Chapter 9 - In Britiniacum

Britiniacum was about a five-hour hike away to the south. Monsieur was keen for us to go there before I left, to give me some more background and to see Pete, a friend of his who was in charge of coppicing. It seems that the friend had checked with the security there and they were not on the lookout for me. 

Monsieur told me that the place specialised in aviation, having once been a French aircraft test centre. The settlers there were making transport aircraft based on an old French-designed short take-off and landing plane called the Breguet 911, capable of carrying about 15 tons of freight and taking off in less than 200 metres. It proved a big success, and the type was often seen buzzing overhead in Deva; we called it the Airtruck.

Early one cold, grey morning, tooled-up and properly booted, we set off on our trudge to Britiniacum to see Pete. It was a rough cross-country hike, through thick woods of young trees now coming into leaf. There were signs of animals everywhere with many tracks in the mud. Monsieur kept going on about it, saying things like ‘Hey, did you see that? Do you think that’s a wisent spoor?” and “That looks like wolf shit.’ I was thinking about Anna and what on earth we were going to see Pete for.

There was something about walking through the wild northern forests; you felt as though you were in your natural element. Sitting behind a desk or on a sofa watching video on a screen in safe and well-ordered Deva may have been comfy, but it was like being a zoo animal or battery chicken: it didn’t satisfy the inner man. In the wild outlands, well furnished with wild animals, tricky terrain and lurking prowlers, life had a different relish. When I was a kid I read The Wind in the Willows, and it seemed that there was something magical about the world it conjured up that appealed to me on a deep level, and it still did. The books of J. R. R. Tolkien seemed to have that quality too. Maybe the European had evolved to fit this countryside and being there makes him feel that they was in their natural place. Perhaps that was the reason people went to parks in cities and even the Devans went for Sunday walks. This kind of contact with nature seemed to meet a basic need and to discharge frustration, a bit like a couple having sex, you might say. It must have been something important, or people wouldn’t spend time on walks and gardening.

That was what had always bothered me about people colonising other planets. It would have meant losing touch with nature, living indoors forever. I couldn’t stand it.

Walking along, I wondered whether Anna would have felt this type of emotion, this strong link to nature. I felt reassured by the way she had suggested we go for a walk on that afternoon, now so distant. Had I at least implicitly covered it in her ground rules? When you came down to it, she wasn’t linked to any particular body; she was essentially pure mind. She could live on any planet or just float through space as long as there was computing power available. Why would she care? But she had her Axiom 1 set to “I’m a human being”, and I supposed that love of nature would be part and parcel of the human condition, so I assumed that I had the case covered.

Anyway, it was such a nice day that the worry soon evaporated. The birds were singing. There were flowers everywhere and plenty of spoor for Monsieur to remark on.

Having an old-fashioned rifle to cart about only added to the authenticity of the experience. And that rifle certainly was heavy. I felt a bit embarrassed to point out to Monsieur that modern firearms were all the smooth-bore diesel-powered sub-calibre flechette type and, to shoot them, you only needed fuel-oil and flechettes, not heavy old cartridges made of expensive brass. And they were far lighter.

After a long trudge, we came to areas where the trees had all been cut. This was a part of the forest where the trees were long, thin and straight, growing from ancient stumps. ‘See, that’s coppicing. All straight and true hardwood. Oak, chestnut and er…the other stuff. Acres of it!’ exclaimed Monsieur excitedly. And, after a bit, we heard a machine rumbling and roaring, harvesting the trees according to Edward. When the machine became visible, it was gigantic. It stood high as a two-storey house on insect legs and had arms in the front that grabbed trees, sheared them off at the base, ran them through a sort of knuckle that stripped the branches off and placed the resulting poles in a stack at the back. ‘Wonderful machine. And they’ve got three of ‘em. All the bits were flown in. They need ‘em. It’s their source of construction material, chemical feedstock and fuel. They don’t have a power reactor like those smug Devans.’ Monsieur was a bit out of breath.

