Blind Faith (18 page)

'It's out of the question,' Cassius said angrily. 'We can't
possibly expand our recruitment programme. It simply
isn't our way.'

'You said it was the duty of every Humanist to be a
missionary, to spread the knowledge.'

'It's also our duty not to get caught and risk handing the
whole damn network to the Inquisition!'

'Network! It's not a
network
. It's a cosy little club! You've
said yourself there's barely a few hundred of you in the
whole damn country of faith. Do you want the children
you saved as a Vaccinator to grow up in the same shitty
world we did? And what about their children's children?
And the children after that?'

'Trafford, we can't start a revolution.'

'Why not? Why can't we start a revolution? We
need
a revolution.'

The two men were facing each other in the anteroom of
the Finchley library.

'No, Trafford, we need
evolution
! Sober thinkers, not
impetuous hotheads. What's your hurry?' Cassius asked.
'When you called me you said it was urgent. Why did you
have to drag me across the lake to ask me this now?'

'It
is
urgent,' Trafford pleaded. 'Every second counts. I
had to wait thirty bloody years to find you. To find this
library. That's almost half a lifetime wasted! Wasted in
ignorance and, more to the point, in utter stupefying
boredom
. The boredom of living in a world where the only
idea is faith and the only diversions are sex and gossip.
You know very well that before I met you, the best I could
manage to maintain some sense of individuality was
keeping a few paltry secrets! How fucking pointless is that?
Hoarding feelings like a rat hoards rubbish. Always
looking inwards, when I could have been expanding my
mind. The day I became a Humanist was the day I was
born. Until then, my mind was
in utero
, an embryonic
consciousness. If I deserved this chance,' Trafford
exclaimed, 'so do millions of other people.'

'They may very well deserve their chance,' Cassius
replied and despite his anger he could not help smiling at
Trafford's passion. 'But we have rules, Trafford. Serious
rules. Each new follower is required to wait at least a year
before approaching a new prospect of their own—'

'A year!' Trafford blurted.

'. . . and even then only with the utmost patience and
caution. If you share your secret with the wrong person
you will be denounced and almost certainly tortured into
denouncing the rest of us.'

' "Patience"! "Caution"!' Trafford echoed derisively. 'The
way you're going it'll take a thousand years to spread
the light.'

'Better that than have it snuffed out for ever.'

'You brought me in. How could you be sure I wouldn't
denounce you then?'

'You had allowed me to vaccinate your baby, Trafford.
You were entirely compromised and in no position to
denounce anyone.'

'Is that the best you can do to spread the word? Wait
until you find someone with a baby that they'll allow you
to vaccinate?'

'Well, you say you have a better way. Let's hear it then.'

'It's bloody obvious. I can't believe I didn't think of it
immediately. That's why it's urgent: too much time has
been wasted already!'

'Yes but what
is
it? What is your better way?'

'By
finding the people who keep secrets
,' Trafford exclaimed,
his eyes bright with excitement. 'That was how you found
me. You guessed that I kept secrets.'

'We work together in the same office. I had the opportunity
to observe you.'

'But don't you see? That's the point. We at DegSep have
the opportunity to observe everybody! We have access to a
profiling tool of incredible sophistication which should, if
we ask it the right questions, be able to find
people like us
.'

Cassius's eyes narrowed with interest. 'Carry on,' he said.

'We need to study ourselves,' Trafford continued, 'and
our fellow Humanists. We need to identify common
movements, characteristics and choices. Are we the sort of
people who do such a thing in a certain way, at certain
times and in certain places? When we have built up some
sort of pattern which we feel is common to us all, or at
least indicates a commonality, then I can put it through
DegSep and look for matches. All we have to do is profile
who we are, then we can find out who is like us.'

Cassius considered this idea for a moment.

'It
is
ingenious, I'll admit that,' he said finally. 'Do you
really think you could manipulate DegSep undetected?'

'Why not, if I follow your rules and do it boldly? My job
is to come up with nonsense to ask the computer, and
this would just be more nonsense. I wouldn't even try to
hide it.'

'Very well then,' said Cassius, and despite his efforts to
maintain a cool, objective air it was clear he was excited.
'I'll think about it and speak to some of the others. You
may have hit on something here, Trafford.'

'Of course I've hit on something. But I'll only do it on
one condition.'

Cassius's face hardened. 'If you are a loyal Humanist,' he
said tersely, 'then you will make no conditions!'

'I am a loyal Humanist but I don't care. I want to bring
in a girl. I know I'm supposed to wait a year but I want to
bring her in now.'

Cassius looked at Trafford long and hard. 'Is it the one
at work? Sandra Dee?'

