Fanatics: Zero Tolerance

by Ferguson, David J.

  “Oh,” said Andrews. “Right.”

  He had already written the “J” of John when it occurred to him to look at the card more closely. He read the small print in the corner with disapproval. “I can’t sign this,” he said.

  “Come on, Mr Andrews,” said the official. “Just sign it. Don’t throw away your freedom for the sake of something so trivial.”

  Andrews looked at it again. “What if I sign this, then just destroy it when I leave here?”

  “It’ll be replicated as a swipe card before you go,” said the official. “We’ll still have the original. But destroying it would just be silly, Mr Andrews. Very soon nobody will be able to function without one of these.”

  Andrews sighed and looked at the card for a moment with half-glazed eyes, then threw it back across the table. “Take me back to my cell,” he said.

  *****

  The Covenant Of Responsibility

  I acknowledge that I have rights, but that I also have responsibilities. I acknowledge that possession of this card not only affirms citizenship, it implies acceptance of the propositions that: 1.) law and order are for everyone at all times, and 2.) the laws and the constitution must be upheld by every citizen, even at the cost of compromising dearly held political or religious beliefs. I hereby declare my commitment to the foregoing propositions, and my determination to show zero tolerance to those who resist embracing them.

  Signed, ____________________________

  *****

  www.new.northernmirror.org/frontpage

  ...Mr Jennings, who has often been heard by his neighbours to declare that he would rather let his family starve than sign the Covenant of Responsibility, was described by Anthony Parsons QC, speaking for the prosecution, as “the worst sort of fanatic”.

  Meanwhile Jennings’ children, who were apparently borderline malnutrition cases, have been doing much better since being taken into care. Alison, 6, and Conor, 3, have once or twice asked about their father, but have not shown any immoderate signs of distress at being separated.

  Contrary to certain alarming rumours being circulated by parties with a Lemming-like outlook, the Jennings case is only the third of its kind to have been heard in court during the last week.

  *****

  Three years later, on the day he wrote the final pages of his last published work, Raptures, John Andrews surrendered at last to the conviction that he would die in his prison cell.

  He could cope with that, he realised with some surprise; what was more difficult to come to terms with was the more insidious sense of certainty that writing the book at all had been utterly futile. His warders had dropped some pretty broad hints that one of these days the book would simply be confiscated and destroyed (and even if it wasn’t, what on Earth was he supposed to do about getting it published? He could hardly hand it to the prison Governor and say, “Here, nip down to the Post Office with that, would you?”) Someone in the secret services would read it, then burn or shred it. John Andrews’ destiny was to be forgotten, and his words obliterated.

  But something pushed him on. If the audience for his swan song was to be only two - himself, and some anonymous grey-suited individual - why, he had better make the performance a good one. He was not, after all, in so very different a situation from an unpublished author trying to impress a hard-nosed agent or editor; and anyway, if this book was as good as he believed it to be, it simply had to be realised. It is difficult to be objective about your own work, and to call the book a masterpiece was certainly a great overstatement, but he was quite convinced that it was one of the very best things he had ever produced. He had read somewhere that “Babies must be born, and good books must be written,” and he could feel the truth of it now.

  As he expected, two days after it was finished, the book was taken away from him.

  The day after that, an inexplicable administrative blunder resulted in John Andrews’ release from prison. Nothing could be done by the men in grey to retrieve the situation; he left in the full glare of publicity. At least, they consoled themselves, the book will never be published.

  John Andrews’ urge to write seemed thereafter to be burnt out; but they watched him continually anyway to make sure that he wrote nothing else.

  PART 5: Raptures

  A handful of months after he was granted his freedom again, John Andrews received a parcel.

  “Sign here,” said the delivery man.

  He looked at the package suspiciously. He received little from the postman except hate-mail since his former captors had “accidentally” leaked his address into the public domain via the internet, so it was as likely to be a bomb as anything good. The sheer volume of mail made the censors lazy, though, so sometimes goodies got through.

  He leaned forward, squinting over the top of his glasses at the handwriting on the envelope taped to the parcel; it looked vaguely familiar.

  He decided to accept it. He took the delivery man’s clipboard, signed his name with a flourish, then handed it back and brought his package into the house.

  He opened the envelope first. It contained a leaflet, and a handwritten note which said: “Dad - even though there’s no royalty cheque, I imagine you’ll be quite pleased to see this. There’s been such demand for it already (underground, of course) that we’re having to print a second run. The tract has been lifted from it nearly word for word. There’s an online version circulating too. I had a feeling you wouldn’t be likely to initiate a lawsuit for breach of copyright! You were right about Dr A. He really knows his stuff.”

  John glanced at the leaflet quickly; then, breaking into a grin, he began to unwrap the parcel. Against all reason, he was convinced he knew just what it was going to be: a very particular paperback book. And it was! Turning it over in his hands and opening it to the first page, he saw it was not professionally produced; the binding looked a bit slipshod, and the cover was plain blue, without any lettering. That didn’t matter, though; he could not have been more pleased if someone had handed him a bar of gold.

