Blind Faith (7 page)

'I don't know what I'll do if I lose Caitlin Happymeal,'
said Chantorria.

Their dinner was nearly over now. Chantorria had passed
what remained of the meal in the virtual conviviality of the
tenement chat room, declaiming and emoting furiously in
a self-conscious effort to socialize and ingratiate herself
with Barbieheart after the near debacle of Trafford
dissing Tinkerbell.

Now, after almost half an hour, when Trafford could
stand the stilted conversation and extravagant professions
of faith no longer, he had logged out. He and Chantorria
could still be seen and spoken to but their own
conversation was muted. The Temple considered this level
of privacy socially and spiritually acceptable, even
desirable at this time of the evening. As each day drew
to a close, men were encouraged to go one-on-one
interactively with their current wives in order to nurture
their relationships and recommit to each other and to a
love of the Love.

'I know I'd rather die myself,' Chantorria continued.

'Yes,' Trafford replied, staring into the congealed remains
of his ready meal. 'When Strawberry Lovebliss and I lost
Phoenix Rising that was how we both felt. I still do feel
that way sometimes, when I think of her. How much better
it would have been if I had died. Except that then, of
course, I would never have met you and we would never
have had Caitlin . . .'

Just then Caitlin Happymeal giggled. She laughed a lot,
much more than she cried. Most things seemed to amuse
her and the little rope of coloured shapes and rattles that
hung above her cot was a particular source of pleasure. She
was punching at them and spinning them wildly with her
fat little arms and legs, and the more they spun the more
she laughed until Trafford and Chantorria could not help
laughing too, and for a moment the three of them laughed
together over nothing more than a few bright cubes of
spinning plastic.

'I think I'd do anything to protect Caitlin,' Trafford said,
still gazing at his little daughter.

'Well, of course you would. We both would,'
Chantorria replied.

This was the opening that Trafford had been hoping for,
a chance to introduce the subject of vaccination, but he
hesitated. He did not doubt Chantorria's absolute
commitment to their child but he knew that life in the
tenement had made her timid and fearful. She would not
be an easy person to inveigle into heresy.

He missed his chance. Chantorria's attention had been
drawn back to the screen on which Tinkerbell continued
to silently emote. That was the hell of those screens: even
when the sound was muted, it was almost impossible to
avoid one's eye becoming fixed on them.

'Both kids gone,' Chantorria said. 'Poor Tinkerbell will
have to begin all over again, although not with that
bastard Sabre, Love willing.'

Like everybody else in their building, Trafford and
Chantorria were familiar with the detail of Tinkerbell and
Sabre's stormy marriage, thanks to the numerous times she
and her aggressive, unstable partner had emoted. They
were serial emoters, proud victims of every sort of dysfunction.
Their violent quarrels and sexually charged
reconciliations had never been offline and had of course
featured noisily at the Community Confessions. They
could also be followed blow by blow and orgasm by
orgasm, live, through the thin walls of the building.

Sabre was a serial adulterer.

Tinkerbell was a pill-popping pothead.

Sabre kept trying it on with Tinkerbell's mates.

Tinkerbell never gave Sabre any anyway.

There had of course been numerous public reconciliations
too, with Confessor Bailey reminding the snarling
combatants that only the Lord and the Love could show
them the way to learn and to grow. Then, to the cheers of
the group, Sabre would enfold Tinkerbell in his arms and
sort her out on the floor of the confessional and all briefly
would be well.

'He's going to prison anyway,' Trafford said, not that he
was remotely interested in discussing Sabre.

'You really think they'll bang him up?'

Sabre was currently on remand, awaiting trial for driving
a vanload of thugs into a Muslim ghetto. The gang had
kidnapped two youths and beaten them to death with
baseball bats.

'He'll get a year for sure.'

'Even after they bombed our shopping precinct?
Surely not.'

'It wasn't the kids that Sabre killed who bombed our
precinct.'

'You don't know that.'

'Yes, I do. The kids who blew up our precinct went up
with their own bomb; they're in a billion pieces.'

