They ceased instantly to be individuals; they … coalesced … and a spokesman was chosen. They rarely did this to him these days, accepting him as a friend. They started up a species of regimented laughter, a short bark of amusement that ran round the table to its beginning and stopped.
The spokesman said infuriatingly. ‘He’s around somewhere; you can’t mistake him.’
‘I know that, but where is he?’
‘Around.’
‘Please, I’m not in joking mood. Where is he?’
The spokesman stood. ‘What’s the trouble, Jim?’
But they always called him ‘Doctor’.
‘Jim? Don’t you know me any more?’
The laugh ran back round the table. The small triumph of a successful deception severed the last link with the past.
He studied the – simulacrum, he thought – carefully. It was a perfect duplicate of – of itself. Anticipation dissolved; the meeting would never take place. He said, with measured meaning, ‘No, I don’t know you any more.’
The friendly doll gave superfluous explanation. ‘I’ve joined the family, Jim. It was the only rational answer, wasn’t it?’ He seemed momentarily doubtful, as if he remembered something, perhaps an old human attachment. Only momentarily. ‘Wasn’t it?’
Most logical. Parker had removed his trouble spot. Lindley’s voice, separate from his weeping will, said cruelly, ‘If you never identify yourself to me again, there’ll be no need for me ever to know who you once were.’
He went quickly, hardening the recesses of his mind, not caring to witness the pain caused by his brutality … a pain which this submerged Albert might not in fact feel.
Almost he had forgiven them the tragedy of England, but now they had taken everything. He could have welcomed the fabulous Robert’s ability to use his turmoils as weapons with which to beat and destroy.
4
Lindley did not set out to get drunk, for he was no drowner of sorrows, but he did not put normal restriction on his alcohol intake that day. By the time he was due to leave for the rally he was in that condition described in a forgotten legal code as ‘having drink taken’, neither quite tipsy nor totally sober – and certainly in no mood for the company of the Ombudsmen for whom Campion had required him, simply because nobody else was available, to act as shepherd, glossary and guide.
He had accepted the briefing without grace, and without grace delivered his notice. ‘I’ll see today out. In the morning I leave you.’
The words came easily in an intention immediately irrevocable, though he had not consciously thought the move through.
Campion did not pretend surprise. ‘I know how you feel.’
‘You can’t.’
‘No, Jim, I suppose I can’t. What do you intend to do?’
As if he cared. No attempt to retain, no wasted gratitude. Practical people, these babies by survival out of future shock. ‘History Departments or Social Research organisations anywhere will take me.’
‘I suppose so.’ The farewell was over but Campion said, astonishingly, ‘I had thought you might be interested in going back to space.’
‘Returning every half-century or so to see what new cultural monstrosities love and logic can devise?’
‘I think Albert is counting on you.’
Apparently he had not been told of that meeting. Lindley answered with the venom of the betrayed, ‘Are you blind in your pumped-up charisma? Spend my life with zombies! I’ve seen what was done to Albert.’
He spat. It made as good a breaking-off point as any.
5
Vehicles arrived, with food distribution insignia on their doors but driven by policemen in civilian clothes, obtained by only Parker knew what acts of ethical thuggery. One was for the Ombudsmen.
Climbing into the front seat; Lindley hissed at the driver, ‘You can’t beat a moral crusade carried out by stealth, threat and misappropriation.’
The youngster, about eighteen and scarcely out of recruitment, caught the smell of beer and pulled impassivity over his face.
It lacked two hours to sundown when they reached the rally area. Emerging from the tree-screened traffic lanes at the entrance to Princes Bridge, Lindley was able to survey the entire gathering on the far side. He had smiled at conservative cluckings over the, to him, modest numbers gathered for Campion speeches in the past, but today’s attendance triggered tensions in his mind.
The mass of humanity beggared expectation. At this crucial point the movement had taken off.
Humanity flooded the cleared block in a ripple of colour to the limits of the angles from which they could see the platform raised before the cathedral’s west door; it flooded the broad old street to left and right and spread across the one-time station site to halt only at the green riverbank.
Twenty, thirty thousand, he guessed, multiplying his pre-estimate to a figure approaching half the population of Melbourne Town. They had been seeping in from the country areas for days, but there must be more than just excited youngsters here. Incredulity fell before the plain fact that the older generation also had begun the slide into Campion’s hands.
The Ombudsmen were astounded.
Bellamy leaned over from the back seat, his voice a controlled storm. ‘What’s this, Lindley? Conspiracy? Show of strength? What are you up to?’ He studied Lindley’s face and laughed as he fell back to his seat. ‘Bitten by his own dog, begod! He didn’t expect this, doesn’t know what to do with it.’ He tapped Lindley’s shoulder with hard, prodding fingers. ‘Don’t imagine we didn’t recognise twentieth-century techniques or that we didn’t know who to thank for them. Now what?’
‘I don’t know.’ The flattening effect of the beer wore off under startlement; it would return, but now he was fully professional, worried but not confused. ‘I’d banked on eight or ten thousand – a monster rally in your terms, but this … I don’t know. And now Parker—’
Bellamy exploded. ‘What about Parker? Is that sanctimonious bastard actively involved? Is he?’