  The book began:

  Most of a certain generation will be able, if you ask them, to tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. So a more cataclysmic event, one would suppose, will probably leave an even bigger mark on people. But you’d be wrong. It’s surprising how few people pay attention to the really important things in life.

  “My clever, clever son,” he whispered, almost in tears. “God bless you, Michael. Good on you!”

  *****

  “It’s an interesting idea,” said the Ufologist, looking at the leaflet again. “Doesn’t it capture your imagination?”

  “It’s all scaremongering nonsense,” replied the Churchman. He was very keenly aware he was one of the last people anywhere in his kind of job, and was naturally anxious not to be associated with anything that hastened the extinction of the profession. “Christian pornography,” he said. “It won’t happen.”

  “It rings a bell, though,” said the Ufologist. “I have a vague recollection of something I read... an account of a conversation with an ETI...”

  “Fairy stories,” scoffed the Churchman. “The products of excitable minds. How could such things happen without anyone noticing?”

  “But it’s all been very well documented, you know. I’ve spoken to eyewitnesses myself,” protested the Ufologist.

  “Humbug,” said the Churchman. “You’re too gullible.”

  “You’re too sceptical,” said the Ufologist.

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” said the Churchman.

  *****

  “So, she hasn’t reported in yet, eh?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Haven’t you any idea what’s stopped her from calling in?”

  “Well, I suppose it’s possible there’s no need to worry; perhaps they haven’t given her a room to herself as she thought they would -”

  “Perhaps they all sleep together. Some of these oddball
cults have orgies every night, I hear. Almost makes you wish you were one of them yourself, eh?”

  “Sir?”

  “Oh, never mind. Well, what about brute force? Are you saying you think her cover’s been blown and they’re preventing her from reporting?”

  “No, Sir. She was walking outside Jericho – I mean, the commune - with one of them this morning. She’s been combat trained just like the rest of us - she had every opportunity to overpower her companion and escape.”

  “Presumably her cover’s still safe, then.”

  “There is another possibility, Sir.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Well - just between us, Sir, I’ve never considered her to be very reliable. I think she may be about to go over to their side.”

  “Yes. The thought had crossed my mind, too.”

  “If she has defected, we’ll have to act quickly, Sir.”

  “Hmm - let’s not jump the gun, shall we? Give her another hour. If she hasn’t called in by then, you have a free hand.”

  *****

  Everything was going tremendously well. So far, the recording had progressed twenty minutes into the programme without even one cut for a stammer or a faux-pas; the studio audience appeared to be enjoying the discussion immensely, and George Campbell, the guest, had even been allowed by his host, Del Shannon, to plug his new book once or twice. Then something disconcerting happened.

  The actual nature of the strange event was really quite difficult to define. Probably the thing which confused one most about it was that it was less like something that had happened than something that had stopped happening. As nearly as it could be described, it was like a draught; but it didn’t come from any particular direction, and using the word draught seemed too crass a way to evoke something so subtle, so delicate, that even Chaucer’s elegant phrase, The sweete breath of Zephyrus, did it violence.

  For a moment, Campbell wasn’t sure whether it was a real sensory experience or whether he was imagining it; then he saw the ripple passing through the audience. They shifted in their seats, looking like people who have only just begun to pay attention after realising they’ve been woolgathering for some minutes.

  Campbell suddenly felt the same.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Del Shannon, “I’ve forgotten your question.”

  “Cut,” came the director’s voice over the P.A. system. “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen. We’ll have to backtrack and record that last bit again. We can’t broadcast it like that.”

  *****

  They were, unfortunately, violent times. Even more unfortunately, the Police, though often needed, were not often enough present; and most of those who needed them seldom had the leisure to go looking for them. Witness:

  John Andrews had just settled down in an armchair and was ready to begin reading the latest offering from his old rival, George Campbell, when he was startled by the sound of a handful of soil and pebbles hitting his window. As he leapt to his feet, someone began to batter at the front door; then something more solid, probably a half-brick, came crashing through the windowpane. The billow of the curtains prevented it from hitting him, but he had to dodge as the whole curtain-rail assembly suddenly fell in a tangle to the floor.

  Outside were ten or fifteen youths, some picking up more stones to throw. One was attempting to climb in through the broken window; Andrews resisted the temptation to pick up a nearby table lamp and brain the boy with it.

  Instead, he made his way swiftly through the kitchen and out through the back door, slamming all the doors as he went. He paused just long enough to drag a dustbin a couple of metres until it was directly in front of the doorway, and then began running, hoping he’d done enough to slow them down. He was counting on being able to get to the main road and flag down a car; but the alleyway at the back of his house was long, and seemed to stretch out interminably before him. Michael was right, he thought. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. Perhaps I should have joined him at Jericho. The thought had all the comfort of an I-told-you-so.