We walked round the scary machine, not too near, and took the track it had made leading to Britiniacum. ‘Not far now,’ he hopefully asserted. ‘You can tell by the smell: woodsmoke.’ He was right.

‘I’ll call up Pete now,’ he said. ‘Can’t go wandering up to the place. It doesn’t have walls like Deva, just dynamic defence with automatic machine guns. Flat fields of fire that interlock so no prowlers can get through. Nice and safe.’ We were on higher ground, a ridge west-north-west of the place, and could see the flat green fields below where the township lay, with its huge drying sheds and smoking retorts for wood processing. Down, off the ridge we went and after a bit came to the track-side hut where Pete was waiting for us.

What I principally noticed about Pete were his watery blue eyes, often the sign of an alcoholic. He was full of enthusiasm, a non-stop talker, a prize bore, a good tryer. Thankfully he had all his attention focused on Monsieur and mostly ignored me. Not having much else to do, I thought I’d record his spiel on my communicator with a view to contradicting him later. 

Well, I never got round to that, but here is what he had to say:
…yes they grow on a thirty-five-year cycle on the thousands of hectares we have here on the plateaus, which are actually quite wet, what with the slow drainage on the heavy clay. Can you think of anything more ecological? We don’t need solar panels here, we grow our own, acorns to oak, home-grown energy collectors, as it were. We can’t make calcium carbide like they can at Deva, don’t have the raw energy, so our feedstock is not acetylene but wood pyrolysis products: tar to methanol and gas, a whole range of precious chemicals. And the leftover charcoal is the perfect fuel. With those wonderful autonomous harvesters we have all we need. And by the way, wood is a wonderful construction material, stress and strain factors are equivalent to steel or aluminium at equal weights. And those wonderful Airtrucks are all made of wood, all laminates bonded with casein glue from our own cows! Those planes are tough and dependable, real workhorses. Just need to keep them dry in the hangars and they last and last; don’t want the casein glue to turn into camembert cheese now, do we? ha ha. I’ll show you round our plane factory later. And this is where it gets interesting: those planes are not designed by people but by computers; every part is optimised for its function; there are only a few parts that are made of metal, like the wing fittings and the undercarriage—mostly what they call ‘ferrures’ in French, eh? And guess what they’re made of: magnesium of course. And how do we fabricate the parts? 3D printing. No waste. And when we want to recycle one of the planes? We just burn it, nothing left but ash. Crushed and into the retort it goes, magnesium and all. Clean, easy. Like the poet said, “The sun shines fair on Britiniacum, energy captured by every leaf” ha ha. And everyone wants the plane we make, the Airtruck. We just took the production drawings for the old Breguet 941, there was a complete set of microfiches here when we came, ran them through the computers to optimise the design and Bob’s your uncle–the perfect transport plane. Can take off in 150 metres, just the thing. Wonderful those computers—check every detail, optimise everything, eliminate the contradictions, what? And when it comes to construction, we have our robots do all the work. We have two types, call them boys and girls, ha ha. The boys clamp up the parts and the girls fetch, carry and assemble: teamwork. Just a couple of engineers to keep an eye on things. We make a pot of money out of this, Cryptocoins of course. I can really say that the Airtruck represents the best cost-effectiveness trade-off that can be found given the present circumstances. To come back to the coppice woods, they’re filling up with game and we run herds of pigs there, full of acorns and sweet chestnuts in autumn. By the way, I’ve heard that there’s some weirdo doing pigs over your way. Maybe we could find common ground. Know who that might be? There’s a good market for pig products. Got to be a bit careful with pigs though; they can turn nasty. Don’t go walking around there with a small dog that runs to you to protect it; dangerous that is, they can chase it.’

Clearly, Pete had no real  interest in what we were up to or what we had to say. He was just anxious to impress us. This seemed to be a good thing, as no useful news would therefore be going to go back to Buonaventura in Deva.

