by Ken Saunders
‘The Luddite website,’ Fiona prompted, trying to nudge the conversation back into the current century. She motioned to Renard who clicked on his Gargantuan. The screen in the room lit up with the Luddite Party homepage. It had a mundane banner heading: The Luddite Party of Australia. Underneath was an old map of Australia, probably drawn by one of the earliest European explorers. Only the west coast of Australia was clearly defined, with the eastward projections of the continent tailing off, unknown. Across the expanse of the Australian continent were scrawled the words: Here be dragons.
Lister St John was someone who truly believed his time was money. ‘Why are you wasting my time?’ he demanded. ‘Surely we don’t have to respond to a party as fucking ridiculous as this.’
‘What else is on the website?’ Langdon asked.
‘Nothing.’ Fiona pressed her hands together. ‘There are no tabs, no links, no party platform, no place to donate money to the cause.’
‘A postmodern joke,’ the Prime Minister offered reluctantly. He had never really understood what postmodernism was supposed to be. Now that retro-postmodernism was around, he was even less sure.
‘Perhaps,’ Fiona conceded, ‘but now we come to the second thing they’ve done: organise two demonstrations. There has been sophisticated planning behind them. All the paperwork was correctly submitted two months ago, all the demonstration participant photo IDs issued, all the placards filed with the Protective Office for inspection and redistribution tomorrow. Without our knowing it, Ned Ludds around the country registered quietly for these demonstrations.’
‘How could you not have known of this?’ Fitzwilliams demanded, unsure whether he had fired the question at the ASIO director or his Minister for Security and Freedom.
‘They registered at different Protective Offices around the country. No one picked up on it.’ Fiona opened her hands in apology. ‘Most people working in the Protective Offices are hired for their bureaucratic officiousness, not their inquisitiveness. The enrolments of any demonstration are tabulated online. These demonstrations are small. ASIO is only alerted when a demonstration exceeds twenty-five people enrolled. A cost-saving measure,’ she offered lamely. ‘Tomorrow there are thirteen in the first demonstration and nineteen in the evening one.’
Across the table, Russ Langdon blinked at the announcement of the two prime numbers.
Olga leaned back in her chair, stroking her chin slowly.‘But there are still the security searches. The kind of people the Protective Office employs can drag out the security searches at the entrance to the mustering area. They can make sure the demonstration doesn’t take place on time.’
‘After Renard received the letter last week, we immediately stepped up surveillance on all known Neds, those who changed their names back in 2019,’ Fiona Brennan outlined. ‘They still don’t use email to communicate, nor do they discuss their plans on the phone. To date, we have intercepted only one message between Luddites regarding the demonstration.’
‘How did you get that?’ Langdon queried.
The director hesitated, clearly embarrassed. ‘The message was dispatched by pigeon—insufficiently trained, it seems. Someone found it hobbling around Parramatta Park and took it to a vet. She detached the message and contacted us.’
‘We’re worried about a group that uses messenger pigeons?’ Lister St John asked the room incredulously.
Fiona raised her eyebrows. ‘The message from the pigeon indicates that the Luddites intend to march in the nude.’
There was silence. The Prime Minister immediately looked at Olga for her reaction. Her mouth was open, but her dark brown eyes were darting busily. Suddenly, she sat bolt upright and a curious smile appeared on her face. Then she relaxed back in her chair and chuckled softly. In the stillness of the room, the chuckle seemed to reverberate.
‘What is so fucking funny?’ Lister St John demanded.
Olga seemed almost admiring of the Luddites and their plans. ‘It’s brilliant. There’s nothing to search. The Protective Office can have them step through the x-ray machine at most. It won’t delay them sufficiently.’
‘Are you saying they’re allowed to parade naked?’ Lister asked. ‘They aren’t allowed to parade about fucking naked!’ he shouted at her, suspecting she was going to give him the wrong answer.
‘Stop swearing, Mr St John.’ She held up a finger. ‘Prime Minister, I apologise. The Luddites have found a weakness in the Demonstration Protection Act I did not know was there.’
