Blind Faith

by Ben Elton

  'Keep walking!' a guard barked and the Owl moved on, leaving Trafford to shuffle in the opposite direction.

  After this Trafford saw Macallan and then Taylor, and Connor Newbury, shockingly reduced from his former glory. There were others also that he recognized from the library and Trafford realized with an anguished heart that somehow or other the Inquisition had penetrated the resistance after all. He started looking about, desperately searching for Sandra Dee, hoping against hope that he would not find her. Why had she been so impatient? Why had she insisted on joining the library so soon? If only she had waited she might have avoided this terrible round-up.

  Then he saw her. She was standing by the door through which he had entered the exercise yard and staring back at him. He began to hobble towards her but she did not move. Nor was she bruised or injured in any way. She was dressed, as always, prettily but modestly and she looked fresh and clean. Beside her stood Brother Redemption. Trafford stopped. Then he watched as Sandra Dee said something to the Inquisitor, as if giving him an order. Then Brother Redemption began walking towards him.

  41

  Trafford was ordered to follow Sandra Dee back to his cell. Head bowed, he watched the gentle sway of her light cotton dress as she walked. It was a dress he had last seen spread out around her as she sat nearly naked on the bench of her boat, listening to his sexual fantasies.

  'Leave us,' Sandra Dee said to Brother Redemption as they entered Trafford's cell.

  'But—' the Inquisitor began to protest.

  'He's been beaten half to death,' Sandra Dee snapped. 'I don't think he's likely to give me any trouble. Leave us.'

  'Very well, ma'am,' the previously all-powerful figure said and left without further protest. The door closed behind him and Sandra Dee and Trafford were alone.

  'You work for the Inquisition?' Trafford asked. Somehow he felt calm; the calm of the already dead.

  'Well, not exactly,' Sandra Dee replied. 'I'm a government employee, like you. A policewoman, a spy really, but effectively we all work for the Temple, don't we?'

  Trafford might have felt strangely calm but that did not prevent him from being totally confused.

  'You came to work in our office . . . to spy on us?'

  'Yes.'

  'Do the police have a spy in every office?'

  'Of course not.'

  'Why ours?'

  'We were looking for a Vaccinator,' she explained. 'You're wrong about all the data NatDat collects being useless, by the way. We use it all the time, particularly Degrees of Separation. That's how we knew that in the last few years our dead friend Cassius had been around colleagues whose children seemed to be bucking the plague trends. Simple link: find a parent whose child survives a plague, key in all known contacts, keep doing it until you find a common factor. In this case, Cassius. That's how we usually catch Vaccinators. Using DegSep.'

  There were so many things that Trafford wanted to ask, so many accusations that he wished to hurl into the face of this woman who was a spy.

  'But . . . if you catch Vaccinators by tracing healthy children' – Trafford's voice shook with outrage – 'you must accept that vaccination works!'

  'Obviously, Trafford. That's why the police are not the Inquisition. They are obliged by their faith to deny it. We are not bound by such strict codes of piety. We catch the Vaccinators because we know that vaccination works and then they burn them because they know that it doesn't.'

  Suddenly Trafford lunged at her, his fist clenched, his face snarling. He did not get halfway across the floor before his wounded body gave out.

  'Please, Trafford,' said Sandra Dee, 'don't be ridiculous.'

  'By arresting Vaccinators you murder children!' he shouted.

  'I'm a policewoman, Trafford. My job is to uphold the law.'

  'Why? Why are you a policewoman?'

  'For all the reasons that you became a Humanist. For all the reasons that first attracted you to me and . . .' here she seemed momentarily to hesitate, 'and me to you.'

  'Don't be insane.'

  'I'm serious. I am everything you are except I have mastered my conscience. Working undercover allows me as many secrets as I want. Only I know who I am. The false blog you uncovered gets selected and uploaded for me by a clerk in my department. I've never even looked at it. I think that the world is as shitty as you do, Trafford, but by working for it I get to opt out. I don't even have to have a fucking boob job. My body's my own and my soul is my own. I live an entirely secret life and the Temple means nothing to me. And what's more, in the course of my duties I get to meet the most interesting people. People like you, Trafford. And the other Humanists. We had only guessed at their existence before you brought me to them. We had absolutely no idea they were so organized, and while I was pursuing you I got to read all those wonderful books. I shall keep mine. That's why I'm a cop, Trafford. Drug cops take drugs, vice cops look at illegal porn and I get to read Pride and Prejudice.'

