A Plague of Hearts

by Patrick Whittaker

  ‘Where was I? Oh yes - Kings and Kingdoms. In any society, the one key thing which holds the fabric together and prevents a drift towards chaos is Leadership. And only a few men are blessed with the quality of character to provide it. I’m all for democracy - within reason - but at the end of the day there has to be someone whose word cannot be questioned, whose decision cannot be over-ruled. And that someone has to be born to it. They have to have the correct heritage, training and background. It’s in the genes. Do you see what I’m driving at?’

  ‘You’ve put it very succinctly, sire.’

  ‘The Panda is not a King. He has no understanding of the workings - the nature - of our Kingdom. This damned war is proof enough of that.

  ‘Left in the hands of that lunatic, Hearts will be destroyed, humiliated and subjugated by people who were once our friends and allies. I suppose I must accept part of the blame for that. I should never have let the situation get this far out of hand.

  ‘Listen, boy. I know what your friend Doctor Ormus is up to. I know all about the Red Orchestra and their plans to overthrow the Panda and re-establish my power as Head of State. And, frankly, I’m all for it.

  ‘Oh, don’t look so dismayed, boy. I may have relinquished most of my responsibilities, but I do nonetheless keep an eye on what my subjects are up to. The Panda thinks he has the largest, most effective spy network in the country. He’s wrong. Ask me what the least of my citizens had for supper last night and I’d be able to tell you within three hours. For instance, I know that you are as yet unaware of the identity of the true leader of the Red Orchestra - the so-called Big Cheese. Perhaps you think it’s Doctor Ormus? I hope not. Only an idiot would believe it was him.

  ‘I know who the Big Cheese is, but I’m not going to pass that information on to you. If the Red Orchestra want to keep you in the dark, then they have their reasons.

  ‘I just want you to let them know that I intend to give whatever support I can. But they must always keep in mind that I can in no way be directly involved or implicated in any of this. Certain of my men have already provided Ormus with valuable intelligence. Of course, he had no idea they were my men, but that hardly matters. A friend is a friend is a friend.

  ‘I want you to tell Ormus that I have a man in his organisation who will reveal himself in the next day or two. If he co-operates with my man, he’ll have all the help I can give him. Is that clear?’

  It was only too clear. The March Hare felt himself being pulled ever deeper into a position of dire peril. Tendrils of intrigue were closing around him, tightening their grip with every passing second. The more he fought against it, the more he twisted and turned, the tighter the tendrils would hold him. They would not relinquish their hold now that they had him so firmly in their grasp.

  ‘Is that clear?’ repeated the King.

  ‘Terribly clear, sire.’

  ‘Good. Any questions?’

  ‘Just one, sire. It concerns the Knave of Hearts.’

  ‘A brave man, but a reckless one. He should never have got caught. You’ll be pleased to hear that he’s very much alive and will stay that way for a few more days at least. The Panda is arranging a show trial for him.

  ‘I’ve done as much as I can for him. It’s clear that the Panda hoped to use the trial as a means of stirring up resentment against the Red Orchestra. His intention was to turn them into scapegoats.

  ‘Fortunately, however, he decided to charge the Knave with a breach of the Official Secrets Act, and with a war going on that translates to a charge of high treason. I have therefore exercised my Royal Prerogative to bring the matter into my own jurisdiction. It will be I and not the Panda before whom the Knave will stand trial.’

  ‘And you’ll find him not guilty?’

  ‘I only wish I could. But to do so would leave me open to charges of collaborating with the Red Orchestra, and that would be very bad for all concerned. We have to face facts, and the most obvious fact right now is that we are losing the war. It won’t be long before the Spadisher army comes marching in triumph through the gates of this palace. If this nation is to survive at all, it must have a Monarchy. Were I to be condemned as a traitor - or if the people should even suspect that I was one - then the whole fabric of our society would disintegrate, possibly forever.’

  ‘And so you’re going to let the Knave die.’

  The King looked grave. ‘I have no choice. Tell Ormus to give up all hope for the Knave. This is war. There’s bound to be casualties.’