Lister St John couldn’t decide between incredulity and fury and opted for both. ‘Don’t let this Russian tell you that they can parade about fucking—’ Olga fixed him with a glare ‘—parade about naked,’ he compromised, losing the momentum. ‘That can’t be legal!’
‘I’ll explain simply why they can and will, Mr St John,’ Olga replied. ‘When we framed the Demonstration Protection Act, we lavished on it all sorts of fundamental rights to cover every minority opinion we could. The obstacles we put in the way of their demonstrations were purely bureaucratic. We devised the protective clauses of the legislation to eliminate large demonstrations, the kind where you have three thousand people shouting obscenities—’ here Olga fixed her eyes on Lister St John again ‘—throwing stones at the police and trying to storm our meeting places. The Demonstration Protection Act enshrined many rights and the act supersedes many other laws in effect, in this case the public decency laws.’
Prime Minister Fitzwilliams could not believe it. ‘Surely not,’ was all he could manage to say.
‘One of the clauses in the opening part of the legislation concerns attire. What was in the public mind then was a fixation about burqas. Some in the community believed a person with a burqa could conceal a veritable arsenal of weapons and bombs beneath those robes. Many people, including radio host Jim Jarvis, wanted them banned you’ll recall, Prime Minister. The Demonstration Protection Act did the contrary. We enshrined the right of attire. Demonstrators had the right to wear anything they wanted. What we did do, however, was make security searches mandatory, security searches that could be of such an intrusive level that no one who wore a burqa would ever submit to such humiliation. Problem solved. Bureaucratically perfect. What the Luddites have done is appreciate the full possibilities of the attire clause. They are exploiting the uni-directional nature of the procedural measures.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Russ Langdon said. ‘You’ve lost me there.’
‘The enshrinement of the right of attire of one’s choice is unconditional, broad enough that, in tomorrow’s case, it covers even a total lack of attire. The procedural measures we put in go in only one direction; they are designed to make people take clothes off, not put them on. There is no security measure required for nudity. We can make them walk through the x-ray machine to ensure they haven’t swallowed a bomb—or worse—but for thirteen demonstrators and nineteen demonstrators, that won’t take much time.’
‘Bloody fucking hell!’ Lister slammed his fist on the table. ‘I’m not having us call an election in front of a bunch of nudists! We have everything ready to roll for tomorrow and I won’t have it wrecked by these clothes-deprived gits with their fucking dragons and fucking pigeons. The media!’ he despaired. ‘They’re going to fucking love this!’
‘Lister!’ Fitzwilliams summoned his parliamentary question time tone. ‘Try not to go entirely to pieces on Day Zero of the election campaign.’
Langdon shook his head. ‘It won’t be such a media hoo-ha. Any naturist would tell you that nudity quickly becomes quite routine. The media will find that people having no clothes on isn’t all that sensational.’
The Prime Minister’s inner alarm system had gone off at the word ‘naturist’. Naturist? No one used that word for nudists, not unless they were a bloody nudist themselves. Fitzwilliams didn’t want to think about Langdon at a nudist colony. God, he thought, there better not be any photos.
‘What planet are you from?’ St John demanded of Langdon. ‘We’re talking about publi
c nudity. Of course the media is going to love it. It’ll be a feeding frenzy!’
‘I suspect Lister is right,’ Fiona chimed in. While the original three thousand or so people who renamed themselves Ned Ludd are of all shapes and sizes, the thirty-two registered demonstrators tomorrow appear to have been selected for their, er, athletic fitness, shall we say. They won’t be hard on the eyes,’ she predicted. ‘There is not much more ASIO can contribute here, Prime Minister. I have arranged the paperwork for Renard, under the name Ned Ludd, to attend the demonstration tomorrow as an additional demonstrator.’
‘What?’ Renard squeaked softly.
‘I was going to tell you later, Renard.’ Fiona smiled at him. ‘After that,’ she informed the Prime Minister, ‘we’ll be limited in how much more we can help. The Luddites will be running in this election. ASIO cannot be at the disposal of one party against another during an election. The Luddites may be utterly secretive, but that in itself is not an offence. At this point, there is nothing to indicate that they are engaged in subversive activities.’