'Well, I hope Tinkerbell finds a better fella for her next
husband,' Chantorria said. 'She'll need all the strength she
can get after losing KitKat.'

Once more Chantorria had provided Trafford with the
opening he needed. This time, tentatively, he began to
speak what was on his mind.

'I met a man today,' he said. 'Well, not met exactly, I've
met him lots of times, at work, over cake, you know, and
doughnuts. But today I actually talked to him. Or rather he
talked to me. He took me to lunch. We had falafels.'

'I can't
believe
what you said to Tinkerbell about
Honeymilk,' Chantorria exclaimed suddenly. 'What got
into you? That kind of comment could get you blogged up
big time.'

'I didn't like the way she dissed you when you offered to
be there for her.'

'She's lost a
kiddie
.'

'I don't want to talk about Tinkerbell. I'm telling you
about this man.'

'What man?'

'The one who took me to lunch. His name's Cassius.

He's quite old.'

'What about him?'

'He seemed . . . he seemed to know me.'

'What do you mean, know you?'

'I mean he guessed that . . . that sometimes . . . I like to
keep things to myself.'

For the second time that evening the colour drained
from Chantorria's face.

'I
told
you people would work it out!' she hissed. 'You
and your stupid secrets. Why do you have to be so
weird
!
Why do you have to keep things to yourself? What's the
point of it? Where does it get you?'

'It doesn't get me anywhere, love,' Trafford replied
patiently. 'It just helps me through the day. You've done
the same thing yourself.'

Trafford looked across the room to where an old Palm
Pilot lay on the kitchen bench. It was what they used for
shopping lists and keeping their accounts but Trafford
knew that occasionally Chantorria used it as a notepad,
jotting down little thoughts and observations, things that
she did not then copy to her laptop or include in her
public blog, things that only she would ever read or
know about. Sometimes she even put her secret thoughts
in rhyme. There had been a time when Chantorria had
shared these little jottings with Trafford. When they
had laughed and cried together over the strange and
inconsequential things that she had felt the need to write
and which he had thought were beautiful and she said
were rubbish. Those days were gone now. Only the power
of young love had briefly given Chantorria the strength to
share a secret.

'I hardly do that any more,' she protested.

'I know,' Trafford replied sadly.

'Besides I don't mean any disrespect to my maker,'
Chantorria went on. 'Where's the harm in a little poem?'

'If there's no harm in them why do you keep them private?'

'I don't
keep
them private! I just don't . . . I just forget to
blog them, that's all. I'm not weird. I don't think I'm
special. And now look, you've been caught and we're in
trouble. They know you keep secrets.'

'Cassius isn't
they
,' Trafford assured her. 'He's just
him
and we have nothing to fear from him either.'

'How do you know he's not a policeman?'

'A policeman sitting in the corner of my office for years
trying to trap me?' Trafford replied. 'Perhaps I'm a bit more
important than I had imagined.'

He felt a little ashamed, directly quoting Cassius's
withering response to his own identical paranoia. But it
also felt good to say it, to come out with a response based
on logic and evidence. Chantorria
felt
that he might have
been entrapped by the authorities; he had
deduced
that this
was enormously unlikely.

'Besides,' Trafford continued, 'Cassius has a much bigger
secret than you or I could ever have. If anyone needs to be
worrying about the cops it's him.'

'Well, that's even worse then. What were you talking to
him for? Is he a Muslim terrorist? A sodomite! What does
he have to worry about?'

Trafford told Chantorria how he had been offered the
services of a Vaccinator. Chantorria listened in silence but
horror was written clearly on her face. When Trafford had
finished she angrily demanded that he denounce Cassius
to the Temple immediately.

'Do you think I should?' Trafford asked.

'I think,' Chantorria whispered urgently, 'that if he's a
Vac— one of those awful people and he gets caught, which
he will be, and then they Tube him, which is the first thing
they'll do, and then they find a vid of you sitting
having a
falafel
with him, you are going to have a lot of trouble
explaining why you
didn't
denounce.'