Some people had a gift for talking; they go gabbling on as soon as they have a captive audience. I envied them. I could never think of much to say, and I liked a chatterbox like Pete who could keep a conversation going single-handedly. I was always afraid that the chat would dry up as the person I was talking to tuned out when I stuttered on. I thought this came back to my spontaneity problem. Duality: I was watching myself doing something and got into a muddle. Other people seemed not to feel this and went on talking in a spontaneous way—unselfconsciously. I had a vague feeling that they were a bit thick.

We were bumping down the track in the cart he had ushered us into, drawn by a stoic pony. From time to time, Pete would shake the reins, but the pony took no notice and kept ambling along at a regular pace, probably looking forward to a nice rest and some feed when it got back.  I was looking forward to that, as well.

The track eventually got smoother and led, between gun positions, to the township checkpoint. Here a camera scanned our faces and came up with our names. I was still wondering about how their facial recognition system knew who I was when we came to a halt in a street of wooden buildings, like in an old-fashioned cowboy film—a convergent evolution situation. Pete hitched the pony to the rail, to its dismay. He ushered us into a sort of shop.

It seemed to be amazing what one can do with wood. All the buildings in Britiniacum seemed to be wood-built, and some were extremely impressive. Where we had stopped, the road surface was smooth-rolled gravel with a central gutter, and the business fronts on both sides had covered boardwalks. Everywhere there was solid, well-crafted wood construction. It was hardly surprising their Airtrucks were so successful. They had made a virtue of necessity.

At Deva, with unlimited energy, all the construction was masonry and concrete. Almost all the houses were built of lightweight cellular concrete blocks, square and trim as sugar cubes. It gave the place a hard and urban feel, quite unlike Britiniacum. Even the Deva waste was vitrified and ended up as square blocks. And in Deva, everything seemed to be electric: transport pods not pony carts.

We were led into a small dining room with a few tables and a mild fry-up smell. Pete was trying on his hearty host act: ‘Come in, come in. Tea, coffee, we’ve got it all. And do try the fruitcake—highly commended, eh?’ Actually, a bit of food, drink and a comfortable place to sit were exactly what we needed after our hike.

While we were tucking in and listening to Pete droning on, another man entered and came over to us. Pete beckoned him over. ‘This is John, from our security service,’ he said. He was a fit-looking young man with an intense expression. He looked us over, his gaze resting a little too long on our long guns slung on the backs of our chairs. ‘Welcome to Britiniacum,’ he said. ‘Sorry to bother, but we like to keep tabs on who’s coming and going. You’re both on our list, so no problem.’ Pete was fiddling in his pocket and finally brought out a pipe and started loading it: displacement activity. John seemed to have something business-related to mention but had a go at a bit of chit-chat first. ‘How’s things in Deva then, eh? Reactor still going strong?’ He must have been a bit jealous of our reactor, so I chipped in, ‘Trees still growing here okay? You have unlimited power here too.’ And he gave me a sulky look. Actually, their low-tech solution to the energy problem was very simple and dependable. Who needs hard-to-dispose-of solar panels when you’ve got a forest of trees? What would happen to us in Deva if the reactor failed? or nobody knew how to keep it going any more? Really, for nature to flourish, all that was needed was for people to disappear, which was what had happened in the exclusion zone after the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. It had demonstrated that radioactive contamination was a lot less damaging to plants and animals than the presence of people. Without asking for it or even realising it, we all were now living in a much better situation than before The Virus: low population and plenty of natural resources to share. 

Meanwhile, newcomer John was getting going but showing no interest in a debate about power generating or Malthusianism. Instead of entering the conversation, blunt-speaking John just ploughed straight on. ‘Actually, I’ve some background on you, James, and it seems that you’re part of the inner circle, as it were, in Deva. You follow me? And that you’re a clever fellow. So we were wondering if you might bring tidings back to them, if you see what I mean.’ 

