by Ben Elton
'You may well have to,' Cassius replied. 'Follow me.'
He turned towards the wall, which was now revealed as containing a secret door. The smell hit Trafford the moment the door opened, although it was not so much a smell as a texture to the air. It was dry. He had never before breathed completely dry air. The humidity in the city was pretty constant and every breath one took was laden with moisture. This air was different though: it wasn't fresh, far from it – in fact it smelt dusty and in a strange way old. But it was dry.
The room itself was as unique as the air in it. It was clearly carefully sealed because as the false wall closed behind him Trafford was aware that the noise of the city had disappeared. He was in a large room made up of the cellars of the next three houses in the street knocked through into one space. Even ground floors were normally ankle-deep in water and home to rats and mosquitoes, so it was most unusual to find a basement occupied. Somehow or other this space had been waterproofed and Trafford could now see that the quality of the air was the result of a large dehumidifier attached to the ceiling.
There were half a dozen men and women in the room besides Trafford and Cassius. They were sitting together around a small table on which stood a pot of tea, a bottle of wine and some plain-looking biscuits of a variety that Trafford did not recognize. The rest of the room was packed to bursting point with books. Old, old books. The people at the table scarcely looked up when Cassius entered, they were so engrossed. Each of them sat hunched over a book, taking an occasional sip of tea or wine.
'This is one of our reading rooms,' Cassius explained in a whisper.
For a moment Trafford wondered why Cassius was whispering. It was strange to hear anybody speaking at anything other than the top of their voice and he had already noted that the room was sealed from the outside world. Then he realized that Cassius did not wish to disturb the people around the table, who were concentrating.
Trafford felt a thrill. Nobody concentrated, ever.
No video screen stayed on the same image for more than a few seconds and no conversation remained focused on a topic for any longer. After all, an important aspect of being a person of faith was always to say the first thing that came into your head and to say it as loudly as possible. There was never any need to concentrate: God knew everything and you did what the Temple told you to do. What was to concentrate on?
And yet here, in this strange room, there was nothing but concentration. Quiet, focused concentration. Trafford wanted nothing more on Earth than to join those figures sitting round that table.
There was even an empty chair waiting for him.
'These are books that we have collected and continue to collect,' Cassius explained. 'After the flood, when the darkness of ignorance began to creep across the land, the first of the New Humanists began to store them. Most books were lost, of course. Many rotted in the deluge and then, as faith replaced reason, others were pulped for pamphlets or burned as fuel or used as lavatory paper. But we saved some and still do. Even now they can be found, stuffed into wall cavities or washed up on ledges in sewers. I once found Plato, Aeschylus and Aristotle lining a hen coop.'
Trafford had never heard of Plato, Aeschylus or Aristotle.
'We grab them when we can,' Cassius went on, 'clean them, dry them, repair them and above all read them. That is our bounden duty, to inwardly digest and understand the knowledge and the literature of the past.'
'Have you scanned them? Digitized them?'
'No. Only paper is safe. The authorities are ever vigilant for sedition on the net. As we have learned to our cost, they scan constantly for the key words and phrases. Oh, a story or a poem might survive undetected for a while; I doubt that the average policeman or Temple elder would recognize a Shakespeare sonnet if it were to beat them with a rubber truncheon. But there are key names and areas of knowledge which they pursue relentlessly. Not surprisingly, these are the same names and areas which every Humanist is pledged to study and to understand. Darwin and evolution above all, for the theory of evolution is the creed at the very core of the resistance, but there are many thousands of others – Galileo, Copernicus, greenhouse gas, Tom Paine and his Rights of Man, the Big Bang, George Bernard Shaw, Isaac Newton . . .'
Cassius was interrupted by a loud clearing of the throat. Trafford turned to see that one of the readers sitting at the table had looked up from his book and was glaring at them fiercely. In the excitement of listing his favourite inspirational names and topics (none of which, apart from Darwin, Trafford had heard of) Cassius had allowed his voice to rise a little and he was disturbing the peace.
'Sorry,' he whispered. 'Almost anything that we might wish to read could be located on the net instantly and traced straight back to us. The internet was supposed to liberate knowledge but in fact it buried it, first under a vast sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth and then beneath the cloak of police surveillance. Now, as you know, cyberspace exists exclusively to promote commerce, gossip and pornography. And, of course, to hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key. A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it, you have to read it.'
'And that is what you do? You read books?'
'We study. We also organize secret seminars and lectures.
Each one of us is an intellectual revolutionary. By our very existence we defy the forces of blind faith and ignorance. Doggedly we piece together the science of the past, the history of the past, and the imagination of the past.'
'The imagination of the past?'
'That which people in the past imagined. Literature, fiction, glorious stories written in an age when a person's mind could wander free . . .'
Trafford struggled to contain his mounting excitement. He was among genuine heretics, freedom fighters of the mind. He felt as if his whole life until this moment had been on 'pause' and only now could he press 'play'.
'May I read something?' he asked.
The empty chair was beckoning him. The great piles of books were calling.
