No Future

Volume Three

Bradley Stoke

Contents

LXVI Roland 2090

LXVII Odile 2110

LXVIII Sally 2091

LXIX Iris 2058

LXX Gabrielle 2040

LXXI Mark & Molly 2075

LXXII Alex 2034

LXXIII Tamara 2098

LXXIV Alex 2035

LXXV Eugenie 2101

LXXVI Eugenie 2102

LXXVII Psychlone 2107

LXXVIII Iris 2059

LXXIX Lindiwe 2069

LXXX Olive 2085

LXXXI Sir Norman 2080

LXXXII Phil 2104

LXXXIII Iris 2060

LXXXIV Chris 2105

LXXXV Iris 2061

LXXXVI Psychlone 2108

LXXXVII Iris 2062

LXXXVIII Odile 2111

LXXXIX Mark & Molly 2076

XC Eric Esterhazy 2046

XCI Gabrielle 2041

XCII Alex 2036

LXVI

Roland

2090

“Stop that!” Roland shouted. “Stop that right now.”

Osama regarded Roland with an admiration that was very much compromised by the very real fear for his own safety and a sincere wish that his friend could sometimes put prudence above charity.

The suit worn by the large unshaven man who Roland addressed were much smarter and more costly than those anyone normally wore in this part of London, but he was oblivious to the fact that it was now splattered with blood from the already critically ill man whose face he’d slapped several times with a pistol. There might once have been a time when his victim could have taken command of the situation, but no patient in the care of Roland’s relief centre was ever in a state to offer resistance. The patient was even less able to do so now. His nose was smashed flat and several teeth had been punched out of his mouth.

“Are you telling me what to do?” the unshaven man challenged Roland. “You’ve got some fucking nerve.”

“This man’s already dying. You don’t have to make it worse for him.”

“The fucker owes me,” the assailant said, as he held his victim up above the ground by his throat. “I’ve been looking for this cunt for years. The fucker’s only getting what he always had coming.”

“It’s not right. Put him down. Let him die in peace.”

“Don’t fucking tell me what to do, you cunt,” said Roland’s unwelcome guest. He slammed his victim’s face several times against the wall. A pitiful whine accompanied the first few impacts. He was then dropped onto the floor and kicked repeatedly in the face and ribs.

Roland continued to stand firm when the man in the designer suit had tired of kicking his victim and strode over to him. “Just how many fucking greaseballs and grasses have you got stashed here, fuckface?”

“None at all that I know of,” said Roland. “This is a Relief Centre. We provide help for the poor and needy. You can see that we don’t mean you any harm.”

“Don’t make me do something I’ll regret, you cheeky fucker,” said the man sarcastically. Without further provocation he punched Roland in the chest so hard that he doubled up and fell backwards. “I don’t want any more of your lip. You’ve fucking crossed the line. You don’t let cunts like Reg Reid into the manor. From now on, you either pay tribute or you and all these dopey fuckwit junkies and clapped-out whores are gonna be incinerated.” He gestured towards the other beds where those patients who were sufficiently conscious were trembling with fear.

“I already pay rent to Harry Rogers,” said Roland.

“Next time that fucker comes round, you tell him you’re paying rent to Oban Rushmore. That’s me, if you didn’t fucking know already. Tell him that if he doesn’t fuck off, I’ll stick my fist down his fucking throat and pull out his fucking kidney. I’ve tolerated you cunts for long enough. Either pay up or dig a hole in the ground where we can bury you.”

With these parting words, the man walked off still unconcerned about the bloodstains splattered over his suit. He made no attempt to hide his gun from curious onlookers in the street. He had no fear of the police and didn’t care who knew what he’d just been doing.

“He’s dead,” said Osama who’d run to the assistance of the victim. “Reg is dead. I think that, towards the end, that thug was just kicking a corpse.”

Roland bit his lip. He’d had no idea that this patient was in any way different from the countless other diseased, starved and destitute that he’d taken into his shelter. Would he have acted differently if he’d known? And hadn’t the well-dressed gangster just claimed that the Relief Centre was now his property?

“We better dispose of the body,” said Roland. “I don’t think anyone else will volunteer to do so, judging from what we’ve just seen.”

It was only a day or so later that Harry Rogers walked into the Relief Centre. He was wearing his trademark tracksuit which was conspicuously less expensive than Oban Rushmore’s suit. This suggestion of physical fitness was totally out of place on a man with such a grotesquely obtuse stomach. However, it wasn’t his fists that he relied on to win a scrap, but rather the pistol and flick-knife that he brandished ostentatiously.

“Oban, eh?” said Harry as he counted the notes that Roland handed over to him for what both parties euphemistically called rent. “That fucker’s been muscling in all over the manor. Why’d he come here?”

“One of our patients was someone he was after,” said Roland.

“Yeah. That figures,” said Harry. “Oban never forgives a slight. What’d he say, then?”

“He told me that we’d have to pay rent to him rather than to you.”

“He did, the cunt. And what d’you expect me to do about it?”

“I rather thought that the money we paid you would give us some protection from thugs like Rushmore.”

Harry considered this momentarily as he shoved the wad of notes into his back-pocket. “You thought wrong there, Roland. It looks like you’ve got to pay rent to two landlords from now on. I’ll still expect my wedge.”

“But we’ve got nothing left to pay Rushmore now that we’ve paid you.”

“Tough,” said Harry. “Why not flog off some of those drugs you’ve got in the medicine cabinet? They might get a few quid on the streets.”

“They’re for the patients,” said Roland.

“Well, that’s not my problem,” said Harry as he walked past an old woman who was gnawing on a crust of stale bread and cringed noticeably as he swaggered by.

It was only the following day that Roland got the visit he was now dreading. It was one of Oban’s henchmen: a scrawny brown-skinned boy, who was also wearing an expensive and well-cut suit. His face was badly scarred and he flaunted his aggression by pushing the lapel of his jacket aside to reveal the gun-holster strapped to his chest.

“I’ve been told you’ve got something for me,” said the boy.

“Who sent you?” Roland asked cautiously. He was as worried for his own welfare as he was for the several people in his care slumped around the room and anxiously watching the unfolding drama.

“My man Oban,” said the boy proudly. “But you already knew that, you cunt. Where are the readies?”

Roland had been expecting this moment, but he didn’t know whether there was something more that he should do. He shoved his hand into his jeans pocket and pulled out some notes. They came from his own private savings rather than from the money he’d set aside for managing the Relief Centre.

“Is that all?” asked the boy incredulously. “Is that fucking all? My man Oban’s gonna be fucking mad if I only give him this much. Ain’t you got nothing more?”

“Nothing,” said Roland. “This is a charity. All the money we’ve got comes from donations and street collections and all of that goes on running the centre. We spend every last penny we have on providing food and rest to the poor and needy.”

“To the fucking scum, you mean,” said the boy. “Oban’s not gonna like this one fucking bit. Give us more or I’ll have to take something.”

“We haven’t got anything more,” said Roland.

“I dunno about that,” said the boy who looked around the room, presumably for something worth purloining in lieu of cash. After a moment or so, he relented. “You’re right. There’s fucking nothing here. What a dead loss. Don’t you worry though. I’ll be back.”

He kicked an elderly man who was crouched on the floor and sent him sprawling onto his face. He then walked off while counting the notes and muttering obscenities as he did so.

“What do we do now?” asked Osama when Roland had told him what happened.

“I don’t know,” Roland admitted. “We can’t afford to pay off two sets of mobsters.”

“Can’t we just pay off one lot,” said Osama. “After all, that Rushmore thug did suggest that he’d hospitalise Harry if he got in the way.”

“We can’t play one group of villains against another,” said Roland. “You can’t trust them in any way whatsoever. And furthermore, we shouldn’t do anything that causes harm to another person—even Harry.”

Osama nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced.

The next visit by Harry was rather sooner than the weekly cycle to which Roland had become accustomed. He was still wearing his tracksuit, but it was splattered with bloodstains and his face was covered with bruises. One eye could barely open from the swelling of his eyelid. When he opened his mouth, there was a fresh gap where once his front teeth had been.

He glared at Roland before he could express any sympathy for the man’s obvious distress.

“Was it you who fucking spoke to one of Oban’s boys and set him after me?” Harry asked.

“No, of course not,” said Roland honestly, though he immediately suspected Osama. Roland had been rattling a collection tin along the plush thoroughfares of Regent Street and Oxford Circus all the previous day while Osama was working at the Relief Centre by himself. If the boy had returned for more money, would Osama have passed on what Rushmore had said to him about Harry?

“I don’t fucking believe you,” said Harry. “I’d know one of Oban’s boys a mile off in their fucking West End suits. Why’d he want to rough me up then? Why’d he tell me to keep my nose out of his business? What was that all about then, eh?”

“I don’t know,” said Roland. “All I know is that Rushmore told me that I was to pay rent to him from now on.”

“Well, of course he fucking would,” said Harry. “But why’d he beat me up? He didn’t need to know you were paying me too, did he? Did you grass on me? I should fucking kill you, you fucker.”

Roland was getting quite confused by this. He was now expected to pay two sets of thugs for the privilege of providing charitable relief in East London. And given that he couldn’t afford to do this, he was now being threatened with violence for being remiss.

“What should we do, Harry?” Roland asked, not unreasonably.

“Just fucking pay up,” he said. “That’s what. Fucking pay up. I don’t care where you get your wedge. I don’t think Oban does either. We’re not fucking econ... econom... fucking experts. If you wanna continue to operate in this part of town you follow the rules. And if you don’t, you’re fucked.”

Roland discussed this dilemma with Osama next time he saw him.

“What do we do?” he said. “We can’t pay both Harry and Rushmore. And by trying to do so we’ve got no money to be able to stay open. What’s the answer?”

Osama considered this carefully. “I think we’ve reached the end of the line,” he said. “We can’t go on. We’ll just have to close the centre.”

“And the patients?” wondered Roland.

“We don’t take any more on,” Osama said. “We close the soup kitchen. And within a week all the patients we’ve got will be dead.”

Roland looked distressed by this. “Is that it?” he asked. “Is that all we can do? Has everything we’ve done been wasted?”

“Of course, it hasn’t,” said Osama. “There are many people whose lives we’ve saved. But let’s be frank. We can’t carry on. Not here anyway. Just by taking care of the patients we’ve already got puts us at risk from heavies who’ll continue to come round and demand money from us. We can’t offer relief to the destitute if we can’t even offer them protection from violence. You saw how Oban treated Reg. You saw how one of his boys beat up Harry. The next people they’ll attack will either be one of us or the volunteer workers. Or they might even turn on those we’re here to help.”

“So, it’s hopeless,” said Roland despairingly.

“It is here,” said Osama. “But we can always open up another relief centre elsewhere. There are people in need all over the Republic.”

Roland’s face lit up. “You’re right,” he said. “From out of the ashes, the phoenix arises. I take it you’ll come with me.”

Osama nodded.

“What else can I do?”

LXVII

Odile

2110

The remuneration for a day’s work was meagre. It amounted to nothing more than the use of a second-hand blanket and a meal that was double the size of what Odile normally had to eat. That was all. But it was something.

Edith was helping to boil a pot of stew on a stove, while Odile doled it out into wooden bowls that were greedily snatched from her by desperate supplicants in the long queue that stretched ahead of her. This queue had started to form well before dawn and many of the hungry and needy had been waiting for hours.

“How’s it going?” asked Roland cheerfully. He was the old man who’d organised the soup kitchen in Lancaster after thugs had burnt down a similar enterprise in London. This was an inferno in which dozens of helpless patients were incinerated. As Roland frequently reminded Odile and the others who occasionally worked for him, things might be bad in Lancaster but they were much worse in London. Odile wondered whether Roland was just saying that to comfort people who usually saw a capital city on television that still had expensive shops, art galleries and public monuments. Was it really so bad in England’s distant far south? Odile wasn’t sure. She’d never even been as far south as Manchester.

There was a television pinned to the soup kitchen wall tuned to a news channel despite the many complaints from those queuing. They’d rather watch a quiz show or a situation comedy that showed a life of indescribable luxury led by middle-class families affluent enough to live in a gated community. What made matters worse was that Roland insisted on screening news from the EBC which was a television company that currently attracted only a small percentage of the national audience. And this was for good reason. The EBC News had few of the exciting graphics and pulsating music that enlivened the news on Sky England. There were too many depressing news items about famine and drought, often happening in countries no one had ever heard of, and not enough about celebrities and television talent shows. Indeed, at the same time as Odile was ladling out soup, the newscaster was droning on about the recent conflict in Virginia between England’s ally, the Republic of North America, and their mutual enemy, the rump USA known officially as the Northern Unites States.

“Do you think it’ll be the big one?” asked a man with as good as no teeth at all and an overcoat that consisted of more threadbare patches than any of its original mohair.

“The big one?” wondered Odile.

“You know: when the bombs go up and we all die,” he said.

“That’ll never happen,” said Roland cheerfully as he hovered behind Odile. “No one could be so stupid as to bring the whole of human civilisation to an end. It’s taken us tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to get here. Who’d want to wipe it all out in a single day of utter madness?”

“That’s what they said about Israel,” said an elderly woman who’d already got her soup and was dipping a large chunk of freshly baked bread into it. “Look what happened to Jerusalem. Not to mention Damascus and Bethlehem. It’s still glowing from radiation after nearly forty years. And I bet that’s what they said in India, Kyrgyzstan and the Ukraine before that.”

“It’s different this time,” said another man who was standing several people behind in the queue. “The Americans have got more missiles than the rest of the world put together. It’s the one thing the yanks were good at building. Now they’re pointing them at each other instead of at the Russkies or the Chinese or the Iranians.”

“Let’s hope some of them are pointed at the fucking Scots,” said another man in the queue. “I don’t trust the Scots not to start another bloody war. They’re always sneaking people into England, but they don’t let any immigrant scum out.”

“Let’s not get into an argument,” said Roland hastily, who knew only too well how much more impassioned the discussion could get. “We all know that the Scots wouldn’t want to bomb England however much our government antagonises them. Radiation clouds can blow north as much as they can south.”

“Well, I’m glad we kept our fucking nukes,” the last man said. “Perhaps if we’d used them already, the Scots and the Irish and the rest wouldn’t keep humiliating us.”

“We’ve got a wider choice on the menu,” said Roland raising his voice over the conversation. “We’ve got two soups now. There’s Leek and Potato Soup. And there’s Vegetable.”

“No meat though,” said someone in the queue. “I ain’t had no meat for ages.”

“There’s no real meat anywhere anyway anymore,” said another. “It’s all GM crap. When’s the last time anyone here could ever afford real meat?”

Odile wasn’t sure. But each discontented voice quietened down after she’d ladled out the soup and the supplicant shuffled to one side to gulp it down under the canvas shelter outside the battered old cafe that housed Roland’s soup kitchen. All the while above Odile’s head the newsreaders gave a litany of yet more depressing news about the world’s woes. Was it any wonder that the people queuing up for food would rather watch a cartoon of the ever-popular Rodney Rat or the top-rated show Who Wants to be a Billionaire? where contestants competed with each other to win enough to afford, for instance, a trip of a lifetime to the Scilly Isles.

“This isn’t going to be enough,” said Edith, when Odile joined her girlfriend many hours later after the last drop of soup had been ladled out and the volunteer workers could tuck into more than two thousand calories of much-needed nutrition. “The blankets help, but how’re we gonna pay our rent?”

“You know the answer to that,” said Odile who mimed a huge cock being shoved down her throat.

“Ruben can only have so many blowjobs a day,” said Edith. “We’re not the only girls he’s got as tenants and a lot of the others are just as desperate as us.”

“We look better and give better head,” said Odile.

Nevertheless, she had to admit that her lover had a point. What had once been a special treat for the landlord when the girls were skint had become a rather regular offering. How much longer could Odile trade her cock-sucking skills for a crappy mattress in a draughty room without even a hearth to light a fire? And where would they go if they had to leave?

“You can stay here at the soup kitchen,” said Roland with a cheeky smile. “And you won’t have to fellate me either.”

“What’s that word mean?” wondered Odile, while Edith nudged her.

“What would we have to do?” Edith asked more diplomatically.

“Just sleep here and make sure that no one breaks into the kitchen at night,” said Roland. “We’ve had several break-ins already. They’ve not amounted to much really. A stolen mattress. A medical kit. A basket of fruit. But we operate on a very low margin. All the money we get through donations goes to keeping the place open.”

“What would we do if someone broke in?” Odile asked.

“I dunno,” said Roland. “Scream. Shout. Throw things at them. It doesn’t matter. No thief would break in here if they wanted something valuable. They’d break into the big houses on the hill where the old University used to be. Just having someone here is sufficient deterrent for most thieves.”

“We’re a bit behind in the rent,” said Edith thoughtfully. “We could move in straightaway. Do we have to bring our own mattress?”

“Not unless you’re particularly fond of it,” said Roland. “We’ve got several mattresses here. As long as you don’t mind the fact that the last people to sleep on them also died on them, they should be fine.”

The girls agreed, although the space available to them on the soup kitchen floor was actually less than that in their old apartment and they’d have to be out of bed on those hours when the soup kitchen was open. There’d no longer be an opportunity to make love together in the afternoon and they’d have to be very wary about inviting over friends to share their company, but it compared well to being kicked out by Ruben and forced to sleep on the street.

“I don’t like what’s happening in Virginia,” said Edith during the night after the couple had expended their bonus calories in carnal pleasure.

“Fuck! You’re not still bothered about that shit,” said Odile with exasperation. “America’s thousands of kilometres away. It’d take days to get there by ship.”

“Or seconds by nuclear warhead...”

“Always the cheerful one, aren’t you?” said Odile. “The Republicans might be our allies, but they’re just posturing arseholes. They’re just trying to get extra aid from the Northern United States for the famine that devastated Arizona.”

“That’s on the border of the Western Union, sweetie,” said Edith. “You’d expect them to invade California or Mexico if they wanted aid for Arizona. Anyway, they’ve got all the brothels and casinos out there so they don’t want to lose foreign tourists even if they only speak Spanish.”

“Well, I dunno,” said Odile whose sense of geography was always rather vague. “But it’d take a lot for the Northern States to rise to the bait. And the Canadians would have a thing or two to say if their impoverished southern neighbours started lobbing missiles at each other. Imagine what it would do to the Canadian wheat-fields.”

“I’m surprised you even know where Canada is,” said Edith who was nonetheless impressed by her lover’s show of erudition. “But I am worried. It’s not just the Americans. There are the Chinese and our allies: the Russians and Indonesians. Then there’s us, of course. The English. We’re surrounded by our enemies, like the Scots, the French and the Irish. All our allies in Europe are in the Mediterranean Union, which is more North African and Muslim than European and Christian. It’s a mess. The whole world’s like a crazy quilt with nuclear warheads all along the seams and every time there’s another plague or famine or drought or earthquake you wonder whether someone’s just going to let rip.”

“You worry too much, Edith,” said Odile. She kissed her girlfriend tenderly on the lips. “Let’s just enjoy our last night on this mattress together. We won’t have to be bothered any more about that rusty spring that pokes into your arse.”

“And you won’t have to suck Ruben’s cock anymore,” Edith reminded her.

“That as well,” said Odile. “So fuck, Honeypot. Spread your legs. I just can’t get enough of you. Even after all these years.”

LXVIII

Sally

2091

Sally had a great deal to be satisfied about even though she wasn’t the kind of person to take good fortune for granted. She was blessed with relatively affluent parents who loved and cherished her. She was similarly blessed with the intellectual ability to secure a place on a postgraduate course at Oxford, one of England’s two greatest universities and one which still ranked moderately highly in the world. She was a talented sportswoman, a girl with an extensive social network and, as she was often reminded, attractive and beautiful.

How could she have been born so lucky?

Sally was aware that each one of her good fortunes reinforced the others. A beautiful woman without brains and money was unlikely to be able to achieve very much in the modern world if she didn’t marry well or trade her looks for money. A beautiful woman with brains alone could only succeed if she slept with the right men or women. But a beautiful woman with both intelligence and a generous allowance could gain the academic qualifications necessary to succeed in one of the shrinking number of well-remunerated professions. Sally genuinely enjoyed studying for her doctorate. Who would have known a generation ago just how exciting the growing synthesis between robotics and biochemistry would become? And as someone already ahead in an area of academic research that was attracting Chinese and Brazilian investment, maybe she could one day study abroad. Perhaps she could become a fellow at a university in a prosperous city like Beijing, Pyongyang or Buenos Aires.

Still, Oxford was a pleasant enough city on the edge of the Cotswolds. It was almost the very last corner of Old England. The colleges and most of the city were walled in to keep out the proles and peasants that were a nagging and uncomfortable reminder of how far it was possible to fall. Sally had no understanding or sympathy for England’s great unwashed. All she knew about them came from the few moments of prole television she occasionally stumbled upon. They were a dreadfully uncouth bunch unhealthily obsessed with quiz shows and vulgar situation comedies. They were often appallingly racist and homophobic. You certainly wouldn’t expect to have much of an intelligent conversation with any one of them.

There was a sense that Sally and her friends were surrounded by an ocean of the less well-off. Labour was so cheap these days that almost everyone could afford to employ a servant or two. Sally had two maids whose names she could never remember who slept in the communal servants’ quarters just outside Oxford’s city walls and whose task was to ensure that Sally was properly cared for while she stayed in her room in the student halls. Servants were best when they were just there when you needed them but at the same time kept themselves discreetly out of the way when you didn’t. Sally expected them to be on hand even when she took a young man or woman back to her room for the sexual exercise that she practiced as enthusiastically as her daily jogs along the city centre river.

Sally was a woman of routine. It was the best way to get ahead in life. Up at six; an early morning jog; breakfast prepared by one of her maids who stood attentively by while she shared her muesli and yoghurt with the lover with whom she’d enjoyed the night; and then a day of study and research. It was only after she’d eaten in the halls that she would choose to socialise with her wide circle of friends during which she would invariably imbibe a glass of wine and even some coke or hash. And finally she’d go to a bed either in her own room or in the room of one of her lovers to keep toned those muscles that more formal exercise could never properly address.

“Do you want to stand as president of the MCR?” Simon asked one evening as they lay together in Sally’s bed.

“MCR?” asked Sally, who for a moment wondered whether Simon was talking about a biotech company. “Oh, the Middle Common Room. I’m not sure. It could be a lot of work.”

“It isn’t at all,” said Simon. “I’ve been doing it for the past year and I think you’d be ideal to take over the role. It’d look perfect on your CV. Employers care about that kind of shit. It shows maturity and leadership and a respect for tradition.”

“Tradition,” repeated Sally with a slightly mocking edge to her voice. What did she care about tradition? She was a thoroughly modern woman who had no time for outdated fripperies at all: even though she lived in a city that was steeped in a thousand years of academic history. All around her were buildings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and some even older than that. She frowned and then beckoned towards the maid on duty. It was the black one with the skinny legs. “Pour the both of us another glass of sherry, will you?” she ordered. She was totally indifferent to the fact that both she and Simon were naked. And she was similarly untroubled that they’d just been openly fucking while the maid was in attendance.

What the maid thought about this was really of no concern to her at all.

“How much will it cost to be president?” was the question uppermost in Sally’s mind.

“It’s got a lot more expensive over the years,” said Simon. “You might need to clear the outgoing with your parents. It’s all about outspending the opposition. But I don’t think it’d be more than the cost of a year’s fees.”

“How guaranteed am I that I’d even win?”

“The first week of the campaign should see off the most talented competition. They’re generally the ones who got into university by the skin of their teeth. You know: by academic excellence alone. They’re the guys with scholarships from charitable foundations and internet companies. You should outspend them by the end of the second week. Then what you’ll mostly have to deal with are the talentless no-hopers with a tonne of dosh. Be careful. Money definitely makes a difference. That’s when you’ll have to spend your money wisely. I’ll be able to tell you who to bribe and whose public support you need.”

“The campaigning sounds as if it’s more hard work than the job.”

“Well, that’s democracy for you,” said Simon. “It’s all about buying votes and  knowing how to get the job rather than knowing what to do with it once you’ve got it. Employers know that. Someone who can run a good campaign would be well set up for a life in modern corporate business. I take it your parents can spare the cash.”

“It won’t take long to persuade them. I just need to convince them that it’ll be money well spent.”

“I don’t think there’s anyone who’s got the money who’d be able to put up a good fight against you.”

“You’re such a sweetie, Simon,” said Sally affectionately. “What I need now,” she continued while she twiddled with her crotch, “is for you to show just how much you love me and not with words. But your cock’s shrivelled somewhat.”

“Your maid’s got pretty hot lips,” said Simon with a wicked smile.

“She has?” said Sally who hadn’t really noticed. She glanced over at the maid who was standing by the sherry decanter in a flimsy skirt and cheap plastic sandals. “Come here and get my friend properly prepared,” she ordered.

“Yes’m,” said the maid who shuffled over towards the couple. She knelt down between Simon’s knees and took his penis between her hands and thick lips.

“Show a bit more enthusiasm,” Sally ordered. “We haven’t got all day.”

“She’s not doing too badly,” said Simon as his penis began to swell.

“It’s for my benefit not hers,” said Sally dismissively. “I want your cock in my snatch not tickling her tonsils.”

She also didn’t want her maid to actually enjoy herself with her boyfriend. Although maids were cheap and plentiful, it wasn’t unknown for people like Simon to get a little too attached to them. If this maid showed any signs of pleasure from having Simon’s cock up her throat, Sally would have no choice but to dismiss her.

“Fucking get on with it,” she said to the maid as she pressed her hand firmly on her short-haired pate. “Show some enthusiasm!”

The following morning, however, it was Sally who was assessing her own enthusiasm. Simon wouldn’t have suggested that she stand for president of the MCR unless there was a very good chance that she’d win the position, but every hour of every one of her days was already taken. And Sally also wondered just how easy it would be for her to persuade her parents to bankroll her candidature. They’d often complained about the burden of financing their daughter’s expensive education and there were also Sally’s two younger siblings who had to be considered. On the other hand, Simon was undoubtedly right. Most employers would be as impressed by Sally’s experience as an MCR president as they would be by her academic qualifications. Perhaps she could get on the fast track for a place on the board of directors and soon earn a generous salary (supplemented by bonuses). And Sally already had pedigree. She’d been head girl at public school which had been the result of a costly election campaign also paid for by her parents.

Sally was jogging along the banks of the River Thames with her mind focused on such elevated matters when she happened to notice that there was a body floating face downwards on the river surface. She abruptly stopped in her tracks and watched it bob by. One leg had lodged against a floating log and this caused the body to spin slowly around so that Sally could get a more leisurely view.

The body belonged to someone who was far too badly dressed to have been a student or lecturer. In that sense there wasn’t much for her to worry about. The death of a prole wasn’t a serious matter, although Sally knew she’d still have to make a phone call to the university authorities about it. Proles were always dying from something or other in the wasteland beyond the city walls. If it wasn’t from natural causes such as starvation or disease, it would be from murder. Even though it was strictly speaking a police matter, it would be pointless to call them. They’d be too busy patrolling the outer suburbs to have time to spare. Such deaths were routine police business, but it would be treated with far more alacrity by the university authorities.

Sally called the University of Oxford Security Services and described what she could see from the river bank. While she spoke the leg became dislodged and the body continued to drift with the river towards an ancient bridge. The questions she had to answer were all to the point. It was obviously not such an unusual occurrence that the security services didn’t know how to handle it. Their main concern was that the body might be a vector for one of the unpleasant plagues that beset the proles who weren’t quarantined behind high walls and didn’t benefit from regular health checks.

When the call was over, Sally clicked off her mobile phone and sat on a bench that had been donated to the city of Oxford by Sigma Cybernetics plc. She watched the corpse float towards a bend in the river. How had it managed to drift so far into the city? Had it been carried through the tunnels under the imposingly high Oxford City walls? Had someone somehow thrown the corpse over the top? However it had got there, Security Services would soon drag it out of the river and then incinerate it and that would be the end of the matter. Unless someone came asking for it, no one would even be bothered to determine the prole’s identity.

What could Sally learn from this? It wasn’t something she often thought much about, but it reminded her that if she should somehow lose a grip on her good fortune there was a precipitous fall towards the absolute poverty that most English people suffered. This wasn’t a fate she’d welcome at all. The unfortunate truth was that the trend in the Republic was for the proportion of those who were relatively affluent to steadily drop and part of that tendency was caused by bankruptcy and business failure. Although everything seemed perfect for Sally now, at any moment her fortunes could dramatically decline and there would be no safety net to catch her as she fell.

If being president of the MCR would in some way help to bolster Sally’s future prospects, then the ridiculous expense of campaigning for the position would be well worth it. Sally had no intention of ever being let loose amongst the hyenas and vultures of the wicked world beyond and she was resolved to do whatever was necessary to ensure that this would never happen.

LXIX

Iris

2058

Iris had never lived anywhere other than London before in her life, but now here she was: renting a room in an ancient sprawling house in the suburbs of Oxford. Although she’d had to make new friends, was now earning somewhat less money than she’d used to and had to sleep on a disgusting mattress that should have been replaced years ago, Iris was happier than she’d been for years. The year in which she’d made a living as a prostitute now seemed like nothing more than a nightmare from which she’d at last awoken.

Her current job at the Biotech lab for Sigma Cybernetics plc was one for which she was ridiculously over-qualified and which only two years ago she’d never have contemplated ever applying for. And the fact that she’d had to re-locate to Oxfordshire, some seventy or eighty kilometres from London, would have placed a job opportunity like this right at the bottom of the list. But now when she went to sleep she no longer had the odour of aging men adhering to her body and no residual memory of their repulsive cocks between her thighs that no amount of scrubbing could remove.

