Authors: Ben Elton
Trafford's eyes were wide. Everything that Cassius said
contradicted everything he knew. 'But surely gravity is the
force which draws things to the Earth?' he protested weakly.
'How could it possibly help you to get to the Moon?'
'Gravity,' Cassius said with scarcely concealed impatience,
'is the force which draws everything to everything. The
Earth does not have a monopoly on gravity, which is why
it does not lie at the centre of the universe.'
'You really think it doesn't?'
'Of course it doesn't. There is no centre of the universe.
The Earth, like everything else that exists, is suspended in
time and space, held in its position by the gravity of the
objects which surround it.'
Thrilled at the ease and confidence with which Cassius
uttered such heresy, Trafford said quietly, 'I want to know
what you know. I want you to make me understand.'
'You can't make someone understand, any more than
you can
make
them truly believe. It is a rule of my calling
that while the Temple knows no argument but force we
recognize no force but argument. If I cannot convince you
of what I know by rational exposition then what I know is
of no value.'
'Is that a rule of the Vaccinators?'
'I belong to a broader collective. We are all dedicated . . .
to reason.'
Despite the oppressive heat, Trafford felt a chill.
Reason, the very means by which he had struggled to
convince Chantorria that it would be right to vaccinate
Caitlin Happymeal.
'I . . . I would like to dedicate myself to reason too,' he said.
'Trafford, a moment ago you thought it incredible that I
believed that men landed on the Moon.'
'I don't! Not any more. I'll believe it. I believe it now!'
'We Humanists are not interested in what you believe.
We are interested in what you
understand
.'
'Help me to understand. I want to understand. I want to
be a . . . a . . .'
'Humanist.'
'Yes. A Humanist. I don't know what it is but I want to
be one.'
'Why?'
'Because there has to be more to life than this and I
know that it can't be found on the outside, not in this
terrible, sweating nest of half-drowned ants we call a city,
so it has to be on the inside. I want to explore new worlds
and I know that they can only be found inside my head.'
'Well then, perhaps we shall talk again. In the meantime
we have the welfare of Caitlin Happymeal to consider.'
'What medicines do you currently have access to?'
Trafford asked.
'I do not deal in medicines. This science is about
prevention, not cure. I deal in vaccines. Do you understand
the difference?'
'Yes. Yes, of course I do.'
'Good, because words are important, Trafford. Clear
thinking. Logic. Precision. Above all, understanding. You
can understand nothing if words can mean anything.'
'Yes. Yes, I see that. All right. What vaccines do you have?'
'You are fortunate. My chapter of the faith is currently
well supplied. I can help protect your child against what is
called the pustules, the hacking rip, the dead shivers, the
running sores and the bone lock, or, as they were once
known, measles, whooping cough, meningitis, smallpox
and tetanus.'
'When can we do this?'
'Whenever you can bring me the child.'
Chantorria was grateful for Trafford's offer to take the baby
off her hands for a few hours. She was
so
busy. Tinkerbell
was to be married the following Saturday and the whole
tenement was buzzing with the preparations.
Weddings were a very big deal, absolutely central to the
life of the community. There was nothing upon which the
Temple placed more importance than the sanctity of
marriage.
'That solemn pronouncement,' Confessor Bailey
thundered at every meeting, 'of unity between a man
and a woman, that children might be created and
family life perpetuated, lies at the very heart of a peaceful
God-fearing society.'
Marriages were good. It therefore went without saying
that the more of them a person had, the better, more holy
and more filled with love that person was.
There had of course been a time when the nation's
spiritual leaders, in their weakness and ignorance, had
misunderstood that which the Lord and the Love
desired from the great institution of marriage. Then
it had been assumed that Jesus's supportive words
delivered during the wedding at Cana indicated that
the ideal spiritual course was to
stay
married. It was
now understood that Jesus had in fact stressed the
importance of
getting
married.
'Jesus did not celebrate a
marriage
at Cana,' Confessor
Bailey assured his congregation, 'he celebrated a
wedding
.'