‘They are bloody well trying to subvert our event tomorrow,’ Lister St John snarled.
‘That is a political inconvenience for you; it is not an ASIO matter,’ the director responded primly. ‘Renard attending tomorrow is purely a prudent bit of information-gathering. That is all ASIO will do. The agency must remain politically neutral.’
Prime Minister Fitzwilliams felt numb. Normally, he liked to dismiss the self-assured Fiona Brennan from a meeting with a curt, ‘You may go.’ He let her go this time with a simple wave of his hand.
Fiona paused at the door. ‘One thing, Prime Minister. I wish to stress that the Luddites appear to have known exactly when you were planning to call the election.’ She smiled. ‘It is not necessarily my business—but you have a leak.’ She closed the door behind her.
...
Prime Minister Fitzwilliams wanted his last campaign to be simple. Everything was in place. His cabinet team was adequate, familiar to the electorate. The economy was solid. The howling protest of the doctors after the GP changes had finally died down. He would retire after this one. He deserved an easy election. Instead he was feeling dazed before the campaign had even begun.
There was silence in the room after the ASIO pair had left. The others were waiting for him to speak, Fitzwilliams realised. ‘I …’ he began.
‘What the fuck are we going to do?’ Lister demanded.
With each successive campaign, the Prime Minister had come to dislike Lister St John more. Balding, vain, crude … Why had balding sprung to mind? he wondered. Hardly a character flaw and Lister St John had no shortage of proper ones to list. No matter what was decided here, Fitzwilliams would be the one to decide it. Whatever Lister proposed doing, he would veto.
Another thought popped into his head and settled there. This was his last election. He was never going to need to be re-elected. He could fire Lister St John. He’d wait until a few days out from the vote, haul Lister St John into his office and sack him. ‘But we’re ahead,’ he could imagine St John whining. ‘You misunderstand,’ he would reply, ‘I’m sacking you not because of the job you’ve done; I’m sacking you because you’re an objectionable human being.’
‘Well?’ Lister demanded again. ‘Say something. You’re just sitting there and this one over here—’ he indicated Olga O’Rourke ‘—is smiling like the Cheshire cat.’
Fitzwilliams shifted into decisive mode. ‘I’ll delay the announcement of the election until six pm. At three thirty the Luddites will have their smaller demonstration. Nudity near parliament will be treated as a bit of titillation, and back at the networks they’ll be swearing away at all the pixilating they’ll have to do. Though the delay means we miss the election call being the lead story on the evening news, we get to interrupt the news at six instead.’
‘That might be even better,’ Langdon put in.
The Prime Minister smiled. There were times when it was good to have a Russ Langdon around. He continued, ‘Following my announcement, I’ll answer twenty minutes of questions and then head directly to the cabinet rally outside parliament at seven. The media will be scrambling at that point, so when a second sorry little gang of nudists shows up demanding extra time on their fifteen minutes of fame, they’ll be ignored. Sure, they’ll make a ripple on the internet. Any bit of nudity will, but between six and seven thirty pm, we will be the story!’ Fitzwilliams leaned back, satisfied.
Lister St John was reserving the right to disapprove, but hadn’t thought out an alternative plan. The Prime Minister looked at Olga O’Rourke. While the Cheshire cat allusion had been an exaggeration, Olga did have a slight smile on her face. ‘What do you think, Olga?’ he asked. ‘You seem oddly satisfied with the turn of events.’
‘Labor are an inept opposition and the Greens are in bankruptcy proceedings,’ she observed. ‘It was going to be a boring campaign. The Luddites are intriguing.’
The Prime Minister had been looking forward to a boring campaign.
‘The actions of the Luddites show some shrewdness,’ Olga observed. ‘We have no idea about them as a political party. They may still be a joke.’ She smiled again. ‘Or we may have a formidable opponent on our hands. I might say at this point, “The game’s afoot, Watson.”’
‘What do you think of my plan for tomorrow then?’ the PM asked tentatively.
‘I cannot say.’ She appeared to be deep in thought. ‘This is an unexpected opening move from an opponent we didn’t know we were playing. Normally, one would want to consider all our options carefully before responding, but they have left us no time for that. We must move. The clock is ticking. We must ask ourselves, how do they expect us to react? Their next thrust is planned in anticipation of that.’
