Chapter 2.
What Did The Prisoner Not Know, And When Did He Not Know It?
When The Empress of Blandings flies, O’Cannan thought to himself.
The odd thing was, he realized, that the situation really was a mistake. O’Cannan was not a spy of any kind, national, international, industrial, super, or even I-spy-with-my-little-eye. He worked as a courier for a couple of old Navy buddies who had formed a shipping company after they were all de-mobbed. For two years Hannan had wasted the time of several perfectly good if somewhat tiresome instructors at Memorial University before dropping out. Actually, he had dropped out only minutes before a weary dean of something or other would have accomplished the dropping himself.
One day shortly after recycling a biology book in a green fashion by tossing it into a dumpster he was moistening his ennui at the Golden Flagon in George Street and met Tim and Honkers – Honkers’ real name was Lorenz; no one seemed to recall the doubtless alcoholic origins of the nickname – lifting a Quidi Vidi or three or four themselves, celebrating their new partnership. The next day O’Cannan was driving around St. John’s and Pearl in his babe-repellent old Honda, delivering large envelopes and small packages.
Several weeks later, after a few night courses and exams, he bore a commercial driving license and was bonded, whatever that meant in addition to stuffing more official bits of paper into his wallet. Although he still made deliveries on The Rock, he sometimes carried other large envelopes and other small packages on flights to St. Pierre, to various cities in Darkest Canada, and along the Arctic Rim to Europe – Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, Poland, the Baltics, Scotland, and perfectly-clear London town.
Several weeks later, after a few night courses and exams, he bore a commercial driving license and was bonded, whatever that meant in addition to stuffing more official bits of paper into his wallet. Although he still made deliveries on The Rock, he sometimes carried other large envelopes and other small packages on flights to St. Pierre, to various cities in Darkest Canada, and along the Arctic Rim to Europe – Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, Poland, the Baltics, Scotland, and perfectly-clear London town.
There could be nothing untoward in his deliveries, for more often than not everything was opened and searched, especially his one time in Finland, where an ice-mannered customs officer with ice-blue eyes and ice-blonde hair questioned him for a full hour as if his proposed entry into Helsinki was an attempt to steal the Sampo and then solicit little Suomi children to be cooked and eaten by Laplanders.
One exception to his northern flights was a recent trip to Cuba.
Cuba.
Oh.
Oh, oh, oh.
Cuba.
Before O’Cannan’s St. John’s / Toronto / Barbados / Havana seat-ache-a-thon departed, Honkers had given him a nifty little Canon camera with a somewhat pink-ish case, a spare battery, and a spare memory card.
“Take me some pictures in Havana, eh. Take lots of pictures – here in St. John’s, getting on the planes, on the planes, from the planes, getting off the planes, here, there, while in Havana. Here’s some extra cash; do some tourist stuff and take lots of pictures, old cars, Spanish forts, hot chicks on the beach. But in the middle of this, take some pictures from the plane – just some snapshots, y’know – when the plane makes its turn off the runway and onto the taxi way. No big deal, just more poops-and-giggles snaps. When you leave Jose Marti, same thing, take some snaps of your umbrella-drink and then out the window when the plane turns off the taxiway and onto the runway. And, hey, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do eh?”
Wink-wink, nudge-nudge.
Cuba.
O’Cannan’s three days in Cuba had been pleasant. He bought some Cuban cigars, went to a jiggle show, took a ride in a 1958 DeSoto cab, drank the local rum, and marveled how grim and crumbled and subtly desperate and hungry Havana was. No problems coming into the country, no problems delivering the company mail, and no problems leaving.
And it was all camouflage for some snapshots. Someone wanted him to take pictures of something in the area of the airport, and someone else was unhappy that he had done so.
For three purgatorial days O’Cannan was cocooned in the white light of his white space. He read. He thought. He slept badly. He examined again everything he could reach (the ceiling was too high) in his white-coffined white world: water taps, sink, under the sink, all the hems of the white cotton sheets and the white cotton blankets and the white cotton pillow and the white cotton towel. Nothing.
“Finding anything?” asked an amused mechanical voice from on high.
“I’m looking for my lost virginity; have you seen it?”
“Oh, well, good luck with that, O’Cannan; Triskelion’s got your soul but not your honor. Just to tell you: you don’t have a light switch but I do; when you want to beddy-bye just sing out for some dimness.”
“Okay, thanks; I’m feeling pretty dim already, though.”