Although the same river ran through Oxford as it did London, there were none of the elaborate flood barriers that were being built throughout the capital city just as they were on the English beaches. Nonetheless, Oxford wasn’t without walls and those weren’t only the ancient mediaeval walls that attracted the few tourists who’d ventured so far from London. The student riots of the last few years had embarrassed a government whose legitimacy had been secured by a promise to banish the chaos and anarchy of public disorder. The city council was determined to demonstrate its commitment to the government’s effort to restore civility and order to the Kingdom and, like other tourist cities in England such as York, Bath and Norwich, the City of Oxford had constructed a wall around the town centre that had at least provided employment to privately resourced security staff and building maintenance workers.

In practical terms the wall was just a bloody nuisance for Iris. Every morning she had to stand in line until she could flash her work permit and the shiny new Government Issue ID that verified that she was eligible to work in the city centre and therefore wasn’t an illegal immigrant. It didn’t normally take her long to get through the security checks, but other people in the same queue were often delayed for much longer, especially those that looked slightly foreign or were dressed in a fashion that bothered the security staff. It wasn’t just a person’s skin colour or accent (especially Scottish or Welsh) that might earn special attention. There were other characteristics such as hair that was too long or too short, too many tattoos or body-piercings, or clothes deemed to be too eccentric.

There was a clear difference between the world inside the city walls and that outside. It was almost as if Oxford was one big gated community. Outside the walls were derelict and aging properties where the unemployed, the poorly-paid and the criminal underclass had to live, work and most likely die. Inside the walls, the streets were clean, the buildings properly maintained and the shops well-stocked. But, most of all, the people inside the city walls were better dressed, better spoken and better fed. In actual fact, a higher proportion of those confined within the walls were of foreign origin than those outside. Many were tourists from China, Korea and Brazil, but most of the others were students at the venerable University of Oxford. Although they mostly came from the same wealthy countries as the tourists, some even came from Africa and the Middle East. There were no Americans, of course. Few of them could afford to travel so far abroad these days. And there weren’t many from Europe now that the Kingdom of England had such hostile relations with almost all its immediate neighbours, especially those with which it had so recently been constitutionally bound.

The main consolation Iris had from her boring work was her daily stroll through the city centre. This was sometimes along the grassy banks of the River Thames where she might pass the occasional punt and even a few ducks. This was a privilege that would have been denied her if she hadn’t happened to be employed within the city walls. Passes into the city centre were usually only issued to students and tourists.

The contrast to the peaceful and elegant streets of central Oxford couldn’t be greater than with the suburb where Iris rented a room in a large sprawling house. It was nearly an hour’s walk home along roads where most street-lamps no longer functioned and where prostitutes lurked in the shadows. It was always a relief to get home and through the front door even though now, in midwinter, it was scarcely much warmer indoors than outside. The only room that was heated was the living room where she and the other residents, mostly young people like Iris, would gather around the television and share the warmth emanating from the coal-burning stove.

Deciding what to watch on television was always a compromise and inevitably the news channels were the ones about which there was least dispute. The choice was principally between the various affiliates of Fox UK and the rather diminished service provided by the EBC. Ever since the government abolished the license fee system, the EBC had struggled to provide an impartial service and even this was still censured for its supposed liberal bias by the government and the majority of the privately owned media. If the other spin-offs from the venerable BBC based in Scotland and Wales weren’t so parochial, Iris would have relied on them for news, but instead, like everyone else, she settled for either the sparkle and glitter of Fox News UK or the static images on EBC News 24.

“What does this England First policy really mean?” asked Sue who was sitting beside Iris on the sofa dressed in a thick jumper, scarf and woollen mittens. “How’s it gonna be any different from what the government’s been doing anyway for the last few years?”

“It’s just a slogan,” said Steve, another housemate. “It probably doesn’t mean anything at all.”

“I don’t like the government posters,” said Sudesh who was rolling a spliff on the back of an old magazine.

“What’s wrong with them?” asked Iris.

He smoothed out the tube of cigarette paper and twisted one end. “I dunno,” he said. “They’re a bit sinister. All those white faces, English flags and village greens. It’s nostalgia for an England that never existed and it’s scarcely what you could call inclusive.”

“And how’s all that patriotic jingoism going to create jobs?” wondered Steve. “That’s what we want. Not warm ale, pork scratching and cricket pavilions. It’s jobs.”

Iris might well have wondered, but it soon became obvious that what the slogan meant wasn’t so much about creating more jobs, but to ensure that what jobs were available would be allocated first to those people whose origins were indisputably English. And it was Sue who was to be the first victim in the house.

“What the fuck!” she exclaimed as she sat cross-legged in the living room when Iris returned from work on a particularly chilly evening. She’d just opened a manila envelope that had been addressed to her. “I just can’t fucking believe it. I’m gonna be deported.”

“Deported?” wondered Iris who could only assume that Sue was joking. Of all the people she knew, Iris seemed the least likely to attract the attention of the English Homeland Security Services. “You’re not American, Australian or anything are you?”

“Of course I’m not,” said Sue. “I’m Scottish.”

Iris had never noticed this before. Sue didn’t have a pronounced accent and although it clearly didn’t come from London it wasn’t one that was easy to place.

“I still don’t understand,” she said.

“Scotland’s not part of the same country as England these days,” said Sue. “And since England left the Northern European Union, all those old treaties that let people in the Union work wherever they wanted have been torn up. Scots can work in Sweden and Poland, just as Swedes and Poles can work in Scotland, but none of us, it seems, can work in the Kingdom of England.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Steve. “I thought you’d spent all your childhood in Durham.”

“I did, but I was born in Scotland,” Sue said. “When the old British passports were scrapped, I was issued a Scottish passport. I didn’t think anything more of it and I’d never thought of applying for an English passport. I mean, who wants one of those anymore? The only places they’re good for are places you don’t want to live. That is, unless you want to carry on living in England.”

“They can’t do that!” said Steve unconvincingly.

“They fucking well can,” said Sue. “And they fucking well have. I’ve got to leave voluntarily before the end of the month or I’ll lose the right to make my own arrangements. It’s just like what’s been happening over in the Republic of North America where all the Mexicans and other Hispanics have been rounded up and driven across the border, no questions asked.”

“Won’t you be better off in Scotland?” said Iris. “They’re not doing so badly across the tartan border, are they?”

“There’s still not much in the way of jobs,” said Sue. “And anyway I’ve got a job. It might not be much and it’s a fucking waste of a Master of Arts from Trinity College, but it’s better than nothing. And I don’t know anyone in Scotland. My parents emigrated from England to Canada fucking years ago before the fall of the United States. It’s a fucking nightmare!”

Sue wasn’t the only person to fall foul of the England First policy, but Iris had to admit the policy did help the government fulfil its promise to provide more jobs for English citizens. As more and more people were deported for not possessing the right kind of passport, the jobs they used to have became instantly available to properly certified English subjects. Iris thought that enough blood had already been squeezed from the stone over the last few years. She’d witnessed the departure of almost everyone she’d known who hadn’t been born in the UK and, most significantly, whose skin-colour and complexion was dark, dusky or black. Only those who could show indisputable proof of birth within the English counties seemed to be safe. But the range of unwanted people was now extended to include any non-national unless, of course, they came from a relatively prosperous country like China or Brazil. People like Sue who’d believed they were safe because they began working in England when the country was part of the Northern European Union were now receiving manila envelopes that enclosed their deportation orders.

Iris noticed that many of her colleagues would suddenly not appear at the office one day and no explanation was ever forthcoming for their non-appearance. Nobody in permanent employment would ever put at risk what reputation they had to the risk of being labelled a troublemaker.

One thing that troubled Iris was how little news coverage was available on the deportation of what must surely be hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Scots, Welsh and Irish. Predictably neither the national newspapers nor Fox News UK made any reference about the fate of the many deportees, although they showered constant praise on the government for its resolute courage in pursuing the absolutely necessary England First policy.

“About time,” said Stewart Platell on Good Morning England on Fox News UK. “There’s a good reason why there’s been high unemployment in this proud nation and it’s not because English men and women are not willing to work.”

“England should always come first,” said Amanda Hislop on Telegraph TV. “We’ve let ourselves accept second-class status to our French and German neighbours for far too long.”

The EBC was less forthright but by virtue of being meticulously non-partisan in a country where the opposition was mostly silent it had to tread carefully. The mild criticism voiced by the people it chose to interview in the pursuit of balance was elsewhere either dismissed as naive and impractical or damned as unpatriotic. The only news agencies that expressed an openly negative opinion came from abroad, but their coverage mostly featured cheerful Scottish and Welsh passport holders who were returning home from what was characterised as exile in the land of weak tea and muffins. This gave the impression that it wasn’t so much that such nationals had been deported, but rather that they’d at last seen the error of their ways and were happy to return to the land of their birth (despite the fact that Wales, Scotland and Ireland had no more jobs and a not much better social security system than did England).

“And then there were two,” said Iris to Steve when the house they shared was now empty of all the other people who’d once lived there. After Sue had left, it was only a matter of time until Sudesh, Gerhard, Mohammed and Alexei should also leave.

“I take it that your ID is OK,” said Steve.

“Yes,” said Iris. “And yours?”

“I just hope that the fact my grandmother was Irish isn’t held against me,” he said nervously. “But you just don’t know, do you? Just how far can these bastards go till they’re satisfied?”

LXX

Gabrielle

2040

There was a demonstration going on in Oxford’s city centre. Normally, Gabrielle wouldn’t be worried by something like that, but the taxi she was in would have to pass through it and she was concerned for the safety of Ajit, her Chief Farm Manager. Would they notice that he was Pakistani?

“Relax,” said Ghazi who was also accompanying her. “Things might be getting heated over there in the Kashmir, but these guys aren’t about to be lynching anyone. Look at them. They’re a mixture of Muslims and Hindus. It’s the war they’re complaining about: not one side of the other.”

Gabrielle looked more closely at the banners on display. There was a reassuring lack of factionalism. There was an apparent even-handedness about the complaints, but it was surely rare in the heated atmosphere of the last few months to find someone whose origin was in the Indian subcontinent who didn’t side with either Pakistan or India. Indeed, there were plenty of good reasons to attack both parties. Neither democratically elected government had been exactly blameless, though Gabrielle suspected that in many ways they were just enacting what their respective electorates wanted them to do. The carnage in Kashmir was enough to upset anyone. Then there were the terrorist bomb attacks in Delhi, Mumbai and Lahore. And every day there was yet another story of an atrocity of one kind or another committed by Muslim, Hindu and Sikh extremists. It was sometimes difficult enough for Gabrielle to maintain the stance that it was the war rather than the warring nations that was most to blame.

Gabrielle enjoyed her business trips out of London and there were few cities as delightful as Oxford. She was looking forward to staying with Ghazi for a few days at the hotel. She just hoped the rooms were properly sound-proofed as she’d become a much more voluble lover as the years passed. Ajit was staying in his own hotel room. Gabrielle had thought about what it would be like to make love with him, but that was just never going to happen. Even if he wasn’t already married with children, he’d be reluctant to compromise his working relationship with his boss. Furthermore, he probably wouldn’t appreciate sex without some kind of emotional tie.

What a drag!

Gabrielle saw plenty of evidence of a more partisan attitude towards the India-Pakistan War after they’d got out of the taxi and entered the grounds of Jared Diamond House. This was where she was due to attend a set of seminars regarding some of the latest agricultural and biotechnological products. There were many posters on the office walls that publicised talks and discussions on the war. Some of the accompanying graphic images were extremely distressing, but then there was no shortage of distasteful photographs arising from the conflict. There were images of Muslim children being burnt alive, Hindu mothers being disembowelled, and naked cadavers being excavated from trenches that had been dug high up in the mountains. It was inevitable that there would be strong emotions in such a large population of British people whose origins were either India or Pakistan: especially here in Oxford. British Asians were, of course, disproportionately represented in the world of academia. No other ethnic community in the United Kingdom had invested so much effort to get ahead. And, naturally, this academic and material success attracted the wrath and envy of another community that was less well represented in university circles, but Gabrielle knew to exist in Oxford from viewing the hate graffiti sprayed on the walls alongside the railway line. Pakis Out! Death to Ragheads! Fuck Off Back to Neelum Valley! The last was an unusually well-spelled reference to the infamous biochemical atrocity that had become a byword for the excesses of modern warfare.

“I’m delighted you could make it,” said Samirah, the promotional manager for Jared Diamond House’s Biotech seminars. “I’m sure you’ll agree that we’ve got some star speakers and plenty of exciting new ideas. Here are your passes.”

She handed Gabrielle the name tags that they’d have to dangle over their breasts for the evening. She hesitated slightly when she saw the names associated with Gabrielle’s companions.

“I hope you don’t mind me asking,” Samirah said in a relatively low voice. “Are your companions Indian or Pakistani? Not necessarily, of course, by birth, I hope you understand, but by...er...allegiance. I’ve been instructed to keep Indian and Pakistani nationals apart. There’s been ever so much trouble in recent months.”

Gabrielle understood Samirah’s concern but she also knew that her response wasn’t going to be very helpful. “One’s Indian and the other’s Pakistani,” she said. “I think they would prefer not to sit apart.”

“I understand,” said Samirah thoughtfully while she consulted her notes. “I’ll see what we can do.”

Fortunately, neither Ghazi nor Ajit dressed in a way that announced their allegiance or religion and most attendees wouldn’t care one way or another. There were a few other Asians, even though their presence in the agricultural profession had only begun to be widespread in recent years since agriculture once more became a prosperous industry and was attracting those who in an earlier generation might have been attracted to a career in financial services. Like Ghazi, most dressed no differently to any other British citizen irrespective of ethnicity, but there were some who openly paraded their sympathies. A group of Asian men and women with a prominent tilaka on their forehead sat on one side of the lecture theatre while on the other side were bearded men adorned in loose traditional clothing. They sat as far from each other as was possible.

Gabrielle was grateful during the seminar that she’d studied Chemistry and Biology as part of her degree in Agriculture and Farm Management. She might not be as comfortable as Ajit with the polysyllabic names and she was sure that without the aid of the photographs and slides she would have lost the thread of the discussion, but she was equally sure that many of the others were totally blinded by science. The bullet points that most visibly awakened their attention were phrased in terms of profit, investment opportunities and the bottom line. They may have been less concerned than Gabrielle and certainly Ajit about the less prominently highlighted caveats regarding mutation, disease-resistance and unproven side-effects.

Ghazi was obviously bored by the seminars and Gabrielle could see his eyes wander about the room. He was clearly attracted to Samirah who, despite her Islamic name, was certainly not Pakistani and was so pale-skinned that she may well have had no connection whatsoever to North Africa or the Middle East. He also had his eyes on an Asian man on the Pakistani side of the room who was surrounded by farmers of a more traditional English aspect that were so obese that even Ghazi would have hesitated to fuck them. Gabrielle knew that Ghazi had a true connoisseur’s nose for those men most likely to find him attractive and who’d be game for a fuck. Gabrielle wondered whether this young Asian would be sharing their hotel room tonight.

However, this wasn’t what happened although there were several times during the rest of the day when Ghazi was absent. That was hardly unexpected. There was little likelihood that he’d really get much joy from the seminars though, as a private investor with many lucrative sidelines, it was almost certain that he’d find some money-making opportunity from either the information given by the professorial lecturers or, more likely, from the contacts he’d make during the coffee breaks. What was rather less to be expected was that the Pakistani man towards whom Ghazi’s eyes had wandered was also not there.

Gabrielle wasn’t put out that much during the evening when she lazed about in her hotel suite watching an ancient Hollywood blockbuster while dressed only in a dressing gown. She’d probably have been rather more surprised if Ghazi hadn’t found a man or woman with whom to spend his time, but her long-time lover was always reliable in one respect. She was more or less guaranteed that she would eventually be fucked long and hard by him and if he picked up a third party... well, that could be an extra treat. In any case, Gabrielle was rather enjoying the preposterous superhero nonsense that had once been such standard fare in Hollywood when movie budgets were extravagant enough to afford real human actors. These days only the excellence of computer graphics disguised the reduced expenditure on special effects, although nothing could be done to disguise the poor quality of the script-writing.

When Ghazi did arrive, well before midnight, he had the unmistakable odour of sex on his body, but as the man or woman with whom he’d so obviously been sharing his body wasn’t there Gabrielle was grateful that her lover showered off the aroma before joining her on their double bed. She guessed that it had been a woman he’d had sex with, simply because he’d not brought anyone back with her. Gabrielle wasn’t even slightly attracted to women, but thankfully most men, even those who enjoyed having sex with other men, were generally attracted to her.

It wasn’t Samirah, that was for sure. When Ghazi and Gabrielle attended the seminar the following day, where Ajit was patiently waiting, Samirah betrayed none of the tell-tale signs with which Gabrielle was so familiar when her wayward lover had made a conquest. It could have been anyone. The hotel bar had been full of women the night before, though it was anyone’s guess how many were guests and how many were plying for trade.

It wasn’t until much later in the day, after lunch in fact, that Gabrielle discovered who it was that Ghazi had had sex with.

She was chatting with Ajit about some of the products that were on display in the foyer. The new brands of GM wheat were particularly impressive, although Ajit was troubled by the fact that the wheat was sterile. They disagreed about the new breeds of goat that were being cloned. Gabrielle was impressed by the milk-yield and the quality of the lean meat, whilst Ajit was troubled by the fact that the goat’s legs were so short the animal could barely lift its stomach off the ground.

It was then that they heard the sounds of shouting and furniture being kicked over that had them both wondering whether it was better to run towards the source of the commotion to identify the cause or to run away for safety. There had been many terrorist incidents in the last few weeks related to the war in India and Pakistan: generally directed towards British Asians rather than any other ethnic or social group. Mosques had been set alight. A Gurdwara in Manchester had been fire-bombed. A dormitory that was housing migrant workers from Bangladesh (which nation had stayed resolutely neutral in the conflict) had been the victim of a suicide bomb. Could this be another terrorist attack?

Ajit led the way back to the lecture theatre with the more cautious Gabrielle trailing behind. It was clear that no bombs or guns had been used but the cause of the fracas wasn’t immediately obvious. A group of people was gathered around the part of the room from which came the unmistakable sound of violence, but it was only when Gabrielle got closer that she discovered what was happening. It was a fight, but scarcely one that was evenly matched. Ghazi was lying prostrate and whimpering on the floor while three or four bearded, hooded men were kicking him repeatedly in the face, the chest and the groin.

And then before the security guards could arrive, they ran off.

The attackers weren’t attendees of the seminar, because all the people who’d been there the day before were still in attendance with the exception of the Asian man who’d attracted Ghazi’s eye. All the Muslim and Hindu visitors were there. No one from either group had been amongst those who’d run away and now hidden in Oxford’s crowds of tourists. The Muslim Asians who dressed in traditional dress had been so far from the scene of the incident that it was obvious that none of them had been active participants.

Ghazi was in a very bad state. Gabrielle and Ajit sat with him in an adjacent room while they waited for the paramedics to arrive. His nose was broken and several teeth had been kicked out. He had difficulty breathing and he clutched his chest where it was likely that a rib had been broken. Blood was trickling out of his nose and his mouth. A bloody gash was open across his forehead. One eye was badly swollen.

“Why did they attack him?” Gabrielle asked Ajit. “Was it just because they thought he was a Hindu and they didn’t like Hindus?”

Ajit shook his head. “I don’t think that’s why,” he said sadly. “I don’t think religion or nationality had anything to do with it. In any case, since Ghazi sat next to me and most people guessed that I might be Pakistani, they might well have thought he was one as well. Or at least a third- or fourth-generation migrant. No, it wasn’t that at all.”

“What was it?”

“I speak Urdu mostly, but I also know Sindhi,” said Ajit. “I overheard some of the conversation between those with the long beards: you know the ones in traditional clothes. What they objected to wasn’t Ghazi’s religion. It was what he seems to have been up to with one of the other Muslim men who were there yesterday but who I gather from what I heard might also be in hospital.”

“You think it might be Ghazi’s sexual behaviour that they objected to?”

“I don’t know your boyfriend very well,” said Ajit very carefully. “He doesn’t confide in me about personal matters and most especially not about his sexual activity. Nevertheless, I know that he did something yesterday that some people clearly didn’t like. And I guess he’s been punished for it.”

“He most certainly has,” said Gabrielle as she continued to attempt to staunch the flow of blood from Ghazi’s bloody mouth.

LXXI

Mark & Molly

2075

There was much that was making Mark feel guilty. Here he was—a married man with a devoted wife with whom he’d lived for fourteen years and a delightful nine-year old daughter—now living every day of the week in Oxford: a two hour train journey from Islington. And this was all because his employer, Sig Mu Inc., Korea, needed a representative in the university town and Mark was aware that he’d been considered to be the best man for the job. He also knew that if he showed any reluctance, his employer would soon conclude that he was no longer the best man for the job he currently held in Central London.

Not only did Mark feel guilt that he was abandoning his familial duties for reasons of economic necessity but, worse, that he’d allowed himself to succumb to sexual temptation. And this was something he’d sworn never to do. He was weak and fallible and terrified that his wife might find out about it. Mark didn’t deserve Molly. He’d failed her. And he continued to fail her every moment that he spent with Salma.

It wasn’t that Mark had gone out of his way to be unfaithful. Indeed, nothing could have been further from his mind. Salma was just the woman who worked next door to SM Incorporated’s skeleton office of two men and one young secretary. The company that employed her had something vaguely to do with the manufacture of nanocarbon polymers. Salma was a scientist by profession with qualifications from Harvard and Shanghai and she was working in Oxford for reasons rather more of necessity than choice.

“My home in Damascus was a place where one of the Israeli missiles struck. My parents, my grandparents, my aunts, my young son: they all died that day. Damascus still hasn’t recovered. Syria continues to suffer from the Israeli invasion and the puppet dictator they put on the throne. My country was once one of the most democratic and liberal republics in the Arab world and now it’s nothing more than a vassal to the Jewish state.”

Mark knew very little about Middle Eastern politics. It was all very confusing. He knew there were countries in that part of the world that were now nothing more than a nuclear wasteland such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan, although he wasn’t sure whether they were strictly speaking even in the Middle East.

“They are mostly Muslim,” Salma told him. “But if you come from Syria or any of its neighbours you don’t think of yourself as Middle East. That’s a sort of Western view of the world. But Israel, Jordan and Lebanon, like Syria, are definitely what you might call Middle East.”

“And Arabia, Yemen, Iraq and all those others?”

“I guess anywhere within easy reach of Israeli missiles is in the Middle East.”

“It’s certainly hotting up over there, isn’t it?” Mark remarked.

“It’s always been bad,” said Salma. “There’s been a hundred and thirty years of Israeli threat, but now since all that’s left of American support for Israel is rhetoric and evangelical volunteers rather than hard cash, there’s a chance that the balance of power might swing elsewhere. It’s not the only nation with nuclear weapons. Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and the Democratic Republics of Arabia could pack a punch if needed. Not to mention Turkey, Iran and Iraq.”

“You don’t think there will be another nuclear war, do you? Surely the last two were bad enough.”

“They say things always come in threes,” said Salma reflectively. “But I hope not. What hope would there be for Syria under the missile flight paths? My hope is that democracy will return to Israel and that the Israeli people will vote for peace.”

“Is that likely?”

“There’s not been a proper democracy in Israel for over fifty years,” said Salma. “But stranger things have happened. Remember North Korea. Or for that matter, how things turned out in the Congo.”

Mark nodded sagely. Things quite often didn’t happen the way people expected, however much it sometimes seemed that history was playing itself out in a sort of pre-ordained way. The Anglo-Saxon economies were in disarray. The climate was getting steadily more unstable. And every day more and more things that were once affordable were becoming prohibitively expensive.

And that included accommodation.

Mark was now a tenant in two properties. He was paying rent for the two-bedroom flat near Holloway that he shared with his wife and daughter. That wasn’t cheap, though Molly’s job with Hackney Borough Council did help pay the bills. His other home where he slept five nights a week was a single room in a large house that he shared with a mixture of mostly young people who kept nothing like the same hours as he did. They never did the washing up and left the kitchen in a shocking state. The bathroom constantly stank as a result of the antique plumbing. And Mark didn’t feel comfortable when he sat in the living room with the other housemates while they smoked dope, snorted lines and watched moronic quiz shows. After having lived as a husband and father for so long, he hated having to share a house. The only retreat his bedroom afforded him was when he pushed his ear-plugs as deep into his ears as he could and pulled a duvet over his shoulders to keep out the draught that whistled through the poorly-fitting windows.

Mark soon found that Salma’s small bedsit was much more comfortable than either his Oxford or his Islington home. Her ex-husband had left her a regular stipend that was enough to supplement her income and to allow her to live relatively comfortably. Although her bedsit wasn’t situated in the best part of Oxford, it was near enough to the city centre that she could walk to work and not have to squeeze into the crowded buses. Her neighbours were quiet, the flat was tastefully decorated and the bed was gloriously inviting.

Mark stood by the window of her apartment through which he could glimpse the city walls that kept gown and town apart. After all these months in Oxford, he’d not once ventured within the walls but he could see from Salma’s window that there was much that would be worth visiting if he should purchase a tourist pass for the day. Perhaps that was something he could do together with Molly and Monica if they ever came to spend the weekend in Oxford.

Thinking of his wife brought a fresh spasm of guilt to Mark. He glanced back at Salma. She and Molly were both women in their thirties, although Salma was somewhat closer to the end of that decade than Molly. She was also a larger woman. Although not exactly fat or obese, she could best be described as chunky. She was taller, rounder and, in places, rather flabbier. But she was also, Mark had to shamefacedly admit, a rather more passionate lover than Molly who often seemed distracted during their lovemaking.

Especially in recent months.

“We shouldn’t,” said Mark ineffectually as Salma dragged him down to lie beside her on the luxurious bed in a room that had none of the icy chill that permeated Mark’s own room. “It’s not right. What would my wife think?”

“Shut up about your wife already,” said Salma in a voice that sometimes betrayed the Jewish influence of one half of her complex lines of ancestry. “You’re with me now. Or would you rather be somewhere else?”

Mark had to admit he’d much rather not.

And after a lovemaking where Mark’s face was sometimes pressed to Salma’s voluptuous bosom and where his penis was lodged deep inside her vagina’s warm liquid grip, the couple lay beside each other gasping from the exhaustion that was inevitable for two people who never did nearly enough exercise: especially not Mark since he’d had to abandon his bicycle in London.

“You’ll stay the night won’t you?” asked Salma.

“Of course,” said Mark who didn’t want to face the perilous journey back home after dark to the outer suburbs of Oxford. He was also more than happy to stay where he was on the firm mattress under a warm duvet pressed against a cuddly woman in a draught-free bedroom. It was bliss of a kind that he’d come to appreciate ever more every time when he returned to his noisy, chilly flat where he had to roll around the mattress to avoid a loose spring pronging into his arse.

However, when he settled back into Salma’s arms under her all-embracing duvet he was suddenly awoken by a loud commotion from the street below that was still audible through the windows’ double glazing. It was the sound of shouts and yells, accompanied by rather unsettling thuds. Salma immediately jumped out of bed and rushed to the window.

“What is it?” asked Mark who expected Salma to blame it on drunks returning from the many pubs outside Oxford city’s walls where the prostitutes and drug-peddlers who were banned from within could ply their trade more freely.

“I don’t know,” said Salma. “There seems to be a kind of attack on the house opposite.”

“An attack?”

“Well, it’s difficult to tell from here. But it looks like people breaking and entering the house and there seems to have been some looting.”

“Shall I call the police?” asked Mark who rolled over the bed to the small cabinet where his mobile phone was lying with his glasses and wristwatch.

Salma nodded. “It’s number 16,” she said. “Tell them to come quickly.”

It was actually over half an hour until the police finally arrived and then it was just two of them on their bicycles. They were fully armed and they immediately ran into the house, but they were too late. The people who’d broken into the house had left a long time before and had shown no sign of haste as they did so. They carried the more portable loot away with them such as television screens and computers, but as they were also carrying baseball bats and other improvised weapons neither Mark nor anyone else were inclined to offer them any resistance.

“House robbery,” said Mark, as if it summed it all up. “That’s not very nice. And right under our noses.”

“It might be a little more than that,” said Salma thoughtfully. “Oxford’s got a sizeable Muslim population and a lot of them are Arabs. I guess their parents or grandparents came to the country when there was plenty of oil money sloshing around the Arabian Peninsula. And I sort of know the people opposite. They were an old Jewish couple who were active in Oxford’s Jewish community. The man always wore a skull-cap. His wife wore one of those weird wigs. They weren’t exactly circumspect about their religion. Not that they’d ever felt the need to be.”

“You think that them being Jewish and there being so many Muslims in Oxford is why their house was attacked?”

“It does seem a reasonable hypothesis, doesn’t it?” said Salma. “Every time the Israelis perpetrate an atrocity of one kind of another in their undeclared war against their neighbours there’s some kind of retaliation by steamed-up Arabs somewhere else. You saw on the news the other day about what happened in Petra, didn’t you? Thousands of years of history went up in smoke along with those cowering Palestinian guerrilla fighters.”

Mark didn’t really have an opinion on the matter and he was more eager to burrow under the duvet than discuss the robbery. Several more police arrived on their bicycles, all well-armed and fully protected. Half an hour later, an ambulance leisurely pulled up into the road and paramedics ran into the house. It was only when stretchers were brought out with sheets covering the faces that Mark felt he could at last return to bed without appearing to be insufficiently concerned about the welfare of Salma’s neighbours.

“Do you think they were murdered?” Mark wondered.

“I don’t think we’ll ever know,” said Salma. “The news media doesn’t bother itself with incidents like that anymore.”

