always been. Through the dusky gloom, he can make out its white carbon-fibre frame, low-slung and of one piece, gathering strength from the identical neighbours in its quarter, then the solar roof, angled and convex to follow the progress of the sun, at each end curving down coquettishly to the ground. The same way, it occurs to him, that Alanis’s hair falls down the side of her face into an impudent, upturned kink. He smiles at the thought of her, as he holds his hand up to the scanner.
And here she is in his head again – for real this time. When he steps through his front door, a pulse arrives from her. She would love to come away with him.
He catches a glimpse of himself, as he washes his hands in the washroom, and sees a smile. His chiselled face, now scored in places with the first wrinkles of diminishment, looks back at him through steel-blue eyes under a manicured bed of creamy hair. For a moment he looks happy.
II
Rushing air. It’s the dream again. Rushing into and past his face. He is above everything and out of step. This is an act of subversion, undermining from on high. He is flying.
Dusty wakes, but not with a start. He knows the dream too well for it to surprise him any more. His heart is racing, but that’s the nature of the dream itself, not his reaction to it. It is the exhilaration.
Sometimes it scares him, this idea that he might be a maverick, a rebel even. The world does not accommodate such people. They are dealt with and returned as good as new. He doesn’t want to start all over again.
But this time he merely opens his eyes and registers the darkness. It is 3.23 a.m. In a little more than six hours he will collect Alanis from the club, and together they will journey into Wales. He knows he will not sleep again until they do.
With each mile from London, Dusty’s spirit lightens, until, a few miles short of the South West’s border town of Swindon, he feels at peace for the first time since his decommission. The M4 is wide, undulating serenely through the wind farms and fledgling forests of the South East and, in a moment or two, the South West. The aero spirits him and Alanis smoothly towards Wales.
Conversation has been easy. They have both needed a break from the heavy atmosphere of austerity London, and what better way to escape it. He picked up the aero that morning, pulling away from the compound in Kilburn with a full charge in the capacitor and excitement in his heart. Alanis fits perfectly with his mood and his vehicle. She has chosen a leisure suit enlivened by swirls of navy and vivid cyan. The suit stops at the top of her thigh. It is a pleasure to see her limbs exposed, freed from the possessiveness of a regular day suit. He enjoys the sight of her legs unfolding into the footwell and the sound of her soft, earnest voice.
After a minute or two of silence, she rests her hands in her lap. ‘Why did you choose Wales?’ she says, just as they cross the border into the South West.
Dusty weighs his words. ‘I’m curious. I always have been. I know the arguments against: it’s the Past; regress not progress; the Lapsed Era is just that; it has nothing for us; and so on. I see all of that, of course I do. But that doesn’t mean that going there can’t be…can’t be interesting.’
He glances at her, but she is looking across him, towards Swindon, and then at a huge agricultural aerofreight twice as wide as their little skim-around and some ten times as long. They pass it, as it slides onto the highway from the north, its consignment dispatched, and makes its return to the fields. These are happier times for the South West.
‘Yes, yes,’ she agrees without obvious conviction. ‘It will be interesting. I can’t wait to see it. I mean, we could easily turn off anywhere along here and spend our break visiting the old towns and villages, if we wanted to see things the way they were, but that’s not really the Past, is it, because no one lives there. I mean, I’ve done that loads of times. It’s safe. It’s beautiful. It’s a holiday. But, no, if you really want to visit the Past, to really experience it, then, well, obviously, you go to Wales, don’t you.’
‘Exactly! You have to!’ The spirit of the moment overwhelms him. Here they are, alone in an aero on a wide open highway, far from the bristling cities, heading west, where soon they will be beyond the Fence, beyond civilisation itself. Free. What harm can there be in a little enthusiasm for that between two old friends?