'But of course. That's why we're here,' Cassius said cheerfully. 'You must start by acquainting yourself with the fundamentals of human understanding. Then, when you are ready, it will be your duty as a Humanist to go out and attempt to spread this knowledge even at the risk of your life.'
Cassius handed Trafford a copy of an old and battered book.
'This is where we all begin,' Cassius explained. 'You see the title? A Child's Guide to the Wonderful World of Science and Nature. It was published considerably over a hundred years ago and it was intended for quite young children. You will find almost everything in it complex and completely new to you. Much of the natural world that it describes has of course long since disappeared beneath the waters of the flood, but the analysis of how our planet works and its place within our galaxy remains entirely relevant. When you have mastered the contents of this book and explained them to me to my satisfaction, we will progress to more adult texts.'
Trafford took his place and began to read. It was extremely difficult at first. The text was so very dense and Trafford found himself wondering how anything could be so long-winded. Perhaps sensing his difficulty, Cassius came over and poured Trafford a glass of wine.
'Stick with it,' he whispered. 'You'll soon get your eye in.'
And quite quickly, to Trafford's surprise he did. Suddenly his eye was racing over the pages, absorbing every word, luxuriating in the pleasure of looking through a window of understanding, shining a light into the darkness of his ignorance.
After two hours during which Trafford scarcely raised his eyes from the pages, Cassius commented that he had a long journey home and suggested it was time to leave. Before Trafford could register his disappointment Cassius produced the empty jacket of a self-help tome entitled New You: Twelve Steps to Inner Fulfilment and Material Success. Taking the copy of the book Trafford was reading from his grasp, Cassius slipped it inside the pamphlet jacket.
'A simple subterfuge but effective,' he said.
'Be brazen. I told you before, the fastest way to draw attention to yourself is to look like you want to avoid it.'
Then Cassius took another book from the shelves. It had a picture of a man smoking a pipe on the front and was called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
'For fun,' he said, putting it inside a manual that promised better sex and a trimmer tummy through the power of positive thinking. 'Bring them back in a week and tell me how you get on.'
22
A week proved far too long. Trafford had devoured both the science book and the stories Cassius had given him by the following evening. He had even tried to read as he cycled down from the library towards the Lake London ferry, which nearly resulted in his being dunked in the murky waters of the Kilburn High Road. Trafford loved Sherlock Holmes; he had never experienced proper narrative before, stories that grew and developed instead of simply repeating themselves like the computer fantasy games with their endless cyclical destruction of digital enemies. His education progressed quickly and within a few visits to the library Cassius pronounced that it was time for him to tackle Darwin's Origin of Species.
'This,' Cassius explained, 'is the core Humanist text. Nothing is more important to us; nothing is more hateful to the Temple.'
'Because it denies God?' Trafford asked.
'No. It doesn't do that at all, although it certainly denies that strange deity known as the Lord and the Love who is supposedly represented here on Earth by your Confessor. This book does not disprove the existence of a Divine Creator, that was not Darwin's purpose. What this book does do is prove beyond any reasonable doubt that, however man was created, he did not emerge fully formed in a single morning along with every other creature on Earth a few thousand years ago.'
Cassius also gave Trafford a copy of a book called Pride and Prejudice.
'This is by a once-celebrated female author,' he explained. 'Read it and ask yourself how the fascinatingly complex rituals of human courtship could have been reduced to the brief preamble to sex that passes for a relationship today.'
Cassius wrapped both books inside the cover of a gossip magazine that promised to expose the acne and cellulite that celebrities wished to hide.
'Remember,' Cassius said as Trafford mounted his bicycle outside the shop, 'Darwin is the key. Evolution is our only hope.'
The weeks went by and, as Trafford spent more and more of his time reading, not surprisingly he and Chantorria drifted further and further apart. They conversed little and aside from the pantomime sex that had to be endured occasionally for the benefit of neighbours there was no longer any intimacy between them at all.
It was not just Trafford's never-ending reading and the fact that his mind was clearly always elsewhere which caused the tension. Trafford also knew that ever since Chantorria had confronted him about reading Sandra Dee's blog she had suspected him of having an affair. Which, in a cerebral sort of way, he was doing, for the only thing capable of supplanting his rapidly expanding knowledge of history, science and literature was his obsession with the secrets of Sandra Dee.
Gradually Trafford and Chantorria came to accept that their marriage was drawing to its natural end. They had nothing to be ashamed of: they had had an appropriate run, two years was neither particularly long nor particularly short for a marriage to last and the Temple would view their divorce without censure. First, however, the necessary public emoting and testification must be gone through, for no partnership could end in private. Every detail of the marriage, every reason for the separation, must be announced at the Community Confession and be duly cheered or booed by the congregation. The proceedings must also be broadcast on the web, for the benefit of those like Barbieheart who could not attend the Confessions in person. After that the public would be invited to log on with their comments about the success or failure of the marriage, which could also be given a star rating of one to five.