I could see what he meant and could quite easily guess who we and they were. Ever helpful and pleased to be of assistance, I said, ‘Of course, John, if there’s anything I can do…’  
‘I’ll explain later when we go to the aircraft sheds,’ he replied, after which he just shut up and started fiddling with his communicator. Very intriguing! Obviously the news that I had been cast out from the inner circle had not yet arrived. Or possibly he was playing some deeper game.
By and by, Monsieur and I had had our way with the tea and cake, and we were feeling a lot more mellow. Coppicer Pete was still pouring out useless information, and agent John was still fiddling with his communicator. Suddenly, it was time to move on, and with a scraping of chairs and a grabbing of equipment out we went to visit the aircraft sheds.

Pete led us out, we followed him and John trailed behind. The pony and cart had disappeared, so we had to walk there. Along the covered sidewalk we went past various shops and businesses until we reached the end of the street. Then, in the strong, clear spring sunshine, he took us through a grid of gravel drives to the industrial part of town. A huge shed came into view. This was an imposing edifice, high and tall, covered with silvery metal cladding. Pete led us up to the entrance gate, turned to face us and gave a little speech. This was what I recorded:

Quite an impressive building, eh? And it’s all made with bamboo framing—yes, really. Bamboo poles are flown in from a special place we have near the Mediterranean coast. Their strength-to-weight ratio is higher than steel’s. The poles are jointed at their ends with hollow square-section metal fittings, tees and wyes and whatever, in which they’re embedded in casein-based compound. And the cladding is faced with magnesium alloy sheet specially treated to resist any corrosion. All amazingly strong and durable, and so easy to recycle when needed. I’ll be showing you round inside in a minute, and I want you to have a good look at the production process. It’s all computer-controlled. Don’t worry about the boys and girls bumping into you; they’ll stop if you get near them. And please don’t touch anything.

He turned, stuck the key in the lock, it wouldn't fit, tried another key, and finally creaked the door open. With a sweeping wave, he ushered us in. There were no windows inside the shed but clusters of lamps hanging from the roof trusses. The structure creaked slightly in the cold spring gusts outside. There were a number of aircraft in various stages of construction. We finally got to see the “boys and girls”. The first were heavy bell-shaped contraptions that moved on hidden castors then settled down on their rims: stable. They were fitted with two jointed arms carrying a range of tools. The “girls” were of lighter construction and mounted on pneumatic tyres. They were swiftly carrying and fetching with quick deft movements. And everywhere there was wood: workpieces, offcuts, chips, sawdust, dust. No mild smell of hot machinery here, just a sharper, cleaner smell of wood. And there was no one in sight on the workshop floor. Pete was still talking…

Flight control is fly-by-wire with manoeuvre-demand inputs by pilot or remote controller fed to a flight control computer that determines optimum corresponding optimal control surface and throttle changes—fantastic! What’s the point of having a pilot on board who can’t even fly the plane as well as a computer. Usually these planes are flown in “drone mode” by remote control via a datalink, and sometimes they are flown by an on-board autonomous control device. Makes more sense. 
And these aircraft are strong; the load factors are minus three to plus six. Every part is designed for them, individually and collectively. Won’t say “unbreakable” but, touch wood, ha ha, they just about are. 
Oh, yes, we know all about wood here, and we really respect it. Did I mention that we have developed new ways of cutting wood that offer incredible improvements? First of all there is our way of processing log. I can’t show you that here; it’s done in another shed. Tree trunks are placed between centres and are turned cylindrical and then—here comes the clever bit—they’re cut into strips lengthways from edge to centre with the log turned a fixed angular distance each time. The strips are then stacked head-to-tail to form rectangles and bonded with casein adhesive. Dead easy! No waney waste. Amazing nobody thought of it before. We call it the pie-cut after mathematical Pi, get it?
Did you know that we have also developed a new kind of circular saw blade? You know how a sharp knife cuts wood, right? Well, this uses the same principle. There are two disks of aluminium alloy back to back. Both disks have file-hard anodic treatment on the outer faces. The meat in the sandwich is coarse-grain silicate-bonded abrasive material. The aluminium disks wear to expose sharp anodic edges that slice into the wood, and the abrasive material clears the cut, and Bob’s your uncle—a smooth-edged cut. Not like those toothed saw blades that leave everything rough.