  ‘I won’t tell Ormus anything,’ said the March Hare, bitterly. ‘This whole affair makes me want to be violently sick. I’m not even sure who the good guys are any more. Neither you nor the Red Orchestra have any right to involve me in your schemes. I don’t care for them and I don’t think they have a hope in hell of succeeding.

  ‘Once we surrender to Spades, we can kiss our independence good-bye. They’re going to swallow us up and it’s going to be as if we never existed. There’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.

  ‘And in the meantime, I just want to be left alone.’

  ‘A person cannot shrug off his responsibilities so easily,’ said the King in a soft voice. He seemed neither surprised nor angered at the March Hare’s outburst. ‘I tried it and you can see where it got me.’

  ‘If I may be so bold, Your Majesty - therein lies the difference between a King and a valet. Affairs of State are no concern of mine.’

  The King frowned.

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You are not a political creature by any means. I can see that clearly. But you are a Heartsman and technically a Royal Ward. However much I may have neglected my people, I’ve always seen to it that the talkies have been well taken care off. And yet, I’m not even going to try to appeal to your sense of loyalty. Rather, I wish to prove to you just how much of a personal stake you have in the current situation.

  ‘Let me show you something.’

  Opening a drawer, the King brought out a handful of photographs and placed them in a line along the edge of the desk. They were black and white, a series of studies taken at either dawn or dusk. The March Hare recognised Gerbil Town by the peculiarly domed buildings and the stone cross in the Market Place.

  Each picture was a variation upon the same theme. Gerbils littered the pavement, hung from windows, stood clinging lifelessly to railings and lamp posts. It was as if they were pretending to be dead, enacting a massacre to satisfy some childish longing. There were no shattered windows. No burnt ruins. No blood. Just bodies.

  ‘Gas?’ said the March Hare.

  ‘Not gas,’ said the King. ‘At the risk of sounding trivial, it was an invisible death ray, or something closely akin to one.’

  The March Hare was appalled. ‘The Spuds have a weapon like that?’

  ‘Not the Spuds. Our own side did this. And don’t try telling me that you don’t believe it; I can see from your face that you do. And I think you know who was responsible.’

  ‘Peregrine Smith. Nobody else could build such a weapon.’

  ‘Correct. He’s been hiding in the Presidential Bunker these past few years, conducting his infernal experiments with the help and blessing of the Panda.’

  ‘Then he’s definitely still alive?’

  ‘Most definitely. The Panda’s been protecting him in the hope that he would develop such a weapon. And now he has. The damned thing’s called TARTS for some reason or another.’

  ‘Why did they use it on the gerbils? They’re on our side.’

  ‘The weapon needed testing, and the Panda has long nursed a grudge against the gerbils. I suppose you could say it was a case of killing two birds with one stone.’

  ‘With this, we could win the war.’

  ‘Or destroy the world. And I think that’s what Smith intends to do.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Because he’s mad, is the simple answer, but there’s got to be a better one than that. And I intend to find it.

  ‘I admit to having little affinity for g
erbils, but they were my subjects and I feel I let them down. I want to see Smith’s and the Panda’s head on a platter for this, and I expect you feel much the same way.’

  ‘I don’t feel anything,’ said the March Hare. ‘Except disgust. I’m still not interested in joining the Red Orchestra.’

  ‘Then let me show you one more thing,’ said the King, again opening the drawer of his desk. This time he produced a large jar filled with embalming fluid and the charred remains of a hedgehog. ‘This is the chap involved in the attempted murder of my wife. Or rather what’s left of him. As soon as it’s prudent, we’ll give him a decent burial - but first there are a few mysteries he can help us clear up.