‘I really think this could be an incredible experience for us! We’re so lucky to have the opportunity. Most people will never get to see this. They train on, giving their all to their commune and to the Perpetual way, selflessly, unthinkingly, pursuing the sacred ideal of physical fitness. And yet there, just the other side of an outsized wall, across a river, exists a completely different way of life. Where being fit might not be the be-all and end-all of human aspiration. They say the generation of energy there is a dirty, haphazard affair, that there is no correlation between sporting achievement and prosperity. Oh, it’s funny to think about it, it’s ridiculous. But it’s…another way of life.
It’s fascinating, isn’t it?’
Dusty can see out of the corner of his eye that Alanis is nodding, but no words are forthcoming. For a few minutes, there is silence in the aero.
Nothing now lies between them and the frontier. They have passed Bristol, the capital of the South West and the last settlement before the Fence. In a few minutes they will be in Wales. Alanis is nervous.
She catches her first view of the Fence, sweeping from the north along the edge of the plains until it melds with the docks of Greater Bristol to the south, an opaque blend of steel and solar panelling, remarkable only for its scale. She loses sight of it as the road dips into a valley, but when they climb to within a few hundred metres the wall reveals itself again. It is at its height over the road, some 45 feet tall, but falls away by degrees either side to a regular height of 30, stretching as far as Alanis can see.
As they approach the checkpoint, a border officer emerges. Dusty powers down the aero, and he and Alanis follow the officer inside.
‘I’ll need your signs, please,’ he says.
Dusty and Alanis each place their left hand on the scanner on his desk, and their permits are duly confirmed.
The young officer, proud in his charcoal-grey official suit, refers to his tablet. ‘You have applied for, and been granted, recreational permits. They expire at midnight on Monday. Have either of you been to Wales before?’
‘No.’
The officer launches into a spiel he has rehearsed well. ‘The Western Assemblage of Lapsed Era Savages is to be visited with extreme caution by those from the Perpetual Era. You are advised never to stray from the M4 or other major routes unaccompanied. The sanctioned routes are being downloaded to your central chip now, Mr Noble. Beyond these inroads into the wilderness, civilisation has no jurisdiction. There are hostels along the M4 with viewing stations and Past simulators, in which the depravities of the Lapsed Era are brought to life. Up-to-date alignment certificates are required for entry into these. If you want to travel deep into the Past, beyond the simulators, there are natives at the Swansea West viewing station trained to escort you to the towns and villages of the Swansea Valley. Do you have any questions?’
Dusty is smiling at Alanis in a manner that might be intended to reassure her. He does look handsome. And relaxed, more so than she has seen him recently. As if they were off for an away break of aquasport on the south coast and not going to Wales at all.
‘Yes, I have one,’ says Alanis. ‘Are there cots?’
‘Naturally, the hostels are equipped with a full complement of coition terminals,’ replies the officer, ‘but they are not connected to any grid. You may have heard that there is no grid at all in Wales, at least not as understood by us. The comprehensive harnessing of energy is not practised there, which is the root of their savagery, what separates them from Perpetual society. The Welsh practise coitus for recreational purposes, and quite often reproductive. But there is no energy generation arising. Our advice is to enjoy your coitus but remain aware that no social benefit will pertain from it.’
&nb
sp; ‘Don’t overdo it, in other words,’ says Dusty, still smiling.
Alanis forces out a little laugh, but she knows she is flushing. Beyond the Fence they will be off the Grid, which is a further twist of discomfort she had not considered. Why couldn’t they just have gone to the deserted settlements of the shires? She’d been to some beautiful old places. Dorking, Farnham, Hungerford, Marlborough. All perfectly preserved; all dead; all safe. She’d seen a yellow sign a while back leading off the M4 to Castle Combe and nearly cried out. She’d been there many years ago on a field trip with the other girls on the fast-twitch module at her nursery. It was enchanting, and the name stayed with her. How she wished they were going there. What did Wales have that could not be found in a place like that, other than the rank threat of its living natives?
But she said nothing as they passed Castle Combe, and she will say nothing now, because Dusty has earned the right to visit a place like this if he wants to. She is honoured that he chose her to go with him.
