Authors: Ben Elton
'I'll have to fake it,' he whispered to Chantorria as they
crossed into the bedroom. 'Too much pressure.'
'I don't care. Just make it convincing,' his wife whispered,
desperate not to be publicly humiliated as a woman
who could not arouse her man even while wearing heels,
a G-string and a cupless bra.
And so, for the benefit of the neighbours, Trafford and
Chantorria performed a pantomime of lovemaking in
which, having briefly and perfunctorily consumed her
chocolate G-string, Trafford lay between her legs, grinding
his flaccid penis against her while she whimpered in
mock ecstasy.
When they had finished their performance they wished
Barbieheart good night.
'Way to go, kids,' Barbieheart replied, opening a bottle of
fizzy drink. 'I am
so
jealous. Back in the day you should
have seen me go. I was
mad
for it!'
As a woman dealing with size issues, Barbieheart was
exempt from the social pressure to have a fantastic sex life.
Trafford could not help wondering in his secret self how
mad for it she had ever been. How mad for it was anybody
in the stinking-hot rabbit warrens in which they lived? Did
other people fake it for the cameras too? How much of the
sex that was streamed on the community webcast was
actually a pantomime? The social pressure to be an
obsessively sexual being was all-encompassing. Every
advert, every song, every reality show seemed to be about
almost nothing but sex. Sometimes it seemed to Trafford
as if, with the exception of some of the news, nothing was
broadcast at all that was not about sex. All comment, all
discussion, all marketing appeared to be based on the
assumption that there were only two proper states for a
person to be in, either 'up for it' or 'at it', and if they
weren't one of those two things then something was very
wrong. Trafford knew that this was rubbish. He liked sex
as much as anyone but people had children to raise,
money to earn, vermin to kill, problems to deal with; it
was impractical for sex to be the number-one priority
every
minute of the day. How would the washing get done?
Was everybody lying? Did they all have secret lives? If
they did then they were all heretics, Tinkerbell,
Barbieheart, Sabre and Lexus, all of them. Enemies of the
Temple. It occurred to Trafford that if only all these people
could be brought to Confession together and made to
speak the truth, there would be a revolution. For a
moment he indulged in the fantasy of appealing to the
camera for common sense. 'COME ON!' he cried out in
his mind. 'Are you
really
all so ecstatically fucking happy?
Don't you occasionally long for a bit of calm? A bit of
quiet? A bit of
privacy
?!'
Unable to speak, Trafford got up and went into the
kitchen. For a few moments he stood over Caitlin
Happymeal's cot, watching her as she slept. Her lashes
were long and dark, just like her mother's. Trafford
wondered if one day his tiny, happy baby would grow up
to have the joy crushed out of her as Chantorria had – or
would Caitlin find the strength to keep her secrets and
make of them a shield? After a little while he went to the
table and sat down at his computer. Sandra Dee had
updated her lies since he had last looked; she was very
conscientious about maintaining her cover. There were
new sex videos, a badly focused tape of a woman singing
karaoke in a pub and a new blog discussing the latest
entrant into a popular reality show.
She looks like a total
bitch to me
, it said.
But fair play to her, she's a strong woman
and I love her big time
. Trafford copied and pasted the
sentences on to his search engine and soon discovered
that the blog had actually been written by a woman
named Vosene who lived on one of the islands of the
South Downs.
Caitlin Happymeal began crying. Chantorria got up to
feed her.
'How's your girlfriend?' she enquired sarcastically as she
emerged through the beaded curtain that stood in for a
door between their sleeping and dining area.
'She's not my girlfriend,' Trafford replied, 'she's a
colleague who gets bullied. I feel sorry for her, that's all.'
'Whatever,' Chantorria replied, and putting Caitlin on
her breast she returned to bed.
Thinking about his baby, Trafford felt a surge of pride.
He had had her vaccinated. He had acted independently in
defiance of the Temple. He had begun his own private
revolution.
The address that Cassius had given Trafford was for a small
communications shop in Finchley. It was not an easy place
for Trafford to get to, as it involved crossing Lake London
with his bicycle and disembarking at the Paddington jetty,
then cycling for miles along the rickety stilt paths and
stinking, muddy, half-submerged streets of what was left
of Kensal Green and Kilburn. As he half pedalled, half
waded his way towards his destination, Trafford's emotions
veered between intense excitement and intense fear.
If he had guessed Cassius's intentions correctly, he was
about to enter the secret company of Humanists, people
with whom he hoped to experience an intellectual liberation
that weeks before he would not have imagined possible.
On the other hand he was also putting himself among
heretics, on a collision course with the Inquisition. What
was more, to do so he was having to journey into a
particularly desperate area of town. It was a grim, fearful
place where fresh water was currency and teenage street
gangs ran illegal tolls on every bridge; where ferrymen
rowed with guns held ready between their knees and even
the police and the Inquisition travelled only in packs,
rarely leaving their boats. A brutalized and embittered
local population lived in a state of continuous war with
the incoming immigrant underclass, both communities
struggling to scratch a living from the rubbish that floated
on the canals.
As Trafford hurried along, the grim environment and
the knowledge of his secret mission preyed on his nerves.
