“I’m sorry. What did your mum say? She must be devastated.”
Abbey growled, and took another slug. “She says she’s glad he’s gone; that he and the grandkids deserve a fresh start somewhere nice. Can you believe that? Selfish cow, she’s gone senile if you ask me. And who’s going to be looking after her, hey? She can’t walk to the bus stop even these days. Did Nathan ever think of that? Oh no, he just took off and expected me to pick up the pieces, just like everyone else left behind.”
“I know, Steve’s school is talking about classes of sixty for next term. The Governors have been having emergency meetings all summer, so I know how many staff have left.” I hesitated.
“It surprised me. I thought they were more dedicated than that.”
“They would be if they were paid properly.”
“The principal has to recruit another fifteen teachers before term starts, or they won’t be able to open at all.”
“Fifteen? He wouldn’t have got that many in a normal year.”
“He said he’s quite confident. There’s all sorts of new placement agencies starting up to source overseas professionals for the UK. Life’s going to go on pretty much the same as before once the exodus is over.”
“Great,” Abbey grunted. “Just what we’re fighting for.”
Our train started to pull out of the station. The backpackers were squashed down the length of the aisle; nobody could move anywhere. There was a big cheer when the PA announced the stop at Bishop’s Stortford.
Abbey took another swig, and muttered: “Wankers.”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “If we ever get our own wormhole to a new world, we wouldn’t let any of this lot through.”
“That’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it?” Abbey snarled. Her anger was directed at me now, which was kind of scary. She gulped back another mouthful of vodka. “We wouldn’t want to have a new world even if we could open a wormhole. It’s a stupid waste of talent that could be used to help people down here. We have to solve the problems we’ve got on this world first, starting with the biggest problem there is, that bloody warmongering Tory: Blair. Colonization is Imperialism. We’ve got to teach people to have social responsibility instead.” She jabbed an unsteady finger at a badge on her lapel. It was one showing an Icelandic whaler being broken in two by a suspiciously Soviet-looking hammer; but above it was a shiny new Public Responsibility Movement badge. “That’s what today is all about. Murray isn’t building himself a new world; what he’s doing is ruining ours. You can’t just do that, just open a doorway to somewhere else because you feel like it; it’s fucking outrageous. They’ve got to be stopped.”
“It’s the scale that’s the problem,” I said. “You can’t stop people leaving, that’s Stalinist. What we’re not ready for is this mass panic exodus that the wormhole has made possible. Emigration to North America was slow; it lasted for decades. This is fast. Two years, that’s all he’s giving us. No wonder the UK can’t cope with the loss as it happens. But it’ll settle down in the long term.”
“We can stop them,” Abbey said forcefully. “There’s enough people taking part in the movement today to block the roads and turn back all those middle-class bastards. Murray didn’t think it through; half of the police have pissed off through the wormhole. People power is going to come back with a vengeance today. This is when the working class finds its voice again. And it’s going to say: no more. You see.”
p. Stockbrokers.
q. Weapons designers and manufacturers.
r. Arts Council executives.
s. Pension fund managers.
t. Cast and production staff of all TV soaps.
u. All sex crime offenders.
v. All violent crime offenders.
w. Call center owners and managers.
COLIN
As ever, the M1 1 was horrendous, a solid queue of bad-tempered traffic. Nearly two hours from the M25 to the Stanstead junction. Not strictly as ever because I was smiling most of the way. It just didn’t bother me anymore. I just kept thinking this was the last time I would ever have to drive down one of this country’s abysmal, potholed, clogged, nineteen-sixties anachronisms. Never again would I come home ranting about about why we couldn’t have Autobahns, or eight-lane freeways like they had in America. From now on my moaning was going to be reserved for sixteen-legged alien dinosaurs wandering over the garden.