The police driver was quietly furious, but there could be no harm in letting it out now. ‘He is.’
‘So it isn’t simple persuaded change. It’s revolution.’
‘Wrong word. More like tugging the mat from under you. I don’t know what Parker is likely to do.’
Datchborn said, with the ghost of a chuckle, ‘Sounds like back to square one, 1990 style. You’ve started something but you don’t know’ what, and we’ve spent our lives trying to stop that sort of politics.’
‘And replace it with worse.’
A confusion of old voices protested. The young policeman intervened, with small effort but tremendous vigour, ‘Shut up! You’re here to see, not to argue. Argue after.’
It was possible that no Ombudsman had ever been so addressed by a youngster. Lindley did not dare to look round at veneration savaged by time and change. Self-shocked, the policeman looked like a man who knew he should apologise and was determined not to. With the car nudging the rear of the crowd spilling on to the bridge, he said, ‘I can’t go any further.’
The Ombudsmen stepped down to the road in psychological disarray. They had known their day was dying but had not dreamed of having the omens spat in their faces. They peered at the crowd, old men uncertain of their standing, newly wary of the youth that as old men of the tribe they had taken too lightly.
Lindley said, ‘Parker is an unusual man who commands intense personal loyalty from his men. That young driver doesn’t represent the crowd feeling.’
It was probably untrue, but they had to penetrate the crowd physically because the stand arranged for them was eighty yards into the mob. In 1990 such men would have had armed escort; now we rely on good manners. Hell! He plunged into the mass, pushing, tapping shoulders, asking, ‘Would you mind letting us through?’
They knew him and greeted him. And saw who was with him.
Ancients could only be Ombudsmen, and Ombudsmen had in the past weeks become obscurely equated with
Security as a repressive force, as ‘enemies of promise’. (Lindley had dug the phrase out of his literary memory and turned it into a catchword.)
Habitual respect demanded politeness but newly taught dissatisfactions underlaid it with insulting reserve. The old men progressed through noise which died at their approach until they moved in oases of attention, not positively inimical but less than friendly. There was judgement in the air.
They mounted their platform and sat down; Lindley took position where he could see their faces as they assessed the scene.
The old stone of the cathedral glowed golden grey in the late sun, its solitude dramatic against blue sky. The crowd was noisy but orderly. The size of the gathering seemed itself an instrument of awe, restricting movement and gesture. Lindley, remembering soccer crowds in the English stadiums, found them unreal; that the Ombudsmen and Security had actually produced this generation of mild-mannered, repressed hooligans was appalling testimony to their dedication and their ultimate folly.
The cynosure was the staging at the west door. It was not massive, just high enough to raise its occupants above the crowd level. It was empty yet the diaphanous sound screen – so fine-filamented that sunlight could not catch it as more than a lucent vapour – was the only moving thing there, swaying so gently behind the dais as to appear no more than a film of mist. In fact it was a very practical piece of electronic engineering whose presence ensured that every word spoken on the stage would be heard at the limits of the gathering without amplified distortion.
It would be the banners that shattered the old men. Burning yellow print on black velvet, they hung in insulting ranks.
They knew of them; news of them had girdled the shocked or intrigued or merely amused world. Now they saw them; the facts, uplifted, were more rawly real than newscasts. The twenty-foot falls stood four on either side of the stage. Directly behind it was another doubly huge scroll hung from the face of the building itself, new to Lindley, not of his designing. The wording of it frightened him, though not in the way intended.
Of those he had designed, on the right a statement was made and a topic discussed:
SECURITY
IS THE
ENEMY
OF
PROMISE
STATUS
QUO IS
A STATE
OF
RIGOR
NOBODY
CAN
FIGHT
SECURITY
BUT—
IGNORE
IT AND
IT WILL
GO
AWAY
On the left also a statement was made and discussed:
DATA
BANKS
GUARDS
US ALL
BUT—
WHO
GUARD
THE
DATA
BANKS?
SECRET
FACTS
ARE
SECRET
CONTROLS
CONTROLS
ARE GUNS
AT
OUR
HEADS
The wording of the new banner was less plain; the old men would take first shock from the blatant others. Lindley said, attempting lightness, ‘Not pithy as slogans go, but your super-educated kids couldn’t be hooked with bilge. I had to settle for talking points.’
Datchborn pulled at his Honest Abe sidewhiskers (in early days he must have gained useful mythic power from the resemblance) and said, with the Pilgrim Fathers breathing down his nose, ‘You’ve done well according to your beliefs.’ The tone called his beliefs names beneath contempt. ‘Total destruction – then what?’
‘First, no destruction!’
The voice came from the level of their feet, from a freckled girl who rested her elbows on the edge of the platform and gazed up at them with too much seriousness spoiling emerging good looks. Some of her peers, boys and girls, were gathered with her, considering the spectacle of so much age in one small space.
She said in no-nonsense tones, earnestly setting up a man to man basis, ‘I know you, Doctor Lindley—’
He cut in at once, recognising the type, trying to head off a display of dogmatism. ‘Every kid in town knows me though I don’t know you, but do you know who this is?’