Every passer-by suddenly looked like a Temple spy and
every leaky punt a police launch. Beggars demanded
money in menacing tones that seemed to say, 'I know
where you're going, boy. Pay up or I shall denounce you.'
Trafford inwardly chastised himself for being weak and
fearful. If Sandra Dee were with him, he thought, she
would not be starting at shadows and scared of weak and
pitiable beggars. She'd face them with the same steady
assurance that she faced that bitch Princess Lovebud.
Trafford felt emboldened. Sandra Dee showed no fear and
nor would he. He would be worthy of the secret love he
harboured for a secret person.
Finally, after wading up and down a seemingly endless
series of mostly deserted back streets just south of the
Nag's Head market, Trafford found the address he was
looking for. The building, which bore the legend
Books and
Pamphlets Bought and Sold
, stood in a grubby terraced street
very slightly more prosperous-looking than the ones
through which he had been forced to pass. He mounted
the scaffolding stairs to the first-floor window and entered
a small, dimly lit emporium.
Communications shops had enjoyed something of a
renaissance in recent years. The manuals and pamphlets
they sold had traditionally been ordered from the net, but
with the deterioration of the courier services and the
continuing rise in the water level there had been a revival
in what was known as 'direct commerce'. Shops had
become viable as businesses once more. This one was
stuffed to bursting point with the usual religious, faith-based
and self-help manuals which for some reason people still
seemed to prefer to consume in hard copy rather than view
on the net. Everywhere Trafford looked, celebrity hypnotists,
healers, pop singers, astrologers and spiritualists promised
step-by-step programmes that guaranteed personal
improvement. Thousands and thousands of books all
offered to make the reader a strong, rich, powerful and
successful person. Trafford had seen many such books;
people read them all the time. There was clearly an
enormous desire to be strong, rich, powerful and
successful. The interesting thing was that despite all these
books and their vast following of readers, Trafford had
never met anybody outside the Temple hierarchy who
actually
was
strong, rich, powerful and successful. It was
just one more of the many contradictions that Trafford
noted but never discussed.
He picked up a book at random, a slim volume which
promised to show him how he could recognize the God
within himself and use it to attract a better class of sexual
partner. As he was glancing through the contents, the
manager of the shop approached him. A small man with
the thickest glasses Trafford had ever seen, he looked a bit
like an owl.
'Was there anything in particular you were looking for?'
the manager enquired.
'Well, actually I was hoping to meet somebody,'
Trafford replied.
'Any particular
reason
why you were to meet this person
here?' the man asked.
Trafford recognized his cue. 'Oh yes, of course.
Reason
dictated it.'
'In that case I think you'll find your friend just
through here.'
Trafford allowed himself to be led into the back room
and from there down two flights of stairs to the cellar of
the building, which by rights should have been flooded
but was not. It was extremely dark and before Trafford's
eyes had time to grow accustomed to the dimness he heard
the familiar voice of Cassius.
'Trafford,' he said.
'Is that you, Cassius? Where are you?'
Cassius stepped out of the shadows.
'Greetings,' he said. 'Are you ready to cross the Rubicon?'
'What is the Rubicon?'
'A river.'
'What about it?'
'In Ancient Roman times Caesar defied law, convention
and superstition by crossing it with his army. For him it
was a point of no return. You have arrived at such a point.
Will you cross your Rubicon?'
Trafford had heard of Caesar; he knew that he was an
emperor from the distant past.
'I don't know anything about rivers,' he said, 'but when
it comes to defying the law, convention and superstition,
I'll cross any river you like.'
'I hope so,' Cassius said. 'We have to be most careful
whom we approach.'
'Don't worry about me. I'm sure I believe what you believe.'
Cassius frowned. 'You earn the right to come here,
Trafford, not by
believing
but by
understanding
.'
'Understanding what?'
'Understanding that in time everything can be
understood. You have no doubt heard your Confessor
speak of the Love that passes all understanding?'
'Of course.'
'Well, I reject that thesis. I do not believe that there is
anything in the universe that passes all understanding. It is
merely that there is much that we do not understand
yet
.
Some people, most people, fill that gap with God. I and
my friends wish to fill it with knowledge.'
'The other Vaccinators?'
'Not everyone who comes here is a Vaccinator, although
most Vaccinators are Humanists. You told me that you
wished to join us.'
'I do, I do.'
'You realize that if you are caught you will be killed, and
if you betray us we will kill you? This is the Rubicon.'
Trafford needed no persuasion; he had been waiting for
a moment like this all his life.
'I understand the risks and I would never betray you.'
'Do you know what a Humanist is?'
'Not really. Perhaps a little.'
'Then how can you know that you wish to be one?'
'Because you have spoken of knowledge and
understanding and those are two things that I desire more
than anything else on Earth.'
'Do you
know
what knowledge is? Do you
understand
what understanding is?'
'I know only one thing and I understand only one
thing: that everything I have ever been told by the Temple
and everything I pretend to believe is a lie. Beyond that I
am utterly ignorant. Whoever you are, I want to join you.
