The Sinful Stones by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online

you’ve got to do is show an interest in their idiot beliefs, drop a hint or two that you feel like enlisting. The moment they see a chance of getting you out of that orange nonsense into a green one, they’ll beg you to stay.”
    â€œWhat do the colours mean?”
    â€œHa! Brown’s for earth, rock and stone. Green’s for growth and hope and that kind of nonsense. That orange number you’re sporting signifies the everlasting bonfire which will gobble up the good citizens of Babylon. I got to know the jargon damned well, one time. But you ask them that sort of question to start with, and they won’t care what you ask after.”
    â€œQuestions about you and your papers?”
    â€œAny questions at all, provided you put ’em right. Course you’re nosey about me—that’s why half the idiots come here in the first place—I’m the prize catch. You don’t think they’d expect you to be interested in anyone else in the island, hey?”
    â€œThey know I’m a policeman already.”
    â€œI’d have thought that’s a thing you’d keep under your hat.”
    â€œAll I said was that I was a civil servant. But one of the brothers called me Superintendent last night, after I saw you.”
    â€œNo odds. Everyone expects peelers to be half way to Colney Hatch. They’ll think you came to spy, remained to pray, hey? That won’t surprise them; why, their top thinker was a Gunner. You start with him—he’s a damned garrulous ninny with a footling moustache—in here at all hours prattling away—I like him. Start him off and he’ll tell you everything. Larky do if he converted you, hey?”
    â€œI’ll try to keep my end up.”
    â€œHaving no beliefs gives you no defence, young Pibble. What sort of pap did your irreligious dad feed into you?”
    â€œHe was an atheist, but not aggressive about it, and my mother was very serious about her religion. So he left it to her to send me to Sunday School and so on.”
    â€œAnd landed you with half a God and a few crumbs of creed, hey? Much good they’ll do you once our brown brothers start work. My dad did better by me, at least—he spoilt everything. I believe in me .”
    â€œYou never told me how good at his job my father was,” said Pibble.
    â€œPersistent little terrier, a’n’t you? Your father was a fair run-of-the-mill mechanic, and a damned good glassblower. Trouble was, he never learnt his place. First, he wasn’t contented with working for the Lab in general—he wanted to be somebody’s personal mechanic—mine—like Everett was J.J.’s. Next, he wanted to think about what I was doing, make suggestions, join in. Always borrowing my Journals to read, then coming back and asking damn-fool questions which showed he’d worried some theory out and got it all wrong. I couldn’t choke him off, because I needed him. Didn’t mind how late he worked for me, provided it wasn’t Sunday. J.J. never liked keeping the Lab open late, mark you—said we couldn’t afford the electricity. Your damned dad, Pibble, was the only man in that Laboratory who could blow me vessels big enough to play with my gas plasmas, if I wasn’t going to go crawling to Everett, or to Fred Lincoln with his waxed moustache and his big bum—and then I’d have to wait a fortnight. So I had to put up with his impertinent fool suggestions—and all the time, remember, knowing that he was earning more as a mechanic than I was. Me, the best mind of my generation, drudging along on a Readership worth forty quid a term, a hundred and twenty damned pounds a year.”
    â€œCould you live on that?”
    â€œI couldn’t, but I did. You saved out of your scholarship when you were an undergraduate. Not so hard for the others—clerks’ sons from places like Sheffield—see the class of company my dad