Mark remained troubled the following morning when he and Salma left for work. His pleasure at not having had to catch a bus and having rested in bed an extra hour was compromised when the couple crossed the road to see what had happened the night before.

Most of the windows were smashed and through the shattered glass Mark could see a degree of reckless vandalism that was far beyond what was necessary. The door to the house had been pulled off its hinges with a metal bar. And through the open doorway Mark could see peculiar symbols spray-painted over the hallway walls.

“Is that Arabic?” Mark asked Salma whom he’d reckoned would know.

She nodded. “I can’t read it all from here,” she said. “But it’s not a quotation from the Koran.”

“What does it say?”

“It doesn’t appear to be especially complimentary towards Israel,” she commented.

LXXII

Alex

2034

It was several weeks since Alex had last travelled outside of London. As always the exorbitant cost was covered by business expenses, although this time there was no flight across the Atlantic or toward the Far East. A train ride north from Paddington to the University City of Oxford, even first class, wasn’t quite the work junket that Alex had now got used to. But he hoped there’d be plenty of good quality wine and perhaps a few class lines to compensate him for the trouble.

Alex still wasn’t really sure what it was that the company on whose executive board he served was actually in the business of manufacturing, but usually that wasn’t much of a handicap. Most of what was discussed in board meetings was pretty much interchangeable between one business and another. But this particular excursion to attend a seminar hosted by Professor Sigrid Smith, the universally acclaimed expert in the discipline, was a risky one. Alex didn’t dare expose his ignorance by questioning his need to attend.

All the same, Alex was gratified to see that Sue from Marketing was also attending. This pleased him in two ways. One was that she would almost certainly be as ignorant as he was about whatever it was that Professor Smith would be talking about. Alex wouldn’t be the only who’d have to blag his way through the day. The other reason was that she was eminently fuckable and Alex had a notion that he stood a rather better chance than his colleagues in discovering the truth of this supposition.

She was an ambitious young woman of oriental origin whose ascent from a minor marketing role to the status of one of the Marketing Team’s rising stars in less than a year was almost certainly assisted by some irregular persuasion. She showed no reluctance in showing off her assets to their best advantage, although in truth there was more suggestion than substance to them. She was very thin, which in an age of generally overweight women wasn’t a bad thing, and she advertised her beauty by propping up her bra and keeping open the top few buttons of her blouse. As a senior member of the Executive Board who was divorced and quite clearly available, Alex was aware that he would be the perfect target for a predatory woman on the prowl.

“South Korea,” Sue said in response to Alex’s almost inevitable question. “Not that I’ve ever been there. I’ve lived in London all my life.”

Alex could have guessed this from her liberal use of glottal stops.

“I’ve never been there, either,” Alex said. “So that makes two of us.”

The fact that his incredibly weak attempt at humour was received so warmly suggested to Alex just how sound his instincts were on the matter of Sue’s availability. He’d learned in the last several years that progress in management was actually hindered rather than helped by an intelligent sense of humour or the ability to crack genuinely amusing jokes. Anything that resembled genuine wit was immediately suspect.

“I wouldn’t bother,” said Sue, in what was possibly an ill-judged attempt to show that she wasn’t simply the bimbo Alex hoped she was. “Life in Korea isn’t so good these days now that the North keeps lobbing bombs over the border.”

“Well, you wouldn’t want to live in a country like North Korea, would you?” said Alex who was now wondering how to move the conversation on without exposing his ignorance about international affairs. Alex looked ahead of him while the taxi weaved through the traffic. He didn’t want to give the impression that he was flirting as Sue wasn’t the only one with whom he was sharing the cab. There were also two male colleagues who were genuinely looking forward to Professor Smith’s seminar. “Famine. Oppression. Even plague. It’s almost mediaeval. Just like Oxford itself. There can’t be many cities in the world with as much mediaeval stuff in it as Oxford.”

“I’ve never been to the city before,” said Sue. “I hope the seminar isn’t going to be too technical. I’m not sure I could stay awake.”

Sue was saying all the right things, but Alex could scarcely admit to his own very similar fears. Maybe she guessed how little the Senior Executive knew and was showing solidarity, but Alex had to be cautious about admitting this.

“I’ll explain anything that you need to know,” he lied.

“When will there be an opportunity for that?” Sue asked.

Steady on, thought Alex. Not so fast. And definitely not so obvious.

“I’m sure there’ll be a break in our busy schedule,” he said.

The seminar was at least as boring and confusing as Alex feared. The more confusing it was, the more difficult it was for Alex to stay awake. He periodically glanced over to Sue who, like him, was near the back of the lecture theatre and evidently more accomplished than him in appearing to be alert. Occasionally his glance met hers and Alex was sure that there was a flicker of a smile on her lips.

“I think I just about understood some of that,” she said to Alex when he and the many other experts and executives gathered together around the sandwiches and coffee that was laid out for them in the corridor outside the lecture theatre.

Alex had to be careful in declaring what he understood. “I’ll need to study my notes in more depth until I come to a considered decision,” he said. “But it was certainly fascinating.”

He was in an awkward position. He couldn’t be seen to be spending too much time with Sue, but he really didn’t want to talk to any of his other colleagues. The risk that he might betray his ignorance to them was much greater than it was with Sue. It was an awkward dilemma best resolved by wandering off to the loo, even though he wasn’t really in very much need.

It was while returning from a lavatory that was nearly five minutes’ walk away that he again met Sue. He didn’t believe that it was a genuine coincidence.

“Goodness,” he said. “We shouldn’t keep meeting like this.”

This was another weak joke and a very old cliché, but precisely right for the occasion. Sue laughed appreciatively. “Are we likely to be bumping into each other at the Holiday Inn?” she asked disingenuously.

So that’s where everyone else is staying, thought Alex. At least, he wasn’t one of those who’d have to slum it. “I shouldn’t think so,” he said with a soft laugh. “I’m staying at the Sphinx. Unless you’re there to sample what the bar has to offer after dinner at eight I very much doubt it.”

Sue nodded and then discreetly switched the subject of conversation. “I hope the next hour or so of Professor Smith’s seminar is as interesting as the first,” she said enthusiastically.

“Indeed,” said Alex.

In actual fact, it was considerably more bewildering. The graphics the professor exhibited on the screen might have clarified his thesis for the other attendees but for Alex they might as well have been abstract expressionist paintings. He passed the time by speculating whether he would meet Sue in the lounge bar of the Sphinx Hotel that evening. When that topic was exhausted he tried to find as many anagrams as he could from the words printed on the screen. He’d have been happier surfing the internet or doing a crossword on his laptop, but that would merely reveal the extent of his boredom.

Alex was aware that although his increasing years hadn’t been kind to him, his attraction to women like Sue had actually increased over time. His enhanced appeal was almost certainly better correlated with his status as a Senior Executive than it was with any aesthetic consideration. It was reassuring that as long as he didn’t fall out with anyone in the organisation more senior than him—and there weren’t many of those now—his remuneration would continue to rise at a rate entirely unrelated to his effort or effectiveness. The less he did, the more he could take credit for not interfering with the achievements of his manifestly more gifted and rather less well remunerated professional staff. Senior management was more about never doing anything stupid than about doing anything clever. In fact, there was so much potential hazard in trying to be clever that the best policy was never to do anything at all.

“Fancy meeting you here,” said Alex when after his satisfying four course meal and a half-bottle of wine he wandered into the lounge bar and, as expected, discovered Sue sitting on a high stool by the bar where she was sipping on a soft drink through a straw.

“I was bored,” said Sue. “I remembered that you said that the bar at the Sphinx was worth visiting.”

“Did I?” said Alex who in truth would never have recommended the bar to anyone. “The drinks are a bit expensive though. Would you like to share a bottle of wine?”

Sue nodded.

“Red or white?” Alex asked.

“You choose.”

It was obvious what Sue really wanted. It was all part of the deal. She wanted the preferment that someone like Alex could provide that would bypass the obstacles and hazards that normally stood in the way of a talented young woman in a meritocratic organisation On the other hand, what Alex wanted, of course, was sex. The art of the exercise was to pretend otherwise.

It was also necessary that Alex should moderate his alcohol intake. This was partly so that he wouldn’t say something to this ambitious young woman that could later be used against him, but also so that he’d be able to perform adequately later on without the help of either prescribed medication or the coke that he’d stashed away in his suitcase. Unfortunately for Alex, Sue was a woman experienced at the same game. She sipped her red wine very slowly and constantly tried to pass the conversation back to Alex rather than for him to let her to do the talking. Although both parties knew what the outcome of this encounter would be, the process of getting there could prove to be fraught.

Alex couldn’t discuss his chequered history with women as this would compromise his position. He most certainly couldn’t discuss anything related to his job as he needed to maintain the mystique associated with his considerable salary. And he certainly couldn’t take the risk of discussing the seminar.

Fortunately, there was a television in the lounge bar permanently tuned to Fox News UK with helpful subtitles displayed across the bottom of the screen.

“It’s certainly hotting up in your ancestral home,” Alex remarked to ensure that conversation kept away from any danger zones.

“My ancestral home?” wondered Sue, with a slightly alarmed expression.

“Korea.”

“Hotting up?”

“It’s just an expression,” said Alex who was now regretting his remark. “You can see it on the news. The North Koreans have just launched a whole load of missiles into Seoul.”

“Missiles?”

Alex was really regretting that he’d not chosen a different subject. “Conventional ones, I’m sure,” he elaborated.

For the next quarter of an hour or so there was no conversation between the two of them while Sue focused her attention on the screen. Alex could see that matters were serious in Seoul, although the film footage was no different than that shown for any of the other countless conflicts across the world. From the Middle East to West Africa, from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, from Lithuania to China, it was always the same kind of news. Some catastrophe, either human or natural, that caused buildings to collapse. People running in panic. Emergency vehicles gathered around bloodied bodies. Shaky videos recorded on bystanders’ mobile phones. One disaster was much the same as another.

“Do you have family in Seoul?” Alex asked sympathetically, when the news switched to a football story about Stoke becoming champions in the Premier League.

Sue nodded.

“Close family?”

“You could say that,” she answered sorrowfully.

Shit! Was this whole evening going to be wasted?

“You seem to be rather upset by it all. Would you like to rest somewhere more relaxing?” Alex asked sympathetically. His hotel suite with its en-suite living room and luxury Jacuzzi was perfect for receiving visitors.

Sue nodded.

Alex inwardly cheered. He was going to get the fuck he’d been longing for the whole day after all.

“I’ll bring the wine with us,” he said as he stood up and pulled the bottle out of its ice bucket. “Mustn’t let it go to waste.”

Sue still looked troubled, but Alex knew that she no more wanted to waste her time than he did.

“Show me the way,” she said.

LXXIII

Tamara

2098

Whatever it was that had defined Tamara’s Jewish identity over the years, it wasn’t her religious faith. Nor had it been her need to belong to the Jewish community. Her identity was more intangible. It was the sense of a shared tradition and what had been until recently a shared nationality. She’d never troubled herself about her Jewish heritage when she’d actually lived in Israel. It was only after she’d abandoned the nation of her birth to radioactive dust and vengeful Palestinians that she’d become concerned about what it meant to be Jewish.

So what was she now doing, travelling south to the outskirts of London on a dilapidated horse-drawn coach with eighteen other Jews, most of whom devoutly religious, to a kibbutz that had only recently been founded? What had persuaded her to seek refuge within her national and ethnic identity?

Tamara had made a genuine effort to settle down to life as a care worker in Morecambe, but it could never be something she’d really want to do for the rest of her life. Tamara didn’t need reminding that it was a job and that for a refugee from the Middle East such a thing wasn’t easy to find, but she was too easily disgusted by the needs of the elderly and incontinent to feel at ease in the nursing profession. Surely there was more to life than this?

And then Tamara heard that there was.

Many of the exiled Israeli citizens scattered throughout the Republic of England had concluded that there was no future for them in the refugee camps that the English government had grudgingly set up to shelter the unfortunate victims of foreign wars. The English had more than enough to worry about without the additional burden of thousands of stateless Israelis, radioactive Palestinians and famished Jordanians. The only possible course of action was for the tribes of Israel settled amongst the dark satanic mills to build a new Jerusalem in England’s grey and drizzly land.

And one such place was Epping Forest. Once upon a time it had been a London park, but the law no longer had the power or authority to protect common land from settlement.  The police force was overwhelmed by the rather more immediate problems of famine, plague, fire and civil disorder. The rule of law was no more respected or observed than the institutions of government that still debated great matters within Westminster City’s reinforced concrete walls.

Tamara had made her northward journey from Surrey to Lancaster in far less time than it would now take her to return south, but that earlier journey had been paid for by the St. John-Easton estate. In comparison to her current travelling conditions, the journey by maglev train from London to Manchester and then by steam train to the faded seaside town of Morecambe had been one of unparalleled luxury. Tamara felt more grand than she’d ever felt before in the company of those so wealthy that they had no difficulty in affording such an expensive mode of transport. The journey south, however, was by a makeshift wagon that had once been a diesel-powered coach now to be pulled all the way by four sturdy farm horses whose real worth would be proven when set to ploughing the fields at the kibbutz towards which the travellers were headed. The roads on which they would travel were mostly pot-holed and sometimes barely roads at all, but at least this route along England’s decaying road network was cost-free. It was far too expensive to use the motorways that were generally for the exclusive use of commercial transport and the relatively wealthy. And even if cost was no obstacle, a vehicle such as the one in which Tamara was travelling would never have been permitted through a tollbooth.

The other travellers on the coach came from all around Lancaster and the Lake District. Like Tamara, they’d heard about the expedition from Tobias who was the driver currently sat on the coach roof and urging the horses on. He’d travelled all the way from Epping Forest to the far North West of England on a mission to find suitable new recruits to the kibbutz. In fact, everyone was suitable as long as they were also Jewish.

Tamara walked from Morecambe to Lancaster on her first free day after she’d heard about Tobias’ expedition from a co-worker. It was there that the man in whom she would later place her trust was camped out along with the horses that he’d bought from a local farmer and the coach that he’d requisitioned and re-engineered. Although she’d always been sceptical about living and working in a kibbutz, Tamara recognised that she now felt a real need to reassert her national identity. And after so long in the wilderness, she also wanted to live amongst people of the same culture as herself.

“There’s no religious aspect to it,” said Tobias. “The only thing we have in common is that we are all Jewish and that we want to preserve our Jewish identity.”

Tamara could see that although Tobias wore a skull cap, he sported none of the other symbols of an orthodox Jew. He didn’t wear a black suit or a white shirt. Nor did he have long sidelocks.

“What about political affiliation?” Tamara wondered. She would rather associate with goyim than spend time with Likud supporters who still blamed the misfortune that had befallen the Israeli state on anyone and everyone other than the Israeli people. Tamara had little patience for those who would happily blame Arabs, Americans and Europeans, but never questioned the conduct of the Israeli government over the preceding century.

“As I say, all we have in common is our Jewish heritage,” said Tobias. “There will always be a variety of opinion about the cause for the Second Diaspora, but unless we make an effort to respect our differences then as a people we’ll never recover from this setback.”

So Tamara was now gathered together with new companions whose characters were exactly as disparate as the greater scattered Jewish community. Some were men, some were women and some were children. Some were orthodox and conservative. Others had opinions rather closer to Tamara’s. But Tobias was right. All the travellers had in common with one another was their Jewish heritage.

Tamara had plenty of opportunity to get to know her companions as the coach trundled south along England’s wretched roads. Not one of her companions shared the same opinion on the fate and fortune of the Jewish people with anyone else. By all accounts, the last two decades following the nuclear war had been universally traumatic. Tamara’s experience was by no means unique, even though most of the others had lived in England for many more years than her. In fact, by virtue of having emigrated from the Promised Land within only the last decade Tamara had the distinction of being the person on the coach with the most recent connection with the land of their shared heritage.

“You still had to carry radiation masks after all those years?” commented Aaron whose parents had left Israel long before even the firebombing of Damascus.

“The main worry wasn’t radiation,” said Tamara. “We were more worried about the Palestinian gangs who’d shoot you as soon as they saw you, unless you were a woman. In that case, you’d be shot only after you were raped.”

“Gruesome! How did you cope?”

“We never went anywhere without a gun.”

“Rather like now,” said Aaron who nodded his head towards the armoury of rifles, baseball bats and pitchforks that Tobias had loaded onto the bus.

“Exactly.”

It was indisputable that Tobias’ precautions were necessary. Indeed, nobody would have agreed to accompany him on the arduous trek south unless they were well armed. England was a lawless country at the best of times, but the general population displayed so much naked resentment towards immigrants that a coachload of Jews would be easy prey to almost any kind of violent gang. The gangs to be most feared were those associated with the Muslim communities of big cities such as Manchester, Birmingham and Swindon. It was for that reason that the journey deliberately skirted the large conurbations and took a rather circuitous route.

The journey was an opportunity for Tamara to get a view of the English countryside that she’d never seen before. Her previous excursions across the Republic had been at a much faster pace, but now she was able to appreciate the fields and pastures of rural England where rustic labourers were busy tilling the soil. Horses much like the ones pulling the coach were dragging ploughs through the mud. Occasionally, a dog or small child would run out from a village and chase after the coach but generally they were left alone. Sometimes stones would be thrown at the coach by idle youths who didn’t have much else to do when they weren’t working in the fields or hunting deer or feral cattle in the woods.

At night, Tobias would find a parking spot by the road that was already populated by other travellers’ makeshifts carriages and rickshaws. One of the men would take up guard duty. Tamara wasn’t too upset when her half-hearted attempt at volunteering for duty was rebuffed. Although it was definitely sexist to assume that a man was better than a woman at scaring off would-be aggressors, the risk from armed gangs was absolutely genuine.

Although there was other traffic on the road, the roads were nothing like as busy as they’d been in an earlier age when people routinely drove to out-of-town shopping centres and sped constantly along the nation’s highways and by-ways. Those were the days when fuel was cheaper, incomes were higher and the motorways hadn’t yet all been privatised. Nowadays, the traffic was mostly animal- or bicycle-driven, though there sometimes passed the occasional gasoil and battery powered vehicle, mostly hastening as fast as it could from the motorway to a private gated community. On one occasion, a cavalcade of motorbikes and heavily armoured black vehicles came thundering by. At first Tamara wondered whether it was an army convoy of the kind that was so common in Israel when she was a child at the start of the nuclear war, but it was nothing more than a wealthy landlord or Chief Executive Officer returning from his office in a Business Park to a mansion somewhere in the Cheshire countryside. Such vehicles were designed for civilian use but were often accompanied by well-armed motorcycle outriders. It wasn’t at all unknown for an armed gang of highwaymen to seize a passing carriage and demand a ransom.

When the coach was flagged down as it passed by the outskirts of Stafford, Tamara naturally feared that it was by a gang of highway robbers. The men were clearly fully tooled up and it was obvious that the travellers wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight against them. Tobias removed his skull-cap and jumped off the coach to address the armed men. Tamara could see through the cracked windscreen glass that the men were mostly young. Only a minority were white-skinned. Some were black and some, Tamara noticed with a thud of dread at the back of her throat, wore head-dresses and sported thick beards. They were almost certainly Muslims, although at least one was a Sikh.

While Tobias was talking to the men his girlfriend, Uma, walked up and down the coach and talked to each passenger individually. She spoke urgently and in a low voice. Tamara noticed that Talman—a Hassidic Jew with a black hat and sidelocks—was especially agitated. Uma didn’t engage in further discussion with him and strode swiftly along the bus to the next person.

“What’s going on?” asked Tamara when Uma finally got to her.

“We don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” said Uma. “Especially not you, Tammy. There’s been a local war between gang-members in Stafford and in Telford in neighbouring Shropshire. Several people have been murdered and these people are simply guarding the town against what they call the Tellies.”

“Tellies?”

“Apparently people in Telford watch a lot of television,” said Uma. “However, we still have to be careful. You must have noticed that there are several Muslims in the gang. They’re of Pakistani origin I think, so they won’t have a specific grudge against Israel, but they’re young and potentially hot-headed.”

“So...?”

“I don’t think I have to spell it out,” said Uma. “Two or more of them will almost certainly board the bus to search for Tellies. They’ll probably be rude and they might ask awkward questions. What you mustn’t do, whatever happens, is make apparent to them that we’re a coachload of Jews who’re travelling south to a kibbutz. And we most certainly mustn’t admit to being Israeli. It’s all the excuse they need.”

Tamara nodded. It was what she expected.

It was ironic that Tamara had joined this expedition in the hope that she would no longer need to deny her Jewish identity, but now found that this was something she still had to do.

LXXIV

Alex

2035

“My people will never be held ransom by its neighbours,” said Tabitha as she sprawled beside Alex on his roomy double bed.

Alex glanced towards the television that was burbling on in the background as it had been for the whole time that he and his fellow senior executive director were enjoying the pleasures of one another’s luxuriant flesh and stomach bulges that was the inevitable penalty of too many business lunches. The news story was about the stand-off in the Korean peninsula between the belligerent North and the ever conciliatory South.

“Your people?” asked Alex, who was somewhat puzzled by Tabitha’s statement. What had this to with the staff in the Strategy Division of which she was director?

“Israel,” said Tabitha.

“Israel?” wondered Alex. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Fuck sake, Alex,” said Tabitha with obvious irritation. “It’s got everything to do with almost everything you can think of.” She returned Alex’s bewildered expression with something that approximated to understanding pity. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“Did you even know I was an Israeli citizen?” she asked.

“No, I didn’t,” said Alex who’d never once thought about it.

“Well, that figures,” said Tabitha. “You really don’t pay any attention, do you? I’d have thought it was obvious.”

“I never think about people’s nationalities,” said Alex. Although this wasn’t always absolutely true, it was certainly so with regards to Tabitha. In fact, until very recently Alex hadn’t thought much about Tabitha at all.

She was a relatively new member of Talpha Apps’ executive board and Alex was taken as much unawares as everyone else by her rapid rise in status in the organisation. Within a few months of not having achieved much of demonstrable value she now boasted a salary that wasn’t far short of Alex’s and had gained the respect of the rest of the board; although this was more for her decisiveness and energy than her professional expertise. She’d recognised that Alex as a potential kindred spirit and without doubt as a man who couldn’t resist the tempting offer of a fuck when it came his way.

Tabitha was almost certainly the oldest woman Alex had ever had sex with although, depressingly, she wasn’t actually very much older than him. Nonetheless, of the two of them she was the one who’d made the better job at concealing the ravages of the passing years. While Alex’s paunch was now too obvious to hide under a belt hoisted up high and the bald spot on his crown was too large to be hidden under a discreet comb-over, Tabitha had compensated for the increasing kilograms of flesh with expensive pedicures, sympathetic skin therapy and a subtle and intelligent use of make-up. She was now encouraging Alex to take that long-resisted step of taking advantage of his executive gym membership. After all, it cost the company a fortune just to keep renewing it for him.

“I was born an Israeli citizen,” said Tabitha. “I did my military service after graduating. I’m proud to hold an Israeli passport. And I can tell you that if we were pushed around by the Syrians, the Jordanians, the Lebanese, or—God help us all—the Palestinians in anything like the way the North Koreans do their southern neighbours there’d be a smell of burning flesh from one end of the Middle East to the other. It’s because Israel never compromises, never stands down, never shows weakness, that we remain strong and why we shall never be in the same sorry state as South Korea.”

Alex wasn’t the sort of man who’d expend effort on an argument he knew he could never win. It was obvious that Tabitha would countenance no difference of opinion, although Alex had known many people, most of them women, who expressed rather more sympathy for the Palestinians whose houses were bulldozered and whose cities were bombed than for an Israel bristling with nukes. However, he couldn’t resist mentioning how much the military support from the United States was critical to Israel’s survival.

“That is a typical Anglo-Saxon opinion,” Tabitha almost spat out in defiance. “It’s the opinion that the guilt and shame of allowing the Holocaust to happen was the sole reason for the foundation of the State of Israel. It’s an opinion that belittles the achievements of a proud nation united by race and religion on the pretence that it’s secured entirely by American money and American votes. Even when America falls, Israel will stand tall. It is our destiny. It can never be otherwise.”

Alex still wasn’t sure how much or whether at all he would benefit from having a relationship with a work colleague, especially one as senior as Tabitha. It was less difficult to see how Tabitha might benefit from a relationship with him. It did her no harm at all to embed herself in a position with regards to the rest of the Executive Board from which it would be impossible to dislodge her. It would also benefit her if her relationship resulted in marriage. It would double her disposable wealth more or less at a stroke. And it would be even more to her benefit if she later became the wronged partner in a subsequent divorce. But despite knowing this, Alex wasn’t a man who could easily turn down an opportunity for sex even with a lover as formidable as Tabitha.

Alex was drawn to the very thing that also most troubled him about having a relationship with a woman who was his social equal on so many levels. His relationships in the last couple of years had been a series of short liaisons with much younger women who were totally unsuitable as long-term partners. In most cases these relationships were predicated pretty much on exchanging sex for money and status, so they weren’t too unlike using the services of prostitutes that since Alex no longer had any difficulty in affording he was also more often tempted by. At least a relationship with Tabitha wasn’t compromised by disparities of age and income that were too obvious.

“I’m not sure,” said Alex a few days later when Tabitha remarked that they should formalise their relationship by making it public knowledge. “Isn’t there something a bit wrong about someone who’s not at all Jewish marrying someone who is? Aren’t there restrictions on that sort of thing?”

“It would have to be a proper Jewish wedding,” speculated Tabitha more to herself than anyone else. “If it got that far, of course. And you’d have to get circumcised.”

“You’re kidding right?” said an alarmed Alex.

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” asked Tabitha whose face betrayed no trace of humour whatsoever. She pulled at the foreskin of Alex’s limp penis as it trailed over his thigh. “This thing is absolutely disgusting! If we were to stay together, I’d have to insist you did something about it. And it’s not a religious thing, either. It’s just commonsense hygiene.”

“Is it?” asked Alex, who nevertheless wondered why, if that was so, that no one had ever mentioned it to him before.

Although Alex didn’t know it at the time, this exchange was to be the highpoint of his relationship with Tabitha. Over the subsequent weeks, he became increasingly aware that Tabitha’s attitude towards him had begun to cool. It was no longer Tabitha who would make arrangements for them to meet at a restaurant, wine bar or West End show, but Alex who would remind her that they should do so.

At the same time, Alex became aware that he was no longer the only man on the Executive Board who attracted Tabitha’s wandering gaze.

Tom wasn’t divorced, separated or single. As far as Alex could see, he’d been happily married for many years now. He was also no more Jewish than Alex. Furthermore, he was some ten years older than Alex and the years had taken a visible toll. He was almost entirely bald, his stomach strained at shirt buttons that were often too tight and the bags under his eyes had become a permanent feature. No one could say that Tom was a better physical catch than Alex, but Tabitha had quite clearly fixed her attention on him.

Alex could see why Tom might be an attractive proposition for Tabitha, despite being non-Jewish, middle-aged and already married. He’d been on the Executive Board for rather longer than anyone else and he actually knew something about the products that Talpha Apps sold to the world. He was one of the few executives whose opinion the company’s technical and professional staff paid any attention to, although he was visibly more at ease in the company of those who knew better how to regurgitate clichés and buzz words than express anything of insight or meaning. He was demonstrably more senior than Alex in status, competence and usefulness to the company although his salary was pretty much the same. Alex could see that if Tabitha could prise him away from his wife, he might well be a better stepping stone for her than Alex could ever be.

The inevitable break-up with Alex didn’t come without pain. It was one of the facts of life to which Alex had become well accustomed over the years that the more someone drew away from you the more desperately you wanted things to stay much the same. Tabitha’s visits to Alex’s bed became less frequent whilst Alex was no longer invited back to Tabitha’s Docklands apartment with its delightful view of the newly reinforced flood barriers.  In contrast, the sex they had together was becoming more fervent and passionate. This was also a familiar pattern known to Alex.

“What about Mrs Turner?” asked Alex as if it mattered to Tabitha when she at last broke the news that her relationship with Tom had reached the stage where it was no longer appropriate that she should continue to have sex with Alex (not that her passion in the last hour or so had noticeably declined).

“It’s Tom’s decision what he does with his life,” said Tabitha baldly. “If he wants to move on, that’s his choice. His wife will just have to accept that society’s movers and the shakers sometimes just have to move on to greener pastures. Tom isn’t a man who’s content to stand still. He has a passion to succeed and get ahead.”

It was difficult for Alex to reconcile his image of Tom with Tabitha’s depiction of him as a dynamic manager. Alex knew him as a man who he’d only ever seen get agitated when a waiter in the restaurant was slow in serving him or when a taxi was late to arrive. Generally, he was avuncular, unhurried and imperturbable. His value in Executive Board meetings was mostly on those few occasions when it was necessary that someone who understood the business should venture an opinion. On such rare occasions, he manifestly enjoyed milking the other executives’ anticipation while he slowly elaborated why something might or might not be a good decision (although he never once ruled against the expert opinion of his technical advisors).

And so Alex was left on the shelf. His relationship with Tabitha had never been made public knowledge, unlike hers with Tom. She soon consolidated her status as his new fiancée while also expecting and receiving the congratulations and good wishes of the other board members.

It was Alex who was now in the more junior position. His longer sojourn on the board counted for nothing in comparison with the charisma of a woman of drive and ambition. It was obvious she was now a very likely candidate for the position of Chief Executive Officer if the current one should move on.

Alex’s main hope now was that his past relationship would remain an asset and never become a liability. But that could only happen if he maintained a very high level of discretion.

And so this was one relationship that neither he nor Tabitha could ever acknowledge had ever happened.

