by Ben Elton
'Come ON! How boring are you?' she demanded threateningly as her vast near-naked silicon-stuffed bosoms swung from side to side to the rhythm of the song. 'This is supposed to be a party!'
One by one, each member of the office staff began to dance, self-consciously mirroring in miniature the extravagant faux-erotic gyrations of Princess Lovebud and her friends. Trafford noticed that Cassius joined in quite early, not so early as to excite Princess Lovebud's suspicions but not so late as to provoke her anger. He was giving, Trafford thought, a pretty good impression of enjoying himself too; a man with as big a secret as his needed to be well practised in blending in. Trafford and Sandra Dee were the last to join the dancing. Sandra Dee never made any effort to court Princess Lovebud's approval, and in a way that was her defence for it undoubtedly provoked in Princess Lovebud a kind of grudging respect. Under normal circumstances Trafford would have joined in earlier but Sandra Dee's courage inspired him. Together but separately they defied the brutal social pressure until Princess Lovebud announced the formation of a conga line and further protest became impossible.
And so the twenty-five or so Senior Executive Analysts who occupied the north-west corner of Floor 71 of the National Data Bank's Degrees of Separation Building formed a conga chain and Princess Lovebud led them as they kicked and skipped between the desks and social hubs and celebrated their fame. Some danced with wild abandon. Others smiled but only through gritted teeth. A few, Sandra Dee in particular, did not even bother to smile.
Only Trafford conga'd in a dizzying cloud of joy. For he had managed to place himself behind Sandra Dee. Her thick, strawberry blond hair bobbed up and down in front of him and he could feel her waist through the thin material of her cotton dress. He wondered if anything had ever felt so exciting. This was the body that she kept secret, and yet here he was, almost touching it. Only a thin layer of hot, damp cotton lay between him and that which belonged only to her. He was holding a living, breathing secret in his hands; he was touching her private places because all of her was private. It was perfect, the exact level of intimacy required for absolute erotic fulfilment. Any closer would begin to unravel her mystery, the very thing which made her so truly beautiful.
When the dance was over Sandra Dee did not turn to speak to him or even smile, but walked away without a backward glance. Trafford did not mind. It was her mystery that he adored. He was in love with everything that he did not know about her. As he turned away to find a desk he honestly believed that if she had marched up to him there and then and offered to disappear with him into the stationery cupboard or a lavatory cubicle, as couples did at work from time to time, he would have denied her. No real sexual encounter could ever match the secret one that he could nurture in his imagination and of which she knew nothing. No living flesh could ever be the erotic equal of flesh kept private, untouchable and unknowable.
17
'Care to grab a bite of lunch?' Trafford said to Cassius.
Cassius looked up and Trafford smiled. He had been waiting for this moment all morning, looking forward to it eagerly despite the danger of what he knew they would discuss. For Trafford, the office had suddenly become a repository of secrets, a place of excitement in which only three people existed: himself, Cassius and Sandra Dee. The rest, as far as Trafford was concerned, were no more real than the pixilated avatars prancing about on their computer screens with which they endlessly amused themselves through their long, pointless days at work.
'I'd be delighted,' Cassius replied.
'Praise the Love,' said Trafford.
'Big time,' Cassius replied with enthusiasm.
It was Trafford's turn to choose the restaurant and he took Cassius to McDonald's.
'Are we celebrating something?' Cassius enquired.
McDonald's was the oldest and most venerable of all the numerous food-consumption chains that crowded every mall and retail hub. Established long Before The Flood, it was one of the very few institutions to have survived into the Age of Faith. It therefore had a certain cachet and was seen as a cut above the rest, classy and special. Full nudity was not allowed and it was the number-one choice for christenings, celebrations of the solstice and weddings.
'Yes. Yes, we are celebrating something,' Trafford replied as they wheeled their little food trolleys to a table that had just become vacant. 'We're celebrating the day I begin to defy the Temple.'
'How splendid,' Cassius remarked as he began to clear their table of the usual mess of food spills, empty cartons and snotty tissues. 'And how exactly do you intend to achieve this excellent ambition?' he asked. He always spoke like a guru figure in a kung fu video game but Trafford suspected that it was not from these that he had picked up his style.
'I want to go through with what we discussed,' Trafford replied.
He said it loudly, firmly, feeling inside himself a sense of liberation even as he did so. Another secret to keep, another act of defiance, and this time one which might even deprive the Temple of another soul.
Cassius's expression did not change. He continued to smile as he unwrapped some of his cartons of food and took a bite of burger. This caused the smile to disappear briefly from his face but he had it fixed once more as he replied, wiping the sticky sweet mayo from his chin.
'Is your wife in agreement with this?' he asked, before muttering irritably, 'They even put sugar in the damned mayonnaise.'
'No, Chantorria has forbidden it,' Trafford said defiantly. 'But I don't care.'
'If we're caught you'll be stoned, you know, or burned,' Cassius said.
'I lost a child. I can't imagine a greater pain than that.'
'Easy to say, but think of the flames licking about your feet. If at the point of punishment you could save yourself by sacrificing the thing you love, wouldn't you do it?'