  'You filthy, selfish bitch . . .'

  'Trafford, selfish is the only way to be. Why shouldn't I be selfish? When you consider what humanity is, what a useless, fucked-up tribe of sadistic, pig-ignorant fools we really are, you see that selfishness is actually the only moral course. Why sacrifice yourself for other people? They're all utter shits. If you have the character to make a sacrifice, you're already too good for the arseholes you want to save. Look at the world they built.'

  'Am I a shit? Was Cassius a shit?'

  She looked at him for a moment before replying.

  'No. You're not a shit, Trafford. You're a fine man and I liked you. There are exceptions, of course, but not enough to be worth martyring yourself for. Humanity had it all and threw it away. If it had it all again it would throw it away again. History is one long proof that the human race does not deserve the brains it was born with. We're a rotten useless breed and in the long run the only thing to do is to look after number one.'

  Trafford was still lying on the floor where he had fallen. She pulled him to his feet and helped him back to his bed. He was surprised how strong she was.

  'Think about it, Trafford,' Sandra Dee continued, 'and you'll see I'm right.'

  'Why would you care what I think?' he asked.

  'Because you're clever and good at keeping secrets,' she replied. 'We need people like you.'

  For a moment Trafford did not understand what she was saying.

  'What do you mean?' he stuttered.

  'I mean that it's time for you to grow up. You wanted to be an individual, then be an individual. Your child is dead; your wife has denounced you. You're a non-person now, so you can pretend to be anybody we choose. Join us, become a spy. We can change your face, place you in a community and you'll get to keep all your secrets while you ferret out other people's. We could even see each other occasionally to swap books or . . . whatever. It's that or burn, Trafford.'

  'I'd rather burn.'

  'I suggest you need to think about it.'

  'Thinking about it will change nothing. I'd rather burn for ever than become what you are, Sandra Dee.'

  'And what's that?'

  'Inhuman.'

  'Then I'm proud to be inhuman because humanity is shit.'

  'It isn't and you know it. You've read enough books to understand that. Humanity encompasses the highest and the lowest that nature has to offer. I'd rather die still believing in the highest than become what you are. You're the lowest, far lower than a bully like Princess Lovebud; compared to you, she's an angel.'

  Sandra Dee got up without another word and went to the door. Then she turned.

  'We killed Caitlin Happymeal, by the way,' she said.

  Trafford was white with shock.

  'You . . . killed her?'

  'Yes. Didn't you think it was a bit of a coincidence that she died just before you planned to use the climax of the Miracles Do Happen campaign to announce that Caitlin had survived not through the work of the Lord but through being vaccinated? You never should have told me the plan,
Trafford. The moment you did that, I knew she would have to die. I reported what you'd told me to my superiors and they got our chemical people to introduce the cholera virus into your building. We killed Caitlin Happymeal to prevent you using her as a tool against the Temple. So you see, her death is really your fault.'

  Even as Trafford's head swam with the horror of what she was telling him, a final idea was growing in his mind.

  One last plan.

  'I loved you,' he said.

  'I didn't ask you to,' she replied.

  'But you made love to me.'

  'I had sex with you.'

  'Do you think you know what love is?'

  'I think so.'

  'I don't think you do.'

  'Well, we'll never know, will we? At least you won't.'

  'I wanted to tell you . . . To tell you what love is . . . I wrote you a letter. I wrote it to you at work on the morning I was arrested. I think perhaps I sensed that something was going to happen.'

  'Sensed? Trafford,' Sandra Dee said with a smile, 'I thought you dealt only in reason?'

  'It's filed under Ev Love.'

  'Ev Love?'

  'Yes. Everlasting Love.'

  Despite the coldness which she was working so hard to portray, something in Sandra Dee's manner changed at this.

  'Everlasting love?' she asked, and Trafford thought he detected in her voice the tiniest of cracks.

  'Yes,' he replied. 'Everlasting love.'

  Sandra Dee resumed her defiant smile, her defences once more intact.

  'Always the romantic, eh, Trafford?' she said. Then she was gone.

  Trafford was left alone, wondering. Would she look? She was a police spy after all; she was interested in people and naturally curious. Also, despite what she had said, Trafford knew that she had loved him a little. In her own inhuman way. He thought she would look. He believed that she would look and if she did, if she went to Trafford's folder at DegSep and opened the Ev Love file, the emails would be sent. Emails which contained the message of evolution. Emails which from that point on would be self-generating.