LXXV

Eugenie

2101

Not many were left in Eugenie’s original posse after they’d been forcibly evicted from the mansion in which they’d been squatting in Hampstead. Ned had been shot in the back by the Security Officers while he was trying to escape by scrambling over the wall. Natalie had been bundled into the back of a van in which at the very least she’d be raped. Of the thirty or forty people who’d crammed into the Hampstead mansion after word about it had slipped out and others had settled in, only half a dozen of them were now in Eugenie’s company. And it wasn’t because she knew better than anyone else what to do. Ever since their eviction, they’d been wandering aimlessly beside the north periphery of the M11 motorway on which only the wealthy could travel and alongside which an electrified fence acted as a barrier to any invasion from rabid foxes and desperate plebs.

There was probably once a time when Epping Forest was a desirable part of North London in which to live, but there was nothing particularly special about it now. The plague and famine that ravaged London as much as it had the rest of England had been especially savage in the suburban sprawl between the railway stations of Theydon Bois and Coppersale Common. It was especially tragic given that this wooded district had earned a good reputation as a refuge to those who’d sought to live an alternative lifestyle set apart from the general poverty of modern England. Unfortunately, good intentions and utopian idealism had proved to be no protection at all against the ravages of the plague.

Alone amongst her companions, Eugenie felt almost at home in the fields and woodland of Epping; no longer trudging through Central London’s dilapidated ruins. This was what she knew best. Plough-horses on open fields. Ragged beggars huddled by the roadside. Poachers who survived on the flesh of the rabbits, birds and feral dogs they’d caught in their traps. Improvised cottages where people who’d never before known the sweat and toil of a life on the soil now had to adjust through necessity to a life of bare subsistence.

“The countryside is real weird,” said Tony. “It must be like home to you. All these fields and shit. How d’you find anything to eat round here?”

“We’ll find a way,” said Eugenie, who wasn’t quite as sure of herself as her demeanour suggested.

“Perhaps we should go hunting for animals and stuff,” said Tinkerbelle, who despite her name only resembled the Disney fairy because she was rather short and not at all by virtue of her Ethiopian ancestry. “I killed a cat once and ate it. It didn’t taste good, but I was fucking hungry. It made all the fucking difference.”

“I don’t like the look of those boys over there,” said Andy pointing at a gang of youths who were sauntering about in workmen’s clothes and wielding improvised clubs. “We ought to get as far away from them as we possibly can.”

Eugenie respected Andy’s nose for trouble. He’d already saved several times their motley crew from calamity on the long trail from Hampstead through the ruins of Chigwell and the ganglands of Wanstead. As Eugenie was the only person in the company who’d ever lived in a country village outside of London, everyone looked towards her for guidance. The general view was that a childhood spent in the East Midlands country was essential preparation for the wilds of London’s outermost parks.

“We’ll head for those trees over there,” Eugenie announced as she gestured towards the forest edge. “If those guys make a run for us we can easily find somewhere to hide.”

The most discrete way for six young people to slip out of sight almost certainly wasn’t to walk across an open field towards the nearby woods while constantly checking behind them that they weren’t being chased, but they weren’t many other options. The other avenues of escape were blocked off and, in any case, Eugenie was already concerned about where they should all sleep for the night. Perhaps there’d be a bush or tree they could sleep under. It would be more comfortable and probably a lot safer than what they most often had to resort to.

Fortunately, there was no need to make haste. The youths might be swaggering in a way that suggested trouble, but it was a necessary show for such gangs to flaunt their aggression simply to ensure that they wouldn’t be seen as vulnerable and thereby invite trouble from other gangs. Eugenie wondered whether she and her friends, armed as they were with their own makeshift clubs, spears and slingshots, might not make a similar impression on the poor people of Epping. As they strode into the woods following the yellow and blue marker trails that were once there for the benefit of recreational walkers, it was notable how many onlookers made a deliberate diversion to avoid having to come into contact with them.

Not everyone ran away or was able to. When Eugenie and her friends hunted through the foliage for a good patch on which to lay down their torn and soiled sleeping bags, they disturbed someone who was far too ill to run away. This was a woman in her early thirties huddled into a tight curled ball under several threadbare blankets in the midst of an expansive ornamental bush that the deer hadn’t yet nibbled away. She pulled her blanket tight to her throat and stared up with an expression of utter terror at Tony when he discovered her in the undergrowth.

“Don’t worry, we’re not gonna rape you,” said Andy.

“You don’t have to worry about us,” said Amy who, although she was a girl, was also the largest person in the posse. Her style of dress was a deliberately incongruous mix of short cropped hair and a filthy lace-hemmed dress. “We’re just looking for somewhere to sleep the night.”

“You ain’t got plague, have you?” Tinkerbelle asked with genuine alarm. “I thought this area was certified safe.”

The woman shook her head and replied through encrusted lips and a hoarse throat. “I’m a survivor,” she said. “Most people in the kibbutz caught it. So did I. The difference was that I survived. Most of those who got it didn’t.”

“So, what’ve you got, if it ain’t plague?” asked Amy who instinctively raised a rag to her mouth.

“I dunno,” the woman admitted. “It’s not plague. I guess it must be a cold or something.”

“I’m not taking chances,” announced Eugenie. “I’m keeping back. There’ve been so many plagues and contagions these last few years you just can’t be sure. Maybe it’s a new thing going round. Now there aren’t any cures anymore for the latest strains of flu, gon, cholera, typhoid or pox, almost anything can be the one that takes you out. Even measles or mumps might be a killer these days.”

Nevertheless, Eugenie and her friends weren’t going to just abandon such an obviously vulnerable woman. In any case, what she was suffering from had more to do with having to sleep on a damp blanket in the pouring rain rather than the plague. Her symptoms were totally different from what she’d have had if she’d had the plague. In any case, it was considered lucky to hang out with someone who’d survived a contagion.

The woman’s name was Tamara and she’d been part of a settlement that had been established in the middle of the forest before it was ransacked and firebombed. The settlement had been a kind of commune rather like some of the better organised squats in North London, but it went by the weird name of a kibbutz.

“Why’d you call it that?” Amy wondered. “Was it something to do with someone called Kibbert?”

“No. There was no one with that name,” said Tamara. “It’s a Jewish word. It’s a kind of self-reliant community that used to be pretty common in Israel.”

“Are you a Jew?” Tinkerbelle asked innocently. “I didn’t think there were any Jews left after all those nukes went off.”

“It was your lot, the Jews, that started the war,” said Tony with second-hand indignation. “I don’t imagine you’re at all popular with the Arabs and Pakis who live round here.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Tamara said, “but those of us in the kibbutz kept ourselves to ourselves and we didn’t cause any trouble.  Most of us weren’t at all proud about our nation’s role in the war, but that’s just history now. There’s been more than twenty-five years since then. I was only a child when it all happened and all I’ve ever known of Israel is nuclear fallout and radiation poison.”

“So what happened to the kibbutz?” asked Eugenie. “Why’s it no longer going?”

“It was the plague that did it,” said Tamara. “We thought we might be safe when the latest outbreak began two or three years ago. We weren’t living in a big city centre and we did what we could to keep ourselves away from it all. But like everyone else we soon found that the antibiotics being sold in the shops were useless when it started again.”

Eugenie wasn’t the only one in her crew with unhappy memories of the plague. There were the quarantined zones; the armed guards with orders to shoot anyone straying where they shouldn’t; the hastily assembled signs that warned people away from infected areas; and, of course, the plague itself. Eugenie wasn’t the only one who’d lost everything to the ravages of a virus that knew no borders, was immune to all medicine and was fatal to almost everyone who fell victim to it. Tamara’s experience was almost worse than anyone since she’d actually been infected and at one time was sure that she’d soon be dead. At the same time as her, the others in the kibbutz, including Tobias and his girlfriend, also became infected and died within a day or so of exhibiting the first symptoms. Before it was over and Tamara was well enough to count herself as one of the rare lucky ones, the kibbutz was reduced to less than a third of its original number and was barely able to support itself. Those who’d survived were traumatised by the distress of having to bury and burn the bodies of the recently deceased and, until very recently, dearly beloved.

The story was a familiar one to Eugenie who’d come across many devastated communities on her northward trek from Hampstead. First plague and then not long after: pillage, pestilence and penury. Nevertheless, there were tasks that Eugenie and her posse had to attend to so that they could survive and Tamara’s value, above everything else, was that she was familiar with the local terrain. She’d be able to guide Eugenie’s crew away from hostile gangs or places where the plague was still prevalent. It would be ironic that now, when the outbreak had almost petered out, Eugenie were to die from its very last gasps. A fire was assembled from the dead branches and rubbish lying around. Eugenie and her friends huddled with Tamara around the light of its flickering flames as the balmy autumn dusk drew in. Not everyone was gathered together as it was Amy’s turn to act as look-out for hostile gangs that might be hunting for easy pickings in the dark shadows of the night.

“It wasn’t long after the worst of the plague had passed that the Muslim gangs descended on the kibbutz,” said Tamara. “They call themselves Jihadists and I guess they believe that they’re serving their faith by engaging in Holy War against the Jews.  Of course, we’d joked about the jihadists when there were plenty of people in the kibbutz who could defend us. One joke was that our kibbutz was like a West Bank Settlement. This was meant ironically because it was precisely the defence of illegal settlements on land owned by another nation that was the trigger for the war that destroyed Israel. After the plague had done its worst, we were demoralised, miserable and easy prey.”

The attack on the kibbutz was intense and violent but undisciplined and chaotic. Tamara managed to escape from the fray with nothing worse than a scar on her shoulder from a jihadist flick-knife and exchanged her survival for the coat by which she was grabbed and from which she managed to struggle free. She fled as quickly as she could: more concerned about her own survival than by the plight of her fellow kibbutzniks, but as she later discovered little mercy was shown to those she’d abandoned. The women were gang-raped with little regard for age and few were allowed to live. The men were spared the indignity of rape in most cases, but not spared either the terror or the torture that followed.

“Is it part of the Muslim religion to do that kind of stuff?” wondered Tinkerbelle.

“Of course not,” said Tony. “It’s just extremists. Anyway they’re still pretty pissed off by the millions of Muslims who’d died in the war.”

“I guess us Jews think we’d already suffered enough when living in what’s left of Israel without also having to face the same thing here in England,” said Tamara. “But you’re right. It’s not religion that makes people behave the way they did, any more than it was ever a Jewish commandment to bulldozer Palestinian apartments, fire missiles into foreign cities or launch Armageddon on the peoples of Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine.”

“Any excuse for a fight, eh?” said Tinkerbelle sarcastically.

LXXVI

Eugenie

2102

For all her life until now and especially after having travelled south to London, Eugenie had lived in fear and dread of gangs and most especially gang members. Wasn’t gang culture just one of the many reasons why everything was shit these days? Rape, violence, theft and murder: no one could pretend there was anything virtuous in the activities of England’s many gangs whether they were based in Central London, Nottingham or here in the Outer London suburb of Uxbridge.

So why was Eugenie now a fully initiated member of one of the most notorious gangs in all London known by the almost ludicrously innocuous name of The Youth Club?

It wasn’t that her membership was merely casual or superficial. The proof of this was the crude U-shaped tattoo etched across the blue stubble of her shaved forehead and pate. She was attired in a peculiarly feral uniform threaded through with feathers and furs that gave gang members an untamed appearance. She’d submitted to the excruciatingly long, undeniably messy and rather painful mass gang-bang that was the mandatory initiation rite for all female members of the Youth Club. She was rechristened with the gang name of YouTube Chick. This was a phrase whose ultimate meaning was lost on Eugenie but which she understood was extremely obscene. She’d become versed in phrases and symbols whose meaning and significance was deliberately obscure to anyone not already a member of the Youth Club and whose real purpose was to announce her allegiance to other gang members in awkward situations. The one rule of conduct that bound members of the gang together was that no one member should knowingly kill, rape or main another without the consent of other members of the gang. It was a security of sorts that Eugenie treasured in these lawless days.

This precarious protection against violence wasn’t the only privilege of gang membership and it wasn’t the principle reason that Eugenie had sought out membership when she’d stumbled into Uxbridge town centre. This came after a long hazardous journey around London’s outermost perimeter along the electrified fences that fortified the M25 motorway. The fence wasn’t there only to protect motorists from the unwanted attention of the mendicant poor and desperate. It also served as a firewall against the spread of plague across the Republic’s town and countryside. Eugenie soon discovered how foolish it would be to was to approach the electrified fence. This only served to attract the attention of armed guards and their exceptionally vicious genetically-enhanced dogs. She’d come across the bodies of other travellers who’d ventured too close to the high fences that protected the privileged few from the unwashed and poorly fed majority.

It wasn’t because Eugenie was especially drawn to the London suburb of Uxbridge that she’d made the journey from Epping Forest. In fact, she had no reason to expect that the London Borough of Hillingdon would be any better than her original home. Her trek wasn’t one she’d have willingly chosen.

After more than four years, the plague that had forced Eugenie to leave her home in the East Midlands was still devastating England just as it was the rest of the world. Eugenie had heard that it was the nation’s worst such pandemic since the Black Death, but as there had been several other such outbreaks in the last forty or so years that had been compared to the infamous Mediaeval scourge the comparison had become increasingly stale. However, Eugenie knew for sure that it had devastated her life and those of everyone she knew. The only people safe from the virus were those wealthy enough to live in the fenced-in villages and suburbs that Eugenie could never enter. The wealthy might occasionally fall victim to the plague but they had access to hospital care, air-conditioned homes and plenty of food. All that must surely have helped them keep the worst of the contagion at bay.

The civil authorities generally ignored Eugenie and her companions. They were no more protected from violence or theft than they were persecuted for vagrancy. The English government’s main concern was to address the anxieties of the ever-diminishing number of people still eligible to vote: a privilege wholly dependent on property-ownership. As long as Eugenie didn’t trespass into streets and districts that had restricted access she was as invisible to the authorities in the Outer Suburbs as she’d been in Central London.

All the same, when a fresh incident of the plague was reported in the vicinity of Theydon Bois, it was the presence of people such as Eugenie that swiftly attracted the attention of the Contagion Control Police who’d been directed to the London Borough of Waltham Forest to round up and evict all vagrants and non-domiciled residents. There was a rumour that they would be transported to the plague-ridden city of Milton Keynes where a slow and painful death was almost certain.

There was no coordination or plan to their escape when Eugenie and her friends first spotted the armed police run over the fields towards the woods where they lived accompanied by their ferocious dogs. Those who ran the slowest, such as Tamara, were left behind to the policemen’s mercy. Eugenie, Tinkerbelle and Andy raced through the woods towards London’s Metropolitan Border until their path was blocked by the electrified fence that ran alongside the M25 orbital.

For the next few weeks Eugenie and her friends followed the fence westwards as it circled North London. There was little to eat and the only places where they could shelter were in the overgrown woods and fields that now belonged to no one. They had to make the occasional diversion around obstacles to their path such as the turnings off the M25 and the private estates hidden behind armed defences that were even more insurmountable than those protecting the motorway. When Eugenie walked past the well-mown lawns, the roads free of potholes and the private shopping malls that were the preserve of only the privileged few, she felt both anger and envy that so much of England’s wealth was concentrated in so few hands. Had it always been like this? Maybe the disparity in wealth was just somewhat more obvious nowadays after all the ravages of economic collapse, climate change, foreign war and, of course, plague. Eugenie had heard that there had once been a golden age in which ordinary people could afford to fly by aeroplane to foreign countries for nothing more than personal pleasure and when every household had reliable access to electricity and water.

Eugenie was alone by the time she’d reached Uxbridge. Andy was last seen running for his life from a huge, slobbering genetically-enhanced guard dog that would probably eat him if it had the opportunity He’d been rather too optimistic when he ignored the warning sign outside an orchard and allowed his hunger to exceed his common sense.

Eugenie didn’t know what had happened to Tinkerbelle after a night when they’d slept on different floors of a disused watchtower on the perimeter of a now derelict farm. There was no sign of her friend when Eugenie woke up. It was quite likely that Tinkerbelle had been abducted even though there was no sign of struggle. Isolated communities that were short of women were known to go to extraordinary lengths to ameliorate the gender ratio. It was also possible that Tinkerbelle had left of her own accord. She’d become increasingly depressed ever since Andy had run away. The two of them had been very intimate.

So by the time Eugenie arrived in Uxbridge, she was desperately lonely as well as hungry and weary. Was it any wonder that when she saw Billy Bollocks—as he’d been christened by the Youth Club gang—that she would be drawn to him? It wasn’t for his apparent charm or good looks so much—of which there was a complete absence—as it was for his possession of a bag of groceries that he’d stolen from a woman as she was leaving a heavily defended supermarket complex. Eugenie didn’t know the details of how he’d acquired the groceries, but in any case she didn’t really care one way or the other. She’d not eaten anything substantial since she’d trapped and skinned a rabbit several days earlier.

Billy Bollocks would have been a truly unexceptional looking young man if he wasn’t so extravagantly tattooed: especially around his shaved head. His aggressive personality wasn’t expressed in either his physical stature or his height, as he was actually rather shorter than Eugenie, but rather by his eccentric clothing. He was flamboyantly adorned in feathers, fur and slogans stitched into the leather and denim that affirmed his gang loyalty. He had an ugly scar across one cheek and over a left eye that was notably dull and expressionless.

“What I wouldn’t give for a bite of that,” said Eugenie boldly as she walked up to Billy in clothes that were as ragged and eccentric as his, but less from design than mishap. She pointed at a can of Heinz Alphabet Soup and a Ginster’s Cornish Pasty.

Billy glared at Eugenie with an expression that lightened his general expression of hostility with a touch of amusement. He held an army knife in one hand that he could easily use to ensure that Eugenie would surrender everything she had irrespective of whether there was a likelihood of reward. He smiled grimly.

“What are you suggesting then, you slut?” he asked.

“A bit of this,” said Eugenie who pulled up her skirt to reveal that she wasn’t wearing any knickers. “I’m a good fuck,” she added, in case that wasn’t enough of a hint.

“I’m sure you are,” said Billy, who contemplated the wild unkempt hair between Eugenie’s thighs with some interest. “But I bet you’ll only want to fuck if you get to eat first.”

“I’ll have more energy if I do,” Eugenie conceded. “Otherwise I’ll be too weak to give you as good a fuck as you deserve.”

Billy considered this. “Yeah,” he said. “That makes sense. All right. We’ll fuck after. Just don’t get any ideas about running away when you’ve eaten. This knife’s killed plenty in its time. See the notches. Each one marks a scalp. I can be a really mean fucker if you cross me, you slag.”

“A deal’s a deal,” said Eugenie who nestled down beside Billy and waited her turn while he took first shares of all the grocery items that he’d stolen.

Eugenie honoured her compact. Well, she’d be stupid not to, even though a fuck was about the last thing she’d really wanted. She hoped that her faked moans and occasional reciprocal thrusts would further endear her to the aptly named Billy Bollocks.

It was obvious that he’d taken a shine to Eugenie however qualified her affection was towards him. He was an aggressive lover who fucked hard and snorted as he did so. He thrust his cock as deep into her cunt as he could and shoved his filthy oily fingers up her arse at the same time. He’d seen plenty of pornos, so he splattered his semen over her face and onto her chest although it really wasn’t necessary and certainly wasn’t something that Eugenie enjoyed.

She followed Billy back to where he lived with the rest of the Youth Club gang. The neighbourhood was spread over a number of suburban houses in a cul de sac at the end of a long street that had been chosen because it offered a good strategic view of any approaching hostile gang. Eugenie wasn’t exactly welcomed by the other gang members and Billy didn’t make it especially easy for her. She could see that the gang was a tight group of people, many related to one another, and that they were automatically suspicious of outsiders. But Eugenie was hungry. She’d not slept on a mattress for many months and she didn’t care anymore who she had to fuck to get what she wanted.

At first, she only had sex with Billy, but Eugenie knew that she’d soon be kicked out of the relative comfort of the four bedroom house with en suite bathroom and conservatory if she didn’t spread herself more widely amongst the company.

So she built up the trust of the Youth Club gang by being open with her body and sharing all the drugs that passed by. Of course, it would be stupid to be known only as a slag, so she also helped the other girls do the housework and cooking that was expected of them when they weren’t lying prostrate on a mattress with their legs in the air. As time passed she won enough trust that associate membership of the Youth Club gang became pretty much inevitable.

And now she was one of those who not so long ago she had feared and despised. She was one of the parasites on ordinary people who were unable to fend off the violence, theft and bullying that was doled out by the Youth Club, just as it was by the many other gangs in North West London. But as she chewed on the food that was stolen and got high on the drugs that were the subject of the most nearly legitimate commerce the gang was involved in, she knew that when she went to sleep it would be indoors, on a mattress, and out of the rain, the sleet and the wind. She mightn’t be able to choose who she would have sex with and she might have difficulty reconciling her lifestyle with her conscience, but she now had a lot to be grateful for.

For all the aggravation, pain and humiliation of gang rape, non-anaesthetised piercing and home-made tattoos, it was all worth it when Eugenie considered the other alternatives that she’d got to know so well after having slept under bushes, huddling under the dark shadow of ancient overpasses and in abandoned barns. She had enough to eat, she had somewhere to sleep and she now had a loyal group of friends who would take huge delight in using their knives and cudgels to cripple or maim anyone foolish enough to assault her.

LXXVII

Psychlone

2107

If it hadn’t been absolutely necessary, Psychlone would never have left Exeter. It was where he’d been to university and where most of his friends lived. But this was exactly what he’d been forced to do when an outbreak of Hen Flu closed down the entire city. His only other alternative was to suffer an indefinite period of effective house arrest in a city now designated as being in quarantine.

It was only because one of his mother’s old boyfriends happened to own an apartment in Uxbridge that this was now Psychlone’s new home. He’d rarely ever visited London in his life before, but this unremarkable dilapidated suburb near the M40 motorway and serviced by the Metropolitan Line was so far out from the more famous sights of London that it was almost no different from living in an outer suburb of Exeter. But at least it was safe from Hen Flu: a disease whose tortuous path from its origins in Uruguay or Uzbekistan (depending on who you spoke to) was most keenly felt in England’s South Western counties.

Once upon a time, this would have been a model estate in the Borough of Hillingdon, but the area was now somewhat tatty and in places derelict. His neighbours were scarcely wealthy, but mostly they had jobs and their homes were well looked after. The area wasn’t sufficiently wealthy enough for there to be security guards or an electrified fence, so most people protected their homes behind metal doors secured by countless locks and steel bars. Nevertheless, even these weren’t a guaranteed deterrent from the most determined thief as was evident from a nearby house whose windows had been smashed and the front door pulled off its hinges.

Although Psychlone was still wistful about his old haunts in Exeter, there were definite advantages for a professional musician to be living so close to Central London. After he’d fought his way past the beggars gathered about the entrance to the underground station, it took only an hour or two by steam train on the Metropolitan Line to get to the heart of London where he could go to a West End night club and put on live sets for the rich and privileged. He was able to get two or sometimes three bookings a week, mostly on the strength of the monster success of his Eric Esterhazy hit, but he was invariably shattered by the time he caught the early train home the following morning.

Psychlone wasn’t the kind of guy who liked to annoy his neighbours so he preferred to wear headphones when he was making music in the evening or at night, but he liked to take them off when he could to allow his ears to recover. This was one such time. It was midday on a Wednesday when his neighbours were at work. As always, the couple who lived downstairs had left for work early dressed in the uniforms of their professions, which were, respectively, psychiatric nurse and supermarket security guard. The street was quiet. No motorised vehicle would venture down a suburban residential road where it was at risk of being car-jacked, so the only sounds anyone could hear other than the occasional clip-clop of a horse-drawn wagon was the stream of percussive electronic music emanating from the windows of Psychlone’s small flat. So when the front door knocker was rudely hammered in the hallway below him, Psychlone could scarcely pretend that he wasn’t home.

Before he unlatched and unbolted the front door he checked who might be outside through its eyehole. He’d heard plenty of stories about the door being opened by the unwary only to permit a torrent of thieves and mobsters who’d trash the premises and maim anyone foolish enough to offer resistance. However, all Psychlone could see were two girls, one about the same age as him and the other somewhat younger. They were eccentrically dressed: all feathers, leather, rags and tattoos. Their heads were shaved and the younger girl had a gruesome scar across her nose and cheek. On the other hand, eccentric dress was no reliable guide to anything at all. Psychlone’s own style of fashion with his long hair shaved short at the temples and a set of clothes assembled from second-hand clothes shops and market stalls in West London could also be considered eccentric. And many of the wealthy young men and women who crowded out the Fat Pig or the Ursus Majoris were also eccentrically dressed although the price tag for their fashionable clothing would bankrupt Psychlone.

“Yes?” he asked the two girls outside the door. “Who are you and what do you want?”

His initial thought was that the girls were collecting for one of the many worthwhile charities that filled the welfare gap no longer bridged by taxation. Although Psychlone paid taxes, the only benefit he was aware of getting was military defence against the potential threat from the neighbouring Republics of Scotland and Wales.

“We’re insurance collectors,” said the older girl with a curiously mocking smile.

“Insurance collectors?” asked Psychlone sceptically.

“Yeah,” said the younger girl in a high-pitched voice that sounded even younger in years than she looked. “What YouTube said. We’re insurance collectors.”

“You don’t look like insurance collectors.”

“What are we supposed to look like, eh?” said the younger girl. “You fucking tell us. What makes you think we’re not what we say we are, you cunt?”

“Shut it, Sick Chick,” said the girl known as YouTube. “The gentleman has a right to harbour doubts. Haven’t you, sir? What with all the tricksters and thieves around... It’s a wonder anyone can trust anyone, isn’t it?”

“It certainly is,” said Psychlone who wished now that he’d not opened the door. What had possessed him to do such a thing? “What insurance company do you represent?”

“You what?” said Sick Chick. “What the fuck’s an insurance company? What the fuck do they do? You’re a cunt, you are.”

YouTube slapped Sick Chick smartly across the cheek. “Fucking shut it, Sick,” she said sternly. She then addressed Psychlone who was hesitating on the notion of slamming the door on the two uncouth girls. “You just want to know on whose authority we claim to be collecting insurance, don’t you?”

“Well yes. What sort of organisation do you belong to?”

“You mean where do we come from, you arsehole?” piped up the irrepressible Sick as she nursed her cheek. “We’re Youth Club, we are. Don’t you forget it. That’s what we are. The fucking Youth Club.”

“I don’t understand,” said Psychlone who’d heard of youth organisations like the Scouts, the Cadets and the Pioneers. Perhaps the Youth Club was something like that.

“I’ll explain sir,” said YouTube. “As long as Sick Chick here doesn’t keep butting in. You’ll have to excuse her, sir. She’s had a rough life, she has. Most of her childhood she was feral like a cat or a dog. She slept wherever she could and survived by stealing gear and running errands for the bad guys.”

“And you’re not the bad guys?”

YouTube ignored the question. “When we say we’re insurance collectors, we’re telling the truth. It’s what we do. And we don’t ask for much either, sir. For a guy like you, nothing more than a couple of grand...”

“Two thousand pounds!” said Psychlone, alarmed. That was nearly what he earned in a single gig. It was nearly what it cost to travel by train to Exeter and back. “What do I get for two thousand pounds?”

“Two grand a month, sir,” said YouTube. “It’s not extortionate. It gives you a sense of security. You can sleep soundly in your own bed knowing that both your property and your person are going to be safe from harm. It’s surely worth it.”

“And what happens if I don’t pay two thousand pounds?” Psychlone asked.

“We’re fair, sir,” said YouTube. “Some people pay rather lower premiums than others. The old people on the estate who’re living on their savings: they don’t pay so much. It’s only reasonable they should pay less. They’ve got less so they pay less. You’ve got a nice place here, sir. You’ve got a good audio system and you dress real smart. So, you’ll pay a bit more. That seems real right and proper, doesn’t it?”

“I guess so,” said Psychlone. “And what happens if I don’t pay anything?”

“Then you’ll be fucked,” shrieked Sick Chick. “You’ll be fucked like you’ve never been fucked before.”

“Don’t keep butting in, Sick,” said YouTube in a reasonable tone. “The gentleman is asking a perfectly legitimate question. What do you get for your two grand a month? What does your non-negotiable monthly premium bring you? Well, as I say: peace of mind.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Have you ever noticed how many houses in this area have a symbol carved into their front door that looks a bit like a U with a vertical line through it?”

“Well, yes,” said Psychlone. “I just thought it was mindless vandalism...”

“It might be vandalism, sir,” YouTube admitted. “But it’s not mindless. That symbol signifies that the property benefits from the protection of the Youth Club. And for two grand a month we’ll carve a symbol like that on your door. Well, another symbol I should say, because I can see that the couple who live in the flat above you already pay their monthly premiums.”

“Do I have a choice?” asked Psychlone to whom it belatedly occurred that these two girls represented some kind of protection racket.

“The insurance premiums will protect you against robbery, theft, break-ins and mindless violence from the many gangs that wander the streets of North West London,” said YouTube. “You might have heard of the Eyeliners from Hillingdon. You can tell them by their prominent eye makeup: both men and women. They’re real bastards, sir. Only the other day they broke into a convent and raped every nun they could find. Then there are the Lords and Ladies of West Drayton...”

“They’re real fuckers,” said Sick Chick. “It was one of them that knifed me when I was raped a couple of years ago. Right fucking cunts they are.”

“There are gangs like the Ox Hands from Langley and the Nutters from Ickenham. They’re all ruthless and violent. Given the opportunity, they would ransack and burn every single house on this estate but only after they’d slaughtered each and every one of the tenants. It would be mayhem.”

“And the Youth Club?”

“For your very reasonable monthly premium, the Youth Club will not only not bother you in any way, they will guarantee that in the event of one of these vicious gangs entering the borough on a crazed murderous spree you will be defended to the best of our abilities.”

