Manalone by Colin Kapp

raft itself had become a problem of even greater magnitude. By then it was too late to raise objections. The raft had become a social problem with no solution.
    It was the oil slicks of an earlier century which had given the raft its origin. The floating booms placed along the coast as a defence against the drifting tides of oil had germinated an idea. Ingenuity, population pressure, and sheer human desperation had done the rest. Some early pioneer, dispossessed of a place to live, had conceived the notion of living on a raft inside the area where the boom and the floating oil quietened the sea. Using plastic drums chained in loose association, and forming a flexible deck from matting interleaved with polythene sheeting, he had built thereon a hut which had served him as a home.
    The idea had survived and grown. Increasing automation of industry had forced the rising tide of unemployment to unparalleled levels. Such a massive loss of jobs and revenue gnawed away at the taxation system which had underpinned the welfare state. Appalling poverty for the unemployed was the unavoidable result. Under force of the need to build shelter for a family, the scene had developed, raft by associated raft, until the dangerous, undulating, pathetic shanty town had developed outwards on the sea.
    The authorities were staggered but powerless. By the end of the century twelve thousand families had taken to the raft, driven by the vicious rise in land prices to construct their own meagre dwellings on the seaspace. Inevitably the floating township was a slum, which stretched from Selsea in a tapered wedge as far as Littlebampton and beyond; watched by the glassy and averted eyes of the growing Bognor metropolis.
    The raft was‘illegal’ land. The Town tried to deny its existence; no rates could be levied without acknowledging its presence, and therefore it was the cheapest place to live. It had no streets, only dangerous alleyways between the shacks where new tenants had joined their rafts piecemeal on the seaward side of the old. Its only regular feature was the chain of floating breakwaters, frequently extended, which the government was forced to maintain around the exterior to prevent massive loss of life in periods of storm and heavy seas.
    The raft was a place of anonymity, hence its attraction for Paul when trying to escape the MIPS. It was a place of anonymous alleys, anonymous structures, and anonymous people – a community drawn tightly together by an open rejection by and of Authority and the law. It was a place of refuge for criminals, psychopaths, and those whose earnest skills could no longer fetch an economic return; a place where the police would venture only in groups of three; and where the hunted could find ample warning of pursuit and ready assistance in escape.
    Manalone sensed the unspoken wariness as soon as he set foot on the undulating raft. Fortunately, Paul had a year previously shown him the location of Kitten’s hut. Studiously ignoring his critical watchers, he strode purposefully through the filthy walkways. His outward show of confidence was probably the only thing that saved him from molestation. Strangers were not welcome on the raft, but among the generally purposeless inhabitants a display of purpose was something to be treated with caution.
    His memory for detail served him well. He made his way straight to Kitten’s shack. This was one of the more durable structures on the raft – a one-roomed hut of heavy timber, with the walls and roof dark with a coating of blistered tar. Manalone knocked on the door with some indecision. He had suddenly become very unsure of how to phrase the things he had come to say.
    ‘Typical of you, Manalone! With machines you’re a bright-eyed genius … but when it comes to people … you haven’t got what it takes. Kitten scares the hell out of you. And why? Because she’s ten times the character you are.’
    He had nocause to revise his estimate of her when she opened the