'Perhaps I would – but fortunately that's not the order in which I have to make the choice. All I know is that right now I have the courage.'
The two of them chewed for a while in silence as all around them hundreds of voices shouted about the food, about celebrity gossip and about the latest diktats of the Temple.
'So, will you do it?' Trafford asked. 'Will you vaccinate my daughter?'
'Of course.'
'Even though my wife forbids it?'
'I would vaccinate a child against the wishes of both parents if I could, just as I would attempt to rescue a child from a father who held a knife to its throat. It is not about the parents, it is about the children. I have a duty to save them. I've told you, it's my faith.'
'Do Vaccinators believe in God?'
'Some do. Many don't. It is not required. Certainly none are followers of the God that the Temple imagines: a vengeful, murderous, insufferably quixotic and illogical God who apparently has the time and inclination to know each individual's heart and hear their prayers and yet kills and maims utterly indiscriminately.'
Their conversation was suddenly drowned out by loud music. A very large noisy birthday party was assembling at the next table and a number of the guests were broadcasting their personal choice of entertainment to the entire restaurant. Huge containers of whipped ice cream filled with crushed sweets were being placed before the guests and party sacks containing many more kilos of sweets were being distributed, to whoops and squeals of delight. Interactive balloons sang 'Happy 50th Birthday, Stargazer' when they were patted, and a large flat screen was playing a lengthy series of loud video tributes from those who could not attend the party. All this, added to the cacophony that had already filled the room, made the noise in the restaurant almost deafening.
'How will we do it?' Trafford shouted at Cassius, who was scarcely half a metre away from him.
'Well, it's a question of which vaccine I have available and when,' Cassius replied at the top of his voice. It seemed strange to Trafford to be conducting such a dangerous conversation at such a pitch but it was clear that there was little chance of anyone or any microphone overhearing them. 'Many things kill kiddies,' Cassius went on. 'One j
ab does not cover them all. We can only do our best.'
'Where do you get the vaccine?'
Just then the noise dipped suddenly. Trafford had been lucky. Had he begun his sentence a fraction later, he would have screamed the dread word 'vaccine' into the lull and who knew what the results might have been.
The relative lull had occurred because the duty manager had asked the fiftieth birthday party if they could tone things down a little as there was a funeral lunch being conducted at another table. At first the partygoers had refused, pointing out that they had paid for their food, that they were as good as anyone else and had as much right to do whatever they liked wherever they liked as anybody did. However, when the manager had pointed out that the funeral was for a kiddie they had grudgingly agreed to reduce the volume somewhat.
Inevitably the noise level began to grow again but for a little while Cassius and Trafford were able to converse in something below a scream.
'There is a network,' Cassius said, answering Trafford's question. 'Some is created in kitchen laboratories here in London or out in the country. Some is smuggled in from abroad. The North European members of the Alliance of Faith tend to be a little more liberal in their view of this sort of thing than we do. Vaccination was actually legal in Scandinavia until fifteen years ago but pressure from the Great Ally put paid to that. No faith means no military umbrella, you see, and with upwards of half the world's population flooded out and anxious to come and live with us you need a military umbrella, don't you? Or perhaps it would be more apt to say military wellington boots.'
At this point conversation was halted once more as a particularly large and heavily tattooed male reveller from the birthday party backed into their table. The table was bolted to the floor but it shuddered as the huge backside crunched down and the scarcely covered buttocks spread across the plastic surface like two vast hairy draught excluders and ended up touching the sides of Trafford and Cassius's milkshake cartons. The man was attempting to get sufficient depth of field to record the party on his communitainer, and each of the guests was videoing the scene on their phone. Apart from eating, it seemed to be the principal activity of the group. It was almost as if the party had been held simply in order that people might record themselves attending it.
Trafford and Cassius sat quietly. They did not admonish the man who had intruded on their space and who was now virtually sitting in their food. London was getting more crowded each day, everybody was on edge and society was divided firmly into two types of citizen, those who sought to provoke and those who did their utmost to avoid giving provocation. Trafford, and everyone who preferred a quiet life, had learned early on that those who were most vigorous in upholding their right to do what they chose were the first to consider themselves disrespected if anybody should seek to uphold their right not to be inconvenienced by them. It was as certain as the Sun going round the Earth that any objection made to the man who was sitting in their food would provoke nothing but righteous anger, accusations of disrespect and probably violence. Trafford and Cassius, in unspoken communion, therefore resolved to wait until he went away.
But those who wish to provoke rarely take no for an answer and something in their silence seemed to alert the intruder to the ever-present possibility of disrespect.
'You got a problem with me sitting here?' he demanded, attempting to swivel the upper part of his huge torso so that he faced them.
'No. Not at all,' Cassius said quickly.
'Cos if you have, we can sort it out right now if that's what you want, if you know what I mean.'
'We don't have a problem, I assure you. You're at a party, go for it.'
'Cos I'm just taking a fucking vid, that's all,' the man stated, beginning to realize that he would find no fight here but still reluctant to give up.
'Absolutely. Go right ahead. Please, be our guest,' Cassius assured him. 'We'll move if it would make things easier.'