“We’ll tear the fuckers’ eyes out of their heads and strew their guts across the street,” elaborated Sick Chick. “I’ll take a fucking steel rod and fucking ram it up the arse so they’ll know what it’s like to be raped before I crush their fucking heads with a fucking boulder.”

“...But mostly we’ll be acting as a deterrent,” said YouTube.

“And if these gangs never venture this far into Uxbridge?”

“Then your safety can’t be guaranteed, sir,” said YouTube. “You might have noticed the house just a block away that was broken into the other day. The house was assaulted by a gang of youths that pulled off the front door and ran away with all the possessions inside. I can’t say what happened to the people who lived there...”

“They were fucked double time,” said Sick Chick enthusiastically. “Back and front. It was wicked! But they’ll live though. They won’t be so fucking late with the fucking insurance payments in future.”

“As I say, sir,” said YouTube who chose to ignore her companion’s remarks. “There is a penalty incurred if you don’t pay your premiums promptly.”

“I see,” said Psychlone thoughtfully.

“I take it that you’ll be registering for household insurance then, sir?”

“Registering?”

“That’s just figurative, sir. Have you got a couple of grand on you?”

“Not at the moment,” admitted Psychlone.

“We’re understanding people, sir,” said YouTube.

“But only so far, you tight-arsed cunt,” chimed in Sick Chick.

“We know that people don’t always carry much money on them,” YouTube continued. “When do you think you might be able to get the money? Tomorrow perhaps?”

“I think so,” said a defeated Psychlone.

“We’ll be around some time before it gets dark,” said YouTube. “We look forward to a long and happy relationship with you, sir.”

“But don’t think it means you can fuck me, you lech,” said Sick Chick aggressively. “I don’t let any cunt inside my twat. Not unless you’re gonna pay for it, that is.”

“Well thank you for being so understanding, sir,” said YouTube as she placed a firm hand on Sick Chick’s shoulder and turned about. “We’ll see you soon.”

“I’m sure you will,” said Psychlone who now felt humiliated and sick in the stomach.

So, this was what life in London was really like.

LXXVIII

Iris

2059

Although Iris missed living in London while she was living in Oxford, she hadn’t really felt ready to return there from so soon. However, the Biotech Lab was one of the first businesses to shut down when Sheep Fever struck the nation. And now she was effectively evicted from the city along with everyone else who didn’t have an actual job in the city and didn’t have the good fortune to have been born there. The authorities could only extend the charity of quarantine to a limited number of people.

Sheep Fever was such an innocent sounding name for the devastating pandemic whose progress across the world from the Republic of North America to Europe, Africa and Asia had been tracked with such anxiety by the English government and the world’s media. The other name by which it was known—White Death—was a melodramatic echo of the ancient mediaeval plague that expressed rather better the dread and horror evoked by mention of the disease. It was an especially nasty disease that had very little to do with sheep beyond having originated in agricultural land where few humans lived but was still home to unfussy livestock such as sheep and goat. Amongst the symptoms were high temperatures, coughing fits, sickness and diarrhoea. The time in which it took to die was interminable. Despite the frantic efforts of pharmaceutical companies all over the globe, no cure for it had yet been found.

Although the English government was happy to dispense well-meaning but not especially helpful advice, it had no grand plan to avert the worst affects of the White Death as it spread across the Midlands and Home Counties. Like everyone else nowadays, when Iris ventured outdoors she always wore a surgical mask around her mouth or held a handkerchief to her face. She wore gloves in public places and conspicuously avoided shaking hands. The most common means by which White Death was spread was by touching a surface on which someone had coughed or vomited.

The Government of National Unity was definitely in its element in discovering novel ways in which to restrict the freedom of movement of the populace. The Kingdom’s border controls were tightened yet further. Tourists were only permitted into the country if they’d booked to stay at an approved hotel. Any lorry transporting goods into England was obliged to leave them at the dock or airport for English workers to carry onwards to their destination. The railway tunnel between England and France was now bricked up to prevent anyone bringing the disease in from the continent, even though it was actually more widespread in England than anywhere else in Northern Europe.

Draconian restrictions to free movement were imposed across the whole of England, although Greater London had somehow escaped the worst. This was mostly thanks to the improvised defences and barbed wire that had been raised around the inner circumference of the M25 motorway. As a resident of Uxbridge, Iris benefitted from this extra security. The London Borough of Hillingdon had effectively imposed martial law on its council tax payers. No one could walk far before being stopped by a quarantine officer and having their eyes scrutinised for the small white spots in the pupil that was the earliest sign of infection. There were several occasions when Iris witnessed the haste in which those suspected of infection were escorted away by nurses in white uniforms for further examination.

Iris’ attitude towards such a stringent policy was mixed. There was a very high death rate from White Death. Barely one in twenty victims survived once infected. Although she had a great deal of sympathy towards the victims of the plague and, of course, their family and friends, she was secretly pleased to see them dragged off to a place where they were less likely to pass on the disease.

On the whole, it was actually rather boring to live in the midst of the White Death. Because they were forbidden from commuting, most people were unable to get to their usual place of work. Only essential vehicles were allowed to travel from one London borough to another. The exhaustive checks required when getting on or getting off public transport resulted in more time being dedicated to such business than was actually spent travelling. Nonetheless, getting to work was the least of Iris’ concerns. She was unemployed and had to live off what was left of her savings. Even if she had a job in Central London, where most of the opportunities were, she’d never be able to get there to earn a salary. Iris initially relied on the basic food and provisions made available as emergency aid, but as the weeks became months and the White Death kept its grip on the country such generosity became more than either the London Borough of Hillingdon or the English government could any longer afford.

“It makes sense though, doesn’t it?” said Iris’s housemate, Eustace, as they queued outside the labour exchange. “There are jobs to be done and we’re able to do them. The roads aren’t gonna get cleaned by themselves.”

“Or the bodies burnt in the incinerators,” gloomily remarked Yolanda, who’d been dossing down on the sofa in the shared house ever since she’d been evicted from Leyton Buzzard. “Or the barbed wire fences guarded. Or the sick and dying sorted from those who’re gonna live.”

“That’s all true,” Eustace agreed. “It’s all gotta be done. And, anyway, what else would we be doing now? I mean, what I ought to be doing is working at my desk in Holborn, but with so many businesses suspended during the crisis, what else can I do? And we get to do our bit to help our country in its time of need.”

Iris felt a bit weary as she listened to her housemate echo the propaganda being broadcast on Fox News UK and, with noticeably less enthusiasm, the EBC. It wasn’t that she disagreed with the essential message that the best way to get through the White Death was for people to work together for the common good. What troubled her more was how the government had somehow made the crisis fit its xenophobic, business-friendly, insular agenda. Not only had the barriers between nations been strengthened, but every possible way to monitor, interfere and marshal the population was being applied. And ultimately to what end? And to what extent was it simply to keep Sheep Fever at bay?

Those already protected from the vagaries of the greater world by their wealth—sheltered in gated communities and escorted in chauffeur-driven cars—suffered far less than most of the population. Those suffering the most lived in districts once noted for their ethnic diversity, such as Brixton, Bradford and Southall. These were the most rigidly quarantined districts and where there was most opportunity to deport people to distant nations that many didn’t know even existed. Iris was lucky not to live in such a borough just as she was to be white, middle class and university-educated, but she was also aware that there was a small minority for whom this crisis was little more than an inconvenience. And it was to uphold the rights of this privileged minority that the government was at its most active.

The jobs that the Labour Exchange assigned to Iris were really no worse than those she’d been given when she worked on the Work Experience Programme in East London. She was far more fortunate than those allotted the decidedly more risky jobs. Iris’ most frequent assignment was to organise the distribution of fruit and vegetables from the borough’s borders to the supermarkets and grocery stores that sold them to people who, like Iris, had earned sufficient work credits to be exchanged for food, clothing and other necessities. Eustace and Yolanda were most often assigned to distribute batteries to those who had no privately installed source of electrical power.

Most people needed to earn a living by whatever means they could during the crisis.  Only a few of those who lived in Uxbridge had places of work within walking distance of their homes, so they mostly had to exchange their labour for work credits. Whether consciously or not, it was apparent that the local government was discriminating against some and showed preference to others. Those who were black or brown or had difficult-to-pronounce names were those most likely to be allocated jobs which Iris, despite her burgeoning social conscience, was pleased to have been excused from.

The White Death was no joke. Those who had the closest contact with the people and places where it had struck were inevitably those most at risk of contracting it and then becoming part of the statistical 95% whose fate was to die in a crowded hospital ward after several agonising weeks of suffering. And it was precisely to such places as hospitals, crematoria, border defences and quarantine zones that people like Juanita Mendez, Tammy Zenawi and Bobby Nidal were assigned. No statistics were issued of the relative proportion of those so assigned who subsequently fell victim to White Death.

The countless public service announcements issued by the government emphasised a very curious kind of Englishness that was as alien to Iris as it was to the majority of Uxbridge’s residents. The bulldog spirit invoked to confront the crisis was resplendent with references to the music of Edgar Elgar, cream teas, warm beer, cricket pitches and old-fashioned tea-shops. The implied message was that an alternative England that might include dance music, mosques and skateboard parks was no longer wanted.

All the same, the White Death’s tight grip on England’s throat couldn’t last forever. Nevertheless, despite the many assurances from the government and the many apparent breakthroughs, no cure was ever found for the disease. Sheep Fever remained incurable to the end. It was still a disease from which only one in twenty people were likely to survive. The news stories became less about the search for the killer cure and more an account of how science and medicine, even in China and Russia, but most certainly in England and America, had at last met its match.

Iris was no disinterested observer with regard to this particular news story. Her study at university and her research in biotechnology had given her experience and expertise in the rather older disciplines that three centuries earlier had resulted in the first ever inoculations against smallpox in England. The microscopic entities that infected every human being on the planet had ever since been evolving at a rate that now surpassed human ingenuity in finding a cure. Before the advent of the White Death, every bacterial or viral mutation had been countered, usually at great expense, by an antidote that subjugated the menace to little more than a few hundred unfortunate deaths and yet another government-backed investment in the pharmaceutical industry.

The pace of evolution had now overtaken human science and human material resources. The ultimate defeat of the Sheep Fever pandemic resulted more from the ancient policy of separating the infected from those not yet infected and of allowing the virus die with its host. From Ipswich to Penzance, from Carlisle to the Isle of Wight, and from Shanghai via Nashville to Stockholm, this was a plague whose demise simply illustrated the prosaic fact that no parasite that kills its hosts can continue to spread when there are no new hosts to which it can spread.

It was several more weeks after the White Death pandemic had subsided that the Metropolitan Line could reopen and the makeshift crematoria alongside the Uxbridge canals could at last close down. It was also a time of fresh employment opportunity though not necessarily of the type for which Iris was best suited. There was much that needed to be done and there was a shortage of people able to do it. In London, as in all the world’s great cities that had suffered the most from White Death, such as New York, Paris and Johannesburg, there was the inevitable sharp bounce back from the poverty and fear that had been associated with the plague.

Like most of her friends, Iris wondered whether a government that had profited so much during a crisis where small minds and small horizons could flourish was really best suited to engage with a period of new hope, new expectations and new opportunities. But for now she was just pleased that she could at last travel by underground train into the city centre to work in an office or restaurant and that she no longer had to walk around all day with a strip of cloth strapped over her mouth.

LXXIX

Lindiwe

2069

Although this was by no means the first time in her life that Lindiwe had been ill, she’d never before felt as desperately sick as she was now. Her luck had run out. The Buffalo Pox that had spread across England as it had the rest of Europe, Africa and Asia had finally chased her down. The horrible boils of pus on her face and chest could never be symptoms of anything else. And here she was, still living in the same Redhill squat which had been her home for almost a year with only hard floorboards on which to sleep.

As a result of the fever and pain from which she suffered, all Lindiwe could do was shiver and sweat in the corner of the room swaddled in a blanket with her consciousness lapsing periodically into blessed oblivion. She needed food and drink, but didn’t have the energy to leave the small spot in the room that she’d claimed as her own and venture out to beg on the mean streets of North Surrey. In any case, she wasn’t sure she even had the ability to hold anything in her stomach once she’d let it slip down her throat.

It was obvious that Lindiwe was sick. She sat huddled against the mildewed wall displaying the typical symptoms of Buffalo Pox such as horrible festering sores and postulating boils. This was reason enough for anyone to keep their distance. Any contact with Lindiwe or with anything she touched could easily spread further a plague that had already claimed so many lives across the world

Lindiwe was sure that there had once been a time when pandemics of this kind were countered with an antidote that would later be released to the public. Such days were gone and these days many new strains of cholera, diphtheria, typhoid, hepatitis and leprosy had taken a fresh hold on those least well prepared to defend themselves against it. The limits to a pandemic’s range wasn’t determined only by the spread of poverty and access to medicine. It was spreading much further as scientific progress was no longer keeping ahead of the pathogens’ rapid mutation. This was England’s second great epidemic in just over ten years, but the first Lindiwe had known since she’d arrived in the Kingdom. It was ironic that although she’d managed to avoid the many truly horrible diseases that had ravaged Lesotho and neighbouring South Africa it was in England that Lindiwe was finally laid low.

The English had almost certainly learnt lessons from the last plague, still known as the White Death, but that knowledge was compromised by the fact that it had happened during the period of the Government of National Unity whose one redeeming feature was its natural instinct for prompt authoritarian action. The government could be congratulated for having put into place a truly radical response: in which England’s borders were hermetically sealed, internal movement regulated and vast areas of Southern England, the Midlands and the Home Counties quarantined, but such praise was compromised by the fact that such policies were the knee-jerk response of an insular, almost racist, government very much in the pocket of big business. Nothing was considered more precious or sacrosanct than the welfare of those least likely to suffer, so the hundreds of thousands of deaths directly or indirectly attributable to Sheep Fever were overwhelmingly concentrated amongst the already poor and vulnerable. No loss, the government probably thought. Such people would never vote for them even if they had the opportunity to do so.

Buffalo Pox’s spread across England followed a different pattern to that of the White Death. This may have been because the current coalition government of Labour, Green and other left-of-centre parties made a huge effort to differentiate itself from its discredited predecessor. Nevertheless, although the contagion was distributed more evenly across the socio-economic classes and ethnic groups, there were still many tens of thousands who’d died and many more who were likely to die in the future.

And Lindiwe was convinced that she would soon be one of them.

Like everyone else, Lindiwe had followed the disease’s progress with alarm as it emerged from the recently re-opened Channel Tunnel and the southern ports; then spread through the counties of Sussex and Kent; and now to the very edge of London. Why was this contagion known as Buffalo Pox? Why not smallpox or even cowpox? Its flimsy connection with buffalos was more to do with Water Buffalo rather than the species of Bison locally known as Buffalo by the citizens of North America’s fragmented nations. The disease’s origin was more the kind of place where such buffalo wallowed rather than the animals themselves.

Such concerns were of little comfort to Lindiwe now; although her thoughts were so fragmentary and unconnected that anything so abstract was a kind of comfort to her. She was also sometimes aware of the presence of the two other African women who shared her bedroom and with whom, until she became ill, she’d huddle together for warmth and company under the threadbare blankets.

There was Uzoma: a large woman now unnaturally diminished by hunger and from whose bosom and buttocks protruded more bone than flesh. Her fluency of English was poor and her knowledge of any other language that Lindiwe understood was non-existent, so she mostly communicated by hand-signals and a severely limited repertoire of words. Lindiwe still didn’t know from which African country Uzoma was a refugee.

There was also Yewande whose original home was Serrekunda in the Gambia, now a province of Senegal. Her English was excellent as was the quality of her education, but there were few job opportunities for a Historian in Comparative Linguistics. She now made a living in one of the many sweatshops that lined the London-Brighton Road. She was by far the best dressed woman in the house—resplendent in the tee-shirts and football sweaters that her employers sold—but she was also generous in helping to stock the place with household provisions.

Although her two room-mates kept a prudent distance from her, it was only because of them that Lindiwe was still alive. They slept as far from her as they could on the other side of the room, their fully clothed bodies wrapped round each other for warmth. When either woman ventured in her vicinity, she would keep her mouth covered as protection from air-borne viruses. Neither woman was expert in medicine, but both knew enough not to touch Lindiwe or anything that she’d worn, touched or coughed on. And it was they who ensured that Lindiwe was provided with the food and water that she was physically incapable of fetching for herself.

The outcome of Lindiwe’s battle against near death was by no means certain. The days were long and feverish and Lindiwe was almost always surprised when after she’d fallen asleep she would awaken the following day. Was she getting better? She wasn’t sure at first. The moments when she thought she might be recovering, when a boil had retreated or the phlegm she coughed up was less viscous or tasted less revolting, was often followed by a fresh outbreak of debilitating fever whose affects couldn’t be relieved by the water that Uzoma or Yewande had left in an old plastic bottle beside her.

All the same, Lindiwe was convinced that a corner had been turned when she was at last able to concentrate with more attention to Yewande’s unbroken monologues on those few moments when she wasn’t working or sleeping. (Uzoma’s similar monologues served only to dull her senses to welcome sleep). The Buffalo Pox had cut a swath across the Kingdom and decimated farming communities as far afield as Cornwall, Cumbria and Suffolk. It was now retreating from its original strongholds in the South East of England and the capital had mostly escaped the worst of it.

“Good!” said Lindiwe bitterly. “So, I’m nothing but a freak statistic.”

“Not just a statistic, Lindi sweetheart,” said Yewande who was delighted and encouraged by Lindiwe’s comments although they were scarcely cheerful. “You’re alive, remember. And you might not become a statistic at all.”

A day or so later, Lindiwe had recovered enough to be able to watch the television news on Yewande’s laptop screen (or for as long as its battery power lasted). This was a privilege that Lindiwe truly appreciated. The cost of powering batteries was especially prohibitive in winter when there was so little solar energy. She watched the EBC News constantly on the small 25 centimetre screen as it continually recycled the same news stories hour on hour on a diminished budget and with most outside images provided on license by Sky News UK and foreign broadcasters from Scotland and Ireland. It was the same depressing cycle of famine, plague, warfare and economic malaise, but more than anything else it helped distract and even cheer Lindiwe. It was comforting to know that however bad things were for her, it was many times worse elsewhere. The Buffalo Pox and the series of other plagues and contagions that had spread across the world had been so severe in some countries that global population growth, including in even Africa, was actually faltering in its otherwise inexorable climb. When the sources of disaster weren’t the familiar four horsemen of the apocalypse, there were other ills to trouble the world. Earthquake. Crop failure. Drought. Flood. Aeroplane crashes. Border skirmishes between the fragments of what had once been the United States. Even some ominous sabre-rattling in the Middle East. It all put Lindiwe’s near death from an international pandemic into some kind of perspective.

Soon Lindiwe was well enough that she could stand, walk, talk and even contemplate re-entering the land of the living. But was she now able to make a living? She didn’t want to return to the life of a prostitute even if Empire Cleaning Services were to employ a woman so scarred by recent sickness. There wasn’t much income to make from other more legal occupations such as begging. Lindiwe dreaded that she would have to resort to theft or some other form of crime to survive.

“Can you sew?” Yewande asked.

“Sew?” wondered Lindiwe who was now well enough to sit on the same side of the room as her friends. “Are you offering me a job in the place where you work? Would they take me on?”

“I’m sure you could do the work as well as I can,” said Yewande. “It’s monotonous but it’s better than starvation. And although Union Republic Sportswear isn’t actually advertising at the moment they have plenty of vacancies.”

“Vacancies? Is business improving at the moment?”

“No,” said Yewande. “But you’re not the only one who’s contracted Buffalo Pox in the last few months. There are many sewing machines sitting idle at the factory at the moment and it’s unlikely that many of those who once used to operate them will ever be returning to work.”

LXXX

Olive

2085

The doctor must be shitting her. It wasn’t right. Olive had already been infected before by gon, syph, NSU, chlam and every fucking thing but AIDS, but why was this syph so fucking different?

“A jab, a few days off work, and it’ll be gone,” said Olive pleadingly. “I’ve had syph before. It ain’t no big deal.”

“It’s not as easy as that,” the doctor of the charitable health centre said sadly. He peered with one eye at the clock: conscious of the queue of patients trailing around the block. “There are several different strains of syphilis and they constantly mutate. We’ve seen it happen with gonorrhoea, influenza, rabies, polio and now it’s happened with syphilis. The viruses have mutated faster than the pharmaceutical companies can find an antidote for them.”

“Well, fuck it,” said Olive who wasn’t sure she understood even a quarter of what the man was saying. “Just scribble something on a piece of paper and I’ll take it to the chemists. If I have to, I’ll even pay for it so’s I can get back to work.”

“I don’t think I’ve made myself clear, have I?” said the doctor apologetically. “There is no antidote at present for the variant of syphilis that you’ve contracted. I can’t offer you much at all in the way of a cure. All I can offer are palliatives. It won’t cure you as such, but it’ll help deal with the symptoms.”

“Well, that’s fucking better than nothing,” said Olive. “Just give me some of those.”

“Well, of course,” said the doctor.

He tapped away on the keyboard attached to his tablet and raised his head to watch a prescription sheet being dispensed from a laser printer on the far side of the surgery. After the single sheet was printed, a further few sheets followed. This was a health leaflet of the sort that only charities and foreign governments provided.

“What’s this other crap I’ve got to read, doctor?” Olive asked half in dread and half in scorn.

“It explains the symptoms of neo-pallidum syphilis and how to best deal with them. It includes the standard advice that you probably already know about such as avoiding sexual contact to restrict the further spread of the disease and what other symptoms you should look out for. What it will probably not make especially clear is that there is currently no known cure and that you may well have to live with the affects of this infection for the rest of your life. It also specifies your possible likelihood of mortality.”

“Likelihood of what? I wasn’t expecting to live forever anyway.”

“This strain will make that even less likely,” said the doctor glumly.

Well fuck that, thought Olive as she wandered out of the surgery past the winding queue. Like her, none of the other patients had the steady income required to pay insurance premiums for health care. Most were elderly, young or disabled. Few were employed, although even those lucky ones were unlikely to be able to afford medical attention that wasn’t provided by charity. And the state of their health wouldn’t be accepted as a reason for not being able to work. Employers were choosy about who they employed, so anyone who was prone to sickness or took a day or more off work would soon return to the ranks of the even more destitute unemployed.

Olive was a self-employed woman, of course. Or at least that’s how she’d characterise herself if there was ever another government census of the sort that used to happen once every ten years. In practice, it meant that she let men fuck her for money. She supplemented this core income by petty theft, drug-dealing and begging. And whether she had the clap or something more serious, as long as she could give her johns a blowjob or a handjob, she had no choice but to do so. Fuck the advice about holding back on the fanny. If a john wanted to fuck her and he had the readies: well, that was what she’d allow him to do, rubber or no rubber.

Even so, Olive resisted the temptation of dropping the freshly printed health advice into the nearest recycle bin. Even if she couldn’t find a use for the paper to roll a spliff or through which to snort a line, there was some stuff on the kind of clap she’d got that she might want to read about. If nothing else, it’d give her an idea of what to expect if the doctor wasn’t just spinning a line and she really was suffering from something incurable. But then there was once a time when they said that AIDS was incurable and, from what she’d last heard, that was still just no longer true. Perhaps they’d find a cure for all the new strains of clap just like they used to do when Olive was a kid and it was her mum who’d turn the occasional trick. Olive was determined to continue fucking even if her twat was weeping with sores, warts and pus. There was always some miracle wonder-cure that the drug companies could make a fucking bomb from. That sort of business never went insolvent, unlike all the others that had gone bust over the years.

Olive was true to her intentions. She found the time to turn a trick or two along Streatham Hill near the railway station before she returned home to the dilapidated squat on Ullswater Road. In only a couple of hours she scored nearly a grand from three blowjobs and an alley-way fuck. That’d be enough to keep her in hamburgers, kebabs and crack for a day or so.

“So what’s the verdict?” asked Yana, her room-mate and occasional lover when Olive had persuaded her to unpadlock the bedroom door. “It weren’t nothing serious, was it?”

“It wasn’t Goat Flu or Rat Fever or shit like that,” said Olive, referring to the contagions attracting most attention from the media at the moment. “It was just the clap again.”

“Again!” echoed Yana. “That’s no big fucking deal, is it? It’s just goes with the job, don’t it? Nothing to get in a sweat about.”

“Well, fuck it,” said Olive who didn’t want to get anxious about what the doctor had said. “I’ve got some crystals. You got any shit?”

“Yeah, dope, snow and, best of all, some GHB.”

“I ain’t had that in a while.”

“I found a new source.”

“Cool.”

The one thing that Olive needed more than anything else was something that could take her mind off her fears. And sometimes these surfaced for long enough for her to get really depressed. But smack, coke, E and alcohol so easily banished such despondency. Drugs were cheaper than food these days. And why eat, when all you did was add calories? After a line, a tab or a toke you didn’t fucking care. You might be the world’s worst fucking mother who couldn’t be bothered to speak to her daughter for well over a year now. You might be sucking cock and taking it up the arse from johns whose names you’d never know and whose faces you could never remember. You might be sharing a mattress in a squalid bedroom in a house full of psychos, smackheads and petty criminals. You might even be suffering from an incurable strain of venereal disease. But what the fuck! When you were high, you didn’t give a fuck. And what was life about if not to enjoy yourself and fuck everything else.

In any case, without the drugs that were so easy to buy and no trouble to afford, what would life have been like for Olive, Yana and any one of the few people, all women, she considered to be her friends? She didn’t fucking care if some john had fucked her in the arse and who, rather than pay what had been agreed, waved a knife around and told her to fuck off. She didn’t give a flying fuck if she got beat up by security guards who saw her as fair game if she ever strayed down one of the private streets they patrolled. As long as each night ended on a high in the arms of either a paying customer or a close girlfriend, what fucking difference did it ever make?

“It’s a fucking mess down there, girlfriend,” said Yana with genuine revulsion. “I ain’t gonna put my tongue there. It’s fucking disgusting.”

“What about your pussy?” Olive pleaded.

“What’s your tongue like?”

“Good,” said Olive, poking it out as far as she could.

“There’s a reason you go to the clap clinic more often than I do, girlfriend,” said Yana with more seriousness than her inebriation might suggest. “And that’s ’cause I’m fucking careful with what goes in my twat and you’re not. Look, O. I love you, I really do. Not since that cunt of a boyfriend dumped me I ain’t loved no one more than you. But, honestly... It’s fucking warfare between your thighs!”

“It ain’t that bad!” said Olive.

“It fucking well is.”

“You’re fucking shitting me...”

“Have a look in the mirror.”

“Not now.”

“The only tongue you’ll get on those lips, dearest, will be from one of your johns,” said Yana sternly. “And fuck only knows what you’ll be giving him in return for his cash. There are enough warts and weeping sores there to fucking coat the dick of every john in London.”

“Well, if you ain’t gonna lick my twat,” said Olive, “at least let me have another line.”

LXXXI

Sir Norman

2080

“What the fuck do you mean?” Sir Norman asked sharply. “There must be a cure. I don’t care what it costs. I’ll pay it whatever the expense. There’s always a cure.”

“Not this time, my lord,” said Dr. Urey, the Harley Street doctor to whose medical advice Sir Norman had privileged access. “I shall continue my investigation, but as you know I have many contacts in the pharmaceutical industry and what I’ve so far been given to understand doesn’t bode at all well. And then there are the complications as well...”

“Complications?”

“AIDS may not be the killer it once was, my lord, at least not in the Republic of England,” said the doctor, “but your natural defences have nonetheless been weakened as a result of your close encounter with HIV. Not to mention some of the more minor venereal diseases you contracted in the Congo and elsewhere...”

“It’s not your job to lecture me on how I should occupy my leisure time,” Sir Norman spat back. “Your job is to cure me.”

“Of course, my lord,” said the doctor with a slight hint of annoyance in his voice. He also had a knighthood and undoubtedly believed that he’d earned it for substantially more worthwhile reasons than had Sir Norman. “You’ll have the very best medical attention, but you also deserve an accurate diagnosis. This strain of the Typhoid bacillus is especially resistant to modern antibiotics. But you may be comforted by the knowledge that its rate of mortality should be in your favour.”

“It is?”

“Within the normal range of statistical variability, it is, my lord. More than seventy percent of cases recover after only a few weeks. But as I mentioned with regards to your condition, my lord, there are complications.”

“Just fucking sort it out,” said Sir Norman brusquely, assured that a doctor even with a knighthood and an international reputation would do whatever he was asked whether he was treated with respect or contempt. “I want to be out of bed as soon as I possibly can.”

“Naturally, my lord,” said Dr. Urey who left Sir Norman’s bedside with a deferential nod that he was unlikely to offer the majority of his wealthy patients. Blue blood still had its privileges even in a fucking Republic.

But shit! Sir Norman didn’t feel at all well. Fever, headache, coughs and a fucking insistent pain in what the doctor called his abdomen. He certainly hoped he wouldn’t have to suffer all this for very much longer.

It was obvious what had happened. The pharmaceutical companies had lost their way. Once they were able to stop any and every pandemic in its tracks almost as soon as it made its first appearance. Within days of a disease being reported in the international news media, a wonder-cure was found. Those with the wherewithal, like Sir Norman, made damned sure they’d get hold of it straightway. It was only after that it was made widely available to the general public at a substantial, but deserved, profit for the pharmaceutical companies and their prominent shareholders such as Sir Norman. But nowadays, all that entrepreneurism, research and development had become more of a cost than a profit centre. The value of Sir Norman’s shares in the biochemical industries were in the same depressingly familiar decline as those he owned in almost every other industry.