‘Good God!’ Lister St John exclaimed. ‘We’re supposed to be running an election campaign here and this one thinks she’s fucking Garry Kasparov.’
Olga shot to her feet. Before anyone could react, she’d grabbed Lister by his shirt and yanked his face in front of hers. ‘Don’t you ever,’ she hissed through her teeth, ‘say a foul word in front of the name of Garry Kasparov again!’ She released her grip, throwing him back into the chair.
Fitzwilliams’ mouth was agape. He felt an entirely inappropriate glow of enjoyment at Olga’s rough handling of his campaign manager. He snapped himself back to attention. ‘Yes,’ he piped up chirpily. ‘That’s an easy enough instruction, Lister. Don’t ever say a foul word in front of the name of Garry Kasparov again. Chess grandmasters deserve respect.’
St John seemed temporarily stunned. Bullies often were when confronted, Fitzwilliams reflected. It was so perfect a moment, the Prime Minister couldn’t resist closing on that note. ‘Thank you all for coming,’ he said, as if everything had gone swimmingly. He stood up and left the room.
It was only much later that he recalled they had not discussed the leak.
CHAPTER THREE
Renard Prendergast was in the Demonstration Mustering Zone outside Parliament House, and he was naked. The last twenty-four hours, he reflected, had been unusual to say the least.
Fiona Brennan’s declaration to the Prime Minister that Renard would be joining the thirteen nude Luddites at the first demonstration had taken him completely by surprise. The discussion afterwards in Fiona Brennan’s office had been surreal. The director had cajoled him, not ordered him, to do it. She had sat there like an encouraging grandparent. ‘I appreciate the regular work you do for ASIO, but this assignment is something different. It’s out and about. You’ll meet people.’ Meet people? She made it sound as if she was concerned he had no social life. He had plenty of social life. His friends would think this hilarious, his girlfriend Taylor probably less so. ‘You have a fine body, Renard,’ Fiona assured him. ‘You shouldn’t be shy about showing it off.’
He tried pointing out the obvious flaw in her plan.‘The Luddites have scheduled thirteen marchers. I may have changed my name to Ned Ludd nine years ago and joi
ned the party, but when I show up to the demonstration tomorrow uninvited with all my paperwork mysteriously done, they’re going to know I’m a plant.’
‘That’s true,’ Fiona conceded. ‘But it’s a one-off thing tomorrow. Find out what you can. That’s all we are asking.’ Fiona believed that the Luddites had intended for their messenger pigeon to be discovered. They apparently wanted the Prime Minister to know what they had planned. That ASIO hadn’t discovered the Luddite’s actual communication system most likely meant they kept internal communications to a minimum. ‘Those attending the demonstration tomorrow will likely only know their assignment for the day. They won’t necessarily know each other.’ The Luddite leadership would quickly finger Renard as an ASIO spy, but those there on the day might not. It was Renard’s chance to find out something. When the director had followed this up with a ‘Please?’ Renard heard his own voice agreeing to do it. He would have sworn he was only mulling it over.
At the demonstration assembly point, Renard quietly joined the small group of Luddites undressing. When Fiona Brennan had summoned him to Canberra, he hadn’t considered it important which underwear he shoved into his overnight bag. He was, he grimaced, wearing the novelty pair his sister had given him for Christmas with the image of Wonder Woman emblazoned on the crotch. Getting totally naked was somehow preferable to letting the world see this embarrassing pair of underpants.
The Luddites were well organised. A Luddite arrived in a van and distributed boxes for the demonstrators to store their clothing in. He also produced all the paperwork for the Protective Office. Inside the DMZ, Protective Office officials grudgingly released the Luddite placards that had been duly submitted for approval days earlier. The placards met all compliance standards. The sticks the signs were mounted on were the regulation collapsible kind that would break if anyone tried to swing one against riot police. The Demonstration Protection Act, after all, was designed only to protect demonstrators against terrorists, not against the police should the coppers decide a particular demonstration needed busting up. Renard took a placard. There was absolutely nothing written on it.