“But we share data with the Americans all the time,” Bantling said. “Why, Professor Bergdorf and I are in constant touch by email, tossing ideas back and forth. I feel certain that if he knew something I didn’t, I’d know about it. If you see what I mean.”
“That’s what Bergdorf would like you to think, professor. But there are state secrets he’s prohibited from passing on even if he wanted to. He’s been carrying out experiments so classified that he’d be shot just for accidentally mentioning them to his wife.”
Bantling opened his mouth and closed it again. Bergdorf? Hiding things from him? Inconceivable!
And yet at the same time it was all too conceivable. Bergdorf was brilliant in his field, an off-the-scale intellect. Bantling had always been surprised that he treated him, Bantling, as an equal. Flattered, too, but mainly surprised.
But then if Bergdorf had merely been feeding him scraps all along, like a dog at the table, and patting him on the head every so often when he did something clever…
It made a horrible kind of sense.
“What,” he asked Nutter, dry-mouthed, “do they have that we don’t?”
“I believe you mentioned a ‘universal language-negation logovirus’ the other day,” replied Nutter.
“They…” Bantling could not finish the sentence.
Nutter could. “They have.”
14
The President of the United States took the British Prime Minister’s call at 3 p.m. GMT on Wednesday June 24th.
Virtually the first words out of the President’s mouth were “I’ll thank you for not swearing during this conversation.” He said this as a devout Baptist but also because his scientific advisers had warned him to take such a precaution. By some miracle, the Bowdler logovirus had not spread to any other English-speaking parts of the world, most likely due to extreme regional variations in accent and dialect. This did not mean that all possible preventive care should not be taken, though.
The Prime Minister scrupulously avoided even the mildest of oaths as he outlined his request to the President.
The President was eventually persuaded to do as asked, but only with extreme reluctance.
“We ain’t in the habit of using our weapons on our friends,” he said. “Leastways, not on purpose. But in this case I’m gonna have to make an exception.”
“I’m grateful,” said the Prime Minister. “I hope we can chat again sometime soon—although I fear that may not be feasible.”
“Been nice talking with you, pal. Always has.”
The President opened a military hotline and gave the authorisation protocols for an attack on Great Britain.
Within the hour, B2 bombers were on their way across the Atlantic.
15
The Babel Bombs screamed down from the heavens, ready to blare their sonic message like the trump of doom on Judgement Day.
They detonated above city centres and rural areas alike. They roared at gigadecibel level, each loud enough to be heard fifty miles away. Saturation bombardment ensured that there wasn’t a single resident of the British Isles who remained out of earshot. Even at Chilton Mead, the effects of the Babel Bombs were felt, and in some sense were welcomed. Here, after all, was where it had all started. Here, therefore, were the people who least deserved to escape retribution.
Bantling and Nutter sat in Nutter’s office, either side of the desk. There had been silence between them for a long while. Now, finally, Nutter spoke.
“ ,” he said.
Bantling assessed the other man’s body language and decided to agree. With a nod, he said, “ .”
“ !” Nutter shot back testily.
Bantling realised he had misinterpreted. “ ,” he said, in a mollifying tone of voice, and added, “ .”
Nutter frowned. “ ?”
“ ,” the professor confirmed.
“ ,” said Nutter. He let his shoulders rise and fall in a tragic shrug.
“ ,” Bantling replied emphatically.
And he meant it, as well.
TERMINAL EVENT
There was a stillness when dawn broke that morning, as there was every morning. A silence of held breaths throughout the city, the country, the world. Birds waited in the trees. Streets stood empty, traffic-less. People lay awake in their beds and listened.
Then—who knows where, who knows whom—someone stirred, or coughed, or twitched, or whispered, and from this tiny point of disturbance, this flap of a butterfly’s wing, activity rippled rapidly outwards in concentric waves, spreading, chain-reacting, until soon everybody was up and talking and preparing breakfast and washing their faces and getting dressed, and cars filled the thoroughfares, and birdsong blared forth, and the day at last, belatedly, began.