The estate car in front had a bumper sticker with a picture of an angry Gordon Brown hammering on the side of the wormhole, with Tax for the memory printed underneath. We’d been seeing more and more pro-exodus stickers as we crawled our way North. I reckoned that all the vehicles sharing the off road with us were heading to New Suffolk. After all those months of furtive preparation it was kind of comforting finally being amongst your own kind.
“It’s the wormhole, isn’t it?” Steve asked cautiously. “That’s where we’re going.”
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re going to take a look at what’s there.”
“Are we going through?” Olivia asked, all wide eyes and nervous enthusiasm.
“I think so. Don’t you? Now we’ve come all this way, it’ll be fun.” I saw the sign for assembly park F2, and started indicating.
“But they’re bad people on the other side,” Steve said. “Mum said.”
“Has she been there herself?”
“No way!”
“Then she doesn’t really know what it’s like on the other side, does she?”
The kids looked at each other. “Suppose not,” Steve said.
“Just because you don’t agree with someone, doesn’t make them bad. We’ll take a look round for ourselves and find out what’s true and what’s not. That’s fair isn’t it?”
“When are we coming back?” Steve asked.
“Don’t know. That depends how nice it is on the new planet. We might want to stay a while.”
Zoe was giving me a disapproving look. I shrugged at her. She didn’t understand; you’ve got to acclimatize kids slowly to anything this big and new.
“Is Mummy coming?” Olivia asked.
“If she wants to, she can come with us. Of course she can,” I said.
Zoe let out a little hiss of exasperation.
“Will I have to go to school?” Steve asked.
“Everybody goes to school no matter what planet they’re on,” Zoe said.
“Bummer.”
“Not nice,” Zoe squealed happily.
I found the entrance to park F2 and pulled in off the road. It was a broad open field hired out to newsuffolklife.co by the farmer. Hundreds of vehicles had spent all summer driving over it, reducing the grass to shredded wisps of straw pressed down into the dry iron-hard soil. Today, twenty-odd lorries were parked up at the far end, including three refrigerated containers and a couple of fuel tankers. Over seventy cars, people carriers, transit vans, and 4x4s were clustered around the lorries; most of them contained families, with kids and parents out stretching their legs before the final haul. The fields on either side replicated similar scenes.
I drew up beside a marshal, who was standing just inside the gate, and showed him our card. He looked at it and grinned as he ticked us off his clipboard. “You’re the doc, huh?”
“That’s me.”
“Fine. There’s about five more cars to come and we’re all set. I’m your community convoy liaison, so I’ll be traveling with you all the way to your new home. Any problems, come and see me.”
“Sure.”
“You want to check over the medical equipment you’ll be taking, make sure it’s all there? Your new neighbors have been going through the rest of the stuff.”
I drove over to the other cars and we all climbed out. Several men were up in the lorries, looking round the crates and pallets that were inside. Given how much we’d spent between us, I was glad to see how thorough they were being checking off the inventory. In theory the equipment and supplies on the lorries was enough to turn us into a self-sufficient commu
nity over the next year.
“This shouldn’t take long,” I told Zoe. “We need to be certain. In the land of the new arrivals, the owner of the machine tool is king.”
“We’ll go meet people,” she said.
I met a few of them myself as I tracked down the two crates of medical supplies and equipment. They seemed all right – decent types. A little over-eager in their greetings, as I suppose I was. But then we were going to spend an awful long time together. The rest of our lives, if everything went smoothly.
Half an hour later the last of the group had arrived, we were satisfied everything we’d bought through newsuffolklife.co was with us, and the marshals were getting the convoy organized for the last section.
“Where’s the wormhole?” Steve asked plaintively as we got back into the BMW. “I want to see it.”
“Two miles to go,” Zoe said. “That’s all now.”
The lorries were first out of the assembly park and onto one of the new tarmac roads that led to the wormhole, with the rest of us following. There was a wide path on the left of the road. Backpackers marched along it, a constant file of them. I couldn’t see the end of the line in either direction. They all had the same eager smile on their faces as they moved ever closer to the wormhole. Zoe and I probably looked the same.