Trafford tried to hide his surprise.

'What . . . what makes you think that?'

'I observe people. You know that, Trafford, and I hardly
think you would stand up to our charming Princess
Lovebud for just
any
girl. I'm right, aren't I?'

'Yes. She's the one I want to bring in.'

'What makes you think you can trust her?'

'Because she's like me, she keeps secrets.'

'If you discovered that, then she can't be very good at
keeping them, can she?'

'No, that's not fair. I discovered them because I went
looking . . . I Goog'ed her up.'

'Why did you Goog' her?'

'Because . . . she fascinated me. I found her attractive.
But when I read her blog and looked at her videos I realized
that they weren't hers at all. They were all downloads
scavenged from other people's postings. She's actually
much, much better at keeping secrets than me, than any of
us. We're forced to cover up what we do and who we are
but she's developed a method whereby she gives
absolutely nothing of herself away, so in effect there's
nothing to cover up.'

Cassius thought for a moment.

'All right,' he said, 'you may approach this girl.'

'Thank you.'

'Just a book or two to begin with,' Cassius added, 'and
you must claim that you found them yourself, by chance,
in a dump or a gutter. Give no hint about us or our
libraries. If the girl responds favourably to what you give
her then "find" another book and then another until such
time as you are sure that her imagination is sufficiently
stimulated for there to be no turning back. Then come to
us and, if we agree, then and only then can you tell her of
our movement and bring her to the library to choose
books for herself. Do you understand?'

Trafford assured Cassius that he did.

'Do you promise to abide by these conditions?'

'Yes. Absolutely.'

'Good. I would advise you to choose very carefully
which books you give her to start with. As you know
from your own experience, to begin to read anything of
any value is a great challenge. We are no longer educated
for such concentration and so you must grasp your
reader's attention instantly. Believe me, you will not get a
second chance. Anyone who reads one of the old texts
is taking an enormous risk and you must make sure that it
is sufficiently absorbing for them to be unable to resist
continuing with it once they have begun.'

'Thank you. I'll think about that.'

Trafford had expressed great confidence to Cassius that
Sandra Dee would prove a willing convert to Humanism.
But in fact he approached the next Fizzy Coff with
considerable trepidation. After all, he had scarcely ever
spoken to her before and now he intended to introduce
himself by suggesting that she become a heretic. It was true
that at the previous Fizzy Coff he had defended her over
the doughnut fund confrontation but she had given no
sign of gratitude or appreciation. She would also no doubt
still be furious with him because her name had been cited
at a Community Confession.

All day long Trafford searched for a moment in which
to catch Sandra Dee's eye, a moment when he might
initiate a conversation, but no such opportunity arose.

He hoped to catch her at the lifts at the end of the day
but she left early and he missed that chance too. In the
end it was Sandra Dee who approached him. He was
walking from the office to the tube station, pushing his
way along the crowded street, when he heard a voice
behind him.

'Am I supposed to thank you?' Sandra Dee said. 'Is that
the idea?'

She spoke loudly in order to be heard above the noise of
the thousands of personal communitainers that were
thudding and banging all around them. Some people used
earphones, some didn't, clearly believing that as many
people as possible should be given the opportunity to
appreciate their musical taste. That, combined with the
mass leakage from the headsets, created a terrible din and
even discreet private conversations had to be conducted
at a yell.

'For standing up for me against Lovebud? New Temple
favourite comes to the aid of office misfit? Is that it?'
Sandra Dee continued. 'Because I can look after myself,
you know.' She was beside him now but although he
turned to her, she continued to face forward as if she was
not talking to him at all but to herself.

'Yes, yes. I'm sure you can look after yourself,' he said
apologetically, although he knew that her confidence was
pure bravado. She could not look after herself. No one
could, not if they got caught up in an office witch hunt,
not once the pack had formed and chosen its prey. Those
things took on a life of their own and once started they
were virtually unstoppable. Whatever nonsense it was that
had been concocted in order to incense them, the
attackers came quickly to believe in their righteousness
and would not stop until their victim lay broken at
their feet.

'I just got sick of Princess bloody Lovebud. That's all,'
Trafford went on. 'I would stick up for anyone to irritate her.'

'Why did your wife name me at the Confession?' Sandra
Dee asked abruptly, finally bringing into the open the
elephant that had squatted between them, unacknowledged,
since the night that Trafford and Chantorria had
begun their divorce proceedings.

'Because . . .' Trafford began, realizing that there was no
answer that would cover the facts except the truth, 'like she
said, I'd been Tubing you up and reading your blog. She
caught me at it.'

