Gridlock

by Ben Elton

  'Now that is a neat trick,' said Deborah, 'and one every girl should be taught by her mom.'

  'But whatever you do, make sure you spread your knees apart, otherwise, four hundred cubic centimetres of burning gas could disappear up your backside. Now, Toss, help me depress the flat iron.'

  The flat iron was exactly that, a small, old-fashioned solid flat iron welded to the jointed arm of an anglepoise lamp. Deborah, like many people, loved buying crap at markets; old fizzy pop bottles, odd cups and saucers and, in this case, a flat iron. Toss had a great deal of trouble depressing the arm down into its niche on the inside side of the arm of Deborah's chair, because Geoffrey had replaced the springs that had been on the lamp arm with some from a Bullworker, which Toss had bought in one of those hopelessly optimistic exercise fits which occasionally consume normally rational people.

  THE BENDS

  'I am going to seriously tone up my body, guy,' he had promised himself. 'I'm going to pack so much power, when I ripple a muscle, the building is going to shake. It is going to show up on the Richter scale!'

  Toss was convinced, as millions had been before him, that if he bought an exercise machine, he would definitely use it, and what's more, use it every morning. He had of course used it once, and then rather unimpressively. 'Ten minutes a day' the booklet had said and Toss had grabbed up the machine with joyful enthusiasm.

  After what Toss was convinced must be well over ten minutes, he glanced at the clock. To his astonishment less than two minutes had passed. 'No pain no gain, guy,' he murmured philosophically, and continued his workout. The next time he allowed himself a glance at the clock, after what seemed an eternity of pushing and pulling, scarcely another minute had passed! Toss was amazed, time seemed to be virtually standing still. He stared at the second hand on the clock, willing it on, but the more he tried, the more it appeared to be actually slowing down until eventually coming to a virtual standstill.

  From Newton to Einstein there has been much fascinating discussion on the various factors that affect time. These include speed, mass, weight, distance and strange phrases like 'quantum mechanics' which scientists make up in order to sound important and convince the rest of us that we are thick. However, for some inexplicable reason, despite all this racking of the brain, no serious research has been done into the commonest and most radical 'time bender' of them all, which is, of course, exercise.

  It seems that Einstein claimed that time travels more slowly at the speed of light, or he claimed something like that anyway. He made it rather difficult to be absolutely sure what he claimed, by deliberately and maliciously employing equations that nobody understood in order to put people off the scent and stop them contradicting him. Anyway, if he did claim that time travels more slowly at the speed of light, and let us presume for the purpose of argument that he did, it is difficult to see why anybody ever thought it such an earth-shattering observation, because the deceleration involved pales into insignificance when compared to the rate at which time passes at the speed of an exercise bike or a gentle jog. Twenty minutes on an exercise bike can take anything up to a year of ordinary time. The seconds crawl past as if they were anchored to the clock face. A fellow might set off for a 'quick half-hour run' and return to find his children grown old and his house replaced by an amusement arcade. Even then, he'll only have done twenty-six minutes and will have to fill out the remaining time with a few desultory push-ups.

  The fact that exercise makes you live longer is not, as many believe, a biological circumstance, but a law of physics.

  BACK TO THE ARMS RACE

  Anyway, Toss gave up exercising within three earth minutes of beginning it. Then, a considerably older and wiser man, he hurled the machine he had bought into a corner and there it had languished ever since, staring at Toss contemptuously and whispering, 'Nice body tone, pigeon chest. I can't exactly feel the buildings shake.'

  Finally, to Toss's delight, the Bullworker had found a purpose. He dismantled it with sadistic pleasure and gave the springs to Geoffrey, thus providing Geoffrey with the means to propel the flat iron through a right hook of considerable pressure.

  Eventually, Toss got the arm folded down beside Deborah and the little catch Geoffrey had designed clipped over it. Geoffrey explained that, were Deborah ever to release that catch, she was to be extremely sure that there was somebody standing over her to absorb the blow. For were the iron to merely swing wildly and unchecked to the full stretch of the arm, it was most likely that the force would topple Deborah's chair.

