Paul now lives in Melbourne with his wife and daughter. Lately he has been battling cancer.
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The Census-Taker’s Tale
KAARON WARREN
The middle-aged man (life expectancy in modern day England being 65 for men, 68 for women) listened, nodding his head, writing carefully in a small notebook.
“You listen very well,” one of his fellow passengers said, “and yet you have nothing to say. What are you writing in that book of yours? Are you a spy, looking for secrets to take to Londonstan?”
The man smiled. “No, I am not a spy, although I have spoken to three. I am, rather, a census-taker.”
There was little uproar in the carriage following this announcement. Most of the other passengers continued with their earlier conversations. One young woman, a neat girl with hair cut short in the fashion of the day, continued to watch him. She was of the innocent breed - the adults who never fully become adults. They could do a day’s job without complaint and so were tolerated.
“I never met a Census-Taker,” she said. “I met farmers and builders and once I met a man who worked at the Council.”
“We have just over a hundred thousand council workers by last count. You’ll probably meet a few in your day. Especially if you’re going to Canterbury.”
The girl’s mother looked him up and down.
“She’s not staying in Canterbury, so lift your mind out of the bedroom. She’s stopping off to get the train down to Dover. They need seamstresses down in Dover.” The woman sniffed. “Don’t meet many Census-Takers.”
“There are 53 of us working in this country. I can’t answer for elsewhere.”
“Elsewhere!” The woman snorted at the thought of such a place. Most people didn’t travel far from where they were born. Only the drunks moved a lot, because they were not welcome in their homes.
“Not too many of us are happy elsewhere. I see a lot of that in my work,” the Census-Taker said. “My name is Romulus Remus Jones. My father read history at Oxford and was sure I would be one of the founders of the new England. He thought the weight of the future rested happily with me.” The man smiled. Cleared his throat. “I do a lot more listening than telling. People give me their stories. Even as a child, I always listened. I remember more about my parents’ childhood than my own. My mother’s first memory is of sitting in her push chair, surrounded by her aunties and uncles. She says her mother put her there on purpose, to keep her quiet. The aunties and uncles were all dead with the plague, and here’s this little girl with all the hopes and dreams, sitting amongst them.”
“Are you the only Census-Taker? Are you married?” the young girl asked.
He laughed. “You think I can count five million people plus ghosts myself? I am no Santa Claus.”
“Have you seen a lot of houses? How other people live?”
“People live in similar ways. You’d be surprised. Bottles are precious everywhere, filled and refilled and filled again. Many houses are built out of rubbish, gaps plugged with more rubbish, glass houses. I went to one home with forty rooms, so many rooms I didn’t know where to sit and there was a ghost in every room. This was the home of the Banker. I heard his son’s story. The son was the guard at the bank, but he fell asleep, drunk. The money was stolen and the son was hung.”
The man nodded his head at each of the travelers, counting them. He said, “I was married once, but my wife was not what she was supposed to be. She did not support a head of household. We need rule in the house, while we have no strong rule of law outside. I followed the way of Londonstan; I simple said, ‘I divorce you,’ three times. I have not married since. I am married to my job, I always say. Can’t have a father who’s never home. You’ll end up with drunkards for children.”
“I know a woman doesn’t remember how many husbands she’s had,” the girl’s mother said.
“Records are lost. Not everyone remembers all the spouses.”
The Builder’s Labourer, whose tale had drawn the women of the carriage to him in horror, said, “So you’ll tell us a story then, Number Man? A story of counting sheep, perhaps.”
The rest of the carriage laughed, but the Census-Taker did not seem bothered by the mockery.
“I am more of a listener than a teller, but I will do my best. I could tell you plenty of stories which have happened to other people; love gone wrong ending in bloodshed, love too strong, love unrequited. Murder and betrayal, lust and magic; these things all happened to other people. I am not an investigator. I ask the same questions of everyone. It is the answers which make all the difference. I like people who can’t read or write because I write their answers. Otherwise I’m not supposed to know.
“The story I will tell you is a frightening one and I hope it won’t upset you too much.”
He was rewarded with a slight opening of lips from the ladies, a shifting in the seats.
“My parents are both what is known as plague babies. Babies born during the plague years who never fell sick, but who prospered and flourished. Most who survived those years are thin, unhealthy beings, exhausted from a short walk out for milk and bread. They managed to have children; some of you are that issue - and the children are weakfish, too.
“Not my parents. They grew up pink-cheeked and bouncy, on opposite sides of England.
“The doctors noticed them early on, and the few others like them. Twenty, perhaps, around the country, standing out from their fellows.