The sun is shining, a condition of comfort to any Perpetual citizen. And yet Dusty derives added satisfaction, somehow, from the knowledge that this sunshine is being allowed to wash over the land and away, untroubled by a people desperate to harness its every ray. This sunshine is of no value at all but for the simple pleasure of its warmth on the skin.
He lowers his window and rests his arm in the void, rejoicing at the freedom to do so. The illicit turbulence that breaks into the aero thrills him. When he glances across at Alanis, she is already looking in his direction. Their eyes meet in a naked instant, before she turns her gaze straight ahead and forces a smile.
Dusty does not share her uneasiness. Energy inefficient it may be, but Wales is setting off little explosions of life inside him the further they venture into the country. Could it be the inefficiency itself? Now that they are past Newport, the M4 is alive with old-style cars, complete with rubber wheels. He chuckles at the outrageous heat and sound loss. The road signs bear the name of each city in English and in the old Welsh tongue. The gratuitousness of it! Why is it that Dusty feels he is coming home?
On past Cardiff (Caerdydd) they fly, Dusty laughing at the madness of it all, past Port Talbot (houses on a highway! Ha!), when suddenly, just after a sign to Swansea (Abertawe!), there appears a smaller brown one beckoning the driver to ‘Gower’. ‘Gwyr!’ says Alanis without much conviction, but Dusty is not laughing any more. That sign has touched him somehow, as if he has seen it before.
He has had his fill of the M4 now. The moment the officer told them to stick to the major routes he knew he wouldn’t be satisfied with that, nor with a guided tour by a brainwashed Welshman. This is the moment to break loose, so he guides the aero onto the slip road and heads for Gower. A wide expanse of sea and filthy chimneys presents itself as they leave the elevated highway and follow the new road round to the right.
He will not look at Alanis, for he knows she is looking at him. His chip tells him they are still on a sanctioned route, the A483, as it sweeps them towards Swansea. The sea appears on his left, and in the distance cranes and docks give notice that they are approaching a Lapsed Era settlement.
‘Dusty?’ says Alanis softly.
But Dusty does not reply. The cars around him stop at a red light. His chip is warning him that civilisation’s reach ends here. The red light is joined by another of a yellowish hue, before both are put out in favour of a green one. The cars move on, and Dusty follows them over the crossroad and beyond the jurisdiction of civilisation, into Swansea itself. They are on their own. He thinks he hears a sound from Alanis, but it could have been anything.
Still the brown signs for Gower lead him on, through the hideous, brick-heavy architecture of the Lapsed Era, the noise and the misdirection. To his left, the ill-conceived buildings now fall away to reveal the majesty of Swansea Bay, but it is a commotion to his right that finally inclines Dusty to slow down. A long white wall of corrugated iron shudders almost visibly to the noise that rises beyond.
‘Dusty,’ says Alanis, with some urgency now, ‘what are you doing? This is beyond the pale.’
He looks her in the eye. There is no colour in her cheeks. She is terrified.
‘Don’t you want to know?’ he says, but his adrenaline is high, so that it comes across as a challenge.
His heart racing, he pulls up on a grass verge a discreet distance away from the commotion. Alanis follows him tentatively out of the aero, and together they walk into the teeth of the unknown. The stadium, for that is what he imagines it must be, is growling steadily. ‘St Helen’s’, reads a sign above the entrance, ‘Home of the Whites’. The next home game is ‘Swansea RFC v Neath’, and the date is today’s. Access is easy. Following a compulsion he cannot disobey, Dusty slips through an unattended gate into a primitive arena of no focus or coherence. He guesses there are about 10 000 people in attendance, many of them packed into the long white building he had seen from the road, a kind of stand but with simple plastic seats and in some places not even that. He joins those standing in an unseated section. One juvenile with food on its face and a look of aggression in its eye clocks his Perpetual clothing and pokes an adult nearby. The adult is too preoccupied with the match to take any notice. Dusty recognises the sport they’re gathered round as rugby.
