Seeing that Jimmy is staring at him in disgust he says, ‘Cheer up. That’s how the prairies came about, with room for herds and herds and herds of buffalo.’
‘Which the white men slaughtered because the red men lived off them. But you know things are a lot worse now. Farmers are sowing genetically modified crops that die as soon as harvested, so they must buy new seed from companies that patented them, while plants folk used to feed on vanish forever. Soon the only live creatures left on earth will be humans and the mutants they eat.’
In a sing-song voice, grinning, the Head says, ‘Remember the viruses, Jimmy! They too are busy wee mutaters. People are great breeding grounds for viruses, especially people eating battery-farmed meat and mutant vegetables.’ With genuine regret he murmurs, ‘Croak, croak. A pity about the frogs.’
‘Are you fond of the Barrier Reef?’ asks Jimmy, desperately.
‘My greatest work of art – one thousand, two hundred and fifty miles long,’ says the Head, reminiscently. ‘A masterpiece of intricately intertwined fishes, plants, insects with the beautiful vivid colour variety of all the great pictures painted by Matisse and Dufy, and a refinement of detail greater than even Paul Klee achieved.’ He shakes his head in wonder at the thought of his own genius.
‘It’s dying,’ says Jimmy. ‘It’ll all be gone in thirty years unless men die first.’
The Head shrugs his shoulders, says ‘Nothing lasts forever,’ and turning, contemplates his crystals as if nothing else mattered.
‘What use are you?’ Jimmy suddenly demands.
The Head, amused, smiles at him kindly but does not reply until the question is enlarged: ‘What do you do with yourself while failing to develop annelid worms in submarine volcanic vents?’
‘I’m preparing to generate a better universe.’
‘Where?’
‘Outside this one.’
‘How can you make a universe outside this one?’
This brings out the Head’s schoolteacher side. Wagging a forefinger, with increasing enthusiasm he says, ‘If you subscribed to Scientific American you would know how other universes would happen. Every universe is like a carpet with a gigantic draught blowing underneath, so in places it gets rippled up into peaks where energy and mass are so concentrated that BANG, a hole is blown in the fabric through which mass energy pours, making another universe where physical laws can bend differently.’
‘What makes that draught?’ says Jimmy keenly.
‘Would you think me a megalomaniac if I told you it was my breath?’ asks the Head, slyly watching him sideways.
‘Yes.’
‘I have to use metaphors when describing universal processes,’ says the Head, impatiently. ‘If you don’t like wind-blown ripples call them … call them labour pains if you like, but the result will be a universe where the planets are this shape.’
From a bench he lifts a variously coloured prism and hands it over. Jimmy looks at it, then says, unbelievingly, ‘A pyramidal planet?’
‘You are wrong. A pyramid has five sides, with four isosceles triangles on a square base. This planetary model has only four triangular sides, four equal continents. Get the idea?’
‘No.’
‘Look at it closely. Four glacial polar regions at the apex of each continent. Water trickles down from these to form an ocean in the middle of each surface – four Mediterranean seas of roughly equal size where life will evolve, and when it takes to land around the shores it will find none large enough for an empire to grow. All the nations that occur will be small and coastal, like Scandinavia.’
Jimmy examines the prism closely then says, ‘I see some off-shore islands. The British Empire spread from an island.’
‘An island with a lot of coal and iron where James Watt devised the first commercial steam engine. In my new world, fossil fuel deposits will be equally dispersed. No gold rushes! The machines people invent will have to be powered by wind and water and oil from plants that can be grown, harvested and replanted.’
Jimmy says, ‘The shape of this thing makes it gravitationally impossible.’
‘Only in this universe!’ cries the Head. ‘I am preparing a liquid universe where heavenly bodies will be gravitationally formed by crystallization! Imagine galaxies of tetrahedral planets revolving round octahedral suns! A universe’ – he ends by murmuring dreamily – ‘with no big bangs and collisions.’