How had Sir Norman been so foolish as to fall victim to one of the many plagues and contagions currently sweeping across the planet? He’d totally avoided the White Death when it played its part in the downfall of the Government of National Unity. Even though Sir Norman was now run aground in England, unable even to fly by private jet to his Scottish estates, he’d previously succeeded in avoiding all contact with even one of the various pandemics As he flew back and forth across the globe to nations in Africa and Asia that had been devastated by plague (not to mention famine, war and climate change), he’d dodged everything that might bring him harm. It was probably in Scotland that he’d contracted the HIV mentioned by the doctor. The fucking jocks were just as retroviral as the fucking niggers, spics and ragheads. The assorted strains of venereal disease were nothing more than the collateral damage to be expected when a man spent his life in pursuit of the best anal passages on the planet.

The treacherous media would have a real field day if Sir Norman were to meet his death from this particular epidemic. A one-time lord felled by Typhoid: an illness once thought banished to the Middle Ages bringing down a knight whose ancestral legacy was from an age where class mattered and the peasants pretty much knew their place. How much mileage would the turncoats on Sky News UK make from the demise of a man so closely associated with the Kingdom of England’s final last stand in the cause of decency and tradition? Did they want the world to collapse in the inevitable morass of squalor and degradation that would result when the privilege associated with affluence had spread so widely amongst the plebs and scum that it exhausted and despoiled the resources of the entire planet? It was better by far that the opportunity and ability to indulge in excess was reserved only for those few whose tastes were sufficiently refined to appreciate the products of four and a half billion years of evolution (or six millennia since the Garden of Eden, if the moronic Americans were to be believed). Only those who truly appreciated the delights of fucking a black arse or shitting on the paps of a black bitch should be so privileged.

Nevertheless, for the next month or so Sir Norman was equally as wretched as any other citizen of the English Republic. The first week had been bad enough, but at least the one-time Lord of the Realm was able to articulate his rage. He could berate with both imagination and wit anyone, including his doctor, who came in contact with him. He even managed to gain something of an erection as a result of the energetic application of tender loving care from a male prostitute (black, of course) who he employed to tug at his penis. But as the week went by, Sir Norman’s temperature continued to rise, his heart beat more slowly, his head pounded, his throat sore and his nose had begun to bleed periodically.

Dr. Urey could give Sir Norman no concrete reassurance although he was well able to recite such words as leukopenia, eosinopenia and lymphocytosis that his patient didn’t understand and was rather grateful that he couldn’t. The only practical relief the doctor could provide was the administration of painkilling drugs by syringe which brought the blessed relief of unconsciousness.

Sir Norman’s fever further intensified after another week and he was now more often feverish than not. Sometimes these periods of delirium were almost ecstatic especially when ameliorated by morphine, but Sir Norman’s most normal state of mind nowadays was of panic as he slipped in and out of consciousness. On one such occasion he discovered to his alarm that there was a further distension of his already unseemly belly. His abdomen hadn’t just inflated like a pus-filled balloon: it also hurt like fuck whenever the affect of the powerful painkillers began to wane. Even worse was the diarrhoea that messed up his exquisite silk bedsheets. That was truly disgusting. It had the odour, composition and colour of some kind of pea soup: itself a far cry indeed from the haute cuisine Sir Norman normally enjoyed. Although there was no time of the day when he was free from fever, the symptoms became steadily worse towards evening. It peaked at a time between the lunch and dinner his chef prepared with culinary skills that Sir Norman was no longer able to properly enjoy. This was mostly because he was now spoon-fed a rather unedifying selection of plain fruit and vegetables.

As the fever intensified and the pain and discomfort worsened, there were fewer and fewer moments of lucidity and those few were scarcely agreeable.

“My lord. My lord,” repeated an insistent voice on one such brief occasion.

When Sir Norman opened his eyes and saw his doctor standing by the bed with his solicitor, he had sufficient awareness to guess that this was no coincidence and that Dr. Urey had administered a palliative drug that gave him the temporary relief required for him to answer the solicitor’s questions. Like Sir Norman’s doctor, Mr Neville Underhill’s services didn’t come cheap, but if the lawyer needed something he made damned sure he got it.

“What do you want?” Sir Norman asked with as curt an inflection as he could manage, but even through the fog of fever he could tell that his voice croaked badly and that he must have sounded rather less than imposing.

“I’m sorry to have to trouble you, my lord,” said Mr Underhill. “But there are urgent matters that require your attention.”

“And what might these be?” asked Sir Norman again aware of the faltering authority of his speech.

The tentative hold that Sir Norman had on his consciousness was put under intense strain as his solicitor advised him of matters the thread of which he lost within a few moments. There were words such as ‘intestate’, ‘close relatives’ and ‘favourite charities’ that alerted him to the gist of meaning hidden beneath Underhill’s mealy-mouthed but loquacious monologue.

“I really couldn’t give a flying...” Sir Norman began, before faltering on the word that reminded him all too well of what he did once care deeply about. “What difference does it make?”

“It is imperative that in the event of an unfortunate outcome that the Newbury estate doesn’t become just a gift to the state,” said the solicitor. “You have successfully avoided paying almost a single penny to what was once Her Majesty’s government...”

“Fuck them!” Sir Norman hissed.

“...but is now the government of the people of England,” continued the solicitor. “There is no obvious beneficiary for your estate. You have no relatives or companions who should naturally inherit the estate and you haven’t written a will. Just who should inherit your fortune if the worst should happen and...?”

“Don’t you worry, Neville,” said Sir Norman. “I’m sure you’ll be well provided for.”

“That is scarcely the issue,” insisted the solicitor. “Is there any cause...?”

“Try the Red Cross,” said Sir Norman in a semi-delirious state. “They do good things. Or the Croissant Rouge. Keep the ragheads healthy. Why the fuck not? Everything else is fucked...”

“Croissant Rouge?” said the solicitor who appeared alarmed. “What about causes more dear to your heart? The Conservative Party? The Taxpayers’ Alliance? The Koch Foundation?”

“Fuck it!” shouted an agitated Sir Norman. “Give it all to the Croissant Rouge. Give the Arabs as many baguettes as they can eat.”

“Are you sure, my lord?”

“Or Greenpeace. They’re still going, aren’t they? The world’s such a shit-hole the Greens’ll find plenty to campaign against for years to come.”

“Is that really the message you want to leave as your legacy, my lord?”

“What’s that?”

“A deathbed conversion to exactly the causes you’ve most despised and excoriated all your life.”

Sir Norman paused for thought. What sort of legacy did he want to leave? Did he want hippies to praise him while they hugged trees and tried to save the world’s last living whale? Did he want ragheads, niggers or other kinds of brown-skinned scum to imagine that he was anything other than a robust believer in tradition and ethnic purity?

“Fuck it!” gasped Sir Norman. “Just give everything to the Tories. They can be guaranteed to preserve my legacy.”

“Indeed they can, my lord,” said Mr Neville Underhill with satisfaction. “Your legacy will be long remembered by the happy people of a prosperous nation.”

“I certainly hope so,” said Sir Norman as his consciousness dimmed for the very last time.

LXXXII

Phil

2104

It was an image of a kind Phil had often seen before, but what was horrifying about it was the simple fact that it wasn’t being broadcast as part of a news story from a distant urban slum or a foreign country. In fact, it was being transmitted from a surveillance camera just outside his own home. And this image, live and direct and in gruesome detail, showed a man’s body slide slowly downwards into the dark red reflective sheet of his own blood that had splattered onto the steel shutters that covered the windows of Phil’s house. It was fortunate that Phil had recently had them installed on the persuasive urging of the Ashton Lovelock Neighbourhood Watch.

The image was truly grotesque. The man’s head had exploded from the impact of the well-aimed rifle shots. A rich red puddle of blood was spreading outwards across the patio in the long shadows of the late evening summer sun.

However horrifying the image was, Phil’s thoughts were also with those neighbours of his who’d not abided by the local Neighbourhood Watch’s advice. Many homes were lacking the steel shutters and anti-personnel devices that were now almost standard. Who knew from what humiliation and torture such poorly defended neighbours were suffering from at the mercy of the plebs who’d broken into their property and who hadn’t yet been eliminated by the security guards? Their worldly possessions would be ransacked. Their houses plundered. And the women (and maybe even the men) raped. And possibly murdered.

Phil’s hope rested in the speed and efficiency that the security guards would employ to defend his property. The manufacturers of his home security system had told him how many minutes the house was guaranteed safe against determined assault, but such information seemed so academic when he’d authorised the purchase of the advanced security system and had it installed.

The live feed from the cameras scattered around the lawns and residences of Ashton Lovelock were providing a continual and unsettling view of the violence that had descended on the gated community now that the plebs had overrun its streets and malls. Phil had the facility to switch the view from one camera to another simply by moving his hand. Many stores in the Gaia Mall had been totally thrashed, but they would have been the obvious target of the plebs’ initial onslaught. They were after clothes and electrical goods as well as the food that they’d been pleading for. The extent of their avarice only demonstrated the extent of the hypocrisy in the claims made by the plebs’ representatives in the media that having enough to eat was all they wanted. Some of Phil’s neighbours’ houses had been broken into. Phil felt especially sorry for the Stewarts, despite their decidedly Scottish surname, whose house was now engulfed in flame.

But, as the cameras also showed, the security guards were responding to the pleb invasion with overwhelming force.

It was only right—given the way they bled his wallet each month—that the security officers should respond to the invasion of Ashton Lovelock with so much force and determination. This was also only what was necessary given how many yobbish invaders they had to repel. Hundreds of the fucking plebs had streamed in through the breach in Ashton Lovelock’s electric fence. And an entirely unappetising bunch they were too. The men were unshaven. The women wore no makeup. Shabby cheap clothes: ill-fitting, unstylish and unprepossessing. The plebs were barely human. They deserved the bullets that tore their bodies apart. They deserved the savage beating they were getting from the security guards that left them barely alive. The most unlucky ones deserved to have their corpses left abandoned in bloody puddles by the kerbside. If Phil wasn’t so worried about his safety he’d gladly have left his home to personally deliver the coup de grâce to the bastards himself.

There’d been warnings of a possible invasion for several months now not just in Ashton Lovelock but in every affluent village and suburban retreat up and down the Republic. The protests in the big cities had been getting increasingly violent as the unwashed and uneducated proles, plebs, peasants and vagrants remonstrated about their imagined grievances. It was nothing more than whingeing, of course. Did they really expect to get something for nothing? Where did they imagine the money would come from to address their ridiculously long list of unachievable demands? The universal provision of education, healthcare, security and well-paid jobs didn’t come from nowhere. They had to be earned. And although the protestors had been treated with far more respect than they deserved, they continued to agitate for what they laughingly and unashamedly called their rights.

The government’s extraordinary patience eventually ran out. This was a long time after it had for ordinary middle-class citizen such as Phil. The protestors would have to disperse. They’d illegally occupied parks in London, Birmingham and Manchester and refused to pay the daily entrance fee. They’d erected tents around public and private property to which they wouldn’t normally be allowed access such as cathedrals, banks and the shopping malls. They regaled innocent bystanders with demand for greater justice, equality and respect. Well, to get respect, a person has to earn it, and these people most certainly hadn’t done that.

The private security staff and armed mercenaries employed by the English government and the mayors of England’s great cities showed both enthusiasm and gusto in their struggle to force the plebeian scum off the roads. It was heartening to watch videos on the internet of their long-delayed retaliation. No mercy was shown with boot, stick, baton, rubber bullet and latterly, as the conflict worsened, with guns and other more lethal hardware. Despite the propaganda broadcast by what little was left of the liberal media, the retaliation was entirely proportionate to the nuisance caused by the plebs and their disruption to English commerce.

And now the bastards were invading Ashton Lovelock.

They must have come from miles away, though Phil wondered how they could have made the journey from the dilapidated urban wastelands of Warwick, Coventry or Bicester. The impoverished plebs couldn’t afford to travel by car and they most certainly wouldn’t have been welcome on the motorways. Perhaps they’d walked all the way or travelled on the back of donkeys. However they’d got there Phil could see the trouble brewing as he drove home every day and passed the steadily expanding encampment just outside Ashton Lovelock’s perimeter. The signs they brandished were the usual ones about jobs, greed and human rights. There were even some relating to climate change, flooding and the other environmental problems that bedevilled the world. Didn’t the plebs realise that the solutions to such problems were exactly what the company that employed Phil was working to resolve?

And now it had happened. The plebs had breached the defensive walls and fences. There was plenty of speculation about how this had happened among the messages buzzing about the internet as knowledge of the invasion spread across the online world. Wire-cutters. Tunnels. Electrical short-circuits. Even an inside job from sympathetic workers in the mall or from the residents’ servants. Whatever! It was happening now, just as it had happened in other privileged communities all the way from Cornwall to the unflooded islands of Norfolk, from Windermere to Bishop’s Avenue, and from Hay-on-Wye to Stratford-on-Avon.

Phil was relieved to see that the plebs had now moved away from his home and were congregating elsewhere. They’d clearly been deterred by the blaze of gunfire that had mowed down the protestors who’d struggled fruitlessly to get through the steel sheets that had slid up on the outside of his already toughened windows and reinforced the deceptively oaken appearance of his front door. The liberal media might gripe about the effectiveness of deterrence, but it was fairly obvious to Phil that it had clearly worked as he watched the plebs wander away from the gruesomely disfigured corpses on his lawn and driveway. His anxiety was now rather less about his life and property and rather more about whether his insurance premiums were sufficient to cover the cost of cleaning up the mess of dead bodies on his estate. There was even the possibility that—like warfare or Acts of God—this was something his expensive insurance policies just didn’t cover.

From what Phil could see from his screens, the plebs were now in retreat. That was good, of course, but it would still leave a scar on the community of Ashton Lovelock that couldn’t be brushed away so easily. It could be weeks, even as much as a month, until the shops were re-opened. And the Stewarts... If they’d suffered as badly as the internet gossip suggested, there’d be funerals for several weeks to come. And if they’d survived, then Phil would have to find time to offer condolence for their losses. He hoped they were well enough insured that he wouldn’t be expected to help provide them with charitable assistance in their hour of need. That would be regrettable; but neighbours had to stick together, especially after such a brutal onslaught.

There was another crackle of gunfire as the security guards located a group of plebs who’d been hiding in the back garden of a house just half a block away. The security cameras from all the surrounding houses swivelled round to focus on the bloodshed. There were just three plebs and two of them were women. They were clearly terrified as the security guards surrounded them with their automatic rifles in hand. They were such a pathetic bunch. Scrawny. Ill-fed. Clothes that were patched and re-patched again and again. The older of the woman had a mouth with few teeth and many gaps. It was a relief to watch them get scythed down by a spray of automatic gunfire.

Scum like that didn’t deserve to live.

Phil continued to watch the carnage from the comfort of his lounge until well past his normal bed-time. He didn’t need to worry about having to get to work the following day. Like other employees on the Warwick Business Park he’d been notified that special leave would be extended to anyone who had reasonable fear that they might be caught up in the protests spreading across the nation. Phil wasn’t so naive as to believe that his employer was being generous merely for reasons of inherent goodness. The drop in profit resulting from the loss of skilled technical and executive staff who’d fallen victim to the angry mob just wasn’t worth it. The cost would be even greater if the employee became eligible for compassionate leave.

As the fear receded that Phil might fall to the same fate as the Stewarts, he continued to watch the live coverage of the security guards’ clean-up. He wasn’t quite as comfortable as he would ideally choose to be. The steel shutters were still securely up on all the doors and windows so he couldn’t benefit at all from the natural light of the evening sun. And he probably wouldn’t want to venture out of his home for several more days. He’d be doing all his shopping online until the mall returned to a good state of repair.

Look! There was another pleb hiding in the shadow of a recycling bin.

The bastard was still holding onto his spoils of plunder. In this instance it was a cheap laptop and a saveloy sausage. Fat use they’d be to him now as a security guard raised his rifle and pointed it towards the pleb’s forehead. He looked understandably anxious. No doubt he was reflecting on the folly of his criminal trespass. Perhaps he’d be leaving a family without its main breadwinner.

The shot from the rifle was brief and not especially loud. The pleb collapsed to the ground. A circle of blood steadily grew on the forehead just above eyes from which all life was now extinguished.

That was a lesson the plebs should all remember.

As the evening shadows lengthened and the sun dipped below the horizon, there were fewer such eventful moments. Now that the mob had recognised that their invasion had been countered with far more force than they could possibly withstand they’d run off back to where they’d come from. The security guards were under no obligation to chase after them, of course. In fact, the terms and conditions of their contract almost certainly prohibited them from doing so. Beyond the confines of Ashton Lovelock, the plebs could only be pursued by a police force so poorly funded and overstretched that it was effectively no force at all. They’d be at liberty to plunder, rob and murder one another with virtual impunity, but hopefully they’d now learnt the lesson that Ashton Lovelock was not the place for such lawlessness.

But the excitement wasn’t completely over yet. As the security guards continued their patrol, followed behind by ancillary staff that would tidy up the mess, drag off the bodies and mop up the blood, there were yet more intruders to locate on the well-tended lawns and polished patios.

This would be a long night, thought Phil as he idly dipped his hand into a carton of popcorn and chomped on a huge beefburger.

LXXXIII

Iris

2060

It would never have been Iris’ ideal choice of career, but there weren’t many choices still available to her. Though there’d been an evident expansion in employment opportunities as the White Death receded, this brief boom vanished at almost the same rate as the last bodies were being incinerating. The jobs that appeared to address the need to clean up after the pandemic vanished all too soon. The Government’s policy of dissuading foreign influence had also destroyed any residual foreign appetite for inward investment and the Republic of England was now a place of even fewer opportunities and rather less hope.

As there were no openings for a career in Biotechnology even in London, Iris decided that having already stooped somewhat lower than she’d ever intended when she chose to work for Empire Cleaning Services, her pride was no longer an obstacle with regards to any decision she made to make money. As she’d already made a living by masquerading as a cleaning maid, perhaps now she should actually work as one. So Iris began to look more favourably at the many vacancies for domestic servants that were being posted on the internet. It was one of the few sectors in the Kingdom’s economy where job opportunities were continuing to grow, but the job opportunities were all cloistered well away from what Iris viewed as the ordinary world. And that was the world where she believed she belonged. This other world where most domestic servants in London worked was secluded behind the electric fences and high gates of the affluent private estates. The relatively prosperous wanted to maintain a good distance away from the ungrateful taxpayer, but they still needed people to mow their lawn, make their beds and do the ironing.

A few years earlier when Iris’ source of income was also to provide services for the comfortably well-to-do, she’d very much been the centre of her employers’ attentions (though perhaps not in a good way). Nowadays when she’d gained access into the homes of the fortunate few—having been vetted by security guards at the electric gates—she was entirely peripheral. As far as her employers were concerned, she was nothing more than an invisible presence. All they wanted from her was to ensure that the detritus of daily life was removed without fuss and with no trace. Toilet bowls cleaned. Shirts ironed. Beds made. Parquet floors polished and cleaned.

Iris was sure that even in just three years there’d been an appreciable hardening in the attitude expressed by the affluent towards those less fortunate. Her employers previously betrayed the occasional sign of embarrassment at being in possession of so much more wealth than those no less deserving than themselves. Now, after seven years of the Government of National Unity and a year of the White Death, there was nothing that could tarnish their innate sense of superiority.

Iris soon came to rather prefer the secluded, secure and tidy world of immaculate lawns behind the electric fences to the perils of her life outside. This was ironic because it was only outside that she was able to enjoy her free time. The world where she worked was a place where the roads were lit in the dark; where the electricity was always on and reliable; and where she was safe from harassment and arbitrary violence. The hedges that enclose the houses were as trim and tidy as the lawns. When she was inside the houses—shaking sheets, ironing denim jeans, dusting behind the furniture—she became almost house-proud for the well-appointed homes whose corners and alcoves she’d got to know in more intimate detail than did the actual home-owners.

When she walked home at the end of the day, having cleaned, tidied and scrubbed in five or six homes for ten or more hours at a rate of pay that was barely more than she’d once used to receive at the Work Experience Centre, she had to pass through a cordon of security guards. Even though they all recognised her, because they were themselves monitored by security cameras, they had to behave as officiously now as on the first day that Iris first worked in the private housing estate. Any evidence of sloppiness would be noticed by the attendant software and their employment would be abruptly terminated.

And then through the barrier gates, into the dark streets where the only functioning street-lights were those few not yet vandalised and which were, in any case, only as bright as their solar batteries allowed. Iris would walk home in a group of other domestic servants in the hope that sheer numbers would provide the desperately needed security for the next several kilometres walk and subsequent bus-ride. When she at last settled down on the decrepit ancient bus with its smashed-up security camera and punched-open windows that let in the wind and rain, she watched the North West London streets on the journey to her house-share just by the periphery of Heathrow Airport.

Once upon a time, this had been a part of London with many jobs but also the constant disruption that came from being right under the flight-path of aeroplanes flying across the Atlantic or to parts of Europe. Although there were still many such flights, they were rather fewer in number than Iris remembered from her childhood when she and her mother took holidays together in Spain and Florida. Even though her recollection of these holidays were marred by the accompanying memory of her mother’s constant moaning about her feckless ex-husband and Iris’ father, she still recalled the childhood pleasure of sitting by the aeroplane window and looking out at the clouds below. Rather fewer people could afford to fly these days and as fuel prices continued their inexorable rise, this was a number that could only continue to fall.

The people who owned the houses that Iris kept so spotlessly clean would have little trouble in affording the occasional plane flight. For them, the experience of flying would be quite different from what Iris remembered. There would be emptier airport lounges, smaller crowds and shorter queues at Passport Control. Not that Iris could be sure about this. Although news stories in the mostly sympathetic media emphasised how strict and rigorous immigration checks now were under the present government, Iris imagined that those few who could afford to fly were unlikely to be the ones whose freedom of movement the Prime Minister wanted to restrict. In fact: quite the opposite.

A plane thundered overhead as Iris turned the key in one of the three locks that secured the heavily reinforced front door. She looked upwards to the sky as cold autumn drizzle pasted her cheeks and could just about make out the livery of the Republic of North America. It was ironic that those of the original United States who’d previously been most enthusiastic about the benefits of unfettered capitalism were the same ones who were now nationalising almost every industry still based in the Southern states to prevent them re-locating to Mexico or the Western Union. And then, in through the door, with a final check that no one was following behind, and up the dimly lit staircase to her bedroom.

There was much about Iris’ life that was more indigent than she’d been used to nearly a decade earlier when politics was nothing more than an abstract term and social injustice was something she associated with foreign countries that were far away and often difficult to spell or pronounce. She was scarcely a radical, but seven years of the Government of National Unity had made her more militant and much less apathetic. She still didn’t know in which direction she believed the nation should head, but she was bloody sure where she wanted to head away from.

She shared her bedroom with Phyllis who also worked as a domestic servant and was as ludicrously over-qualified as Iris for the position. Phyllis was fluent in several European languages—none of which were now of much use in a Kingdom that had disassociated itself from the Northern European Union—and had gained an MBA at just the time when most international corporations with offices in England made the strategic business decision to manage their affairs from aboard.

Iris strode up the worn faded stair carpet by what would once have been a living room but was now just another bedroom. She hardly knew the other people in the house at all except for those she occasionally encountered in the kitchen or bathroom. The other residents were almost always either out working or in their bedrooms asleep. The little social interaction she had was usually around breakfast and lunch-time, but despite the wealth of university degrees few of her fellow residents were employed in a profession. The only legal and legitimate jobs in abundance were those in domestic servitude. However as Iris was reminded as she opened the door to her shared bedroom, illegal commerce such as drug-dealing was also enjoying rather a boom under the Government of National Unity. The government’s hard-line policies that now prescribed deportation or prison as mandatory sentences for all but the most trivial drugs offences had led only to widespread disregard for the law when the supply of imported drugs was so considerable and alternative forms of employment so scarce.

“It’s from the Kashmir,” said Phyllis as she passed the spliff to Iris. “That guy from round the corner said it’s the best shit to come from there since before the nukes went off. And since there’s nothing but hemp growing on the mountains there’s a lot of it and it’s fucking cheap.”

“How cheap?” Iris asked as she took a long draw on the proffered item.

“Fucking cheap. A gram is less than the price of a shot of whiskey. And you get higher on this hash than you’d ever get from a fucking bottle of spirits.”

“It’s good,” said Iris as she felt the nerves on her face tingle. “That’s just the tonic I need after a day of work.”

“Good day?”

“’S OK. Not great. Just OK.”

“You still good for Saturday?”

Iris shook her head. “Not till the evening. I’ve got a couple more houses to clean. There’s always work to do after the Friday night parties.”

“Well, it’s always a good time to pick up extra gear,” said Phyllis conspiratorially. “Those rich shits always leave unsnorted lines and discarded tabs about the place.”

“You take them home with you?” Iris asked naively.

“Don’t you?”

“Well...” admitted Iris who hadn’t realised that her surreptitious pocketing was such universal practice. “I wouldn’t want to get sacked. And when you get sacked from one home you’re effectively sacked from them all.”

“The more wasted the bastards are, the less they’ll ever notice,” said Phyllis. “And, anyway, what else are you supposed to do with all those lines? Flush them down the toilet. The shit’s too good for that.”

Iris nodded. “This most certainly is good shit,” she said as she passed the spliff back.

Phyllis cupped her palms around it and inhaled a deep lungful. “Well, Saturday’s still on,” she said. “We’ll wait up for you at the pub in the evening till you arrive. But I’ve got a favour to ask you.”

“A favour?”

“Yeah. You know. Freddy...”

Iris nodded. “When?”

“He wants to come over tomorrow night. You don’t mind?”

“Just don’t make too much noise.”

Although Iris tried to make out that she didn’t mind that much, the truth was that Phyllis’ nocturnal trysts with Freddy were a real source of annoyance for her. It wasn’t just that her room-mate was so vocal when she orgasmed, it was also that the fact that Phyllis got so much obvious pleasure from her lovemaking. It was just another reminder to Iris how little sex she was getting these days and, furthermore, how little she actually wanted it any more.

When opportunities occurred nowadays, and there were no fewer than there’d ever been, Iris was never eager to follow them up. And when she did succumb to persuasion, if only to justify the continued expense on contraceptive pills and condoms, she felt so detached from the actual physical activity that it was something she was watching from a distance rather than experiencing herself. Her few months of employment as a prostitute had shattered her ability to properly enjoy sex any more. The psychological distance she’d adopted to cope with the emotional toll of having sex with strangers who were most often decidedly unattractive now made it difficult to enjoy sex with anyone.

“We’ll do our best to be quiet,” said Phyllis who planted a grateful kiss on Iris’ cheek. “But you know Freddy...”

Iris nodded.

She certainly did know Freddy. She knew more about him than she’d have liked to. And earplugs never seemed to make that much difference given that Iris’ bed was so close to the one where Phyllis and Freddy would be fucking. The only real solution to this inconvenience was to be so stoned that she couldn’t care.

Iris pointed at the plastic bag just by Phyllis’ elbow that held the Kashmir hash.

“You don’t think you could spare a few grams?” she asked.

LXXXIV

Chris

2105

No one could ever call Chris a shirker. He worked hard to pay off his debts to the distant City corporation to whom he was indentured and he might well have expected some kind of recompense for his loyalty and exertion. But the instructions received from distant Nanjing showed no appreciation of Chris’ efforts at all. The shareholders scattered around the globe had approved the management board’s recommendation that the company should consolidate its European agricultural assets. As Chris was as much a property of the Chi Chong Investment Bank as the ethanol trees, the meat vats and the asparagus collecting robots, he was now to be thrown onto the open market to the mercy of the highest bidder.

“How much more do you have to do to earn your freedom?” asked Chloe, Chris’ wife and the mother of his five children. “Surely there can’t be many more years of indenture. You’ve worked for Chi Chong for nine years now...”

“It’s actually twenty-one years I’ve been indentured,” said Chris. “I was just fourteen years old when I sold my labour to Chingford Christmas Trees. That was well before the company was bought up by the Chinese.”

“It still can’t be many years yet...”

“They cut my salary remember,” said Chris. “That was a few years back. I don’t think I’ll ever earn enough to buy my freedom. As every year passes, there’s always yet another obstacle on the way.”

“Well, at least we get to keep a cottage in the village,” said Chloe as she gazed through the cracked glass of the antique late twentieth-century window at the wind-generator in the garden just beside the vegetable plots that were an essential supplement to the family’s diet.

“That’s not certain either,” said Chris. “We don’t know what the new farm owners will do. Chester Beeches’ business used to be mostly Christmas trees and livestock when I first started working there. Over the years, they’ve tried every kind of agriculture there is. It’s whatever makes the most profit at the time.”

“And what’s that at the moment?” Chloe wondered.

Chris shook his head. He’d worked long enough to realise that you couldn’t make predictions about what the far distant shareholders and business executives might decide, whether they were based in London, Nanjing or Chester. But he’d find out soon enough.

What he probably didn’t expect was that not only would he no longer be working for Chi Chong, but that he would no longer even keep his home. This was a real shock to a man who’d lived all his life in Christleton and when he ventured beyond the county borders it was only as far as the occasional agricultural show in the outskirts of Manchester’s urban sprawl. Chris hoped that whatever else might happen, he wouldn’t have to live amongst the crime and squalor of a big city.

“The new owners are replacing us with robots,” said Chris, still in shock when he returned home after the announcement and not yet able to really believe what he’d heard. “Robots!”

“That can’t be so,” said Chloe. “It doesn’t make economic sense. Surely human labour is still cheaper than an expensive thing like an agricultural robot.”

