Number 240 was Number 6’s own observer. However having been unable to find No.6, Number 240 asks her Supervisor-Number 22 if she should watch Number 34 instead? But the Supervisor tells her coldly that he’s dead. Number Six, having spent a night on the beach, wakes up to discover a dead man in the water.
In his pockets he finds a wallet containing a photograph of a man and woman, and a small transistor radio in a leather pouch. There can be no doubt that the photograph found in the dead man’s wallet was taken in the Village, with the couple sat by the pool and fountain. What’s more it can be surmised that the dead man Number Six found in the water that morning was Number 34. Yes it is a fact that there was no badge of identification pinned to the jersey of the dead man, but that could easily have come off in the water.
Number Six took and kept the radio he found in the dead man’s pocket, for which he was eventually put on trial for. Not that fact that he took the said radio, but for the simple possession of it. Number Six no doubt thought he would hear something from the outside world, his world as he saw it. So Number 6 took the radio from Number 34’s pocket, but how did Number 34 obtain such a radio? It seems unlikely that he had a radio of his own, that there was no radio he could have borrowed, so he must have brought it into the Village with him! But surely if he had brought a suitcase with him to the Village it would have been searched, and the radio discovered, unless he had help in some way. You see to my mind Number 34 could well have been a plant in the Village, and the young woman pictured with him in the photograph was in all probability his wife, and now widow.
The fact that the man in the photograph is wearing a open neck shirt, is suggestive that the photograph was actually taken on the day of his arrival here in the Village.
Who Number 34 was working for will forever remain unknown, except to those who sent him to the Village in the first place. What 34’s business was in the Village will also remain unknown, unless it was to gain information about the Village itself. You will recall how secret agent John Drake whilst working for M9 of British Military Intelligence once infiltrated ‘Colony 3,’ in the guise of Robert Fuller, because so many people with certain skills and aptitudes were disappearing, either abducted, or having defected. Well this could have been the same reason for Number 34’s infiltration of the Village, to discover why so many people had been disappearing, and to where. It is likely that somehow, we do not know how but possibly through a Labour Exchange, or employment agency, that Number 34 got himself recruited to the Village, with the help of those behind the man.
So what can we deduce about the dead No.34? A brief description would have him as being middle aged, approximately 5 feet 10 inches tall, about 160 pounds, with fair hair. He was wearing a dark turtle neck jersey, light grey trousers, and deck shoes, which is an indication that this man was a citizen of the Village. It would appear that there are no marks on the body, this is suggestive that No.34 died by suffocation or drowned and suffocated, by the membranic Village Guardian.
Why the Village Guardian would attack Number 34 is probably because he was abroad after curfew. Why the man was out of the Village after curfew is unknown, although Number 6 was also out of his cottage after curfew, probably because he felt stifled and caged in his cottage. It is possible that No.34 wanted to be completely alone, and unobserved so that he could tune in his radio and listen for a possible message from his principles, his masters.
So Number 6 came in possession of a radio, he sat tuning the radio in on the outlook above the cliffs, and listened to a radio broadcast, it follows;
“Nowhere is there more beauty than here. Tonight when the moon rise’s the whole world will turn to silver. Do you understand, it is important that you understand. I have a message for you, you must listen. The appointment cannot be fulfilled. Other things must be done tonight.
If our torment is to end, if liberty is to be restored, we must grasp the nettle even though it makes our hands bled. Only through pain can tomorrow be assured.”
It is assured that that message was not intended for Number 6. However it did bring him down on the beach that evening of ‘Dance of the Dead,’ looking for a light, a boat, a plane, someone from the outside world. So it can be assumed that the message was meant of the dead man Number 34, and it appears, discerning from the message, that something had gone wrong!
One interpretation of part of that message is, that the appointment cannot be fulfilled, that there were other, more important things that had to be done. In other words, Number 34 who was under the impression that he was to have been extracted from the Village by force or forces unknown, had been hung out to dry in the Village, with no way of escape!
However there is a question regarding the origin of that message, and who originated it. Because the voice come over the radio sounds to me like that or a previous Number 2 of ‘Free For All’ {Eric Portman}. What’s more this part of the message: “If our torment is to end, if liberty is to be restored, we must grasp the nettle even though it makes our hands bled. Only through pain can tomorrow be assured,” reads as though it could have originated from somewhere within the Village itself! Perhaps the former Number 2 who once toasted “to hell with the Village,’ really meant those words, and was now instigating rebellion in within the Village. In talking about ending the torment of the citizens, and restoring their liberty to them, that to do that means it will take open rebellion by grasping the nettle, even though many will get hurt. But only through pain can tomorrow be assured. Yes I know there’s a flaw in that thinking, that that particular Number 2 actually left the Village by helicopter!
I suppose the next question is, who is the young woman in the photograph?
It is clearly difficult to say with any great certainty, certainly further investigation has revealed absolutely nothing about her, save for the fact that she knew Number 34 otherwise he would not have carried the photograph of them together in his wallet. That it is possible that the young woman could have been Number 34’s wife, who came to the Village with him husband.
To sum up my somewhat brief piece of investigative journalism into this matter, all I can be sure of, is that I can be sure of nothing, so nothing new there then!
Our own reporter
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