds of miles from home, they were without the protector which had stalked their lives and the lives of their enemies for hundreds of years. They were sans-medicinierre, sans-culinierre and sans-generalierre. Worst of all, indescribably worst, they were sans-Ton Ton Macoute. It could barely be considered.

But Weatherall, Jacobin Weatherall, had spoken at the meeting. His cracked and ancient voice had been drowned at first by the shouts, the anguish, the tears from what had very quickly turned from a meeting to a mob. But his relentless monotone had gradually seeped through the cacophony, gathering listeners. Again and again he was saying the name of the Terror, whose name brings instant death, but he didn’t die.

“Three have died. Angelica is recovering. It is the magik number and we should know what to do.

“Here, in this new place, where we have no history, we must make history. You young people, we old people, must become medicinierre. We must become culinierre. We must all become generalierre and we must all become the terror of the Ton Ton Macoute.

“We must each become Ton Ton Macoute. We must become fearful and have no fear. We must become terror but not have terror.

“This is not a place of peace. Nor friendship. It is a place of hate. We must take the hate, feed on it, fatten on it, strive on it, thrive on it and, with the same dread care and knowledge as our ancestors, we must turn the blade on our tormentors and, if necessary, drive each and every one of them into the sea.

“Three have died. Their blood has nourished this parched earth. Their blood will waken the land. We must wake the land, feed the land and take the land.

“It is the Rule of Three. Blud answers blud. We are all one.”