The Tyrant's Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

they, all of them, were there to help Toby get the job done, he began to see that they were under the same pressure as himself—not that that was much consolation. He told them straight out it couldn't be done. He appreciated their offer, but the day staff was gone and he needed a further delivery of the honeyed sandstone of which the fourteen-feet-high walls were built. Work on the swimming pools and fountains would continue through the night, and wiring in the main residence. But the stonemasons themselves had all gone home. They were in coffee bars, driving their cars, shopping in supermarkets (or selling cigarettes on the black market).
    Give us the lists, said an Overguard officer. We'll find them.
    The stonemasons? asked Toby.
    Every bastard you've got on the payroll. We'll get those lazy damned Overalls working too.
    (The Overalls were the lowly city police, who wore blue overalls.)
    He opened his computer personnel files and printed them off page by page, as the officer distributed them to his three dozen men. Toby could well imagine the quantity of fear that would arrive at each hod carrier's or bricklayer's door in the person of an Overguard officer. Are you Ted Williams? Then please accompany me, sir. The red beret, the great splotches of martial camouflage, the hefty holster, and the submachine gun carried upside down on a belt between the shoulder blades. Timidly, Is there a problem, sir? And if the Overguard were a little genial: You're wanted at work. Tell your missus to keep the dinner hot.
    By five o'clock the workers were largely back at the site. Overguard officers with experience of pneumatic drills were helping out the stonemasons. Everyone in this together. Waves of fear and light-headedness overtaking Toby. It can't be done, I tell you it can't be done. And the Overguard demonstrating that in a sense they
were
warriors, saying it could be done, the redoubt could be taken, the walls closed up to those gates whose dignity demanded it. To hell with Courtney Witt and his fancy gates! thought Toby.
    You might remember it was a hot evening, he reminded us.
    Fine dust of sandstone fragments democratically clogged the lips and nostrils of workers and Overguard. The stacked and abandoned weaponry was humanized with orange grit, which seemed to hold out a promise that when the impossible job was not done by nine o'clock, or five past, and all or some were put against the wall, the weaponry might benignly clog. Further cement trucks arrived, and winches pulled large friable blocks onto foundations of wet cement. It was impossible. Ten yards either side to be closed, and closed with the same quality as the rest of the palace walls, no sloppy cement, no leakage, no hasty trim on the sandstone itself, no faulty symmetry.
    About six-thirty, Toby said, the job was quarter done, one side closed up but only to human height. Unqualified men were trying to erect scaffolding to take the wall higher. Then the officer of the Overguard suggested they bring in workers from other government sites. There was a Ministry of Oil building going up on Viaduct Bay. An army of riggers and scaffolders were working there. We'll get them! promised the Overguard. Toby did not bother saying, There's not time to get them here. The Overguard officer was sanguine. He said that half the delay had been logistics, the job would move faster now. Even if they could bring in workers who would be effective for an hour and a half, that would be a contribution. More riggers were in any case needed to assemble scaffolding in line on the far side of the gates, where the other stretch of space was to be walled.
    Throughout their labors, the workers on-site were largely silent—no whistling, no pop songs. There were occasional sudden surges of rage. You stupid prick, pick it up! But ultimately each of them came to realize he needed every stupid prick who could be mustered. Some upper wall stones were miscut, were raised, broke the uniformity of the