  ‘You must remember that this is the first time a talkie hedgehog has ever expired, and so I ordered a postmortem. We’ve often wondered how something with so small a brain capacity could display such a disproportionately large amount of intelligence.’ The King placed the jar on the desk. Reaching into the drawer, he brought out a tiny mesh of wire, not unlike a spider web. Where the strands met, tiny black nodes stood out in contrast to the wire. ‘You won’t know what this is boy, so I’ll tell you. It’s a computer - a thinking machine with a capacity far beyond anything our scientists have ever been able to come up with. As far as we can tell, this mesh covered the hedgehog’s brain and somehow endowed it with an intelligence comparable to a human being’s. It’s so advanced, we can’t even begin to understand how it works. Which can only mean it’s alien.

  ‘There is somebody on this planet with a knowledge of science that’s centuries beyond our own.’

  ‘It could be Smith,’ said the March Hare.

  ‘Without a doubt it’s Smith,’ said the King. ‘He made this hedgehog - and he made you and every other talkie in existence. The man is so far ahead of us, that he might just as well be God. And now he’s working for the Panda. Or maybe the Panda’s working for him. Whichever way round it is, this world’s in mortal danger.

  ‘Are you prepared to stand back and watch those two destroy - or at the very least enslave - every last man, woman and child in the world?’

  There was a knock on the door. It startled the March Hare who only now became aware of the fact that for the past few minutes he had been shaking.

  ‘Come!’ said the King.

  The White Rabbit entered and bowed stiffly. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Your Majesty, but His Excellency requests your presence in his Campaign Room. Shall I inform him that you are presently indisposed?’

  ‘There’d be no point. He knows damned well how I spend my time. Have my limousine waiting for me in the West Parade Ground. I’ll be there in a minute.’

  ‘Yes, sire.’ The Rabbit departed.

  ‘You’re angry with me,’ said the King. He shrugged his shoulders in resignation. ‘I don’t blame you. If you want to go home, you may do so. Otherwise I’d like you to come with me to see the President. I think you might find it informative.

  ‘I think I might at that,’ said the March Hare.

  Tomorrow, he would look back on his insolence towards the King and shudder. Later he would much the same way about it as he did now. He would feel proud.

  Chapter 11

  Nurse Jane

  ‘It’s a unicorn.’

  ‘It’s a horse.’

  Unicorn or horse, the beast in question was cut neatly in half and laid out on a table, each pair of opposing legs spread a hundred and eighty degrees apart. Its organs lay in its left rib cage, trussed up in plastic bags and labeled with name, function and time of removal. The Panda picked one at random and held it in his paws.

  ‘That’s its liver,’ said Peregrine Smith, his voice like the rustling of dry leaves. ‘It’s half the size it ought to be.’

  The ancient scientist sat almost inertly in his wheel chair. When he spoke, only his lips moved. His eyelids were open the merest fraction; they never seemed to blink.

  ‘Thanks to the primitive technology I have to work with, the creature never developed as I hoped,’ he went on. ‘The entire body is riddled with toxins and cancer.’

  ‘So you’ve got a dead horse,’ said the Panda, caustically. He felt ill at ease. Surrounded by white walls, dissected cadavers and an old man who seemed barely alive, he had to fight down an urge to leave immediately. The white tiles covering the floor, walls and ceiling reminded him of a public lavatory. Not once had he ever entered the Clinical Investigation Theatre without wanting to urinate.

  ‘Unicorn,’ insisted Peregrine Smith. He lifted an emaciated arm in order to point to his lap where a heap of grey meat sat on a square of canvas like a sleeping kitten. ‘This is its brain. If you’d care to examine it, you’ll find that the cerebellum has been pierced to a depth of two and a half inches.’ The arm dropped.

  ‘So you’ve spent my money creating a horse with a hole in its brain. Thanks a bundle.’

  ‘Not a horse. A unicorn.’

  ‘So you keep saying. But from where I’m standing, it looks like a horse. I’m no expert, but I was under the impression that a unicorn is meant to have a horn on its head. In the seven months of this wretched creature’s miserable life, you and your cronies have spent hours watching for the slightest hint of such a growth. You kept promising me that it would appear at any moment, but it never did.’

  ‘It was there all the time. We just couldn’t see it.’