It was the wedding that counted: that special moment
when a woman and a man committed themselves
absolutely to each other in body and in soul and in the
Love of the Lord. This was an event which (for the good of
society) simply could not happen too often.
'Faith is no faith at all if it is mundane and workaday,'
Confessor Bailey explained. 'What use has the Lord for a
love which has grown so tired that it must be nurtured
even to survive? That's not love! That's habit! Don't
stumble through life accepting second best. Life is not a
rehearsal. You get no second shot! Go for it! Grab it. Take
what you want. You deserve more! More of everything!
More fervour! More rapture! More ecstasy. More food,
more drink! More worldly goods! More sex! Take them,
they're yours! Grab them in the name of the Love. What
could be better than a wedding? What could be better than
food, wine and the pleasures of the flesh? These are gifts
from God! At a wedding all three are in abundance, all
consumed in solemn observance of our spiritual vows.
What's not to like about that?'
For Trafford, society's obsession with weddings was
just another frustrating contradiction which he must
keep secret.
It was obvious to him that the emotional energy of
the wedding was based on the absolute certainty that
the marriage would last for ever. The day only worked if
everybody connived in the fiction that this wedding was
the
one, the greatest love of all, a union quite literally
made in Heaven. Every song, every speech, every tear and
every vow was dedicated to the once-in-a-lifetime
specialness of the day and the unequivocal, lifelong
commitment that the bride and groom were making to
each other – while every single person in the room, not
least the bride and groom, knew that the union would
almost certainly be over within two or three years. Every
aspect of society, both legally and spiritually, was geared
to the indulgence in serial marriages and yet each of
these marriages had to be entered into as if it was to be the
only one.
'I never truly loved Sabre,' Tinkerbell assured her
numerous maids of honour. 'Not Supernova either, nor
Love Man. All my other marriages have been shams. Lexus
is the only man I ever truly loved.'
Everyone in the building was thrilled for Tinkerbell,
filled with outspoken admiration for the way she had
turned her life around. She had bigged herself up after her
split from Sabre and refused to be a victim, and through
the loss of Gucci KitKat she had learned and grown to be
a better, stronger person.
'I've been talking to God a lot,' she assured the crowds of
friends who dropped by her apartment and the many
more who followed her blog, 'and he's been telling me
how beautiful I am.'
Watching her on the wallscreen, Trafford could not
help wondering how deep Tinkerbell's new-found
happiness ran. She had lost her child only a few months
previously and he simply did not believe it was possible
to put such a thing behind one so quickly. Looking into
her pixilated eyes as she sucked her alcopops and assured
the webcam how happy she was, he saw nothing but
sadness. Perhaps he was imagining it, transferring to
Tinkerbell the emptiness he felt every day over the loss of
Phoenix Rising, but he doubted it. Trafford suspected that
Tinkerbell was acting in the manner she was because she
believed that was how she ought to act.
'And the best thing of all,' Tinkerbell stated from the
wall, 'is that I know, I just
know
that my little Gucci KitKat
is watching and he just loves his new daddy. In fact I
believe that somehow Gucci KitKat found Lexus and led
him to me.'
Did she really believe that? On what possible evidence
could she base this colossal assumption? Surely that
would be the question Cassius would ask. Which he,
Trafford,
should
ask, but he didn't of course. Like
everyone else, he assured Tinkerbell that her dead baby's
return to Earth to guide her to the pub where Lexus, a
local vermin control agent, had pulled her was the most
likely explanation for her sudden, overwhelming happiness.
'And the sex is just spectacular,' Tinkerbell told her little
world for the thousandth time. 'Lex is just the best. He
knows what to do for a woman all right. We do everything.
I expect some of you will have seen. Wow! I am such a
lucky girl.'
Chantorria was helping with the dress. She had
volunteered to hand-staple the thousands of blinking,
multicoloured lights required for the train. Tinkerbell, like
every new bride, wanted her dress to be the most spectacular
dress ever made and ten whole metres of white plastic
sheeting were to be used in its construction.