  42

  On the morning scheduled for Trafford's public execution the news loops were filled with the story that the heretic of Wembley, the man who had openly boasted of poisoning his child, was also a member of a sinister sect, a secret, subversive terrorist organization. Worse even than the suicide-bombing teenagers of the Other Faith, these people, the news reported, sought to revive the dreadful lies of the monkey men through study and teaching. Their sworn aim was to bring back the very delusions that had caused the Love to send down his terrible flood in the first place.

  The route to the funeral pyre along which Trafford was whipped was therefore lined with many thousands of outraged citizens, a great crowd blind with fury over the heretic pervert who enjoyed poisoning children and who believed his great-grandfather was a monkey.

  At the place of execution the other members of the sect had already been crucified and were hanging, still alive, from the crosses to which they had been nailed. The crowd hurled mud and stones at them as some begged for mercy and offered to repent while others stayed silent. Trafford noticed that Connor Newbury did not plead. Trafford was surprised; he had not credited him with such character.

  Chantorria was there too, naked and in the stocks, a willing object of scorn, her mind half gone with grief and fear, babbling that only through her suffering might her baby one day find her way to Heaven.

  Trafford mounted the steps from which he was to be put on to the fire. With a chill of anguish he saw that the pyre was made of books and he realized this was the contents of the library that had brought him so much happiness.

  Confessor Bailey was already in place when Trafford reached the top of the steps. As his Confessor, it was Bailey's job to demand of Trafford that he recant and deny his beliefs prior to his execution.

  'Trafford Sewell,' he intoned solemnly into the microphone, clearly relishing his moment in the spotlight, 'do you confess to being a Vaccinator and a reader of books and a believer in the so-called "science" of the monkey men?'

  'I do,' Trafford replied loudly, 'and proudly!'

  The crowd shrieked its derision. Looking down, Trafford saw that Princess Lovebud and Tinkerbell had somehow forced themselves to the front of the crowd. Their faces were ugly with spite.

  'Will you recant your sins?' Confessor Bailey called. 'Will you deny that vaccination is a science and that man evolved rather than being created in one day by God?'

  'No. Never.'

  'Then you must be burned alive.'

  'A faith which has to be extorted is worthless!'

  'Burn him!'

  Trafford had never dreamed that he would have the strength to die rather than recant but now he found it. As they bound him to the stake, he stared down into the faces of the crowd. A microphone was pointed in his direction in readiness for his screams.

  'Everlasting Love!' he called out suddenly. 'Everlasting love! Ev Love! Ev Love! Ev Love!'

  For a moment there was quiet in the crowd, everybody anxious to hear what last blasphemy the heretic had decided to deliver.

  'Don't look forward into ignorance!' Trafford cried. 'Look backwards to enlightenment. Look backwards. Ev Love, backwards I tell you. Ev Love! Ev Love backwards.'

  And in that moment, as the hooded executioner advanced with his burning torch to light the pyre, Trafford saw a waving hand in the crowd. He turned to look, expecting a familiar face, but the man who caught his eye was a stranger. As Trafford looked, the man pointed at his vest. On it were written the words Ev (erlasting) Love!

  The man nodded steadily at Trafford.

  Looking round the crowd, Trafford caught sight of a girl on her boyfriend's shoulders. She carried a banner.

  The banner said Ev Love. The girl was not cheering but merely staring intently towards Trafford, her boyfriend staring too.

  Sandra Dee had taken his bait and gone looking for evidence of his love! For whatever reason – curiosity, sentiment or mere psychological interest – she had entered Trafford's folder on the DegSep computer and opened the Ev Love file. He had tricked her in the end and caused her to release his viral email. Millions of people had received the first Humanist mail shot.

  Trafford was placed on the bonfire and the fire was lit. But as the flames from the burning books began to lick about his feet, he found one last moment to smile, for he knew in his heart of hearts that one day the Temple would be defeated. Reason dictated it. Reason and the theory of evolution. For no society based on nothing more constructive than fear and brutish ignorance could survive for ever. No people who raised up the least inventive, the least challenging, the least interesting of their number while crushing individual curiosity and endeavour could prosper for long. Trafford knew that natural selection would save the world, as it had done before when other tyrants had tried to crush the human spirit, and that one day the Confessors of the Temple would be extinct.

  THE END

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