'So what? Don't all men perv on the net? Isn't that what
you're all supposed to do?'

'Yes but . . . well, I . . . I was only Tubing you.
Nobody else.'

They were deep in the crowd now, shuffling towards
the opening and closing station gates. One great mass
of humanity, hot, sticky and angry. Half a fried chicken
was being consumed noisily not ten inches to the left of
Trafford's face: he could see it out of the corner of his
eye, the gaudy red and white bucket held up with two
hands while its owner buried his face in it and
consumed the contents as he shuffled, like a horse with
a nosebag.

Chicken to the left of him, a huge sweating red neck in
front of him, a belly pressing on his spine behind him,
but to his right Trafford thought he felt lovely coolness.
He knew it could only be an illusion, for Sandra Dee
was human and hence not immune to the stifling,
oppressive, bug-laden heat that wrapped itself around
every individual like a thick woolly blanket. She must
sweat and burn like the rest of them and yet somehow he
perceived a kind of freshness emanating from her. And
whenever her arm touched his, which despite her best
efforts it continually did as the crowd moved this way and
that, her skin cooled him.

'You only perv on my vids?' he heard her say.

'Yes,' he admitted. 'But I stopped . . . after, after what my
wife said at the Confession.'

'I know you stopped. I started tracking my hits and you
weren't there. Why did you stop?'

'Well . . . you looked so angry.'

'Angry? Why would a girl be angry because a guy pervs
her up? I'm made up of course, totally flattered big time,'
she said, toeing the socially correct line but in a voice
that dripped with angry sarcasm. 'So a man likes
watching me have sex. What's not to like? Isn't that what
the Temple expects of me? Isn't that what every girl
wants? To be watched, all the time? To be lusted after
and thought
hot
?'

'Because . . .'

Trafford hesitated. He knew the answer. She knew
the answer. But did
she
know that
he
knew the answer?
'Because the girls having sex in your vid diary
aren't you.'

There, he had done it. He had spoiled her secret, the last
thing he had ever wanted to do.

'Ah,' she said, trying to sound calm and matter-of-fact, 'I
was wondering if you'd worked it out. I supposed you
must have done. The lie wasn't built to withstand
intense scrutiny.'

Trafford said nothing. The man to the left, having
finished his chicken, paused in his shuffling to create a gap
between himself and the person crushed in front, then
dropped the box with its filthy, rat-magnet contents on
the ground.

'Are you a cop?' Sandra Dee asked.

'God, no!' Trafford exclaimed.

'A Temple spy?'

'As if.'

'Then why are you interested in a girl who prefers
to break the law rather than risk uploading an
honest blog?'

'I was . . . fascinated. You see, I too value . . . privacy.'

'Then why did you draw attention to yourself by
defending me from Princess Lovebud? She's a bad enemy
to make even if you are currently a favoured one.'

Trafford's reply was almost as unexpected to him as it
must have been to Sandra Dee. 'Because . . . I think I might
be falling in love with you.'

He really did not know he was going to say it. He had
not, up until that moment, truly admitted the fact to
himself. Certainly he knew that he was fascinated by
her, even obsessed, but this was the first time he had
voiced the word 'love' in his own mind. And now in that
same moment he had acknowledged it to the very object
of his passion. The strangeness of the situation made
him dizzy.

'Don't be bloody stupid,' she replied. 'You don't know a
single thing about me.'

'Yes. You've made sure of that. Nobody knows anything
about you. I think that's the reason I'm . . . attracted
to you.'

This seemed to make her think and for a number of
minutes they shuffled on without speaking. The great gates
opened and closed ahead of them as they drew closer.
There were stern announcements instructing people at the
back to stop pushing.

'Shall we find somewhere better to talk?' she asked finally.

'That would be great,' he replied. 'Where?'

'Stick with me.'

There was no question of retreating from the tube crowd
now; it would have taken an hour to fight their way back
out of the queue. Therefore they descended together into
the appalling, breath-denying crush of the station.

'We'll just go one stop,' Sandra Dee gasped as they
struggled on to the platform.

When the train arrived, the crush was so great that he
nearly lost her. As usual, the mass of people surged
forward to battle for places, hindering those who were
attempting to leave the train.

After a few minutes of breathing the treacle-thick fug of
the carriage, the train arrived at the next station and battle
commenced once more. They fought to get off the train
against the human tide that was attempting to board and
then struggled to ascend the litter-strewn, long since
broken-down escalator until finally, mercifully, they
reached the surface and spilled out into what for one
glorious moment seemed like fresh air.

'Where are we going?' Trafford panted.

'Down to the lake,' Sandra Dee replied. 'I have a little boat.'