“There!” Olivia suddenly shouted. She was pointing at the trees on the other side of the backpackers. For a moment I was confused, it was like a dawn sun was shining through the trunks. Then we cleared the end of the spinney, and we could see the wormhole directly.
The zero-length gap in space-time was actually a sphere three hundred yards in diameter. Murray had opened it so that the equator was at ground level, leaving a hemisphere protruding into the air. There was nothing solid; it was simply the place one planet ended and another began. You crossed the boundary, and New Suffolk stretched out in front of you. That was the notorious eye-twister that made a lot of people shiver and even flinch away. As you drew near the threshold, you could see an alien landscape dead ahead of you, inside the hemisphere. Yet it opened outward, delivering a panoramic view. When you went through, you emerged on the outside of the corresponding hemisphere. There was no inside.
It was early morning on New Suffolk, where its ginger-tinted sun was rising, sending a rouge glow across the gap to light up the English countryside.
We were half a mile away now. The kids were completely silent, entranced by the wormhole. Zoe and I flashed a quick triumphant smile at each other.
The road curved round to line up on the wormhole, running through a small cutting. Police lined the top of each bank, dressed in full riot gear. They were swaying back and forward as they struggled to hold a crowd of protestors away from the road. I could see banners and placards waving about. The chanting and shouting reached us over the sound of the convoy’s engines. Things were flying through the air over the top of the police to rain down on the road. I saw several bottles smash apart on the tarmac. Backpackers were bent double as they scurried along, holding their hands over their heads to ward off the barrage from above.
Something thudded onto the BMW’s roof. Both kids yelped. I saw a stone skittering off the side. It didn’t matter now. The first of our convoy’s lorries had reached the wormhole. I saw it drive through, thundering off over the battered mesh road that cut across the alien landscape, silhouetted by the bright rising sun. We were so close.
Then Olivia was shouting: “Daddy, Daddy, stop!”
87. Government may not employ more than one manager per twelve front-line workers in any department. No Government department may spend more than 10 percent of its budget on administration.
88. Government will not fund any unemployment benefit scheme. Anyone without a job is entitled to five acres of arable land, and will be advanced enough crop seed to become self-sufficient.
89. There will be no death duties. Dying is not a taxable action. Citizens are entitled to bequeath everything they have worked for to whomever they choose.
JANNETTE
It took us bloody hours to get from the station to the wormhole. The Public Responsibility Movement was supposed to lay on buses. I only ever saw two of them, and they took forever to drive around the jammed-up circuit between the station and the rally site. As for the PRM stewards, they’d got into fights with the backpackers streaming out of the station, asking directions and wanting to know if they could use our buses. The police were separating the two factions as best they could, but the station car park was a perpetual near riot.
Abbey used the waiting time to stock up at an off-license. By the time we got on the bus she was completely pissed. And she wasn’t a quiet drunk.
As we inched our way across the motorway flyover I could look down on the solid stream of motionless vehicles clotting all the lanes below. There were hundreds of them. All of them waiting their turn to drive up the off road. Each one full of people who wanted to go through the wormhole. So many? They said it was like this every day.
The bus finally made it to the rally area. A huge 747 flew low overhead as we climbed out, coming in to land at Stanstead just a couple of miles north. I had to press my hands over my ears the engine noise was so loud. I didn’t recognize the airline logo; but it was no doubt bringing another batch of eager refugees from abroad who wanted to join in with the exodus.
I tracked it across the sky. And there right ahead of me was the wormhole. It was like some gold-chrome bubble squatting on the horizon. I squinted into the brilliant rosy light it was radiating.
“I didn’t realize it was that big,” I muttered. The damn thing was intimidating this close up. Now I could finally understand how so many people had vanished into it, swallowed up by Murray’s stupid promises.