'I think we should look at this logically.'

'I
am
looking at it logically and don't talk to me like I'm
a bloody idiot. You always do that and actually it's you
who's being an idiot. Logically it's bloody obvious that
when they catch this bloke,
logically
they'll want to talk to
the people he's talked to. That's you, Trafford, and
logically
what do you think will happen then?'

'I'm not talking about me, or you for that matter. I'm
talking about Caitlin. Supposing this man really can
help her survive?'

'He can't.'

'Well, all right, how about we say there's a hundred-to-one
chance. Would you accept that?'

'I don't know what you're talking about. I don't want to
discuss it.'

'Just
think
about it for a minute, for Lord's sake.

Chantorria! Say the odds are a hundred to one that he can
help. Shouldn't we still take them? Shouldn't we take any
remote, tiny chance to help our daughter grow up healthy?
Even a thousand-to-one chance is better than nothing at
all! Chantorria, I don't want to go through again what I
went through with Phoenix Rising. I don't know if I can.'

'Trafford, they
burn
Vaccinators.'

'Only when they catch them. He doesn't think he will be
caught,' Trafford replied. 'He doesn't think they notice
things.'

'They notice everything.'

'We've always assumed that they do. But maybe they
don't.'

'Trafford, you have to denounce him.'

'I'm not going to denounce him.'

'He's an enemy of faith. Protecting him puts us all
in danger.'

'I think we should put Caitlin's safety before our own.'

'Of course we should! We do, always!'

'Then I think we should have her inoculated.'

'Is this a terrible sick joke?' Chantorria asked furiously.

'No, of course it isn't.'

'Well, stop fucking grinning then!' Chantorria shouted
into Trafford's face.

Trafford had indeed been grinning, following the policy
Cassius had suggested of not provoking attention by
appearing furtive. He relaxed his face, reflecting that it was
in fact Chantorria's expression which was least likely to
draw attention from any web spies who might be
snooping. It was far more common for the residents of his
little rabbit warren to be screaming at each other than
smiling.

'I think we should allow this man to inoculate Caitlin,'
Trafford repeated.

'I don't believe I'm hearing this. Please tell me you're
not serious.'

'I think . . . I think that we have to do everything we can
to protect our daughter.'

'You want to allow a total stranger to stick dirty needles
into her? I don't call that protection.'

Chantorria went to Caitlin Happymeal and picked her
up and hugged her, as if she expected Trafford to produce
a great spike there and then and murder the infant with it
on the video game table. Perhaps Caitlin somehow sensed
Chantorria's fear, for mother and daughter both now
seemed to be staring at Trafford accusingly. Physically
Caitlin was much more Chantorria's daughter than her
father's; she had the same lovely olive-toned skin and huge
dark eyes. Now all eyes were on Trafford and for a moment
he felt like a stranger in his own family.

'I don't think the needles they use are dirty,' he
replied quietly.

'You said yourself they're filled with the same poison
they are supposed to protect the child from! Trafford, they
fill those needles with
disease
.'

'You're not stupid, Chantorria. You know the theory as
well as I do,' Trafford replied, angry now that he was being
forced on to the defensive.

'It's not a theory, it's witchcraft.'

'A small dose of the bacteria educates the child's
immune system.'

'And you believe that?' Chantorria asked incredulously.
'It's voodoo, Trafford, black magic. It's—'

'All I know is that I've analysed a decade's worth of
figures from a period just Before The Flood . . .'

'Monkey time.'

'Call it what you like but the fact is that in those days all
the children survived.'

'I don't believe it. It just couldn't be. The Love gathers
the children unto him, that's all. It's a fact of life, it can't
be changed.'

'It
was
changed, Chantorria! And not by God but by
man. Before The Flood almost no children died in infancy.'

'Yes! Yes, Before The Flood! And why did the Love visit
the flood upon the monkey men? Because of their vanity!
Because of their arrogance! Because of their stories and
because they thought they could obstruct the purpose
of the Lord by sticking needles full of poison into their
children like the witches they were!'