‘But how can a planet have seas in a universe full of liquid?’
‘My universal fluid will be as light as air! In fact it will be air! I will make it air!’
Inspired by the idea he hurries to a blackboard with chemical formulae chalked on it, seizes a chalk and writes N-78. 1%, then heavily underlines it, saying, ‘When my heavenly bodies have crystallized, these chemical constituents must remain.’ He starts chalking down a new column of figures, muttering. ‘This universal … solution … will make flight between worlds easy. No need for people … to blast themselves … across light years of dreary sub-zero vacuum.’
He flings the chalk down and contemplates the formulae with something like smugness. Jimmy says, ‘But …’
‘You are going to tell me, Mr Prometheus O’ Lucifer, that air is largely oxygen exhaled by vegetation, and how can I grow enough plants to fill a universe with it? But my next universe will start with a big splash instead of a big bang, and the initial chemistry will be wholly different.’
He sits down, folds his arms and looks triumphant. Jimmy, not impressed, turns the tetrahedral model in his hands, saying, ‘OK Mister Sly-boots Clever-clogs, I was also going to ask about this planet’s angle of rotation.’ He hands the model back, says, ‘It will have to perform intricate somersaults if one of your triangular continents is not to be in perpetual twilight.’
‘That is certainly a problem,’ says the Head agreeably, putting the model back on the bench. ‘I am working on it.’
‘So how long will it take you to get this … airy new universe up and running?’
‘I have eternity,’ says the chief, smiling to himself.
‘You will spend eternity dreaming up a Utopian universe while mankind destroys life on earth in a couple of generations?’
‘That’s nonsense, Jimmy!’ says the Head consolingly. ‘Men cannot destroy all life on earth, only themselves and equally complex creatures. In which case insects will inherit the earth while vegetation recovers and then …’ (he becomes enthusiastic) ‘… from the segmented worms you and I will evolve a wealth of new creatures with different organs and sensations and minds. I never repeat my mistakes. It was maybe a mistake to give big brains to mammals.’
‘Why deny intelligence to creatures who suckle their young?’
‘Freud thinks it makes them unhealthily dependent and unhealthily greedy. Why not try hatching big intelligences from eggs? Birds, in general, seem happier than people. Tropical birds are as colourful as the organisms in my Great Barrier Reef, and the world will become a very tropical planet when men have made it too hot to hold them.’
‘But!—’ says Jimmy explosively. The Head cuts him off. ‘You are about to say bird brains are too small for development because their necks are too thin, but owls have short, thick necks and are notoriously brainy. One day you may fly up to me in the form of a dove with an eagle’s wingspan and find me a gigantic owl …’ (he spreads his arms) ‘… with feathers as colourful as a parrot’s. Pretty polly!’
‘And is that the most comforting message I can take back to the few on earth who listen to me? The few who care for the future of life there?’
The Head says mildly, ‘You recently asked me to exterminate the human race and now you want me to send it comforting messages.’
‘Not comforting messages but useful messages. When I asked you to exterminate humanity I was trying to goad you into suggesting a new way of saving them.’ He sighs. ‘But of course you knew that.’
‘I did,’ says the Head. ‘But the only ways humanity can save itself is by old things that come
in threes.’
‘Faith, hope, and love,’ says Jimmy glumly.
‘Yes, but these can only work beside liberty, equality, fraternity.’
‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!’ raves Jimmy, ‘What are you on about? I’ve been so mixed up with … postmodern people that I’ve forgotten.’
‘Liberty is not having to obey other people because they are richer than you.’
‘Equality?’
‘Is what everybody enjoys with friends, or in nations where everyone knows they need each other.’
‘Fraternity?’
‘Brotherhood. The brotherhood of man.’
‘Exclusively masculine?’
‘A good point, Jimmy. Call fraternity love also, the love that still makes your earth the centre of the present universe.’