  ‘Great,’ said the Panda. ‘Here we are in the middle of a war and my chief scientist comes up with a unicorn with an invisible horn. What a breathtaking breakthrough for genetic engineering that is!’

  ‘The postmortem,’ said Peregrine Smith, who was either impervious to the Panda’s sarcasm or else incapable of showing a reaction, ‘revealed that the horn had been growing inward. And that’s what caused the unicorn’s death. I have the horn in my study if you wish to examine it.’

  ‘Left-hand thread or right?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Smith - you’re an idiot. I’m going to go take a shower and try to wash every trace of this room out of my fur. In the mean time, you can take your horn and stuff it wherever it will cause you the most discomfort.’

  *

  Standing in the Conference Room of the Presidential Bunker, watching the Panda toweling his head dry, the March Hare was still in a mood to assert himself. The confined nature of the room helped him immensely. His world was limited to four walls and three people - including himself. He could handle that.

  A King, a President and a valet, he thought. Quite a trio. Perhaps if I say the right thing - something witty and incisive, or just plain profound - I can somehow influence one of these two, help decide government policy. I might even change the course of history.

  ‘I trust you’re happy with your new valet,’ said the Panda, letting the towel drop to the floor. He shook his head and fluffed up his fur with his paw. For once, he was not wearing his uniform. Just a dressing gown and a pair of slippers. ‘I’ve never seen the appeal of having someone waiting on me hand and foot - but I’m not Royalty, am I?’

  The King let the jibe slip by. ‘My other valet - the White Rabbit - tends to have a lot on his plate these days. I thought it prudent to lighten his load.’

  ‘And why not? We must look after our menials, mustn’t we? It would not do to tire them out. Of course, my bureaucrats informed me of your request to have the March Hare assigned to you. I’m told of these things as a matter of routine - national security and all that. I’d hate to see you assassinated by an enemy agent,’

  ‘Your concern is most touching but hardly necessary. The March Hare has been in my employ before and is without doubt worthy of my every confidence.’

  ‘I quite agree. That’s why I approved the assignment. I understand he’s not exactly playing with a full deck, but my security people seem to think he’s harmless.’

  ‘I’m glad he meets your standards.’

  ‘He’s a splendid chap by all accounts,’ said the Panda, graciously. He grinned at the March Hare. ‘We we
re at school together, weren’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the March Hare, consciously addressing the Panda with a minimum of civility.

  ‘I remember you well. You were always keen to donate your lunch money to my cigarette fund. I think such charitable impulses are utterly admirable. Which is why I used to encourage them.’

  ‘You used to encourage them quite a bit,’ agreed the March Hare. ‘Chiefly by sitting on me and beating me about the head with your lunch box.’

  ‘For your own good, my friend. You were rather prone to hysteria back then, weren’t you? I’ve always assumed that to be the reason why you kept putting sand in my bean shoot sandwiches. It was an aberration - a temporary lapse of reason.’

  ‘I wish I’d used arsenic.’

  The Panda cupped a paw over his ear. ‘I don’t believe I heard you right. I’m sure you must have addressed me as Your Excellency, but just to make sure, why not try again?’

  ‘I wish I’d used arsenic, Your Excellency.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you do. But then you always were inclined to rash acts, weren’t you? Take for instance that time you were nearly expelled from school for heresy. I believe you claimed that we talkies were as human as the other children. Seems a strange thing to say, but I’m sure you had your reasons.’

  ‘That happened just after Doctor Ormus announced that he had discovered human proteins in our genetic make-up.’

  ‘He never got around to publishing his proof though, did he?’

  ‘The government wouldn’t let him, but they must have believed him because they passed the Bill of Equal Rights.’

  A look of vague disgust settled on the Panda’s face. ‘Equal rights to what? To the afterlife?’ He turned to the King. ‘Tell me, Your Majesty. How many times has the Church Council met to discuss the spirituality of talking animals? Three times? Four?’

  ‘Four, I believe.’

  ‘And how many times have they issued a decree stating that no animal has a soul?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I have no say in religious matters.’