It seemed to me that he was starting to invent all this as he went along, so I thought I’d trip him up. ‘And what about the engines of the Airtrucks? What kind are they?’ This caught him off balance and he hesitated a moment. He mumbled something about them being the same old turbines but that they were looking for an electric-drive solution. Touché!
Before he could get into his stride again, agent John tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Could we have a private word?’ and gestured towards a door.

Off the two of us went and found ourselves in a side office, well-provided with desks, screens, keyboards and shelving with files, but a bit dim. He closed the door and suddenly we were in a very quiet and private place. He sat down in the “boss chair” behind the biggest desk, and I sat down on the “interviewee” chair opposite. I had stood my gun on its butt between my knees in the manner approved by Monsieur. And agent John was wearing a pistol at his belt.

He had a good look at me with a sort of intense, wistful stare, wrinkling his face into a slightly pained and hapless expression. What on earth was agent John going to announce? Finally, he came to the point: ‘We know all about you, James.’ Here he paused and glanced up at the ceiling: corny posturing. ‘Here in Britiniacum, I represent law and order, but there are also wider issues that need to be attended to. Meg says that we can trust you.’ I was thinking that any moment he would be putting the squeeze on me and giving me my marching orders. But he branched off into a general spiel about politics, eager to find agreement or just in self-justification.

‘Here’s the thing, James. Up till now, we’ve been living free and easy in the townships with plenty of things to do and plenty of resources to do them with. We’ve been bringing civilisation back since The Virus. We’re proud of what we’ve been able to do. But now there is a growing political aspect to our organisation. Look at what’s happening in your Deva: Buonaventura’s setting himself up a little dictator and is trying to use you to cement his position. We need to consider what we need to do in this developing situation to avoid losing our freedom—all of us.’
Of course, the idea that rogue officials often acted as agents of influence way outside their briefs—whether Common Purpose, Communist, Islamic or Jesuit (you name it)—had not been lost on me. Maybe I’m just careful, distrustful, paranoid. What’s earnest agent John’s game? Somehow I couldn’t help liking him; he seemed so haplessly honest. I listened on.
He started with a tedious speech about the semi-religious movements currently in vogue at Britiniacum. There were two opposing each other. One was a Bacchic movement inspired by Dionysus and Isis, featuring orgiastic revels in the woods on summer nights when large quantities of wine were drunk. It sounded fun but hardly constructive. The other was an adaptation of the ancient Roman religion of Mithras and focused on seeking truth. I liked the sound of that, as it seemed to me that the only progress that humanity had ever made could be ascribed to determining true facts about its environment that could be used to its advantage. I once read the following entry in an old encyclopaedia that I had glanced through in an idle moment: Mithras: the god of truth and good faith. 

Obviously, this was John’s chosen movement, and he was trying to recruit me. ‘We are just people who believe in seeing reality as it is, unflinching. We don’t believe in the supernatural; for us, Mithras is just an idea. Our symbol is the Sun. Our metal is gold. Our colour is yellow. Our sign is the circle. We try to determine what is true. When we find that something is not true, we abandon it. We abhor bad faith. Everyone in The Network is a follower of Mithras. Join us, James, or at least work with us.’
We seemed to  have reached the bargaining point at last. So I said, ‘Tell me more?’ He looked reassured. 
‘I think I know what you want.’ 
‘You think so, do you? What would that be?’
‘You want your robot back and need money. That’s the story I’m hearing.’
‘What are you offering then?’
‘Join us. We have a party that needs the kind of assistance that only someone like you can provide. You’ll need to go into the ruins of Paris to find him. Are you up for it?’
‘Maybe. What’s in it for me?’
‘Gold, Cryptocoins.’
‘What’s in it for you?’
‘The same.’
‘Tell me more.’
‘Just go back to Aigrefoin and you’ll get your instructions.’
‘That all you’re telling me?’
‘Yep. Take it or leave it.’