The girl beside me was corn-haired and cat-eyed. I could not remember her name; nor did I expect her to remember mine. Somewhere in the midst of last night’s carousing we had paired off. Tired of yelling above music din, we had set to kissing, tonguing, groping. Very drunk, we had staggered in search of a taxi. We had been staggered to find a vacant one after looking for only a few minutes. At that hour, hot and deep into the night, when apparently everyone in the city was trying to get home, vacant taxis were gold dust. Cheering our luck, we had chatted with the driver, as though a trio of old friends, all the way back to my flat. The meter had been running but there had been no question of him asking for, or us paying, the fare.
More alcohol—wine from the refrigerator—and then the inevitable, purposeful sex by the light of scented candles. And now, dry of mouth and thick of head, I looked at her while she snoozed on, and I wondered how many men she had slept with over the past few months and how many women I had slept with in that same period. The way things stood, the chances were extremely high that I had had sex with someone who had had sex with someone who had had sex with her. Three degrees of separation. Three degrees of intimacy.
I rolled out of bed and slouched into the kitchen, where I brewed coffee as hot and strong as Satan’s blood and cooked a buttery fry-up of eggs, bacon, fried bread, sausages and tomatoes. The smell of food brought the girl round from slumber and out of the bedroom in a T-shirt of mine. We ate at the sitting-room table with the window wide open beside us and all the sounds of the street as accompaniment to our clacking cutlery and munching mouths. Stereos everywhere were playing. Some rooftop parties had already begun (or else were picking up again from last night after a brief hiatus during the small hours). The hot-rod fraternity were down at the kerbside tinkering with their engines; later, they would get into their cars and vroom off out past the suburbs, taking to the motorways for headlong, heedless drag-races. Old Mr Cartwright across the road was out on his balcony in a deckchair, a knotted handkerchief on his head, rereading a much-loved novel. Mrs Reuben, one floor below him, was watering her windowboxes. The sun was already beating down hard—amber light, bluish shadows.
“You off then?” I asked the girl as she deposited her empty plate in the kitchen sink.
“Just let me have a ciggy first,” she replied, and fetched a pack of Marlboro Extra Strength from the pocket of her combat pants, which were strewn on the bedroom floor. She lit up and offered the cigarettes to me. I refused.
“Given up?” she asked.
“Never started.”
“Now’s the time.”
“Don’t like the smell. The smoke makes my eyes itch.”
“Oh well. It’s not as if you’re completely vice-free.”
“I should hope not.”
I watched her as she sucked the cigarette down to the filter, considerately wafting her smoke towards the window.
“I enjoyed last night,” I told her.
“Did you? Or do you think you should just say that?”
“Bit of both.”
“We don’t have to bullshit each other.”
“I know. Old habits, I suppose.”
She offered an almost touching smile. “Look, you weren’t the best I’ve had, you weren’t the worst. L
et’s leave it at that.”
“Suits me.”
A few minutes later she had dressed and was gone.
I checked the internet for the best entertainment this evening. Endtimefun.com recommended a warehouse rave up in the north of town. BoptillUdrop.co.uk plumped for an open-air concert on wasteland south of the river. It would be feasible to attend both, but the latter of the two sounded marginally more fun. The line-up of bands was appealing, drugs would be available at the door, alcohol would be on tap all night.
I took a shower. The bathroom mirror showed just how out of shape I had let myself become. There was no point pretending they were pectorals any more; they were tits, plain and simple. My abdominals, the old six-pack, were long gone, buried beneath a spongy swag of flab. I patted my belly with both hands like a favourite dog.
The phone rang. Draping a towel over me like a toga, I went to answer it.
“Paul? It’s Ashley.”
“Ash! How you doing? What’s occurring?”
“It’s time.”
“Time?”
“For me. I’ve decided. I’m going to do it.”
“Today?”