I am lost. I am alone. Every thought I have I must keep
secret. Everything I claim to believe I actively despise. I
would rather be a dog than a man: animals know nothing
but they don't
know
they know nothing. I do. I am aware
of my ignorance. I am aware of the pointless banality of
my existence. It's a curse to have a mind if it is illegal to use
it. It's a curse to have intelligence if you are forced to cloak
it in a lifetime of wilful stupidity. If you and your friends
can bring light into the miserable darkness of my life then
I will be a Humanist and die a Humanist.'
'You may well have to,' Cassius replied. 'Follow me.'
He turned towards the wall, which was now revealed as
containing a secret door. The smell hit Trafford the
moment the door opened, although it was not so much a
smell as a texture to the air. It was
dry
. He had never before
breathed completely dry air. The humidity in the city was
pretty constant and every breath one took was laden with
moisture. This air was different though: it wasn't fresh, far
from it – in fact it smelt dusty and in a strange way
old
. But
it was dry.
The room itself was as unique as the air in it. It was
clearly carefully sealed because as the false wall closed
behind him Trafford was aware that the noise of the city
had disappeared. He was in a large room made up of the
cellars of the next three houses in the street knocked
through into one space. Even ground floors were
normally ankle-deep in water and home to rats and
mosquitoes, so it was most unusual to find a basement
occupied. Somehow or other this space had been
waterproofed and Trafford could now see that the quality
of the air was the result of a large dehumidifier attached
to the ceiling.
There were half a dozen men and women in the room
besides Trafford and Cassius. They were sitting together
around a small table on which stood a pot of tea, a bottle
of wine and some plain-looking biscuits of a variety that
Trafford did not recognize. The rest of the room was
packed to bursting point with books. Old, old books. The
people at the table scarcely looked up when Cassius
entered, they were so engrossed. Each of them sat hunched
over a book, taking an occasional sip of tea or wine.
'This is one of our reading rooms,' Cassius explained in
a whisper.
For a moment Trafford wondered why Cassius was
whispering. It was strange to hear anybody speaking
at anything other than the top of their voice and he
had already noted that the room was sealed from the
outside world. Then he realized that Cassius did not
wish to disturb the people around the table, who
were
concentrating
.
Trafford felt a thrill. Nobody concentrated, ever.
No video screen stayed on the same image for more
than a few seconds and no conversation remained focused
on a topic for any longer. After all, an important aspect of
being a person of faith was always to say the first thing that
came into your head and to say it as loudly as possible.
There was never any need to concentrate: God knew
everything and you did what the Temple told you to do.
What was to concentrate on?
And yet here, in this strange room, there was nothing
but concentration. Quiet, focused concentration. Trafford
wanted nothing more on Earth than to join those figures
sitting round that table.
There was even an empty chair waiting for him.
'These are books that we have collected and continue to
collect,' Cassius explained. 'After the flood, when the
darkness of ignorance began to creep across the land,
the first of the New Humanists began to store them. Most
books were lost, of course. Many rotted in the deluge and
then, as faith replaced reason, others were pulped for
pamphlets or burned as fuel or used as lavatory paper. But
we saved some and still do. Even now they can be found,
stuffed into wall cavities or washed up on ledges in sewers. I
once found Plato, Aeschylus and Aristotle lining a hen coop.'
Trafford had never heard of Plato, Aeschylus or Aristotle.
'We grab them when we can,' Cassius went on, 'clean
them, dry them, repair them and above all
read
them. That
is our bounden duty, to inwardly digest and understand
the knowledge and the literature of the past.'
'Have you scanned them? Digitized them?'
'No. Only paper is safe. The authorities are ever vigilant
for sedition on the net. As we have learned to our cost,
they scan constantly for the key words and phrases. Oh, a
story or a poem might survive undetected for a while; I
doubt that the average policeman or Temple elder would
recognize a Shakespeare sonnet if it were to beat them
with a rubber truncheon. But there are key names and
areas of knowledge which they pursue relentlessly. Not
surprisingly, these are the same names and areas which
every Humanist is pledged to study and to understand.
Darwin and evolution above all, for the theory of
evolution is the creed at the very core of the resistance, but
there are many thousands of others – Galileo, Copernicus,
greenhouse gas, Tom Paine and his
Rights of Man
, the Big
Bang, George Bernard Shaw, Isaac Newton . . .'
Cassius was interrupted by a loud clearing of the throat.
Trafford turned to see that one of the readers sitting at the
table had looked up from his book and was glaring at
them fiercely. In the excitement of listing his favourite
inspirational names and topics (none of which, apart from
Darwin, Trafford had heard of) Cassius had allowed his
voice to rise a little and he was disturbing the peace.
'Sorry,' he whispered. 'Almost anything that we might
wish to read could be located on the net instantly and
traced straight back to us. The internet was supposed to
liberate knowledge but in fact it buried it, first under a vast
sewer of ignorance, laziness, bigotry, superstition and filth
and then beneath the cloak of police surveillance. Now, as
you know, cyberspace exists exclusively to promote
commerce, gossip and pornography. And, of course, to
hunt down sedition. Only paper is safe. Books are the key.
A book cannot be accessed from afar, you have to hold it,
you have to read it.'