“There came a time when somebody, a doctor who studied and read the past, thought perhaps that the blood of these children, taken as a dose, could cure, or at least protect from the plague.
“So this is how my parents met. All the Plague Babies brought to Eastbridge Hospital, here in Canterbury.
“My mother still talks about the arrival. They had been taken from what remained of their families and transported by carriage. They were treated well. My mother saw many families along the way, some walking, the children dragged on wheeled carts when they needed to sleep. Others crammed into old carriages, babies hung out the windows on improvised hammocks. It made my mother tired to watch, and she slept a lot on her journey.
“She said she wasn’t worried about where she was going. It was an adventure to her, something different. The small village she lived in bored her. The only thing she found interesting were the ghosts which clung to the village like the dags on a sheep.”
The ladies sat forward again. They liked a ghost story.
“My mother could hear the ghosts when the rest of them were deaf and blind to it. She found out all about the villagers, especially the ones who would prefer their secrets kept.
“The schoolteacher, an ignorant, angry woman who taught only as much as she knew, which was very little indeed, always stood on her step and screamed at passersby. ‘Look at your wife, her body hanging out,’ or ‘Some learning wouldn’t go astray, Mr. Plod.’ Yet my mother knew, through the radiant ghost of a baby which crawled the streets crying for her, that the schoolteacher had more than one child and she had drowned them all. These are the things my mother learned from the ghosts in her village.
“Meanwhile, my father grew up on a farm, where three uncles not much older than he ran the cattle in a very efficient way. None of them had book learning, but they were smart in the ways of animals and the sun and were rarely surprised. My father swears there were no ghosts, though my mother says she has seen plenty there. That everyone has secrets.”
‘“Not these men,’ my father says. ‘They were too busy with their cattle for secrets. Too busy Feeding the Nation.’
“Whenever I heard ‘Feeding the Nation’ I knew it was time to make myself scarce. A full-blown argument was brewing, wherein they would insult each other’s families. Deride each other’s knowledge, mock each other’s perceived ailments and then move to the next phase; violent love-making. If I was still there at this point one of them would have the presence of mind to thrus
t a coin at me, tell me to go to the village for a puppet show. Mostly I took the coin for myself before it got to that point. If I was lucky there would be something other than Punch and Judy. If I saw Punch and Judy, I expected to come home and find one of my parents murdered with a rolling pin.
“So my parents, from different sides of the country and with different lives, came together at Eastbridge Hospital.”
“I went knocking there one time,” one of the passengers said. “When I broke my arm falling out of a tree. They said they couldn’t do me unless I paid. Nine hundred years they’ve been there, and they can’t fix one measly arm?”
“They were not set up as a medical facility when my parents arrived. It was a home for old, wealthy citizens. And for travellers and pilgrims. It surprises me they turned you away, sir. They have never been known to turn a needy person away. In my opinion that hospital is one of the reasons Canterbury was chosen as the new capital. Its spirit of giving and helping is one we would all do well to adhere to.”
“Well, all I know is they turned me away. I had to go to a local man and my arm’s never sat right since.”
It was true; the man’s arm sat at an odd angle.
The Census-Taker nodded. “We all take impressions differently. That’s why numbers are important. Numbers are what they are and cannot be argued with. We have this many men, that many women, this many children. That is why I count. To have something to rely on. Why, did you know that of our population, there are ...” Here, the Census-Taker drifted into number talk, little realizing that his audience was not interested.
“Tell us about the ghosts,” the young girl interrupted.
“Hear, hear,” the others agreed.
“The twenty plague babies, the children, were treated very well. Each had their own room, but they were lonely and often ended up sleeping three or four to a bed. My mother was the only one to see the ghosts and she kept everyone awake repeating the stories they told. Can you imagine? 900 years of the sick and the people who cared for them. There was no end to the stories.
“It was a time of adventure. They had a small amount of schooling, but mostly they were subjected to one medical test and examination after another, until they felt like museum specimens. Apart from that, they were free to explore.”
“I’ve been to the museum. Smelly, dusty place it is. I wouldn’t go there again,” the girl’s mother said. “What’s the point in all that history, anyway? Doesn’t mean a thing.”
“I agree with you there, Good Lady,” the Census-Taker said, smiling. “In all my questionnaires, the one about the level of historical education draws the most confusion. What is history, indeed? It is opinion, nothing more. Ask any two people about the fall of London and you will get two different stories. Ask ten and you will get ten stories.
“My parents and their friends thrived and grew. My mother in particular was never bored. She had the other children, but she also had the ghosts, who told her all kinds of wondrous things. She tried to teach the others how to see the ghosts and, after five years passed and they were sent back to their ordinary lives of struggle, some of them could indeed discern movement. They could not hear the voices though.