  In fact, he was more than halfway along the alley before he heard the rattle of the bin falling over and the curses and shouts of those who’d been unlucky enough to find it first.

  Andrews finally reached the main road, and was dismayed to find it deserted. He stood for some moments in an agony of indecision, then dashed leftwards for a short distance and ducked into some shadows. Wheezing and gasping, he turned around and watched as the mob spilled out of the darkness onto the road. They would find him any minute now.

  He heard a car approaching, and realised he would have to gamble on the driver’s kindness; his present hiding place was anything but satisfactory. He ran out in front of the car, waving his arms. It swerved, tyres screeching, and mounted the pavement briefly; but it didn’t stop. The driver could see the mob beyond Andrews, and clearly didn’t wish to get involved.

  Desperate, Andrews turned and ran again while the gang was still gathering its collective wits. Going around this corner, then that one, then another, took him momentarily out of their line of sight, and he dodged into an alleyway where he hoped they wouldn’t follow. He almost ran headlong into a courting couple standing just outside the circle of the nearest streetlamp, but could waste no breath for an apology.

  The mob was only seconds behind him. The young couple, anxious to give it no reason for fastening onto them instead, shouted: “That way! He went that way! It’s a dead end, he can’t get away!”

  The commotion stopped suddenly when they reached the dead end wall, only ten metres or so down the alleyway. A couple of thugs turned and collared the young couple, who’d been trying to slink away as quietly and as quickly as they could manage. “We don’t see him,” one said.

  “What?” said the boy. He could only look blankly at them. The girl craned her head this way and that as if she thought that they were hiding Andrews and had staged the whole thing as a cruel trick.

  For an answer, the mob leader shoved the two of them along until their backs were against the dead end wall.

  “I don’t understand,” said the boy. “He came up here. I saw him!”

  “It’s true,” offered the girl timidly.

  “You helped him get away,” said the mob leader in a deadly cool voice. “I’m not very happy about that.”

  “But we saw him!” said the boy, almost sobbing. “We saw him!”

  “Oh?” The thug made a gesture with his hands that encompassed the whole of their surroundings. “Where is he, then?”

  *****

  Not everyone had the same difficulty flagging down a lift that John Andrews did on that night. If you’ve ever been walking along miles from home on a freezing cold night watching the tail-lights of the last car to pass you disappear over the horizon and leaving you with only the sound of your own footsteps for company, you find yourself making resolutions that if ever the situation is reversed, you will certainly stop for the hitch-hiker.

  Doctor Philip Allen, on his way back to Jericho after a hard day’s subverting the nation, had made such a resolution; and he was the sort who kept his resolutions. So when two men stepped out onto the road ahead of him and began waving their arms at him, he slowed down to a stop.

  He was entirely too trusting, of course. The man nearest the driver’s side who walked forward to meet the car as it rolled to a halt put a hand into one of his coat pockets; and it will probably come as no great surprise to you when I tell you that there was a gun in the pocket. The likes of Doctor Allen are easy pickings for his sort.

  Sometimes, though, the simplest of things just won’t go according to plan.

  Just as the gunman reached the car, something distracted him. What particularly it was, he couldn’t have said; but it was enough to stop him and make him look around. It felt vaguely like the sudden conviction you sometimes get that you’ve forgotten something important; or as if an incessant but hitherto unnoticed background noise had suddenly stopped.

 
He put it out of his mind; this was not a good moment to slip into a daydream. He bent to the driver’s side window and drew the gun. “Okay,” he said, “get out with your hands -” he stopped, bewildered. The driver was nowhere to be seen; the car was empty apart from a large box on the back seat.

  The gunman started and swore as his companion’s face suddenly appeared at the other window; he’d been within a whisker of blowing his head off.

  “Where’d he go?” said the other man.

  “How should I know?” snapped the gunman, rattled. He reached over the back of the driver’s seat and opened the box. It was half-filled with what seemed to be religious leaflets, the sort the Lemmings used to churn out. This did not appear to have been a profitable exercise.

  “Maybe we can flog the car,” said his companion.

  *****

  At about the time his father’s career was drawing to a close, Michael was in one of the front rooms of the sprawling building known as “Jericho” to its inhabitants. He was having a quiet chat with an erstwhile girlfriend, Joanne.

  The term “quiet chat” was his, not hers; the longer the conversation continued, the more difficult Joanne found it not to shout. She had never thought of herself as someone particularly noted for her volatile temper; so what was it about this man that provoked her so much?

  “Why can’t you understand,” she said slowly, wearing the face of someone who has to suffer a fool gladly, “that there are a lot of very good reasons why I can’t make that commitment?”

  “But don’t you see, said Michael, “this a million times more important than any so-called good reason you might have for ignoring it?”

  “But you don’t even know what I’m talking about!” she said testily. He started to say something else, but she shushed him. “Michael, I can’t come over to your side. It’s too late for that now.”