O’Cannan kept on, inspecting everything centimeter in the whiteness of the only world he was permitted for three days.
And on the third day the whale coughed him up.
After breakfast the mechanical voice beeped. “Okay, O’Cannan, you’re normal enough for us; we’re moving you onto the beach in a half-hour. Take only your personal stuff; leave the bedding.”
A committee of black-uniformed Triskelions, one carrying a clipboard while O’Cannan carried the useless cloth slippers, escorted O’Cannan through corridors and up a lift and through another corridor to yet another painted door, this one clearly marked: “Lucky Bag.”
“Got a customer for you, 11.”
Number 11 lazed behind a long, steel-topped counter just like those used for issuing military uniforms at the beginning of recruit training. He displayed the insouciance and indolence of a four-year corporal, with just a soupcon of the resentment of the girl at the courtesy booth at a piles-of-Chinese-junk-store who must interrupt her ‘phone calls to speak with a customer.
11 flipped a cigarette away. “Oo’s this, then?”
“Don’t you know? This is the notorious Brendan O’Cannan. Everyone’s heard of him. Kit him out, would you?”
“Right. Okay…hmmm…here’s yer own stuff, yeah.” 11 pushed O’Cannan’s own traveling clothes, freshly cleaned, and his old canvas hiking bag across the counter to him. “Now, then, you’ll need some more clothes. You like blazers; goin’ for the Patrick McGoohan look? Take a look at these…oh…this one’s got holes in it. I missed that one. Now take a look at these…
O’Cannan and his escort left the new wing of the installation and crossed a glassed-in flyover to a much older stone structure. O’Cannan barefooted along carrying his bag, the clothes he had been wearing on his last delivery, Carry On, Jeeves, and of course the useless cotton slippers.
“Old castle and fort,” said his escort, indicating the old, joined together just anyhow parts of the building they were walking through.
The corridor floors here were uneven and all was darker. For the first time O’Cannan saw other prisoners, all wearing apparently the clothes of their choice, no uniforms, going about their routines.
“You’re an accomplished man, O’Cannan, you won’t be mopping floors, I’m thinking.”
“Well, I was in the Navy, eh; it wouldn’t be a new experience.”
“You were in the Navy?” asked the caregiver with the clipboard, flipping papers. “Navy? Is this the wrong file…no…oh, well, it’ll be sorted out later. And here is your home for the next week or so. We’ll get you your own cubby and more freedom later if you show us that you can play nice with our other children.”
O’Cannan entered a long, low room with rows of cubicles with four bunks each. There were no hatch covers, only curtained openings, and the walls of the cubes reached neither to the overhead nor to the deck.
The only other person in the area was an elderly man in dungarees and smoking a cigarette. He pushed a broom with the speed of a union hand, and eyed the arrivals with some curiosity but said nothing as he worked.
“Find an empty bunk anywhere, and welcome aboard,” said the minder with the clipboard, and she and the other warders left.
“Where is everyone?” O’Cannan asked the old man.
“They are doubtless in the library conspiring to escape; conspiracy has become their morning custom in the few days they have been here, and almost surely a futile endeavor. If you will proceed along the passageway to your left, turn left at the next crossing, and carry on until the end, you will surely find the library.”
You can’t miss it. Translation: you’ll be hard put not to find yourself in the dark on an unmarked road in the next county with the headlights showing only glowing eyes in the underbrush.
“Fine. Bunk anywhere?”
“You may indeed. May I be of any assistance? I’m Neville Travers, by the way.”
“My name’s O’Cannan, Brendan O’Cannan.”
“Pleased to meet you. I’m a priest.”
“Oh, one of those black-hearted Anglican heretics, eh?”
“Lord, no, I’m a Catholic. A bad one. Born in Manchester, council school for a bit and then later Downside Abbey on a burse. Diocesan studies, then a year in Rome, a year in Louvain…”
“But why…?”
“Oh, here I sweep the floors and make the beds in the Lord’s service. Rather keeps me humble, you know. Neither Triskelion nor most of the customers here are much concerned with the state of their souls or why Saint Jerome and Saint Augustine couldn’t get along or whether the Luminous Mysteries are not really heretical. They’re not, of course. Not that anyone prays the Rosary. Not even in Rome. And most assuredly not in Louvain.”
“So they made you a cleaner-upper.”
“‘Tis my limited service, but ‘tis one.’”
“Macbeth, Act II, I think, when Macduff exits to awaken the King.”