“Let’s get to it,” Abbey slurred, and marched off towards the long scrum of protestors ahead of us.
Now I remembered why I’d stopped going to protests. All that romance about bonding with the crowd, sharing a purpose with your fellow travellers; the singing, the camaraderie, the communal contentment. It was all bollocks.
For a start, it wasn’t just the PRM supporters who’d turned out to make their voice heard. There were a lot of unaffiliated comrades looking for trouble. Real serious trouble. I got batted about like some cheap football. Everybody wanted to score points by shoving into me. The shouting was loud, in my ear, and unending. I got clobbered by placards several times as their carriers dropped them for a rest.
Then we got real near to the police line, and a beer can landed on my shoulder. I jumped at the shock. Fortunately it was empty. But I could see bottles flying overhead, which made me very nervous.
“Let me through, you arseholes!” Abbey thundered at the police.
The nearest constable gave her a confused look. Then she was banging on his riot shield in fury. “I have a right to get past you can’t stop me you fascist bastard this is still a free country why don’t you piss off and go and bugger your chief constable let me through.” All the while she was pushing up against his shield. I was pressed up behind her. Our helpful comrades behind me were making a real effort to add their strength to the shove. I shouted out in pain from the crushing force but no one heard or took any notice.
Something had to give. For once it was the police line. I was suddenly lurching forward to land on top of Abbey, who had come to rest on top of the policeman. A ragged cheer went up from behind. There were a lot of whistles going off. I heard dogs barking, and whimpered in fright. I hated dogs . . . really scared of them. Policemen were moving fast to plug the gap. Several wrestling matches had developed on either side of me. Protestors were being cuffed and dragged off. Clothes ripped. I saw blood.
Someone tugged the neck of my blouse, lugging me to my feet. I was crying and shaking. My knee was red hot; I could barely stand on it.
A police helmet was thrust into my face. “You all right?” a muffled voice demanded from behind the misted visor.
I just wailed at them. It was pathetic, but I was so miserable
and panicky I didn’t care.
“Sit there! Wait!” I was pushed onto the top of the bank. Ten feet below me backpackers were cowering as they scrambled along the path. The vehicles heading for the wormhole were swishing past, their drivers grim as they gripped the steering wheels.
I saw a big BMW 4x4 towing a horsebox. The driver was peering forward intently. Visual recognition kicked in.
“Get your fucking hands off me dickhead this is assault you know I’ll have you in court oh shit get those cuffs off they’re too tight you’re deliberately torturing me help help,” Abbey was yelling behind me.
“It’s Colin,” I whispered. “Abbey, that’s Colin!” my voice was rising.
“What?”
“Colin!” I pointed frantically. There was Olivia sitting in the back seat, face pressed up against the glass to look out at all the mad people. “He’s taking them. Oh God, he’s taking them through the wormhole.”
Abbey gave her arresting officer an almighty shove. “Get them,” she screamed at me. “Move.” Three policemen made a grab for her. Her shoulder slammed into me. I tumbled down the bank, arms windmilling wildly for balance. My knee was agony. I crashed into a backpacker, and fell onto the tarmac, barely a foot from a transit van that swerved violently.
“Grab them,” Abbey cried. “Grab them back. They’re yours. It’s your right.”
The vehicles along the road were all braking. I looked up. Everybody was stuck behind Colin’s BMW, which had stopped. The driver’s window slid down smoothly and he stuck his head out. We just gazed at each other. A whole flood of emotions washed over his face. Mainly anger, but I could see regret there as well.
“Come on then,” he said in a weary voice. The rear door opened.
I looked at the open door. I got to my feet. I looked back up the bank at Abbey’s snarling features. I looked back at the BMW. The wormhole was waiting beyond it. Cars were blowing their horns in exasperation, people shouting at me to get a move on.
I started walking toward the BMW with its open door. I knew it was morally wrong. At least, I thought it was. But what else could I do?
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