  'Great,' said Deborah, 'so this one's for putting me out of action, is it? I tell the murderers not to worry, that I'll just fling myself on the ground to make their job a little easier.'

  'It's for close quarters fighting, Deborah,' said Geoffrey.

  'Yeah,' added Toss excitedly, 'you have to imagine that the geezer is standing over you, right. He's come across the room, right, saying . . . "I'll waste the bitch, I'll cream her sweet arse. She is history. She is dead meat. She is—"'

  'Yeah, OK, Toss, I'll imagine my own death if that's all right by you.'

  'Just trying to get you used to heavy geezers, Debbo. Know what I mean?'

  'Toss, till I was eighteen I lived in New York City. In New York if you don't get threatened occasionally you go see a therapist and ask him why you have no charisma. Where I used to live you asked someone "how was their day", they'd say it was fine, nobody shot at them. People in New York go to Beirut for a break.'

  Deborah was aware that New York was not actually quite the war zone she described, but she rather enjoyed massaging the paranoid prejudices of foreigners.

  'All right,' said Toss, 'we'll forget the character stuff and get to the point, right. He is standing over you with a blunt machete, saying that he's going to fillet you, dice you up and leave you marinating in a puddle of gore, unless you hand over the plans. What do you do?'

  'I hand over the plans.'

  'Well, yeah, that's right, but if you don't have the plans or an unexpected fit of bravery comes over you, that's when you flick the switch – but don't do it now, all right, because it packs a wicked hook.'

  Geoffrey went on to explain that once the punch had been delivered, if time allowed, Deborah should put the arm across her and attach the iron end to the opposite arm of the chair so that the elbow of the jointed anglepoise arm pointed out in front of her like the prow of a ship. Having done this, there was a small wire coiled up in the end of one of the chair arms, Deborah should stretch this across and hook it onto the other arm, thus forming a drawstring to the angle-poise bow. Geoffrey had concealed two nasty-looking bolt-like arrows in the uprights of Deborah's seat back.

  'Stick an apple on your head, Toss,' said Deborah, 'I feel like some target practice.'

  'Later,' said Geoffrey, who was behind Deborah fitting something into the back of the chair. It was a battery which Toss had pinched for him from a temporary traffic light. Geoffrey wired this up to the handles of the chair, adding a small charge-convertor which made it possible for Deborah to deliver all the electricity in the battery in one hit, if she so desired. Geoffrey reckoned that there would be enough power to seriously scare any enemy who grabbed the handles of Deborah's chair.

  'Especially if you can manoeuvre him to stand in a puddle,' Geoffrey added.

  'Well, I'll sure try and remember that,' replied Deborah.

  'And finally there is this,' and in danger of cutting himself and Deborah, Geoffrey put a nasty, vicious-looking hatchet into a niche down by Deborah's leg.

  'Oh yeah, and how does that work?' asked Deborah.

  'Uhm, well, you have to grab it and chop the bloke with it,' admitted Geoffrey rather shamefacedly.

  'That's OK, Geoffrey,' said Deborah. 'It can't all be Star Wars. I'm kinda pleased you left a human element in there. When I kill, I like to feel the guy die. So what about you, Geoffrey? What weapons of death have you equipped yourself with?'

  'Oh I'll be all right. I have to get on with the engine,' said Ge
offrey. 'I wanted to see you all right first, after all I can run, sort of.'

  Deborah hoped that Geoffrey was right.

  SAM'S NET CLOSES

  The murderers that Sam had commissioned to find and kill Geoffrey had found a willing source of information in Denise, the woman at Geoffrey's place of work with the 'You don't have to be mad etc' sticker on her desk. She did not know much, but what she did she was happy to divulge.

  'Well, he keeps himself to himself really,' she wittered, meaning that he was generally ignored. 'A very quiet man, terribly brave. I mean if I looked like him I'm not sure I'd want to go on really, would you? Being a burden and all. Anyway, we haven't seen him for a week or so, he rang in sick. Probably still hung-over from Suzi's leaving do. That was the last time I saw him. He had a lovely time, you could tell by the way he twitched. Everyone just treated him as one of the gang. They're a wonderful lot that work here you know. Mad of course, oh yes, we're all completely potty, but wonderful. Friends? Well not really that I noticed, I think they like to be more with their own kind really, don't you? Less embarrassing for them. I did see a lady in a wheelchair come and pick him up once or twice in her car. Lovely, isn't it, that they can help each other like that?'