“Labourers are cheaper than they used to be,” Chris admitted. “Especially since the banks decided to trade indenture for inherited mortgage and household debt. But robots have been getting cheaper and smarter and more capable all the time. They don’t look anything like humans and you can’t have much of a conversation with them, but if you see them in the fields—herding cattle, picking asparagus, ploughing fields, sorting out the produce—they’re as good as a man would ever be. They’re ten times more productive and their running costs are getting steadily lower.”

“So there’s no competition?” Chloe remarked bitterly.

“None,” said Chris. “All the lads are being replaced by robots. Not just me. Everyone. Christleton will just become a ghost town. The local supermarket will have to close as well. Robots don’t need groceries.”

“And what about us?” wondered Chloe desperately. “The boys are still in school and the girls aren’t at marrying age yet. What’s going to happen to them?”

“Well, unless the administrators find a buyer for me, we won’t be able to afford school fees for the boys,” said Chris. “The other lads and me: we’re all gonna be auctioned off with the other stock that the new buyers don’t want.”

“And who are the people who’re taking over Chester Beeches Farm?” asked Chloe. “They sound soulless and cruel. To sell their indentured labourers as if they were nothing more than old tractors or beaten up combine harvesters...”

“It’s a company I’ve never heard of before,” said Chris. “International Consolidated Capital Investment or some name like that. I’ve heard they buy assets, sell what they don’t want to the highest bidder, and make what’s left as profitable as they can.”

“And I take it that you and your mates are what they don’t want?”

“I guess so,” said Chris with hangdog resignation.

The day of the auction was rather sooner than Chris or his friends would have liked. The bad news had hardly sunk in that each and every one of them would soon be evicted from the cottages and terraced houses where most of them had lived all their lives and where, in most cases, so had their parents and grandparents all the way back to the days when fuel was cheap, jobs were more plentiful and town-folk would choose to escape from mundane suburbia to a house in the country. They had less than a week to prepare, while also having to work many times harder than usual to disassemble, dismantle and slaughter those assets that were deemed to have no significant resale value.

The labourers lined up along a makeshift stage and in front of each of them was displayed a printed brochure on which each of them was depicted in bland marketing prose. They were described mostly in terms of health, age and physical strength. There was also a detailed account of the numbers of years and months of likely continued indenture on a sliding scale of their anticipated value. Generally, the more menial the employment the longer the remaining period of indenture would be. For those like Charles and Stuart who were now old men in their early fifties, their age had so reduced their resale value that it was likely that they would die of old age within the next ten years well before they’d had a chance to pay off their debts.

The buyers at the auction wore expensive suits, almost certainly purchased in the swanky salons of Shanghai, Chongqing or Buenos Aires, and exuded an aura of wealth and pitiless calculation. They were mostly men, although there were a couple of women amongst them: tight-lipped, sour-faced and with steel cold eyes. Although the finance behind International Consolidated Capital Investment was almost certainly from the Far East, none of the buyers were oriental. They were all European and a minority were even English. Chris choked a little when he overheard one of the men speak to a colleague with a Scottish accent. He’d always hated the Scots, as any true-blue Englishman might, and he hoped that he wouldn’t become a vassal to England’s historical foe and the nation that more than any other had brought about England’s decline and fall.

The auction was as humiliating as it was tedious. For most of the time, Chris stood in line with his fellow labourers in neatly starched company uniforms, while he held up his chin and pulled in his chest in an attempt to bolster his saleability. God help any man sold below the reserve price. For such a man the future was truly bleak. The inherited debt would continue onto the next generation and beyond as compound interest piled high on a man’s market value. The man who was sold at a good price, offset against accumulated debt, might well yet see that day when he could till his own field, buy and sell chickens, and maybe—if he worked hard and achieved the required statutory minimum income—even be eligible to vote in a General Election.

Chris watched with anxiety as the bidders walked by. Several stopped beside him and asked him to flex a muscle, stick out his tongue or turn around. One of these was the man with the Scottish accent. Chris hoped that he wouldn’t be sold to the jocks. They were known for their hatred of the English and there were enough medium-range missiles on the tartan border pointing south to leave no doubt as to how willing the Scots were to avenge perceived past wrongs.

However, it was one of the women who successfully bid for Chris and several of his colleagues. The bidding wasn’t especially fierce and the numbers mentioned in the bidding were somewhat abstract. The value of each indentured labourer was calculated in a complex way which took into account the number of outstanding years of indenture, the estimated years of productive labour, and an overall abstractly weighted quality rating. Chris was somewhat put out to realise that those with most marketable value were the younger labourers with the least experience and the highest level of debt. Nevertheless, like a beauty contest where the contestant had no opportunity to demonstrate his or her other qualities or, more accurately, like the sale of livestock at a cattle market, Chris’ fate and that of his family was decided on the bidders’ whims. The auctioneer’s hammer came down decisively on Ms. Charrington, the English representative of Consolidated Minerals, Pyongyang. Chris was now no longer a Chinese asset but rather one that belonged to the Federal Republic of Korea.

“What use does Consolidated Minerals have for agricultural labourers?” wondered Chris’ pal, Ian, who’d also been purchased by Ms. Charrington. “Do they have an agricultural division?”

“You just don’t know what these corporations do,” said Chas who’d been purchased by the Scotsman, who was actually a representative of an Ecuadorian company. “You’d think it was agriculture, but it might turn out to be biofuel, genetically enhanced fabrics or pharmaceuticals. Perhaps Consolidated Minerals has a connection with agribusiness that you’d just never imagine.”

“Perhaps,” said Chris, who was worried more than anything else by what he could say to Chloe. She’d rather placed her hope in the possibility that he’d be purchased by Chrystal Planet, the only bidder that was in any sense a local concern, although Chris wondered what use he would be in a business that manufactured nanocarbon tubes for the communications industry.

“I’m going to be a coal miner, dear,” was what Chris finally had to announce to his wife.

“Coal miner? I thought mineral extraction was all done by robots these days.”

“There’s still a need for men to help fix machinery underground and to handle those situations that robots aren’t fully equipped to respond to.”

“You’re not a coal miner,” said Chloe. “You’ve never been underground. Why’d they choose you?”

“I’m as cheap as labour can possibly be,” said Chris with resignation.

“And what about me and the boys? Where will we live?”

“I don’t think it’s part of the package, dear,” said Chris who’d finally got to the part of his briefing that he’d most dreaded having to pass on to his wife.

“Not part of the package?”

“Family obligations aren’t factored in,” Chris said. “I’ve been told that we’ll all be assigned to a dormitory more than twenty meters beneath ground. There’s no space for families.”

“So what do we do?” asked Chloe.

“I’ve been told that it’s not any concern of Consolidated Minerals,” said Chris. “The agreement to provide family accommodation in the village became void when Chi Chong Investment Bank liquidated its assets. The only person in the family that Consolidated Minerals is interested in is our middle son, Chester.”

“Why only him?”

“He’s the designated inheritor of my indentured debt if I die in service,” said Chris. “Do you remember that peculiar document we had to sign several years back? The one that was described as Liability Insurance. The one that named Chester as the security on my continued employment.”

“And what’s going to happen to Chester?” wondered Chloe. “He’s only nine years old.”

“As an asset of Consolidated Minerals, he’ll be coming with me and he’ll also be indentured to them unless I can pay off my debts before his age of seniority.”

“And is that likely to happen?”

Chris shook his head sadly.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can only hope.”

LXXXV

Iris

2061

When she was a child and even until quite recently, Iris cherished a very romantic vision of country life.  Green fields. Village ponds. Forests. Lakes. Winding lanes with hedges on either side. Songbirds on the wing. And although much of the English countryside was still pretty much like that, now Iris was employed as conscript labour on England’s green and pleasant land, what she mostly experienced of life outside the cities was nothing at all like what she’d hoped it would be.

As far as Iris was concerned the least romantic aspect of it all was the actual work she had to do. It wasn’t as if she’d exactly volunteered for it. When one of the cleaning women on the estate where Iris used to work had stolen some jewellery and neglected to admit her guilt, every domestic servant employed within a few houses of the crime scene was dismissed. And it was Iris’ bad luck that she happened to be out of work at the same time as the Government of National Unity was promoting its Home-Grown and English Food Initiative. The promotional material advertised a nostalgic England symbolised by cricket pitches, the healthy outdoors and a sunny sky. What Iris and the other reluctant urban farm labourers very soon discovered were agri-business compounds which were both smelly and unglamorous and where most work was done indoors and under shelter. The sunny sky and green fields were only what she might see on the walk to and from the dormitory and her place of work.

“I always thought there was like freedom to roam and get to know nature,” said Cherry, one of Iris’ fellow labourers, as they stood side by side at the conveyor belt and separated substandard tomatoes from the rest. She tossed a decidedly green and slightly smaller tomato into the receptacle destined for prole supermarkets. “All the nature you’ve got round here are the same muddy fields and pot-holed roads you see every day on the way to work. It’s not as if you can go somewhere different at the weekend. The buses don’t come round very often and when they do it’s only to take you to the retail park.”

“To where?” shouted Iris over the racket of insistent rock music blaring out more for the benefit of the shift supervisors than the several hundred or so nominal volunteers who filled the warehouse’s cavernous space. “What did you say?”

“The bus is fucking useless,” Cherry shouted back through the hackneyed guitar solo that could have been assembled at any time in rock music’s century-long history. “It only takes you to the shops.”

“Well, it is a shop bus,” said Iris. “The only reason it comes to Church Norton at all is to take villagers to the Tesco-WalMart supermarket. Those that haven’t got a car that is...”

“Who can afford one of those these days?” wondered Cherry.

“I used to have a car,” said Charles who was working on the other side of the conveyor belt. He was at least forty years old, so it was perfectly possible that he was telling the truth. “It was a second-hand Chrysler Chipper. It even ran on petrol. You don’t get cars like that anymore, at least not those made in the last twenty years or so.”

“Petrol!” Cherry sniffed. “That’s not very green, is it? It’s worse than fucking diesel. And there aren’t many fuel stations where you can buy diesel nowadays.”

“It’s all change,” said Charles. “Almost everyone had a car when I was a kid. Now only the really well-off can afford one...”

“It’s all the fault of the fucking government!” snorted Chubby who, despite his name, was unusually skinny and whose other most prominent feature was the scattering of tattoos and piercings on his gaunt face.

“You blame everything on the government,” said Cherry.

“That’s ’cause almost everything is their fault,” Chubby asserted. “They fucked it up with Europe and the United fucking Kingdom. They fucked it up with civil rights, the economy, the environment, race relations... You name it, they fucked it up. That fucking Ivan Eisenegger and Eric Esterhazy: they’re cunts!”

He hissed the final ‘s’ of his tirade and was clearly intending to follow through with more, but Charles spoke first.

“It’s not the government’s fault that the oil’s all run out,” he said. “At least not this government. It’s been a long time coming. I guess no one expected it would ever actually happen.”

“What? Like the floods and the droughts and the plagues and the famines and all the other shit?” said Chubby. “They all fucking knew everything was all going to shit but, instead of holding back, the cunts just pressed hard on the accelerator.”

“What’s going on over here?” asked one of the supervisors who was carrying a lethal cattle-prod he’d probably have used to discipline the workers if it was ever made legal. “You all fucking shut it. We’ve got quotas to meet.”

Even Chubby didn’t want to risk having his daily rate cut for showing lack of enthusiasm, although he made sure that everyone around him could see him mouth the word ‘cunt’ when the supervisor wasn’t able to see. The object of this silent derision wandered off down the line while singing along to the squalling cat-like shriek of the music. It was another one of those rock songs that was either an ode to adolescent sexual lust or some nonsense about hobbits.

The walk back to the dormitory was exactly as miserable as it ever was. There were two miles of muddy lanes and the rain was pissing down. This was what the countryside was mostly like, Iris decided: shit and piss. Or at least manure and slowly draining murky green puddles. There were no drains, no pavements, hardly any public transport and really very little to persuade Iris to renew her contract at the farm when it expired. She’d rather do any job in the big city than stay in this shit-filled arsecrack of the Kingdom of England. London might be grimy and grey, but at least there was always something to do and you could get about by bus, tube and, more often recently, rickshaw.

It was a welcome sight when Iris, Cherry and her new workmates came within sight of the dormitory block, but less because of what it was than for the shelter it offered from the rain. The building had once been secondary school in the late twentieth-century when education was free and universally available, but had become derelict as the numbers of families who could afford to buy their children a place at even the most humble school had steadily decreased. The room which housed Iris’s bunk bed and that of her closest companions had originally been a chemistry lab, but all that was left of its previous role were tatty posters that showed the human body sectioned into some very peculiar angles and a line drawing of the nitrogen cycle.

Nevertheless there was still an educational role offered on the premises even if it was entirely vocational and utterly pointless. There was a nightly two-hour lecture on agricultural matters as part of the government’s initiative to encourage people to work in the countryside and go some way to compensate for the prohibition on migrant labour. Since Iris’ only other distractions were drugs, drinks and whatever she downloaded onto her laptop, she decided to sit in on the sessions. After all, her degree in biotechnology actually made her more knowledgeable on matters relating to biology than those conducting the presentations.

It was obvious, however, that these lectures could only be described as educational to someone who didn’t know the difference between a bacterium and a virus, who thought all animals were born in phials, and who were surprised to discover that potatoes grew in the ground and didn’t hang from the branches. The content was mostly propagandistic, although the enthusiastic lecturers in their colourful sweat-shirts and baggy shorts couldn’t completely disguise the fact that life in the countryside generally involved being dirty, getting cold and wet, and learning how to operate sophisticated agricultural machinery. From Iris’ perspective, it was the last which was the most instructive. The scientists in Japan, China and Indonesia had pushed technology forward further than Iris realised. Some of the robots that herded cattle, picked beans or trimmed hedges were as multifaceted as anything Iris had ever seen cleaning windows, handling customer complaints or serving beer in the more modern tourist hotels.

As each year went by and the Government of National Unity uncovered yet more excuses to suspend parliament and postpone the General Election, like most English citizens Iris now suspected the worst of anything the government did. Nothing happened by accident and everything was for a reason. Why was the government so enthusiastic to promote the countryside and encourage so many urban and suburban citizens to relocate to the villages and hamlets? There were the economic reasons, of course. The White Death and the government’s trademark draconian immigration policy had drastically reduced the number of agricultural workers. But Iris had come to realise that such an answer, however much sense it made from a rational economic perspective, was unlikely to be the real reason. After all, agriculture was only one of the many industries that had suffered in the last eight years.

Iris had two theories which she happily discussed with Cherry and Chrystal, another fellow labourer, when they huddled around a few lines and one of Cherry’s potent spliffs. The first hypothesis was that it was just a plot to relocate a bunch of urban malcontents out of the capital city where they could only cause trouble to places as far away and politically irrelevant as possible. The other was that it was a perfectly natural direction for a government of national chauvinism to be heading.

“I can see the first theory,” said Chrystal as she brushed a few crumbs of white snow off her nose. “After all, what government wants a load of stroppy protestors embarrassing them? If it got really bad it might even get a brief mention on Fox News. But what are you getting at with your second theory?”

“I dunno,” said Iris. “It’s just that there must be some kind of logic behind all this insular, anti-foreign, pro-business stuff. I don’t mean that it makes logical sense in a rational way, but rather that the kind of people who believe all that shit must sort of think there’s a direction it’s sort of taking them.”

“Yeah...?” said Cherry sceptically.

“Well, the ultimate end is that England should be totally isolated,” continued Iris. “It’s like the Kingdom has no trade or commerce with foreigners at all. It’d be like Mediaeval days. In fact, it’ll be worse than that since there used to be things like the Hanseatic League. So, if you’re going to be one hundred percent self-sufficient you’re gonna need to be able to grow all the food you need. And to do that you’re gonna need a load of people who know how to work the land.”

“I dunno,” said Chrystal. “That sounds too much like the cunts in government have a rat’s arse idea what they’re doing. I reckon they’re just pushing all this countryside shit ’cause they’ve run out of other ideas. They’re always pushing one popular initiative after another while they try to justify being in power. They’ve done anti-drugs, patriotism, foreign war, and, of course, immigrants. Now it’s the time of the countryside. That’s all it is. They’re a bunch of cunts with no idea of what to do with the power they managed to get through lies and deceit, so they have to come up with some kind of shit to justify still being there.”

“Sounds plausible,” Cherry agreed.

“If only we could get shot of the bastards,” echoed Iris.

LXXXVI

Psychlone

2108

No one could ever doubt it. This was by every possible measurement the biggest gig of Psychlone’s professional life so far. It was the biggest blast he’d ever had, even including the first time he had sex. But Psychlone wasn’t making a penny from it. Not even a measly grand or so. And the other acts giving it out were also all giving it for free. Although Psychlone knew enough from his university studies in Political History that there were fewer more hackneyed clichés in the history of alternative or underground culture, this whole thing was being done for the cause of World Peace.

But this time it was deadly serious. Peace in the world was at serious risk. Those missiles stationed on the tartan and taffy borders were more of a threat to peace and the survival even of the human species than any war there’d ever been in a distant foreign country, however much they served to keep the military preoccupied in other matters than that of beating up protestors.

This time it was fucking serious.

And one thing Psychlone knew, as did the other DJs and performers along with the tens of thousands of fans spread in front of him across the expanse of the illegally occupied Hyde Park, was that the bad guys in the current crisis weren’t the Scots, the Welsh, the French or the Swedes. It might be true that those were the nations whose missiles were trained on English towns and villages, but the real villain of the potentially cataclysmic pantomime playing out across the planet was the Republic of England.

It wasn’t quite as clear-cut as that of course. It wasn’t the people of England who were the villains. This was made absolutely obvious by the very existence of this illegal rave and the huge demonstration of which it was a part. The English people had no real quarrel with the Irish, the Scots, the Chinese or the Canadians. Furthermore, in a sense it wasn’t really the government of the Republic of England who were to blame either. They were bound by an alliance of convenience with other oppressive regimes across the globe, notably the Republic of North America, the United States of North Africa and the Muslim Republics of North India and Pakistan. Psychlone, ever the Political History graduate, was fully aware that the current arms race and the dangerous flirting with Mutual Assured Destruction, with the whole panoply of mostly antiquated Weapons of Mass Destruction, was driven less by a deep hatred of one set of people towards another but by conflicts of territory, resources and the relentless logic of military escalation.

On the other hand, that wasn’t the kind of complicated message a man could preach to the thousands of mostly young people who were enjoying the first free gig of their lives. What they wanted were slogans and an easily digestible message. And the Plastic Ono Band from a century and a half ago, mashed up with Psychlone’s own skronky beats and the insistent sampled growl of Captain Beefheart was sufficiently catchy and percussive to be both danceable and on point.

“All we are saying is...” Psychlone yelled into the mike.

“Give Peace a Chance,” echoed the crowd, totally ignorant of the political context of the 1960s and the United States of America’s futile war in Vietnam. This was just one of the many conflicts that had led to the nation’s economic collapse and eventual disintegration. And this was a nation—now split into three warring nations that were threatening to fragment even further—that once considered itself the world’s policeman in an era when that notion seemed somehow plausible.

Crowd response! This was fucking fantastic.

Psychlone didn’t want to milk it too much. The crowd wanted more than slogans to sing along to. They wanted beats to dance to. There were other tunes on his laptop from the far distant twentieth century he could mix and match with more familiar tunes from the turn of the twenty-second century. “War. What is it good for?” “There’s a Hard Rain a Gonna Fall.” “Eve of Destruction.” But Psychlone wasn’t here to drop tunes from the long dead Age of Rock and Roll. This wasn’t the time to invoke the mostly forgotten ghosts of Gil Scott-Heron, Woody Guthrie or Country Joe and the Fish. This was the time to drop the midrange, pump up the bass and accelerate the beats per minute.

No one in the audience gave a fuck about the authorities. Any heavy-handed impulse to break up the gig would be defeated by the sheer weight of numbers and the unspoken fact that many within the political establishment were secretly pleased that they now had the excuse of popular dissent to put their feet on the brakes on the otherwise inexorable drive towards global destruction. In any case, the police would be impotent to break up a demonstration of such numbers. There weren’t enough of them to make a difference and anyway they were so corrupt and compromised that they no longer commanded any respect. The military had the weapons to deal with social dissent, but they were of little use against a peaceful protest however many laws were being openly flouted.

Most of those laws were generally ignored anyway. Those regarding drugs were routinely disregarded. Successive campaigns over the centuries had been a totally unqualified failure. Drug abuse was more prevalent than it had ever been: openly practised and about the only way in which a substantial proportion of the population could make a living. It was such a profitable industry that almost everyone in the establishment was rumoured to have a finger in the huge pie. Regulating against drugs had become as senseless as regulating oxygen. The laws which gave cause for most concern were not those relating to illegal drugs, public sex or disorderly behaviour. The ones that emboldened most people to protest were those related to public assembly and private property. Very few of those dancing manically to Psychlone’s beats had ever been inside one of London’s parks before. The entrance fee was far too prohibitive. Few would ever have marched along roads like Whitehall, Piccadilly and Haymarket that were normally the exclusive domain of those with money and status. Psychlone had only ever been so privileged because he could flash his backdoor pass to the night clubs where he performed.

Here was London’s largest park invaded by the unwashed masses—tens if not hundreds of thousands of them—all gathered to hear him drop beats that were circulated across the globe on the heavily policed internet. As Psychlone also knew, he was being seen and heard by many others on countless time zones through the same ubiquitous digital media. He would be heard in nations such as China, Canada and Vietnam who were the last remaining bastions of human rights and the freedom of speech in a world in which such values now seemed hopelessly unfashionable. Fewer people would be able to decrypt the video and audio signals in repressive regimes such as Morocco, Venezuela and the breakaway Republic of Texas.

But all good things must come to an end.

This wasn’t just Psychlone’s gig. He was, in fact, one of dozens who’d risked arrest to perform in the heart of London within earshot of Mayfair: England’s most exclusive and heavily guarded residential district. There were many wealthy Chinese, Brazilians and Malaysians in the Park Lane hotels overlooking the park who were able to witness a historic occasion of the sort that was once quite common but now happened very rarely.

One of the promoters was urgently whirling his arm round to signify that Psychlone should start winding down. Five minutes his spread out fingers indicated. Psychlone could see Bobby Tarkovsky of the monumentally popular Techno Skiffle band, the Quarrymen. He wouldn’t remain very popular himself if he unduly delayed their appearance on the stage.

It was a cliché but it had to be done. The final beats came from Psychlone’s insanely catchy and slightly subversive Eric Esterhazy which was an unusually apt selection for a gig like this. Most people had only ever heard of the man’s name in relation to the universally despised Government of National Unity (which was actually no worse than the current government), but it gave them a focus for their pent-up anger. “What a fucking cunt!” they all shouted in unison as the chorus dived and swerved round the percussion and swirling chords. It was ironic that the man was now far more famous as the inspiration for a sarcastic and undoubtedly scurrilous dance tune than for what he’d ever done as a politician. That was one thing for which Psychlone and the ravers could be grateful.

“Right on, man,” said Steve Psonic, the drummer from the Quarrymen, as Psychlone made his way off stage and the compère made his way to the centre.

“Give it up large!” yelled MC Car Crash as he took the mike, before launching into an account of what was coming up later in his trademark rap delivery that was both hip and essential. As always, he wore traditional West African dress that seriously clashed with his choice of hats. Today he was wearing a Stetson. This must be a deliberately ironic reference to possibly the most despised nation in the whole world. Psychlone was sure that the rednecks and hillbillies of the Republic of North America didn’t really merit the derision and scorn directed towards them, but they did come from a nation that perhaps deserved to be allied with Muslim extremists. Like their allies, they still denied the truth of evolution even as they preached the merits of natural selection. Furthermore, they both promoted the sanctity of the life of the unborn child while also televising public executions and reviving lethal gladiatorial sports. The Republic represented an intolerant biblical fundamentalism totally at odds with their firm alliance with fundamental Muslims.

And these were the kinds of people that Psychlone was supposed to regard as his country’s natural allies in a time of war.

Although folk music, like skiffle, rock and reggae, wasn’t really to Psychlone’s taste, he could see that the Quarrymen were onto something. They had catchy tunes and inspired arrangements, that was for sure. They also had an extra spark revealed by their exuberant showmanship. With only a modicum of technology, they immediately grabbed the audience’s attention and got them to dance and even sing along to tunes that were a reminder of a far distant age when England, as the major partner of the United Kingdom, produced music from the cities of Liverpool, London and Manchester that more or less conquered the world.

Despite the Quarrymen’s obvious skill, it was difficult to believe that there should ever be such days again. Just like America—whose pre-eminence in popular music, cinema and industry had declined even faster than its economic and political fortunes—the Republic of England was a cultural desert compared to China, South America and West Africa.

But the day was yet young. It would be several more hours till the summer sun would set. And now that Psychlone had done his gig, he could chill out, take it easy, listen to the Quarrymen, toke a joint, snort a line, and be content that he had done his bit for World Peace.

And you never know. Maybe he had helped to keep those neutron missiles and mushroom clouds at bay for just a few years more.

That was surely something to celebrate.

LXXXVII

Iris

2062

The demo wasn’t originally going to be anything more than a protest. It was meant to be just one of the many other demonstrations that had grown steadily in number and frequency and extent over the last few weeks. The banners were unfurled. The paraphernalia of protest such as masks, tents and protective padding were all in place. But today the event Iris was taking part in wasn’t a protest at all.

It was, at long last, a celebration.

The Government of National Unity had fallen. The most unpopular and universally despised government in English history, or at least since the rules of King James the Second or King John, was now no more. Ivan Eisenegger had offered his resignation to His Majesty the King of England, Scotland and a host of other places that were no longer either in the long defunct British Empire or the more recently dissolved United Kingdom. Nobody was at all surprised that King Edward the Ninth accepted the resignation. There would almost certainly have been a complete collapse of the very institution of monarchy if he’d shown any hesitation. There was already a widespread suspicion that the monarch had been complicit in keeping the Government of National Unity in power far beyond its statutory five year term and had even been sympathetic to its reactionary agenda. But, irrespective of whatever opinions the King privately held, he had to appear even-handed given that he was also the titular Head of State of the independent and almost openly hostile governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Iris had partied hard many times in her life. When she was younger partying hard was something she did pretty much on a weekly basis. These were what now seemed the happy days of innocence before what had at first looked like just another Tory-led coalition evolved into something rather more sinister. Nevertheless, as an undergraduate biotechnology student she had to temper an enthusiasm for drugs, drink, sex and excess with the need to get up in the morning and work in the lab. During the long years of Ivan Eisenegger’s premiership and his government’s virtual dictatorship, the opportunities for even an occasional debauch happened on occasions that were fewer and further between. So much had become illegal or actively discouraged, except for those with money and connections, that it was difficult to be sure which new law she was about to break. Night clubs were closed down. Nightly curfews became increasingly common. Any gathering of a dozen or so people instantly attracted the unwelcome attention of the police.

And now after all the dismal years of austerity, oppression and dreary mean-spiritedness Iris had the opportunity to party hard in a way that had been impossible for almost a decade: the best years of a young girl’s life. Iris wasn’t so young now. She was well into her thirties and she wondered just how well she could keep the promise she’d made to herself to dance, drink and blow out to the very limits of medical advisability. She was already flagging and it was still less than a day since the first tentative signs of change had been heralded by instant messages, bulletin boards and word-of-mouth.

It had been a huge effort to protest for so long, despite the generally mild spring sunshine and the cushioning mass of thousands upon thousands of fellow protestors. It was Trafalgar Square that had been London’s main focus for protest. Over the last few weeks it had more or less become Iris’ home. It wasn’t that she had much else to do, of course. She had no job to go to. But then who did these days? All the expenditure on her education had been wasted and the government’s employment initiatives were fizzling out as the funds to provide something that approximated to worthwhile work was diverted to other more pressing concerns. And nowadays these were to prop up the mostly foreign-owned banks, cut corporation taxes yet further in the forlorn hope that this policy might yet stimulate a recovery, and bolster up the fractious and discontented armed forces.

However, as the extent of the protests grew there also came a mounting sense of inevitability about it all. At first, it seemed very unlikely that peaceful protest could ever bring down a government that was by no means reluctant to employ an extraordinary array of weapons to suppress revolt. Every day Iris expected the tanks to roll down Whitehall and the Strand and to crush her nylon tent along with all the hundreds of others camped outside the Church of St Martin’s in the Fields. She felt almost embarrassed by it all. She wasn’t a natural protestor. In truth, she didn’t really believe passionately in anything very much. She had a general view that something should be done about the despoliation of the environment, the extreme weather conditions, the galloping inequality, and the crackdown on civil liberties, but she wasn’t especially sure what that action should be and just how far it should go.

Then the massed voices of discontent became emboldened and either voiced sympathy for the protests or actually joined in. What was strange was the universal extent to which English people all of a sudden agreed that they wanted to see the demise of Ivan Eisenegger’s government. The opposition came not only from self-professed radicals, revolutionaries and malcontents. The number of protestors was swollen by vicars, priests and preachers. By judges, solicitors and barristers. By journalists, actors and musicians. By mechanics, engineers and middle managers. By professionals, executives and manual workers. From every class, every region and every socio-economic group. What was most peculiar was that many people who Iris had assumed were the natural friends and allies of the government became increasingly vocal in their complaints. It was these people that both attracted the most hope amongst the protestors and generated the most despair amongst the government’s apologists.