‘Of course I know who Mister Bellamy is.’ Her hand moved automatically to her heart and she caught herself in mid-gesture. And knew her peers had seen Lindley trap her so easily. She could not abort the salutation without open insult, and that was not permitted by her upbringing or by the new education Campion’s area advisers dispensed. Blank-faced, she completed the movement.
‘And these are the Ombudsmen of the governments of the Kremlin Hegemony and the American Soviet.’
She bobbed her head angrily, owing them no more than politeness.
Datchborn had followed the play appreciatively and felt himself cued to continue it.
‘Well, Miss—?’
‘Waggoner,’ she said irritably, ‘Jenny Waggoner.’
‘No destruction you say, Miss Jenny. In the face of those!’
His waved fingers despised the banners and their messages. It was a mistake, giving her her chance.
‘Nobody wants to destroy the data banks, only to limit the information preserved in them and to ensure the removal of private, personal, unnecessary, destructive information.’
Lindley recognised the wording – his own – and hoped she understood it; propaganda could be anaesthetic as well as informative. Datchborn did not know she parroted. He answered quietly, like a man in communication with himself. ‘My America will not fancy that. One people, one state, from crèche to crematorium … I don’t think …’ He lapsed into private thought.
Fomin spoke, with less antagonism than Lindley had expected: ‘You will make rules, eh? But who will keep your rules? Like the – the message – the placard thing there – who guards guardians, eh?’
The answer came pat, robot-taught; the girl had not yet begun to jab at dogma with intelligence. ‘All data in all data banks must be publicly available at all times. In this way retention infringements will be under constant random surveillance.’
Some of her peer group seemed discomfited by the metallic quoting but no one tried to supersede her. Bellamy muttered, ‘Holy Jesus!’ and fingered his cross as if he rubbed an amulet. The Russian was scandalised, the American amused.
Sympathising a little with the naïve figure the girl cut, Lindley pushed the argument sharply under the aged noses. ‘In the old world, complex with energies at cross purposes, it couldn’t have been done. In this one, still manageably small and relatively unsophisticated, it can.’ Bellamy nodded slightly and Fomin shuddered; Datchborn presented smiling contempt. He felt tired as latent alcohol continued its draining of will, and said dully, ‘At least, I hope it can.’ He should not be defending the campaign in which he had no faith, but his disgust with the Ombudsman system was as great as his other resentments.
The dialogue should have ended there, but Jenny was having her day, talking with Ombudsmen and a starman in heady importance. She said, probably more astringently than she intended, ‘You sound as though you hope it, Doctor, but don’t believe it.’
For a second, just long enough, the hectoring broke his restraint. His pent bitterness splashed her. ‘What would you know, you automated brat?’
His voice was low, pitched behind his teeth, but she heard and so did a handful near her. She stiffened to shame in an island of stillness. The youngsters exchanged glances like – like the damned clone making a party decision – and without a word turned their backs on the platform.
Datchborn shook his head with insulting sympathy, Bellamy looked distressed, Fomin impassively disapproving. Nobody shamed a youngster save in necessity and love.
With a quite insane feeling of having struck a blow for an obscure personal freedom Lindley said loudly enough to be heard a dozen paces, ‘I behaved badly and should apologise. I’m not going to. I’ve had enoug
h of this ethic-proud culture that simpers morality while it murders minds. Let it rot!’
He ran down, assailed by the conviction that nothing he said or did could avert onrushing chaos. The youngsters elaborately gave no sign of having heard.
Nobody, he thought as he clawed back to sense, had queried the anti-Security posters. Perhaps they approved of those; politics could come into its bedlam own with the blinker-boys out of the way.
6
The cathedral venue had been Parker’s suggestion. As the doors of the west porch swung open on dimness Lindley speculated angrily on mystery and symbol. Surely the man did not mean to force his hardnosed Christianity on the movement? He was capable of anything, but how would it be relevant?
The door opening was stageplay. Lindley knew that Campion already waited behind the drop of the central banner, whose lower edge was level with the back of the stage. His first appearance would be on the stage itself. An advent.
A ripple of quiet rolled out to the limits of the crowd. A huge, tensioned hush descended.
The youngsters, unaware of the sophistication of twenty-five centuries of drama – the age had developed little theatre yet, and that little was amateurish – were involved by simple effects, the more easily on a day of prepared, pre-ordained excitement.
Datchborn muttered appreciatively, approving technique. Bellamy was alert and not fooled. Fomin seemed unaffected; he leaned to whisper in Lindley’s ear, ‘The very big placard thing – banner – what does it mean?’
Sooner or later it had had to be asked.
IS
THE THOUGHT
I THINK
MY OWN
THOUGHT?
OR
IS IT
ANOTHER’S?
WHOSE?
‘I don’t know.’ It meant what he could not explain until he discovered the extent of revelation intended. In any case it meant they had decided to lead enormous trumps and chance the game on a coup.
‘Not know? Not your own words, Mister Entrepreneur?’
‘Not mine. I am not fully briefed on today’s – exhibition.’
He caught the sidelooks of politicians recognising another on his way down, probably deciding this as the strain behind his outburst of a minute before.
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