  RATTLING THE SKELETONS IN DIGBY'S CLOSET

  Sam Turk's hired thugs were not the only people involved in investigations. The hack pack from the Sunday Word had descended on the Royal Princess Hotel, Brighton, where the upper echelons of Digby's party had stayed during conference week. Not the upper upper echelons, but Digby-level echelons. On arrival, the dedicated journos had proceeded to interview everyone, buying drinks and slipping tenners about pretty liberally.

  Of course the Word, like all the scandal sheets, had its regular spies, whom it kept on retainers, at any venue where the famous might be found. Every hospital has its porter alert for the arrival of an overdosed sporting personality or a newsreader with a Coke bottle stuck in some important little place. All the top drinkeries have a waiter on the lookout for any celebrities who seem to have a weak bladder and who always return from the toilet rather cheerful and with a small white moustache. However, regarding Digby, the regular spies at the Royal Princess knew nothing, and so the search was spread further.

  'That ex-minister, Digby Parkhurst,' the hacks would ask, 'the one who resigned in disgrace. Remember anything about him the night before his speech? Anything that might have upset him?'

  The hacks heard of the dressing down Digby had received over breakfast from Ingmar Bresslaw. They heard how the previous evening Digby had arrived late for the launch of the Global Crappee and how he had seemed very angry with Sam Turk. Eventually the hacks got lucky. From a receptionist, they heard that a barman knew about a maid who had a funny story about a bloke wandering the corridors of the hotel, late at night, in drag.

  'I couldn't believe it, well you wouldn't, would you?' the maid said, accepting a gin and tonic. 1 mean it was obviously a man, it's all this European influence I reckon, all the blokes are turning into poofs.'

  The maid explained that the fellow had been in full drag and drunk as a lord. She had met him as she came out of the lift, it had been on the top floor where the suites are. The hacks knew already that this was the floor on which Digby had stayed. Sensing a scoop, they asked the girl to describe the man in drag.

  'Well, I must say, he made quite a presentable woman,' she recalled. 'Slim he was, good looking I expect, under the make-up. I remember thinking it was a shame he was a poof. I can tell you there weren't many good-looking men staying in this hotel during conference. Lot of fat bastards and no mistake.'

  'Anything else about the bloke?' the anxious reporters asked, 'anything to distinguish him?'

  'Not really, no. Except, of course, that he was definitely Scottish.'

  'Scottish,' the hacks confirmed.

  'Oh definitely, he called me a wee lassie.'

  Chapter Sixteen

  OIL, ROADS AND ENGINES

  OLD FRIENDS

  The elegant Dutchman was almost white with shock. Not many things in this wicked man's life had shocked him. Things that would cause a normal person to have to sit down for a minute and have a cup of tea, left Cornelius Brandt completely cold. He headed an enormous oil-based multinational company that had, for a century, abused human rights and fundamental employment practices worldwide – but Cornelius was unmoved by this. His company, Imperial Oil, had tenaciously hung on in South Africa through the worst excesses of apartheid. This, Cornelius thought merely good business. He had personally and happily dealt with Pinochet's brutal regime in Chile; he had fuelled the aircraft that had got Samosa out of Nicaragua, and never had Cornelius Brandt turned a hair, let alone been shocked. You could have crept up behind him and burst balloons in his earhole from now until the end of time and he would not have twitched – but now, Cornelius Brandt was shocked.

  He gripped the arms of his chair with pale, transluscent knuckles, the bones, seemingly, trying to burst from his grasping, clawlike fingers. 'We have known each other many years, yes?' he said, in that peculiar sing-song accent with which the Dutch speak English. An accent which is normally kind and pleasant, but coming from Cornelius, it sounded like the authentic voice of a henchman of the devil.