‘Don’t talk shite! My wee world is near the edge of an average galaxy among a million million galaxies! I helped Galileo destroy the Jewish notion that the whole shebang was made for them. How can my wee world be a universal centre?’
The Head says patiently, ‘Wherever somebody opens their eyes is the centre of the universe and your earth is still the place where a lot of that happens. I hoped mankind would take life to my other worlds. They have the technology.’ He shrugs. ‘If they use it to destroy themselves we’ll start again with another species,’ and he murmurs, ‘To-wit-to-woo. Pretty Pol.’
Jimmy slumps down looking totally defeated. Our Head claps his hands, rubs them together, goes to him briskly, pats him on the shoulders and says cheerfully, ‘And since we now see eye to eye I must waste no more of your valuable time. Tell folk the competitive exploitation of natural resources is a dead end. Nuclear power, used wisely, will give access to all the space, raw material, and energy they need without fighting aliens for it. Less than five miles beneath the earth’s surface is heat that, rightly channelled, will drive their machines without poisonous emissions.’
Without appearing to use force he raises Jimmy and accompanies him to the exit, saying, ‘Fossil fuels should be exclusively used as fertilizer, and housewives when shopping should use net bags instead of the plastic sort which add to the price of what they buy. Goodbye, Jimmy.’
‘Nobody with wealth and power will believe me if I say that! They know the damage they are doing to the planet but they’re still extending motorways! Making and selling cars! Nobody owning one will change to a bicycle! Nobody who can fly will go by boat! Owners of companies wrecking the ecosphere are buying self-sustaining bunkers where they and their like can survive when everyone else is poisoned!’
‘They won’t survive,’ says the Head, chuckling. ‘Only folk who want to save everyone else have a chance. Perhaps.’
Now he firmly propels Jimmy to the exit, adding, with what sounds like mischievous encouragement, ‘Workers of the world, unite! Remind them of co-operative socialism! Owens, William Morris, James Connelly!’
‘I’ll be laughed at,’ moans Jimmy.
‘Then all laughter will become screams of hysterical despair. Send me all the emails you like but don’t come here again for a millennium or two. Goodbye, son.’
‘Son!’ says Jimmy on the threshold, ‘I’m glad you … sometimes … admit I’m in the family.’
‘Goodbye, son,’ says the Head, quietly for once, ‘and good luck.’
‘Which is not something you need, Dad,’ says Jimmy, and leaves.
The Head returns to contemplate the crystalline models and formulae on his blackboard, seeming almost despondent. He is sorry that it is so hard to show his love for those who love him most. The rest are not so demanding. And why does Jimmy think he needs no luck? Is it because, as Headmaster of all, there is supposed to be no greater power? He hums a little song to himself, ‘I’ll give me one-o. What is my one-o? One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so.’
After a pause he sadly says, ‘One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so.’
In the place where he sits another presence becomes apparent, one that stands so much higher than he that its voice seems from above, a gentle, female, slightly amused voice saying, ‘You silly wee man.’
‘Mother?’ he asks wistfully.
Like Canute
Clare Dudman
Sophie begins the day by looking at the sky. No matter how this ends it will always be there. She likes the shade of duck-egg blue shining through a rip in the clouds just above the roofline, and wonders where she read that the only sea really this colour is the Mediterranean. As her tea brews she watches a reflection of herself in the glass door of the shower cubicle in the bathroom. She lowers herself over the pedestal. The bowl is too large for the room, and unfortunately also functions as a sound box. It would be embarrassing if anyone could hear, but no one ever does. As she rinses her hands, part of the manuscript she was reading last night comes back to her: a wisp of an idea that disappears when she tries to grasp it. What was it? Something she should know.
The thought that there is something she can’t quite remember bugs her on her journey to the office. Once or twice it almost comes to her, but then someone jostles it away. Maybe she’s getting old. Sometimes she finds herself wondering about the answers to the questions they ask to test for Alzheimer’s. Who’s the prime minister? She grins as she imagines her answer: who cares?