'Wow!' Trafford was surprised and impressed. 'Pretty
cool. How did you manage that?'

In the semi-flooded city, ownership of a boat was a great
luxury. This was a world in which twenty square feet of
folding plasma screen could be bought for almost nothing
but a rowing boat was a rich person's plaything.

'There are ways and means,' Sandra Dee replied
mysteriously.

Together they walked down to the shore at Notting Hill,
where many thousands of private pleasure boats were kept
moored to the tops of rusting lamp posts in a vast marina
which had once been the Borough of Hammersmith.

'How do you afford to pay mooring fees, let alone own
a boat?' Trafford asked as they made their way out along a
floating jetty that threaded its way among the long lines of
chimney pots.

'I have no children to support,' she said, 'no leeching
lover. My money's my own. Besides, it's only a little skiff.'

Trafford did not enquire further although he knew there
must be more to it. Whatever Sandra Dee's circumstances,
paying for a mooring on a NatDat Senior Executive
Analyst's salary would not be easy. Perhaps, he thought,
she had inherited money.

'Here it is,' Sandra Dee said.

They had arrived at one of many near-identical little
aluminium-shelled open boats with a single short mast.
They climbed aboard and within moments Sandra Dee
had cast off and was navigating her way expertly among
the derelict rooftops of Maida Vale.

'If I could spend the rest of my life on this boat I
would,' said Sandra Dee. 'I hate people. Well, I hate most
of them anyway. And I hate all of them when they're
in a crowd.'

Trafford did not say anything for a little while. He felt
suddenly so happy that he did not want the moment to
end and he worried that if he said something it might be
the wrong thing and so cause this unique woman to
return the boat to its mooring and order him out of her
little paradise.

'It's lovely,' he said eventually.

And it was. Perhaps, Trafford thought, as lovely as
or lovelier than anything he had previously experienced.
To be alone in such company, to be
away from the crowd
.
Looking about him, he realized that the nearest boat
was more than twenty metres away. He wondered if
he had ever in his whole life been as much as twenty
metres from another human being. It felt wonderful to
be so alone. Except he wasn't alone, of course: Sandra
Dee was with him, sharing the isolation, and that was
wonderful too. She looked so beautiful and strong;
the warm breeze which gently filled the sail as she
adjusted it filled also her dress, revealing her lovely legs
to the thigh.

'So,' Sandra Dee said finally, 'how did you discover
my secret?'

'By chance really,' Trafford replied. 'That day in the office
when Princess Lovebud denounced you for not having
breast implants – I Tubed you up that night and saw
almost immediately that nothing you posted was real.'

'Why did you Tube me?'

'Because I found you compelling. And I felt . . .
connected. I believed from just looking at you that you
kept a part of yourself private in defiance of the Temple
orthodoxy. It turned out I was right, although I had no
idea of the lengths to which you went.'

'Privacy is illegal.'

'Of course.'

'You discovered me committing a crime.'

'Yes.'

'And you kept on looking at my crime until your wife
got angry and then she went to Confession and drew my
blog to the attention of the entire community, any one of
whom might have decided to check it out.'

'I know. I put you in danger, I'm sorry.'

From beneath a reel of rope Sandra Dee suddenly
produced a boat knife. It was a vicious-looking tool,
the blade well polished and flashing wickedly in
the sunlight.

'I could kill you now,' she said. 'Just thrust myself
forward, plunge the knife into you and it would be done.
No one would notice, no one would care. One more
corpse floating on the lake and all my secrets would
be safe.'

'Your secrets are safe,' Trafford assured her with alarm.
'All I know is that you
keep
secrets. Everything else is
a mystery.'

'So what? The Inquisition doesn't care what your secrets
are, it only cares that you keep them,' she said, still
fingering her knife, testing its edge with her thumb.
'
Keeping
secrets is the crime.
Privacy
is the crime. I've been
lucky, your stupid curiosity has done me no harm, but
who knows? One day you might betray me.'

'I won't.'

'Why should I risk it?'

'I would never ever betray you. I'm in love with you. I'm
in love with your secrets. I would rather die than betray
you for keeping them.'

'Why are you in love with my secrets? What interest can
they possibly have for you?'

She still played with the knife but she smiled too and
something in that smile emboldened Trafford. Something
in the way she crossed and recrossed her legs as she
looked at him, something, even, in the way she held the
knife gave him the confidence to reveal his own secret,
silent passion.

'Because I've discovered through you that there is
nothing more exciting than mystery. Nothing more erotic.

Your body is a mystery to me. Your sexual soul is
completely hidden and that's why I want it. I want nothing
else. I'm breathless with desire for it.'