'I was in cream when I married Sabre,' she explained,
'but I owe it to Lexus to go white this time since he's
paying to have my hymen reconstructed so I'll be a virgin
again. It means we'll have to go without for forty-eight
hours before the wedding. Isn't it
romantic
?'
Chantorria was a maid of honour, as was every woman
under fifty in the tenement. It was quite clear to Trafford
that Chantorria had been invited to make up the numbers;
Tinkerbell was a major face in their little community and
it befitted her to have a massive wedding. There would be
a carriage and matching thrones, of course – the traditional
elements of any wedding – but the real status of such an
event depended on the number of identically dressed
women the bride could gather around her. For the
purposes of the big day Chantorria had been enlisted in
the ranks of Tinkerbell's closest friends and she was
thrilled to have been asked. In Chantorria's mind, this was
a level of public acceptance that gave her some security
against bullying. Trafford did not agree with her; he knew
that loyalties were paper-thin and that nobody was safe if
the mob turned. After all, the one thing people liked even
more than a wedding was a burning.
Trafford left Chantorria alone in their flat with her staple
gun and thousands of flashing lights and carried Caitlin
Happymeal towards the bus stop, where, after watching
several full buses go by without stopping, they were finally
able to get a ride to Heathrow Central. There was only one
terminal at Heathrow now. At one time there had been
seven but as the oil slowly ran out they had been closed
down and redeveloped as housing estates. A museum of
aviation had also been built and it was here that Cassius
had instructed Trafford to meet him.
They were to spot each other as if by chance, work
colleagues who happened to bump into one another.
Trafford was to introduce his baby and engage in brief
small talk, after which they would decide to join the queue
for the cinema.
After nearly two hours of shuffling, during which
Trafford cuddled Caitlin Happymeal and she laughed and
giggled constantly, as was her wont, they finally gained
entrance to the darkened auditorium. At this point, as
Cassius had instructed, Trafford gave Caitlin a bottle of
infant formula laced with a dose of antihistamine. By the
time they took their seats Caitlin was asleep so she missed
the looped entertainment, a ten-minute film entitled
Global Warming: The Great Lie
. 'CO2 didn't cause the
planet to be flooded. God did,' said the narrator firmly.
The film told the story of how man in his vanity sought
to claim credit for his own destruction, blaming God's
righteous vengeance for man's wickedness on something
called greenhouse gases.
'The simple explanation just wasn't good enough for
us,' the stern voice of the narrator continued. 'What could
be more clear? Man was wicked, God punished him. Hey,
it's that simple. But no, the so-called scientists of this
Godless age had a different idea. They said that the
floods came from polar ice melted by the heat of the Sun,
trapped upon the Earth by the exhaust from oil-fired
engines. Yeah, right. That's exactly what happened, I
don't think.'
While they watched this, Trafford was holding Caitlin
Happymeal on his knee as Cassius had instructed, and
now Trafford sensed the Vaccinator feeling for the infant's
leg. Trafford shifted his position a little to allow Cassius to
reach her more easily. Looking out of the corner of his eye,
Trafford could see Cassius feel for the chubby part of
Caitlin's thigh and slip a needle into it. 'Hold her!' Cassius
whispered as the pain woke the infant up and she began
to scream.
Trafford struggled to keep her still while Cassius gently
depressed the syringe plunger.
'Poor thing, is she teething?' Cassius asked, withdrawing
his hand.
'Yes, I think perhaps she is,' Trafford replied. 'I'll take her
outside.'
As Trafford got up, Cassius offered him his hand.
'Good to see you,' the Vaccinator said.
As they shook hands, Trafford felt something being
pressed into his palm.
'Let's meet up some time,' Cassius continued.
Later, on the tube home, when he felt safe to do so,
Trafford glanced down at what he had been given. It was a
slip of paper. On it, as well as an address and a time and
date, was a message:
Do join us. Reason dictates it
.