“Yeah, today. Now. Would you come over? I don’t want to be alone.”
There was a buzz in the back of my throat, a thrum of nothingness.
“Paul?”
“OK, Ash. Sure. I’ll come over. On my way.”
On the high street they had set up a clap clinic, doctors dispensing advice and antibiotics from a white-painted Portakabin. Beside it, a body-ornamentation specialist had erected a stall, and there was a small line of people queuing up for that tattoo or that piercing they had always been meaning to get. A corner café was thronged, patrons lolling out on the pavement with their coffees and teas and sandwiches and rolls. The restaurant next door to it, which had once been an Indian, was cycling through cuisines from around the globe. This week it was Lebanese; Indonesian was advertised for next week. The immense red-brick Catholic church opposite had thrown its doors open to permit a twenty-four-hour influx and outflux of worshippers—the lifelong devout and the freshly converted and those who were simply after a little last-minute religious insurance. Further along the road, Mr Singh, the local newsagent, was washing the windows of his shop. He no longer had any newspapers or magazines to sell, but he took pride in his premises and liked to keep busy. The nearby Odeon was holding a disaster-movie retrospective. I had attended a couple of screenings. There was something absurdly comforting about those celluloid mini-apocalypses. As a rule, someone always survived.
I took a shortcut to Ash’s through the park. God knows how many people were flying kites from the small rise that overlooked the duckpond. The sky was filled with batwings and diamonds and hollow boxes and ribbed parachutes, all swooping and looping and trailing their tails. The ducks, meanwhile, could not recall a time when they had been so well fed. Bread crusts were being tossed their way by the fistful, and some of them had grown so plump that they could barely swim, let alone waddle. All across the grass there were human bodies sprawled in various states of undress, pairs of them locked in embraces—sometimes very passionate embraces indeed. Unleashed dogs ran rampant, lolloping around in pursuit of pack unity or simply a sphincter to sniff. There was a game of kickabout under way, shirts versus barebacks, all the participants except the goalkeepers charging after the ball. In the recreation area, clambering children shouted. In trees, clambering adults did the same.
Ash lived just beyond the park, on the third floor of a Victorian townhouse. The lock on the front door to the building had been permanently disabled. I nudged the door open and climbed the stairs.
He was playing music at top volume—Bowie’s “Five Years”—but when I knocked and entered the flat, he hit the Stop switch, ejected the CD and returned it to its case. The song was one track out of forty on the two-disc anthology Literally the Ultimate Compilation Album in the World…Ever!. Other tracks included “The End” by the Doors, “Dancing With Tears in My Eyes” by Ultravox, Prince’s “1999”, R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)”, “(Nothing But) Flowers” by Talking Heads, and “Eve of Destruction” by Barry McGuire. I myself owned a copy of the album. I did not know anyone who did not. I would probably have bought it even if the record shops had not been giving it away. Apoc rock. It was the coming thing.
Ash grinned at me. An incomplete grin—unconvinced, unconvincing. The moment I saw it, I knew I might have a chance of talking him out of doing what he was intending to do. I also knew I should be subtle about it; I should not make it obvious that I was trying to dissuade him. That would put unfair pressure on him. Whatever the outcome, whether he went through with what he was planning or not, I did not want him resenting me.
Like me, Ash had grown chubby. A second chin was slung beneath his first, a silky hammock of flesh. He did not bother trying to do up the top button of his jeans any more. God, but we had been athletic lads once, not so long ago. Both of us on the running team at school, him a sprinter, me middle-distance. Both mad as anything about exercise. Intoxicated by the fact that we were so much leaner, lither, fitter, purer than everyone else. We would live for ever! Now, excess and indolence had made us saggy; had prematurely middle-aged us. We got out of breath easily. Our clothes did not fit properly. Our arteries were sewers. We did not care.
“You all right?” he asked.
“Parched. Could do with a drink.”
“Lager? Wine? Voddie?”
“Water’ll do fine. Pint of. Ice.”