There’s a storm coming. It’s being announced everywhere: on the radio, by the newspaper vendor at the entrance to the station, and on the news site when she switches on her laptop at work. If it comes it will bring torrential rain: something most people will welcome after these weeks of drought. Her assistant tells her that someone from the council is wittering on about flooding, and the likelihood of the sewers overflowing. He’s recommending that people living at or below ground level acquire sand bags.
Long ago, on a childhood holiday, the rain came down so hard and fast that the roof of their tent was battered into a pool-filled valley. First it dripped but then it cascaded through the canvas, and they had had to wait out the rest of the day in the family car. Through patches in the steamed-up windows they had watched the rain-glazed pathways quickly become small, fast-flowing, dirty streams. There had been sandbags then. ‘Like Canute,’ her mother had said. ‘No one can stop the tide coming in.’
All morning they wait for the rain to start. Her assistant says she can smell it coming, as if the air is growing thick. In the afternoon, by the time the chief calls her in for a meeting, it has still not come. ‘Hope you’ve brought your umbrella, Norman,’ she tells him, ‘because I haven’t.’
Norman doesn’t smile. He tells her to sit, then says that he’s sorry, and he knows this is going to seem unfair because she’s been here even longer than he has, but he wants her to clear her desk. Even though she is the most valuable and dedicated member of staff, she is also the most expensive and it’s been hard, obviously, but the cuts are hurting everyone. No one is safe, he says. It’ll be the rest of us soon.
Her hands rest on the small arms of her chair. She notices the shininess of her skin over her knuckles, how she can see each ridge of her bone, and each blue string of vein threading over and between. Then she remembers what she has been trying to remember all morning. ‘There was a manuscript I read last night,’ she says, ‘I think it’s important. I think you should see it.’
Norman shakes his head. ‘Not now, Sophie,’ he says. He stands, pats her lightly on the shoulder, and then walks over to his door and opens it. He waits until she stands too, then steps aside so she can step through it. ‘Keep in touch,’ he says, his voice flat.
‘I’ve put everything in these bags,’ her assistant says when she returns to her desk.
‘Well, that was quick!’
The assistant gives a small smile, looks down, and then walks quickly back to her desk. Sophie wonders how long she’s known, and if all that conversation today about the rain was a way of filling in time, of saying nothing. But it still feels as though it will rain.
The uniformed man on the reception desk smiles
widely when she hands in her pass cards. He posts them in a box and then waves goodbye just as cheerily as he has every evening for the last twenty-six years. By the time she has passed through the revolving door she has forgotten his face.
It is still mid-afternoon: a time of day she rarely sees outside the office. How quiet it is, and how hot. There’s something missing, a small sound that should be there but isn’t. A single man passes on a bicycle. There are no cars, no trams, and no buses at this time of day, not any more, but it’s not their roar that she’s missing. Something else. She will either have to walk or wait until the rush hour starts. The air is sucking moisture into itself. There is no wind, no sign of a storm, but the newspaper stall is still predicting it in scrawled capital letters. Everyone is waiting.
That night Sophie, who is not sleeping, is disturbed by a sound. When she opens her bedroom door, a man with a hood over his head, a scarf over his lower face, and a knife in his hand is standing by her open fridge. He has her cloth bag from a Trade Fair partly filled with food. ‘Hungry,’ he says, and his black eyes have a glittering violence to them. ‘I hungry. I have baby, wife, child. They all cry. You not need. I do.’
A refugee. He’s come from somewhere warmer and used to the sun. She can smell the dust and the heat on his clothes.
‘Take it.’ she whispers. ‘Take everything. Here.’ Inside her cupboards are vegetables, tins of fruit, and meat. She pulls out a shopping bag and thrusts it at him. ‘Fill it. Take what you want.’
Beacons Page 4