“So you know your Shakespeare! Delightful, young man!”
“Nah, my teacher showed us the movie. Over and over. And over.”
“Oh, well, quite good enough, rather.”
“But why are you here, Father? Did you annoy a bishop?”
“Possibly, and I surely did annoy the diocesan contract accounting firm by writing the bishop letters asking unseemly questions about the figures regarding donations from the Walk for Colon Cancer and the Save the Rain Forest-Athon, among other numerous, numerical, and fiscal activities. The diocesan accountant was the bishop’s brother-in-law, it seems, and was also somehow connected with a member of the cabinet. I’m only speculating, of course, but thousands and thousands of pounds were disappearing, one charity at a time. One day I was practicing my googly in the alley after morning Mass and the next day I was here. So now I sweep floors and make beds and clean toilets. It’s a much cleaner vocation than finance, really, more honorable and decent. And Triskelion do let me offer Mass for the faithful daily; I hope you’ll come and increase my customary parish attendance by precisely 33.3333 percent.
“I will. Oh, Father Travers, we Catholics are a sorry lot.”
“Indeed; we’re not to be trusted at all.”
“We should all be taken out and shot.”
“I used to read than in the London newspapers.”
“So you’re not with the others, planning to escape or overthrow Doctor No, or whatever it is?”
“No. Tidying up keeps me out of trouble and keeps me humble. I needed some humility. And besides, I wasn’t asked to join. Rather an exclusive club, you know.” Father Travers winked. “But go along and find them. Perhaps you will be the one to get us all out of this. Not to sound as if I were a stereotype, but I do miss cricket. Cricket on a village green, cricket at Lords. Holy cricket.” He sighed.
“Cricket. And the real crickets chirp when that yawn-inducer is played. But I’m pleased to meet you, Father. I’m going to change and find the others. And shoes – I’m looking forward to wearing shoes again.”
Father Travers smiled. “Just deposit your jammies in the laundry hamper.”
“Thanks. And, Father, you needn’t make my bed.”
“My son, I wouldn’t dream of not doing so. Would you deprive a poor man of his place in God’s ekonomia?”
A few minutes later O’Cannan, feeling much more the man in his own old slacks, old shirt, old blazer, and old shoes, real shoes, was alone in the centuries-old corridor, walking to the library, walking without an escort.
Left turn…or was that a right turn…nope, this was it.
The library doors were open to the corridor, and the collection, at a distance, at least, seemed pretty good, not unlike a nice little red-brick university in the era before glowing screens. Individuals were reading here and there, or searching the stacks, but the assembly of six men and women somewhat proprietarily occupying the table with the best view over the scree and the ocean appeared to be the group of which Father Travers had spoken.
He approached, but no one welcomed him.
“And you are…?” The clipped, neutering, interrogatory sentence was left unfinished by a young woman who, O’Cannan speculated, wore a red blazer in her previous life and who made existence pure Newark for anyone subordinate to her.
“Brendan O’Cannan.”
“Doctor O’Cannan, we are so pleased to meet you!” exclaimed the bald gentleman in the sweater-vest and half-rimmed spectacles, half rising from his seat.
“Oh, no, I’m high school graduate O’Cannan, eh.”
“You’re not Doctor O’Cannan, the ethno-eco-bio-engineer and visiting fellow of ethno-eco-bio-engineering at the Ali Bin D’Ouevre Institute in Beauville?” asked the grey-haired lady in the Che Guevera pullover.
“No, I’m ‘umble Mr. O’Cannan, the delivery man.”
“Oh, ho, ho, you will have your little joke with us, Doctor O’Cannan. Come and join us; I’ll make introductions all ‘round. We’re all new here, it seems.”
O’Cannan sat at the table; red-blazer woman pointedly moved her chair away by a millimeter or two.
“I’ll begin with myself – I’m Doctor Calvus Vertex, astronomy, University of Trout Creek, occupying the Mr. and Mrs. Bertram Augustus Gloriosus Chair of Astral Studies.”
O’Cannan nodded slightly.
“This is Doctor Sordida Mulier, professor of chemistry and advisor to the educational commission of the government of the Channel Islands.”
O’Cannan nodded slightly and murmured “Ma’am.”
“Quite,” replied Doctor Mulier, as if she were saying “quiet.”
“To my right is Doctor Anicula Vetula, former chair of mathematics…”
“That is ‘Chair of Higher Mathematics,’ thank you, doctor.” One could hear the capital letters.