What a bastard. One minute loquacious, the next laconic. Anyway, I knew what my mission was because Meg had already told me. Conceited ass. I just said, ‘Okay,’ and started to get up.

But it wasn’t over yet. He stood up with a smirky smile and beckoned me over to a door at the back of the office. We filed into another shed. It was an assembly hall for small aircraft that looked vaguely familiar, rows of them. They looked like the ancient V-1s, Hitler’s flying bombs (doodlebugs), with an engine above the rear part of the fuselage. I stepped forward for a closer look at the engine of the nearest one. Agent John cleared his throat and entered coppicer Pete mode.
‘It’s a ramjet engine, but valveless. Still makes a tremendous racket. Long-range, and the leftover fuel makes a fuel-air explosion that makes even more. Any serious trouble out of Deva and they can say goodbye to their precious reactor. Then they can go and eat chestnuts in the woods.’

But why was he telling me this? I supposed he was organising a controlled leak to put the fear on the Deva controllers. He ushered me out and back to the main assembly hall where Pete was still holding forth.

…and we don’t have a problem with plastic waste, as all the plastic we use is chitin-based. It’s a by-product of our waste disposal system where fly-maggots consume all the eatable material and, when they hatch, fly to the light through ionising radiation that kills and sterilises them. Chitin is then extracted from the cuticle of their bodies and the mushy part is made into chicken feed. No waste—fantastic. And chitin is, of course, the ideal plastic replacement; it can be made rigid or flexible—wonderful stuff. And, of course, totally recyclable. We do use cellophane too, but that is all flown-in as producing it is a messy business. It comes all the way from Asia in our planes. Oh! hullo…

Monsieur was gazing at the robots moving about, his thoughts miles away. He gave us a glad smile when we joined them.

Agent John spoke up: ‘Well I expect you two will be going back soon, eh?’ looking at Monsieur and me. Dismissed! Coppicer Pete shut up, looking slightly hurt; he had been hoping we might stay a bit longer. Soon, we were all shuffling out and the door of the shed was being locked behind us as we blinked in the strong sunlight. We headed back, finally reaching Aigrefoin as the shadows lengthened and the air grew chilly, our feet sore.

After dinner in the cosy warmth of the fire, Monsieur passed me an envelope John had entrusted him with. He told me to open it in my room, read what was in it then come back and burn everything. Off I went with a candlestick in one hand and the envelope in the other. In the dim, cool mustiness of my room I tore the envelope open. There was just one piece of paper in it, marked: “Contact Jean Montafian in the Catacombs of Paris on the second of May, Denfert-Rochereau entrance. Tell him John sent you.” 

I went back down again and threw it all on the fire with Monsieur eying me. ‘I’ll need to go into the ruins of Paris tomorrow near Denfert-Rochereau,’ I said, and Monsieur nodded knowingly. 
‘Better get ready for an early start then,’ he said and heaved himself up. ‘Denfert-Rochereau, eh? That’s actually a near part of Paris. It’ll take all day to walk there though. Let’s get your kit ready tonight and leave first thing tomorrow morning. The best way for you is to walk along the disused railway line that begins at Saint Rémy. I’ll walk you down there; then…best of luck.’ He added, ‘Actually, I only took you over to Britiniacum so that Johnny Boy could give you his official blessing for the mission. Wouldn’t want to hurt his feelings would we now?’

The Network! What a bunch of amateurs. How could I be safe with them?