“The tests became more invasive as time went on. There was an air of desperation. This was in 2058 when my mother was five and my father eight. An air of desperation as the plague continued to kill.
“Finally, one morning the children were given a particularly fine breakfast of bacon and eggs and herded into what was once the kitchen. It was vast and still full of the items of the past. Rusting machines, the use of which the children could not imagine. They were gathered in the corner and told, “We have a very special man coming to see us. Who has heard of Prince Charles?”
There was a clamour in the carriage. “What year was this again?”
“2058.”
“Fifteen years before he became king, then.”
“Yes. He was just a young man. But with great vision, even then.”
“You say he’s got vision? What about the workers? What’s he ever done for us?” the Builder’s Labourer said.
The Census-Taker shook his head. “He has done more than you know. He was reading medicine at Oxford at the time. I think they held the school open for him, or near enough. Anyway, he came to the hospital to talk to my parents and their friends. My father never forgot the speech, being old enough to listen. Whereas my mother was more interested in his formal mode of dress and in contemplating what would be for lunch.
‘“Now is the time for sacrifice,’ the Prince told them. ‘The future of all of England lies in your veins. You are the strong. The fit. You are unaffected by the plague which is slowly but surely destroying us. I ask of you a sacrifice, but this sacrifice will not kill you. And you will be compensated, both with money and with fame. Your names will be known now and forever.’”
“What are their names?” the Builder’s Labourer said.
The Census-Taker named his parents and some of their friends. The passengers all shook their heads.
“You see? History is bunk. The great sacrifices are forgotten.”
“What sacrifice was it?” the young girl asked. “Did your parents die?”
The passengers spluttered into laughter. “If they’d died, they couldn’t have had him, right?”
Tears came to her eyes and the other passengers consoled her. Disabled children were always treated very well, because they were considered to be a punishment for bad behaviour and, as a message from God, very worthy.
There were not many disabled in modern England. The weak died early, premature or ill babies were not kept alive. There were more miscarriages, called a blessing from God. God taking the punishment.
“No, they didn’t die. Three of their friends did through miscalculation. Are any of you old enough to remember the medicine taking of 2060?”
An older gentleman nodded.
“That serum, given to every man, woman and child of Great Britain, was made from the blood of the Plague Babies. It is because of my parents, their blood, and King Charles V, that we’re here today at all. She still makes me my lozenges, Mum does, with drops of her blood, to suck on. Keep me healthy.”
“The plague simply died out. Everyone knows that. You can’t claim hero status,” the Builder’s Labourer said.
“Not me, no. But my parents and the other children spent five years in that hospital, giving their blood to the cause. They were not unhappy; any cache of toys or books found was allocated to them, over and above the Royal family. They got used to a rich diet, unlike anything we know. And the doctors worked to use the inoculation. There is still a stock somewhere, of the blood. Kept underground, I believe, somewhere in Scotland, where the ice rarely melts.
“My parents and the other children disliked being back at home. They felt displaced, as if the world had shifted slightly while they were in the sky-high world of Eastbridge Hospital and their feet had landed in an unfamiliar place. Things were the same; in fact life had gone on without them all quite well. They were different, but not in a good way. People walked around with their inoculation scars, little realizing it was my parent’s blood which had saved them. My parents didn’t really realize this themselves until later when they read together at Oxford.
“For yes, they did meet again, as young adults. The others fared both well and ill; some went to an early death (though none through the plague) and others had turned to a life of crime, seeking the riches they had known as children. My parents both accepted their lives in a way which meant they would change it at the first opportunity. The Prince made sure they were all looked after, but it was not enough.
“They kept in contact through long, increasingly personal letters. One of their members (she is a writer for the newspapers, has been for 30 years. King Charles is not always pleased with what she has to say, but that is by the by) built them a newsletter, a very private sheet only ever seen by the Plague Babies. In this way those capable amongst them plotted to meet u
p at Oxford, where they would learn enough to save the world. Rule the world. Change the world. Again.”
“Who are these people?” demanded the mother. “More names. You say they changed the world yet we know nothing of them.” She gave the Census-Taker a good look and seemed to decide he might be good material after all. With the new morality, the rewritten religions, sex for procreation was good in and out of marriage. “You should sit up straight. Strong men don’t slump.”
He shrugged his shoulders back. “I always carry forms with me. They’re heavy.” He gave them more names, of a writer, an architect, a historian, people whose names were in the newspaper. He unrolled a roti with curry and was looked on with suspicion by the others. “It’s tasty and handy food. It doesn’t mean I am Indian.”
The Year's Best Australian SF & Fantasy - vol 05 Page 28