  'Sure, we go back, Cornelius,' answered Sam Turk with his usual easy charm. Sam was a bluff, straightforward Yankee who could say 'You're fired, your desk has been cleared' in such a manner that people often did not realize what had happened until they had left his office. It was this easy tone that had been in Sam's voice when he had informed Brandt that Global Motors would, without question, destroy him and Imperial Oil within an absolute maximum of fifteen years.

  'We can run cars on hydrogen, Cornelius,' good ol' Sam had drawled. 'It's happened. The alternative is here, oil is history.'

  'Oil is history . . .!' Tell Cornelius Brandt any three words but those! Say to him 'your wife's dead', that would be fine. 'Is it in?' Cornelius could handle at a pinch, but never 'oil is history'.

  'Samuel, you and I, we have fought many good battles together, we are old and good boys, you and I!' Cornelius was trying to sound as relaxed as Sam but the piece of concrete in his larynx was making it difficult. 'Is it thirty years since you and I lobbied Congress, side by side, over the super highways?'

  'Thirty-five, Cornelius.'

  'Don't let us be fighters to each other, Sam. It would be sad, no?'

  'Ain't gonna be no fight, Cornelius, not unless you call putting an old hound to sleep a fight. You're the past, my old friend, you ain't got nothing to fight with.'

  Cornelius dropped the Mr Nice Guy act.

  'Listen, Turk, you may think you've grabbed my curly short ones, but I've got a tiger in my pants and it's going to bite you, old pal! We'll lobby to licence fee this engine out of existence. We'll push for twenty years of safety tests. We'll blow up your fuck factories—'

  'Cornelius, once Mr and Mrs USA realize that they can drive to Alabama without paying a penny in fuel . . . Once the President realizes he ain't never going to have to kiss ass to any Arab ever again . . . Once the EEC sees the possibility of complete self-sufficiency . . .You know better than anyone how unstable the oil supply is. Every damn week there's somebody about to start a war in the Middle East. The day after we demonstrate this engine to the world, you get your death sentence, pal, and you just sit around waiting to die.'

  Cornelius said nothing. Very slowly he swallowed an aspirin, sipping from a lead crystal goblet inscribed 'Stay on side, we need you,' and signed Richard Nixon.

  'Of course, it doesn't have to be that way,' said Sam.

  NEW BROOM

  Druscilla 'Corker' McCorkadale entered the Ministry for Transport with a firm, purposeful tread. Everything about her suggested that she had lots to do and no time to waste. This was actually an illusion because Corker had just had her car driven around for fifteen minutes until the photographers arrived. Corker had specifically asked the press office to invite some cameras, in order that her first
bustling day as Minister for Transport might be duly recorded.

  'Tell them it will be a super photo,' Corker had said.

  'Will you be making any kind of statement, Minister?' the press officer had enquired.

  'Don't be silly,' said Corker. 'What on earth would I want to do that for?' The Prime Minister had chosen Digby's replacement well.

  Just around the corner from the Ministry, Corker had her driver stop the car and remove from the boot a collapsible bicycle.

  'Have you got the yellow reflector sash?' Corker whispered.

  'Yes, madam, here you are.' The driver handed it over and Corker pushed off. 'Ching ching,' went her bell.

  'Shifto, you chaps, I've a department to run,' she shouted cheerily, wobbling towards the hack pack on her unaccustomed steed.

  'This way, Minister! Look this way please,' they shouted as the motor drives sprang into action. Corker reluctantly allowed herself to be stopped by the cameras. Ever the professional, she could not prevent a modest portion of still-shapely thigh peeping out from beneath her rising hemline, as an elegantly shod foot perched on the pedal.

  Druscilla had been known as 'Corker' since the first day she entered government, when the Sunday Word had headlined a four-year-old photo of her in a bikini with the phrase 'Coo what a Corker!' She made a great fuss of demanding to know the source of the photograph, but colleagues suspected that she had sent it herself. Until her promotion to transport, Corker had been a junior minister at the Department for Health and, despite her relatively lowly antecedents, she was already extremely well known to the public. The reason being that she was a voracious publicity vulture. Corker had once fainted in Dixons, having hyperventilated at the sight of so many cameras.