One day, therefore, Trafford and Chantorria went by mutual agreement to see Confessor Bailey in order to ask that the break-up banns be posted and that they be allotted time at the following week's Confession to begin the public parading of the dysfunctional nature of their relationship. After this they could humbly request that in due course, if the Confessor was satisfied that every option for healing, growing and learning had been exhausted, he might grant them a divorce.
Confessor Bailey received them in the airy splendour of his Spirit House, a large converted pub which he and his wives and servants had all to themselves. The Confessor expressed (as convention required) great sadness to see such a fine marriage come to an end and made no secret of taking Chantorria's side. Nor did he make any effort to disguise his attraction to her, pronouncing himself amazed that Trafford could have grown tired of having sex with such a fine-looking woman who had been blessed with such impressive natural breasts.
'You must be dead from the waist down, Trafford,' the clergyman sneered. 'Barbieheart, your chat room moderator, had of course informed me that you good people were having trouble and she also Tubed me an edit of Chantorria lingeing you up, Trafford.'
The Confessor touched a button and there on his wallscreen appeared Chantorria standing behind Trafford in her heels, cupless bra and chocolate G-string.
'Very nice. Very beautiful and pure,' Confessor Bailey said, licking his big glossy lips. 'You're a credit to your sex, Chantorria, and I'd be prepared to wager you won't stay long on the shelf.'
'Thank you, Confessor Bailey,' Chantorria said, blushing, 'that's very kind.'
'I mean it. You mark my words. There'll be any number of decent red-blooded boys of faith and good family trying to get a piece of your big holy arse. In fact I should like to see your breasts right now in the name of the Love.'
Without a word Chantorria undid her bikini top and stood topless before her Confessor.
'You're crazy, Trafford,' Bailey said, having feasted his eyes. 'Still, we always knew you were a little touched.'
The Confessor then noted down the forthcoming testification, entering the title of the dysfunction that Trafford and Chantorria had agreed into the Order of Service:
He won't sort me out and prefers to perv on other girls' Tube diaries.
Trafford had been happy for Chantorria to be the injured party. Indeed, he could think of nothing for which to blame her and no good reason why the marriage should be over. Nor could he confess to being in love with someone else since his love was secret and therefore a sin. It didn't matter: only one partner was required to be injured and nobody would take much notice of an insignificant couple like them anyway. Confessor Bailey completed his paperwork and dismissed them.
The following Sunday Trafford and Chantorria went as usual to the local youth centre where the Community Confession was held. Both were a little sad, conscious that this would be one of the last times they would attend Confession together as a married couple.
Glancing through the itinerary as they took their seats, Trafford could see that it was going to be a very busy evening. The Confessor would have his work cut out to fit everything in. Trafford was relieved that there was no shortage of entertainment and so nobody would mind very much if he and Chantorria simply went through the motions.
Three couples were scheduled to confront their issues before Trafford and Chantorria had their turn. None of them were asking for divorce but instead for community counselling in the hope that they might learn and grow through their difficulties and in due course heal. Trafford knew all three couples: they were local celebrities, people who loved to confess, who gloried in the drama of it and the parish notoriety that it brought them. He read the three proclamations:
He hates my mum which I can't forgive but then he sorted her out and also my sister although I blame her for that, the bitch.
My tarot reader says he's the wrong man but I love him. Should I leave him? Who should I trust? My husband or my healer?
She won't let me give it to her from behind and I have to lie when my mates talk about how much anal they get. Is she frigi
d?
The congregation screamed and stamped their feet as Confessor Bailey took the stage to lead them in the opening testification of faith before inviting the first warring family to join him on stage.
'OK, we have a lot to get through,' he said. 'First up, listen to this. How would you feel, girls, if your husband had sex with your mum and also your sister? That's right! Would you blame him? Would you blame them? Or would you blame yourself? Would you fight to keep your precious man in your loving home or would you let the scheming love rat go? Let's find out how one family is dealing with just these issues. Madonnatella, Angel Delight, Heavenly Braveheart and Ninja, please join me on stage and face your community!'
The cheering, whooping and shouting rose to fever pitch as the four parties of dysfunctional testification strutted arrogantly on to the stage, sneering and grimacing at each other and at the congregation before taking their seats.
'All right!' Confessor Bailey shouted above the din. 'Madonnatella, what's your beef? What's going on here? Let's see if we can't sort this out right here, right now.'
Madonnatella rose and turned to look at the man sitting on the furthest chair from her. Her big face, which had been made lumpy and strange from too many cheap injections and implants, was wound up into a grimace of fury.
'We live in a small flat, right?' Madonnatella said in tones of righteous outrage. 'And ever since my mum got dumped by my last stepdad she's lived with us, right? Which I don't mind because I love her to bits and at the end of the day she's my best mate, right, even if she is a bitch. Well, one day I come home from shopping, right? And him, right! Yeah, you, Ninja! You know who I'm talking about.'
Ninja and the other two women on stage were already vigorously shaking their heads in a furious pantomime of denial and disbelief, even though as yet Madonnatella had accused them of nothing.