“My apologies, esteemed colleague. Chair of Higher Mathematics” – Dr. Vertex accented the ‘higher’ ever so slightly, microscopically south of anything that could be adjudged irony – “at Inflatio Composite University.”
O’Cannan nodded slightly and murmured “Ma’am.”
“Kindly do not call me ‘ma’am.’ I am Doctor Vetula. You just don’t understand. I worked so hard for my doctorate, and I would appreciate it ever so much if you would call me Doctor Vetula.”
“Doctor Vetula,” replied O’Cannan slowly, slowly, selecting his words cautiously, “I apologize for greeting you respectfully as a gentleman to a lady. I will always regard you as a doctor of higher mathematics.”
“You Americans simply don’t understand how to comport yourselves in an academic setting. At a recent conference in San Francisco…”
“Doctor Vetula, I further apologize if I have unintentionally led you to infer that I am an American. I am in fact from Newfoundland.”
“Newfoundland – well, that’s a part of America.”
“Doctor Vetula, Newfoundland is, sure, a part of the North American continent, but although we like to think that I’s d’ bys, we are unfortunately associated politically with the Canadian regime, who too often do indeed act like the more unfortunate aspects of lower Canada, meaning our separated colonial brethren and sistren of the United States.”
“I’m sure I don’t understand your sub-cultural folkways and dialect. And, anyway, I have had little time for indulging in – harrumph -- geography while developing my quondam theory of higher geometrical progression of albino waves with regard to bio-tabular mega-micro-mechanics as interpreted through a holistic feminist filter of self-actuated thoroughness.”
“Damme if I wasn’t reading that in The Sun just last week, Doc; it was right next to the picture of Miss Saskatchewan Tractor Pull. Man, you shoulda seen the power takeoff on that little hottie..."
“I THINK WE MIGHT NOW CONTINUE WITH THE INTRODUCTIONS,” said Doctor Vertex in a suddenly powerful let’s-get-on-with-this voice. “Doctor O’Cannan, we also share incarceration with Doctor Inanus Vercelli, mathematician and consultant to numerous Silicon Valley firms.”
Doctor Vertex was speaking rapidly now.
“Here we are pleased to have Doctor Contus Saltator, who has reached the height of the study of physics, and next to her is Doctor Tarde Progreti, famous for his publications in impedance studies.
“Well, then, that’s our merry little band of intellectuals, as unfashionable as that term and that concept may be to certain disaffected right-wing no-nothings who would take us back to the Dark Ages of the 12th Century.
“And now to our new member, Doctor Brendan O’Cannan, the famous ethno-eco-bio-engineer whose radical and ground-breaking theories in ethno-eco-bio-engineering have pushed the envelope of the boundaries outside the box in that earth-shattering new mathematical discipline. His ideas will be of immense and immeasurable and uncountable help as we struggle to free humankind of the shackles of Triskelion.”
“Um…thank you, Doctor Vertex, but two problems appear to obtain. And before I begin, is everyone taking notes? Okay, here goes: (1) Don’t you think Triskelion is monitoring everything we say? And (2) I’m really, truly, and honestly not a doctor of anything; I barely graduated from high school. Honorable doctors, I am as I say, a deliveryman.”
“I understand,” whisper Doctor Vertex. “You want to fly under the radar. If Triskelion only knew…”
“I am quite sure Mister O’Cannan is no academic,” said Doctor Vetula. “He shouldn’t even be here. He can help that old fool who does such a poor job of cleaning up our dungeon.”
“I agree,” said Doctor Mulier. “He shouldn’t be here. He isn’t known.”
“Aw, I’m havin’ so much fun,” drawled O’Cannan. “Think I’ll sit a spell and rest my feet. Not used to shoes yet, eh.” Turning to Doctor Vertex he asked “So what’s the plan for getting’ off this rock, eh?”
“It could be worse," said Doctor Progreti. “He could be an English major. Goodness knows we don’t want anyone of that sort around here. Beowulf. Romantics. Blank verse. How perfectly reactionary and, well, déclassé.”
Doctor Vertex, barely suppressing a grin, held his lapels in his practiced Churchillian fashion and intoned: “Our plan is to shut down the Cloud of Electronic Unknowing, send radio and visual signals offshore free of interference, and thereby effect our escape from this fascist concentration camp.”
O’Cannan considered the six decidedly ineffective oddities at the table and said to himself: Escape? Bet me.
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