He brought me tap water clinking in a glass stolen from a pub. He had a litre-bottle of Stolichnaya for himself.
“I thought we might go upstairs. The roof.”
“Why not?” I said. “Have you got the Kit?”
“Just for a chat.”
That was good, I thought. An encouraging sign. Maybe he wasn’t fully committed. Maybe he did want to be talked out of it after all.
There was a stepladder on the top-floor landing, left there so that the household’s residents could gain access to the roof at any time. Up through the skylight we climbed, me carrying my water precariously, Ash clutching the vodka bottle by the neck. The roof tiles radiated a pleasant heat, still bearable to touch. Discarded cigarette butts, drinks cans, crisp-packets and sweet wrappers clogged the guttering. Blankets were provided, for lying on. Someone had adapted a small table for use up here, hacking off two of its legs and sticking chocks under the other two to keep its surface horizontal. A pack of playing cards, a game of Connect 4, some tatty and sun-faded paperbacks, a small radio…We had everything we could have wished for.
Hunkered side by side on the tiles, Ash and I gazed across the city, across jagged ranks of rooftops to the brown-hazed horizon, where jumbo jets soared, taking passengers to or from the holiday destinations they had always wanted to visit.
“Get up to anything interesting last night?” Ash enquired.
“Oh, the usual. You?”
He swigged from the bottle. “Stayed in. Didn’t sleep much. I was thinking about…you know. Been thinking about it for a while now, of course. What it’ll feel like, and what happens after. Whether it’s, like, harps and angels, or just the Big Sleep.”
“And have you drawn any firm conclusions on the issue that’s plagued and puzzled humankind since the dawn of consciousness? Made any giant leaps forward that the world should know about?”
“Well, no. But whatever the afterlife’s like, it’s got to be better than sitting here talking to a facetious arsehole like you.”
“Ooh! ‘Facetious arsehole’! Hark at her!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, Paul, can we be serious for once in our lives? Please? You probably want to humour me out of this. You probably think all you have to do it make me laugh and I’ll change my mind. I’m really not going to. I’ve made my decision. Did a few days ago, actually. Since then it’s been a question of screwing up the courage, and I have. I’m ready. I’ve made myself ready. I’ve
hit this plateau, and it’s right, I know it is. I’ve fought down all the doubts, all the fears. I’ve struggled and I have this certainty now, this sense that all the pieces are in place. It’s a good feeling. But it was hard-won, and it could crumble away if I’m not careful, and I don’t want that. I want to go out on this feeling. So be nice. Be my friend. Don’t make me lose what I’ve achieved. I’d be really pissed off if that happened.”
I caught words back in my throat, a dozen bubbling witticisms, a hundred smart-aleck remarks, a thousand hilarious jibes. I said nothing, and then said, simply, quietly, “You’re not going to wait?”
“I’m not going to wait,” he replied, nodding. “I could. I would. But why? Why bother? What would be the point? I could wait and wait and keep waiting, but I’ll probably never again reach this place I’m in, this zone of…acceptance, I reckon the word is. Yeah, acceptance. It could come, the biggie, the T.E., and I might not be ready. It could come and I’d be afraid and I don’t want to be afraid and I’m not now, so why not do it? Why not do it now, when I’m calm, content, secure, serene?”
“Yeah, OK, I can understand that, Ash. But at the same time—and I’m just expressing an opinion here, right, I’m not trying to undermine you—at the same time you don’t know how long there is left. No one does. It could be weeks, months, years even. So many more days and nights to have fun and piss about in. Think of all the shagging and self-abuse you could be missing out on.”
“But equally it could happen tomorrow. It could happen this afternoon. It could happen in a couple of minutes’ time, while we’re still talking. Then I wouldn’t have missed out on anything. And anyway, I’m bored of the shagging and self-abuse. I’m done with the hedonism thing. Great while it lasted, but ultimately it’s all a bit shallow, don’t you think?”
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