But he is more preoccupied with the natives themselves. He can make out no pattern, no order to their appearance, young mixing with large mixing with female mixing with male. Many are dressed in white shirts, but the uniform is superficial and ignored altogether by some. Below the waist there is no consistency of attire, some legs exposed, some not. They hydrate from receptacles of different colour and material – metallic, plastic, glass.
It is, however, their attitude, feral and uncontained, that makes the deepest impression on him. He marvels at the unmodulated nature of the noise they make. Not only do these people shout, they do so continually, even when their team are not scoring. There is an emotional quality, as if they can’t help themselves. He is frightened by it and exhilarated, just as in his dream.
‘Come on, my lovers!’ screams one woman, her hands held wide to the sky, a plastic vessel in one of them swilling golden liquid that washes down her naked arm towards naked shoulders and breasts only partially concealed by a dirty grey tunic. Her voice undulates curiously.
‘Dusty!’ cries another voice, more familiar, behind him.
Alanis is shouting so that she may be heard over the din, but there is an edge of desperation to her cry. He had quite forgotten her for a moment. He turns to see her cowering at the gate.
‘Come on!’ he urges, then turns again to take in the stadium.
On two other sides of the pitch thousands more jostle on their feet under an open sky, but behind the goalposts to the right the grass widens into another field, which could almost be a cricket pitch, the one patch of grass a kind of deformity on the face of the other. At the far end, the perimeter is bounded by a brick wall, and all around there are Lapsed Era houses, the mean, minuscule windows of some actually looking out over the pitch.
‘I feel sick.’ Alanis has joined him. She holds her arms tight around her waist and looks about her at the Welsh, as if they were circling crocodiles.
Dusty is too excited to sympathise. The apparent lawlessness of events on the pitch enthrals him now. It is some time before he realises the match is being refereed by a human, albeit in a different coloured shirt. One team is in white, the other black, in an appropriate coming together of opposites, for, truly, there is anger and fury in the contest.
The black team are stronger, but Dusty’s final observation, after which he has eyes for no other, is that the white No10 is a contestant unlike any on the field, unlike any Dusty has ever seen. His hair is the brightest blond, so blond it is almost fluorescent. Was it the hair he noticed first, or the way he sashayed through the black midfield just now to score that try, precipitating a thunder from those watching that threatens to tear the old stand to the ground? Either way, Dusty is seduce
d. He thrills every time the ball comes the way of the No10, who operates with a compelling blend of irreverence and grace, as if he is above the match, or outside it. Dusty is transfixed by the narrative of the contest, by his proximity to it, by the personality of it, swept along by the energy of those watching, distressed as they are when the black team score again, a seething swarm of them marching towards the try line.
But moments later the brilliant No10 scythes through once more and arrows in on the full-back. There is a surge of excitement in the crowd. A few metres before the full-back, the No10 holds both arms out wide, waving the ball in one hand like a charm, and mimics a wobble with criss-crossing legs, in response to which the full-back falls over backwards. The crowd bellows with joy as the No10 glides on, but there is a covering winger who has him in his sights. Just before the tackle, Dusty’s hero – although Dusty is unaware that this is what the blond No10 has become to him – flings out a long pass, and the white winger scores in the corner.
The roar of the gathering seems to impart movement to the very ground beneath their feet. But it’s not like the pump boards at home. The ground here is solid and not designed for energy generation. This energy is intense, and there is a quality of wildness to it. Most of all, though, it is unharnessed – energy generation of a gratuitous kind, which rattles the old stadium and flies off into the air. Dusty cannot help it. He lets himself become a part of the multitude, as they soar ecstatically on the back of their wild ritual, until a perfect stillness settles when the blond No10 lines up the conversion from the touchline.
Alanis glances from face to tautened face. She is gasping for air. Her temperature is high. This has been an appalling experience. She knew it was a bad idea the moment she stepped among these natives, the Lapsed Era garments hanging loosely off their bodies, an affront to the virtues of heat retention. They turn their menacing eyes on her, some horrifyingly withered by excess diminishment, others juvenile and of no organised programme.
IVON Page 3