'Good. Glad that's settled,' said the man, turning back to continue recording his companions' revelry.
Cassius and Trafford sat self-consciously waiting him out. It was not possible to conduct a conversation of any kind while looking directly at a person's buttocks. They could only sit and watch the sweat flow down the great cleft and disappear into his bottom cleavage, then re-emerge on to the table (having soaked through his tiny satin shorts) and form a spreading puddle in which their food cartons stood.
Finally, with a tremendous creaking and bending of the table, the man raised himself to return to his companions. He farted hugely as he did so, to the enormous amusement of his friends.
'Oh, I do beg your pudding,' he said with heavy sarcasm.
Trafford and Cassius smiled through gritted teeth. If they left the restaurant or moved table, this might easily draw forth an accusation of disrespect. After all, the man's flatulence was as good as anybody's and there was no law against farting.
Eventually the unpleasantness dissipated and Cassius and Trafford were able to resume their life-and-death discussion, one that might mean life for Trafford's daughter and death for him and Cassius.
'Who makes the serum?' Trafford asked.
'Chemists. People who secretly study the forbidden science.'
'All science is forbidden, surely?' Trafford said.
'Don't be ridiculous, of course it isn't. Science runs what's left of the country. It pumps the flood water from the Underground lines; it drives the trains and buses. It packages and preserves the food, runs the microwaves and freezers.'
'Oh I see, you mean wisdom.'
'No, I do not mean wisdom,' Cassius replied testily.
'Wisdom reflects attitude and opinion. Science deals in facts. The Temple may call science "wisdom" when they teach those bits of it that they require for their own purposes. But what they are actually teaching is what remains of what was once called science.'
'Wisdom, science?' Trafford asked. 'Does it really matter? It's just words.'
'Yes, words with completely different meanings. Wisdom is subjective. Science is objective. Don't you see how important that is? Science has nothing to do with faith or feelings. Science is about what can be established through observation and deduction, what can be proved.'
'Yes, yes, of course, I see,' Trafford replied eagerly.
He was fascinated, thrilled even. Everything Cassius was saying was in accordance with his own secret thoughts, thoughts which he had never before had the opportunity to discuss.
'The problem for the Temple and its lackey the government,' Cassius went on, 'is that they need science. They may claim to despise all that was known and discovered in the time Before The Flood but in fact they rely on that learning absolutely. The surgery they force upon women; the physics that keeps the remaining aeroplanes aloft and guides the missiles that they fire at migrant infidels; the chemicals which grow and preserve this foul mess we're eating; above all, the microtechnology that delivers what they call information to everybody, everywhere, every second of every day. All this was the work of that very same intellectual community which they condemn and despise, that same community which once developed vaccines and put a man on the Moon—'
Trafford interrupted him, excited but also incredulous. 'Do you really believe that men once walked on the Moon?' he asked.
To the Temple, the so-called Moon landings were the most celebrated conceit of all the lies and myths of the time Before The Flood. They had been a trick rigged in a television studio, a complex plot to prove that man was cleverer than God.
'The Moon landings happened,' Cassius said firmly.
'It seems incredible,' Trafford replied, suddenly doubtful. 'I mean walking on the Moon? Flying through space?'
'Incredible? You really think so? That idiot over there, giggling about his flatulence, holds in his fist a device which can record sound and vision in perfect detail and broadcast it instantly via the internet to any corner of the planet. Do you find that incredible? I do. The cheapest child's communitainer contains technology many th
ousand times more complex than that which took men to the Moon. The Moon landings were a matter of simple ballistics and the harnessing of the force of gravity.'
Trafford's eyes were wide. Everything that Cassius said contradicted everything he knew. 'But surely gravity is the force which draws things to the Earth?' he protested weakly. 'How could it possibly help you to get to the Moon?'
'Gravity,' Cassius said with scarcely concealed impatience, 'is the force which draws everything to everything. The Earth does not have a monopoly on gravity, which is why it does not lie at the centre of the universe.'
'You really think it doesn't?'
'Of course it doesn't. There is no centre of the universe. The Earth, like everything else that exists, is suspended in time and space, held in its position by the gravity of the objects which surround it.'
Thrilled at the ease and confidence with which Cassius uttered such heresy, Trafford said quietly, 'I want to know what you know. I want you to make me understand.'
'You can't make someone understand, any more than you can make them truly believe. It is a rule of my calling that while the Temple knows no argument but force we recognize no force but argument. If I cannot convince you of what I know by rational exposition then what I know is of no value.'
'Is that a rule of the Vaccinators?'
'I belong to a broader collective. We are all dedicated . . . to reason.'
Despite the oppressive heat, Trafford felt a chill. Reason, the very means by which he had struggled to convince Chantorria that it would be right to vaccinate Caitlin Happymeal.
'I . . . I would like to dedicate myself to reason too,' he said.
'Trafford, a moment ago you thought it incredible that I believed that men landed on the Moon.'
'I don't! Not any more. I'll believe it. I believe it now!'
'We Humanists are not interested in what you believe. We are interested in what you understand.'