Even the government’s natural constituency—conservatives, nationalists and business leaders—had decided that enough was enough. Although many of Iris’ old friends and by far the majority of her new friends living in the tents erected around Nelson’s Column and outside the National Gallery were convinced that these turncoats were merely bending with the wind and had chosen to follow the prevailing trend, Iris wasn’t so sure it was quite as simple as that. A better strategy for a hypocrite would surely be to stay quiet until after a change of government rather than voice their discontent before where there was still a possibility that they would be caught out of step with events. But even the conservative establishment had reason to complain. What had happened to traditional English values? What right did an English government have to irrevocably change the nation’s principles of governance without submitting itself to the popular vote? Were the legislators of the realm somehow above the law? Shouldn’t there have been at least one General Election by now?

Was there any way that a conservative or a nationalist could plausibly plead that the Government of National Unity had been a success? The United Kingdom was no longer united. England had fewer international friends and allies than it had ever had in its long history. The economy was now in a much worse state than it had been a decade ago. The reach of the law no longer extended as far as the ordinary people. Not one of the government’s targets had been achieved, with the sole exception of the draconian immigration policy that Fox News UK contended had still not gone far enough and which had contributed more than anything else to the extinction of the United Kingdom and the decline in the nation’s economy.

The protests had worked.

Iris still had to pinch herself to believe it. The slogans which only yesterday were calls for the government to resign and for so many wrongs to be righted was now centred around the single sigh of relief and solid determination: ‘Never Again!’

And never again was what Iris truly hoped for. Never again should a government tear up the consensual agreement that characterised the English alternative to a written constitution and replace it with a series of drastic reactionary measures whose appeal was primarily to the basest chauvinistic and nationalist sentiments, cheered on all the way by the majority of the media and supported by the bottomless pockets of billionaires whose patriotism never extended to actually paying English taxes or spending much time on English soil. Never again should so many people surrender with so little struggle to the loss of the basic human freedoms of speech, movement and expression.

Never again.

Of course it could never happen again. The nation that Iris once knew no longer existed and she was now a citizen of the Kingdom of England whose image had been forged by the despised and now deposed government. Could life now return to how it was before?

The nightmare was now over. Iris stood in the crowd under the constant drizzle of brightly coloured paper streamers: a spliff in one hand, a bottle of red wine in the other and still higher than the paper kites that flew up above her with crude caricatures of Eisenegger, Esterhazy, Eaglecliffe and Eastwick. Every now and then she’d erupt in a cry of ecstasy as a wave of celebration rolled over the thousands upon thousands of protestors, well-wishers and celebrators who jammed up Central London from Piccadilly Circus to Aldwych and from Leicester Square to the Embankment.

Ensuring that the event was happening and keeping it live was the constant thump and rhythm of dance music that echoed from speakers positioned all around central London that was there to represent the multitudinous sound systems of the Kingdom. Occasionally the beat was interrupted by the cacophony of a rock group, the clatter of an alt-folk group or one of the many kinds of English music that had struggled to survive in a philistine culture where the most talented music-makers were the ones most likely to have been deported or imprisoned. This was the long-awaited liberation of the underground, alternative, independent music scenes, many of which had only become so because the prevailing culture was so utterly unsympathetic to anything whose beats, rhythms or messages were neither familiar nor reassuring. And fuck it! it was good to dance again knowing that no security guard or policeman would dampen down the excitement. No one would be smashing up the amps and trashing the sound systems. No one would be laying into the dancers with truncheons or tear gas. The DJ was giving it large and no fucker was going to stop him until he’d dropped every last beat and smashed it to the max.

When the news broke that the Prime Minister had at last done the decent thing Iris was in her tent huddled up with Stuart, a guy she’d met on the protests and who’d now moved his sleeping bag into the comfy claustrophobic space of Iris’ mountain tent.

“Resignation!” said Stuart with an arched eyebrow. “The bastard should have fallen on his sword.”

“Metaphorically he has,” said Iris.

She listened as the news spread across the squatted spaces of Trafalgar Square from tent to tent and from person to person. Iris heard the news on the EBC News which had become the only trusted voice in the Kingdom of England after all other independent voices had been suppressed and subsumed. The breaking news being broadcast across the bottom of the screen was what she now realised she’d been hoping and praying for almost every day of her adult life.

And now it had happened she wasn’t sure what she should do.

“I guess we’ve got to celebrate,” said Stu.

“We’ve got plenty of time to do that later,” said Iris with a cheeky smile. “What I most want to do now is to fuck.”

Stu was alarmed. The two had never fully consummated their friendship and he’d almost certainly come to believe that they never would.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

After the years in which Iris had only ever agreed to have sex reluctantly and with no real enthusiasm, the years in which all amorousness was compromised and tarnished by her memories of having worked as a prostitute, the years in which she’d never been able to let herself truly go, she was now as sure as she’d ever be.

“Fuck it!” she said. “What better way is there to celebrate the good news?”

LXXXVIII

Odile

2111

There were several things that could have killed Odile. So much devastation was happening at more or less the same precise moment in time that there was an embarrassingly rich choice of lethal candidates. But whichever it was, it happened far too suddenly and with absolutely no warning for Odile to take evasive action, not that there was much she’d have been able to do anyway.

The intense blistering heat alone was more than enough to kill Odile even though the explosion’s epicentre was over a kilometre away. But if it hadn’t been that or the searing temperature, then the abrupt onrush of air into the suddenly opened vacuum would have dashed the life out of her as her charred body was smashed doll-like against the walls of houses that had suddenly buckled into ruins from the same unimaginable force.

It could have been the intense heat, sudden impact or even the lethal radiation that killed Odile. Like a marionette with strings cut, Odile and her freshly broken limbs were thrown back and forth against buildings and lamp-posts: a fresh spurt of blood breaking forth after each collision. If by some miracle there was still a breath of life in her this was surely extinguished when the walls of a house propelled across the street along which she’d a moment ago been walking crushed her shattered body against the walls of another and she was buried under several tons of rubble. Her skull was crushed and an arm visible through the rubble was bent into several impossible angles.

Odile didn’t even see the mushroom cloud or hear the explosion. The searing heat and radiant light that instantly burnt out her retinas reached her before any associated sound. Her lover Edith was somewhat further from the epicentre of the explosion which was detonated more by navigational error than design in Lancaster’s outermost suburbs where it could have been of no conceivable strategic advantage to whichever of the Americans, Scots, French or Irish military command that had launched the nuclear-tipped device towards the by-now obliterated Republic of England. But Edith’s further term of life was barely a moment longer than Odile’s.

Her attention was instantly drawn towards the window of the room where she’d been sitting through which burst a blinding flash of light. There was also a weird whistling that wasn’t quite what she might have believed would herald the end of everything in the world that either she or Odile had ever known. Edith’s eyes were scorched but as she wasn’t immediately blinded, she could glimpse the rising column of smoke and dust four or five kilometres away. For Edith her the heat was more painful than terminally lethal. Her flesh wasn’t so much roasted as severely singed. But Edith’s demise and that of everyone else in the Lancaster town centre happened when seconds later she was caught in a maelstrom of tumbling buildings and other unexpectedly mobile street furniture from which she couldn’t possibly flee as the winds rushed inwards towards the source of the explosion and flung her repeatedly and mercilessly against whatever hard object there was until, like Odile, there was no life remaining in a body that was crushed, battered, bleeding, scalded and in severe shock.

Neither Edith nor Odile ever believed it would end this way.

Probably nobody did, including the military officers who’d unleashed humanity’s nuclear arsenal in one final pyrotechnic display that lit up the surface of the moon and was more than enough to bring a brightly-lit end to all that was left of human culture and civilisation. There were no doubt shelters in China, Siberia, New Zealand and the Pacific Ocean where the last remnants of the human species might survive a little while longer, but not necessarily for many more years.

It was without doubt the end for the Republic of England and for everything associated with it. There would be no more English art and culture. No more rural retreats. Those who survived were as equal as any other in their wretchedness with only ill-health and the prospect of slow death from radiation to look forward to. Their brief future history would be plagued with endless recrimination and mutual blame during which the last remnants of civilised values such as sexual and racial equality would be very much forgotten. There was no prospect of help and salvation from a scientific community that had unwittingly brought about its own destruction and that of everyone else. Perhaps survivors with a conscience such as Roland might strive to help the desperate millions, but with what resources? The future was a desperate one in which human dignity was lost forever and where the distribution of food, shelter and clothing, however compromised by disease and radiation, would be determined more by luck and bloody combat than any concept of desert or fairness.

It was strictly incorrect to say that the apocalypse had arrived without warning, although there had been a significant failure in the early-warning systems that were meant to sound moments before the weapons of mass destruction arrived. But what real use would they have been as thousands upon thousands of lethal missiles were launched all over the globe and, as an afterthought, over England? But as so few resources had been allocated to civil defence it was likely that the alarms would never have worked anyway. So much of the government’s limited resources had been set aside for war-readiness, famine-relief, quarantine against plague, blighted crops, rising sea-levels, violent weather events and the impossible-to-satiate demands of the rich and powerful.

In any case, whatever mistake it was that had triggered the international exchange of every ounce of thermonuclear destructiveness the world’s governments had stored over the last century and a half was almost certainly not the conscious and deliberate choice of a political or military leader. The legacy of creaky software systems and over-complicated administrative procedures was just not able to cope with a modern world that was increasingly beleaguered by mediaeval blight and where most people now lived in pre-industrial ignorance. And those who might survive now faced a future that would resemble more a prehistoric than a mediaeval past. This was the return to an age in which the human being was only one of several species of animal struggling to survive by chewing carrion and dodging predators.

This desperate future was the ultimate outcome of the fantasies of those who held the belief that humanity was somehow uniquely blessed. Perhaps they had faith in the divine providence of an elevated being with a remarkable physical likeness to the hominid male with a grand plan so obscure that no one really understood it, least of all those who most unquestioningly believed in it.

In the days before the final end, Odile and Edith had watched the news broadcasts on the television screen at the soup kitchen with the same apprehension as everyone else. Nevertheless, even in these desperate early days of international war, most of those who filed in for their daily bowl of soup would much prefer to watch a quiz show, a situation comedy or a chat show. Such entertainment was still very much available, along with the increasingly hysterical pleas for calm and restraint issued by public officials, until the arbitrary moment when the high-alert early warning system somewhere in the world—perhaps in the Republic of North America, but just as likely in Northumberland, Beijing or Aberdeen—reacted a little too presumptuously at the sight of a flock of geese or the distant echo of a small earthquake. Edith’s final moments could just have easily have been as she watched the closing moments of a comedy quiz show where the laughter of the studio audience would just momentarily be punctuated by screams of panic and despair as London fell victim to a cluster of missiles directed towards it from all over the globe, of which only a few were likely to have come from England’s traditional enemies: the Scots, the Welsh and the French.

Like most people, Odile had nursed the hope that all the anxiety of impending doom would soon blow over. The tense atmosphere couldn’t last forever and normal life would eventually resume. Edith, however, reminded her lover that recent history didn’t give much cause for optimism. The rhetoric was ratcheted up so high that it seemed increasingly unlikely that it would just fade away. How could the Scots ever forgive their southern neighbours for the insults thrown at them? Although the last few years had been characterised as the Second Cold War, the tension between the belligerent nations was becoming unpleasantly hot. At which stage would the international state of low-level aggression escalate into something much more bellicose?

The news programmes covered in interminable detail the various small-scale wars that the hostile nations of the world were conducting against each other. The Isle of Man was a particular hotspot. It was criss-crossed and scarred by deep trenches as the English peeked over the parapets towards their Scottish and Irish foes. In North America, the border states of Virginia, Minnesota and New Mexico had long been host to widely reported atrocities and massacres. And far from the gradually shrinking influence of the English-speaking world, there was warfare, border disputes, undeclared invasions and isolated lethal incidents across all the continents, although the greatest concentration was in Africa, Europe and North America.

Despite the many signs of imminent crisis, Odile’s last day began no differently to any other. She and Edith had struggled out of bed with the morning free of any need to go to work. Edith stayed at home above the soup kitchen, while Odile went for a walk across Lancaster to visit another friend of hers in a part of town that only a few hours later would become nothing more than a vast smouldering crater. There was no premonition that the tatty, derelict streets lined with beggars and drug addicts would soon become scorched by the fires of hell and that every last soul would be incinerated.

Even the weather was unexceptional. It was a typical April day. Not too hot. Not too cold. A little bit drizzly and moderately overcast. None of this would have been an obstacle to the missile which either by chance or design was headed towards North West England, more likely intended to level Manchester or Liverpool than the ancient city of Lancaster. Its guidance systems knew nothing about the elements. It was travelling at just the right speed, maintaining just the right ambient temperature and deflecting sufficient electromagnetic radiation, that it wasn’t detected by England’s antique anti-missile defences which, despite the years of neglect and the Just-In-Time philosophy that ensured that it was only one step away from collapsing in on itself, was still able to prevent the arrival of a significant proportion of the incoming missiles, but not necessarily of their radioactivity, heat and long-term environmental legacy.

As it glided over England’s hills and valleys, hugging close to the wooded hill-slopes and cleverly changing colour as it flew over England’s lakes, motorways and fields of genetically modified foodstuff, it knew only the rough coordinates of its destination. But the decades since the missile was programmed and the many alterations made as the geopolitical systems shifted according to whim and political expediency, the actual target at which it its journey came to an end was almost certainly not what was intended.

Neither the missile nor the nuclear warhead whose contact with Lancashire soil would leave a churned-up long-lasting legacy of heavy metals for many hundreds of thousands of years had any emotion of affection or malice towards its target. It was nothing more than a bullet shaped device with stabilisers, a guidance system and a very crude Artificial Intelligence system that took account of potential obstacles but had no means of changing its purpose or objective once in flight. It had no notion of the history or significance of any English town or city, any more than it would have of Houston, Moscow, Johannesburg, Buenos Aires or Edinburgh.  But these cities and many much smaller were all to be devastated by similar weapons of mass destruction. Many were launched from submarines whose propellers churned up the last few corpses at the bottom of the jelly-fish infested oceans now long depleted of fish, whales and coral. Many flew from the sky. Some were launched from the robot-staffed military bases on the moon that brought the last vestiges of humanity’s space adventure on missiles back towards the home planet and from whence the whirring automatons could observe humanity’s demise with no risk to themselves. Many were launched from silos in deserts, often where jungles and lakes once used to be, destined to leave the entire planet in a state of desertification as much like the Sahara, Arizona or the Gobi as it was possible to be.

Along with Lancaster Castle, the shopping centre, the historic monuments and a millennium of English history; along with Odile and Edith, their shared love and life together; along with the unpredictable and various hopes, fears and anxieties of the ragged undernourished people of Lancaster; the whole of England and English history arrived quite suddenly and abruptly to a very absolute and unmistakable full stop.

LXXXIX

Mark & Molly

2076

This wasn’t the first time that Mark and Molly had sat together on the sofa transfixed by the vision of a huge slowly growing and self-enveloping luminescent cloud tumbling ever upwards into the sky into the now familiar shape of a mushroom. This wasn’t even the first time that the couple had watched the image of exactly the same thermonuclear explosion, although there were so many others that could have been shown from either the last two nuclear wars or the current one. It might well be that there were other images that were somehow more dramatic, more evocatively posed or in some other way more striking. The most disturbing aspect of the image wasn’t so much its cinematic or aesthetic qualities, but rather where it had taken place.

Somewhere beneath the billowing cloud of deadly radiation was the site of what had once been the world’s most holy city. And now all that remained of the City of Jerusalem’s three or four millennia of history was being lifted upwards above the atmosphere, towards the troposphere and even the stratosphere. The holiest of the Holy Shrines—the Wailing Wall, the Dome of the Rock and Mount Calvary—were now nothing more than radioactive ash being borne high into the heavens to rain down on the Middle East and, depending on the prevailing winds, over Europe, North Africa and Asia.

Unlike the many other cities that had been incinerated, annihilated, vaporised and irradiated, this was one whose name was known to everyone in the world, whose presence would be genuinely missed and for which many people had a genuine emotional attachment. For Molly it was more from her school day memories of having sung the verses of William Blake’s Jerusalem. This hymn was performed everywhere in the period of the Government for National Unity as it was just about the only decent patriotic tune that had any relevance to England rather than Great Britain. For Mark, Jerusalem’s significance was more in the hazily remembered Easter story whose events took place around an ancient city long since covered by concrete whose foundations had now been uncovered in the most brutal and radical way imaginable.

And now Jerusalem was no more.

If it was ever to be re-inhabited, it would be only after many generations. By then almost everything about the city would be charred, annihilated and perhaps long-forgotten. The spirit of Jerusalem might outlive the city that was now as totally obliterated as Judaism’s most sacred temple in the age of the Romans.

Where now in the world was there a place for veneration shared by all pilgrims of the Holy Scriptures, whether the Torah, the Bible or the Q’uran? Certainly not Mecca, Rome or Salt Lake City. Nor, since the many retaliatory missiles hit their primary target, the city of Tel Aviv.

“I can’t believe it!” moaned Molly. “I just can’t believe it.”

“Doesn’t the Bible predict that the world will end when Jerusalem falls?” Mark asked anxiously.

“What, in Revelations?” replied Molly. “That’s just a load of hallucinogen-inspired bullshit. St John the Revelator was some kind of First Century smack-head. And, anyway, where was the number of the beast, Gog and Magog, and all the stuff about the Antichrist?”

“Maybe the Israeli Prime Minister was the Antichrist.”

“Not a very impressive one, was he?”

“I don’t like this programme, Mummy,” pleaded Monica who was sprawled across her chair in the corner of the living room. “Can’t we watch something else? Aren’t there any cartoons?”

“Shush, dear,” said Molly. “This is history. You’ll remember this day for the rest of your life.”

“Why?” the young girl asked, unsure of whether she’d missed something important. “What’s so special about it?”

“You see these pictures on television,” said Mark. “Those are real. That is what’s really happening. It’s not a science fiction movie. It’s a real nuclear war. And it’s happening in Israel and Palestine and Lebanon and Turkey and all over the Middle East. Millions of people are dying. It’s really very very important.”

“It’s boring to watch the same pictures over and over and over again,” moaned Monica who wasn’t at all convinced by her father’s explanation.

The days leading to the launch of all-out nuclear war in the Middle East made the actual event seem strangely inevitable. The term ‘sleepwalking into apocalypse’ had been used again and again by media pundits as a description of how the logic of Israeli and Arab intransigence had driven them inexorably towards this defining moment. It was a cliché that described a real worry and didn’t fully express the complexities of a dispute that involved several nations, some—such as Turkey and Iran—who weren’t at all Arabic, and amongst which there had been various states of undeclared war for several years now.

The quarrels had become steadily more heated over the past few weeks and months as both sides tried to bring their competing perceived interests to some kind of resolution. Everyone knew that the real catalyst of the conflict was the presidential election in the fragmented United States. The relatively wealthy North Eastern United States and the Western Union were edging towards electing a president who whether a Democrat, a Unity Democrat or a Reformed Republican, was unlikely to be supportive of the increasingly belligerent Republic of Israel. In contrast, the more populous and politically aberrant Republic of North America was becoming ever more gung-ho for the Jewish Cause, whilst manifestly lacking the financial or military muscle to back up its rhetoric. As Israel’s sole backer in the world became progressively more impotent, there was a sense that now was the last chance for Israel to employ its formidable military assets before they became obsolescent and useless.

The unthinkable alternative was for the Republic of Israel and its neighbours to compromise and arrive at some kind of mutually advantageous accommodation.

“I should be going to work,” said Mark who was now working on a very peculiar workshift to accommodate the time zones of his employers in the Far East. “I could be late.”

“I bet there’ll be no public transport,” said Molly. “And there’ll be no one in the office when you get there.”

“Why would that be? Israel’s thousands of miles away.”

“There’s a risk of fallout. Internet communication will be flaky at best. Most people will be watching the news at home.”

“I know. I know,” said Mark. “But I’ve got to make the effort. I’ll have to walk to the office if necessary.”

“Best of luck,” said Molly sardonically.

Mark nodded with resignation and sidled out of the cramped living room. As he walked towards the front door of the apartment he could hear Monica’s voice still whining: “Are you sure we can’t watch cartoons, Mummy?”

Having said that he’d walk to work if he had to, Mark was more or less obliged to do so when he walked to Holloway Road underground station and found it closed. A hastily scribbled note announced that normal services would be resumed as soon as possible, but gave no indication as to when that might be. Fortunately, it was a dry if somewhat windy day so Mark was able to walk the six or seven kilometres to the office without too much discomfort.

It was a bizarre experience nonetheless. London was eerily quiet. There were very few cars, bicycles or horses on the road and those who were sitting inside the few pubs that were open were viewing the same film footage of Jerusalem’s final moments that Mark had just been watching at home. Even so, Mark was careful to stay as visible as he could under the faltering streetlamps and as far from the shadows of the early autumn dusk as he could. There were those who wouldn’t care whether bombs were landing in London itself and would show no compunction in murdering a vulnerable pedestrian for something as petty as a mobile phone or an overcoat.

When Mark finally arrived at the offices of Sig Mu Inc. he was almost surprised to find that the doors were open and that the receptionist was sitting at her desk. But then it was likely that, like many ancillary workers in London’s offices these days, she couldn’t afford a home of her own and slept in a small dormitory in the office block’s basement.

“Many people in tonight, Ophelia?” Mark asked after he’d swiped his security card at the entrance and let the body scanners trace his contours to confirm that he wasn’t carrying any weapons.

“Not many,” said Ophelia. “It’s all what’s going on in the Middle East. Look, the Israelis launched a missile at Ankara but it’s been intercepted. Baghdad wasn’t so lucky.”

“Are there any cities left in Israel?” Mark asked, while looking at a map on the television screen which displayed a map of the Middle East with little mushroom clouds slowly pulsating over various points.

“I don’t think there’s been any more launched towards Israel for several hours,” said Ophelia. “Perhaps it’s all over.”

Mark strolled over to the escalator and punched in a code that allowed him access to Sig Mu’s offices on the twenty-fourth floor. Ophelia might well be right. If the last two nuclear wars were anything to go by, although the last happened when he was only very young, the pattern would be an abrupt exchange of nuclear warheads, followed by a few stray explosions and spasmodic retaliatory launches from hitherto unknown missiles silos or other launch pads, and then a kind of radio-silence as the nations who’d just destroyed themselves and one another came to comprehend the true horror of what they’d just done.

Mark was assured by the television commentators that the days, months and years to follow were certain to follow much the same pattern as that after the last two nuclear wars. No one could be really sure how things might turn out but there would be little value now in launching more nuclear weapons, even assuming that any were still in reserve. As a deterrent to attack, the formidable nuclear arsenals of the Middle East had quite clearly been a total failure. As a method of cataclysmic destruction on a scale that the newscasters already claimed exceeded by several factors the first two nuclear wars, they’d unequivocally demonstrated the hell they were capable of unleashing.

As Mark sat at his desk, he studied his e-mails while also keeping an eye on the news broadcasts his fellow employees were also watching. Naturally, there was the tardy release of a notice from the company’s Pyongyang head office which announced that due to the real risk of radioactive fallout on all European offices, especially those in the Mediterranean Union and the South, employees would be excused from attending work for the next week. Time taken off would be deducted from annual leave.

“What do you think this fallout will do?” wondered Olaf who normally worked in the secure office at the end of the corridor but was today wandering aimlessly around Mark’s section. “Will it make my hair drop out?”

“Not much danger of that happening to me,” joked Mike as he patted his bald pate. He was one of half dozen or so other people in an open plan office that normally accommodated several hundred.

“It’s best to stay indoors, it says here,” said Mark who indicated the health advisory leaflet attached to the company e-mail. “The main risk is cancer and radiation sickness. It also recommends filtered water and oxygen masks.”

“Where the fuck are you supposed to buy an oxygen mask?” exclaimed Mike. “The last one must have been sold weeks ago.”

“It’s the nuclear winter we’ve got to worry about most,” said Olaf.

“Nuclear winter?” said Mike. “What kind of shit is that?”

“Well, not nuclear winter so much as increased cloud cover,” Olaf corrected himself. “Nuclear winter is for the big one...”

“The big one?” Mike queried.

“You know, when the big nuclear powers, like China, Russia and Germany, let theirs off. You know like in the last century when it was between the Soviet Union and the United States...”

“Neither of those countries exists anymore,” Mark pointed out.

“The nukes still do,” said Olaf. “Anyway, it’s all the dust and debris and shit that the nuclear clouds put into the sky and block out the sun and make things fucking cold. That’s what a nuclear winter is. You’ve seen the news programmes. There’s been a fuck of a lot of bombs going off. It’s gonna be real crowded up there in the upper atmosphere. All the stuff that goes up has got to come down, but before it does it spreads across the sky and blocks out the sun...”

“That’ll be a change from all the global warming shit that causes all the droughts and floods and heat waves,” said Mike.

“Yeah, whatever,” said Olaf. “So, even though we’re fucking hundreds of kilometres away, we’re still going to suffer. Fucking radiation and freezing winters...”

“...And mutations, cancers and health warnings on everything imported from the Middle East,” chimed in Mike.

“Yeah, whatever,” conceded Olaf. “We’re gonna suffer for years to come!”

XC

Eric Esterhazy

2046

There were so many other things Eric would rather be doing. For instance, he could be doing something to address the scandalous rate of immigration from the war-ravaged regions of the world: scarred as they were all the way from India to Kazakhstan and from Tajikistan to Azerbaijan. He could be consolidating his position as Treasury Secretary by outlining innovative new tax cuts and further rationalisation of public expenditure. He could be actively promoting the causes for which his constituents elected him and in which he believed so passionately.

Rather than do all that, he was having to join the chorus of government ministers gathered around Prime Minister Olanthe O’Donnell as she wrung her hands and mouthed platitudes about how appalled and distressed she and her Cabinet were by this morning’s horrific exchange of nuclear warheads and the consequent loss of countless innocent lives.

Now, instead of devising new ways to keep the quarrelsome ragheads out of Great Britain where they would yet further dilute the nation’s cultural identity with Arabic chants and minarets, Eric Esterhazy would have to express in glutinous syrupy tones how much he and his colleagues would do whatever they could to help the millions of unfortunate refugees even to the extent of relaxing the Kingdom’s already lax border controls. It would be months, even years, until he could once again suggest that the traffic should be much more in the other direction: away from rather than towards British shores.

Like his fellow ministers, Eric now had to learn to pronounce the names of far distant cities, towns and other places just at the moment when their annihilation bestowed on them the fame and immortality they’d never have earned otherwise. Who’d even heard of Dushanbe before and even guessed that it was a city in Tajikistan? And what about tongue-twisters such as Jalalabad, Chagcharan and Dzhebel? It was a curse that the part of the world where the second nuclear war in less than a decade should take place was where the names were on the wrong side of pronounceable. It would have been far more convenient if the war had happened somewhere civilised where the names were English rather than Turkish or Arabic.

It wasn’t just that the combatants’ names were tricky to say without stumbling and that it was difficult to find on a map the location of the now irradiated wastelands, the biggest predicament for a professional politician was that the whole conflict from beginning to end was utterly incomprehensible. Who, for instance, were the good guys and who the bad? What had triggered all these fractious quarrelling states to finally crack and launch at each other the lethal arsenal that had ended up in the hands of absolutely the wrong nations after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Surely the experience of such close proximity to Pakistan and India where the last nuclear war took place should have been some deterrent to the squabbling Stans, especially since these were precisely the nations who’d just had to cope with a flood of refugees from Pakistan when the country essentially ceased to function in any meaningful sense. Wouldn’t they also be left with years or maybe decades of civil war, vigilante justice, local warlords, refugee camps, a permanent legacy of radioactivity and a displaced population? But perhaps the ragheads just couldn’t see what they would let themselves in for. After all, there was a reason why Great Britain was Great, the United States were United and the ragheads, wogs and  spades of the world had to be dissuaded from landing on the shores of more civilised nations.

Eric Esterhazy was far too astute a politician to express such unfashionable opinions in public, however much he believed them to be true. It was all because of political correctness, of course, that the truth had to be suppressed. It was obvious that the different races of the world had to be kept apart under Anglo-Saxon stewardship (even when intermixed with Hungarian blood). But political correctness was still something that a politician whether Conservative or Liberal, especially a Cabinet Minister, had to be mindful of. Eric almost envied the Reds and the Greens. Political correctness came so naturally to them.

And now what was Eric to do other than spew out hollow platitudes? How could he distinguish himself from his colleagues when set against a bland wall of solidarity that abhorred the tragedy of a far distant apocalypse and pledged to help in every way possible?

“Don’t be a prick!” said Callum O’Leary, Fox News UK anchor, when Eric confided in his anxieties after he’d answered the scripted questions on live television with a soggy account of how British government aid would help the suffering millions in Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the other republics the pronunciation of whose names Eric had been rehearsing over the last few hours. “News moves on. People will soon get as bored of watching mushroom clouds over Samarkand as they did the ones over Faisalabad. Pretty soon the news will focus on radioactive fallout, viral mutations and lawlessness amongst refugees. And where there’s chaos there’s opportunity for the Conservative cause...”

“Meaning what?” said Eric who was weary of cryptic comments, although he enjoyed using them himself. Behind O’Leary’s head was fresh film footage of a mushroom cloud enveloping in and around itself above what had previously been the little-known city of Qurgonteppa.

“When people feel threatened,” Callum explained, “they unerringly seek comfort and succour in what they’re most familiar with. They don’t want to be confronted by the unknown and the unfamiliar. Not long from now, we’ll have the same radiation scares we had six years ago. Accompanying that, there’ll be an influx of strange-looking foreigners from all these gobbledegook republics in their turbans and sandals who won’t speak one word of English between them. There’ll be health scares about weird diseases and unhygienic toilet habits. Before you know it, the newspapers will be full of stories about the invasion of commie ragheads who couldn’t keep their fingers off the nuclear button. You won’t need to suffer too many weeks in mourning the death of the millions of unfortunate women and children who’ve just been incinerated in how-the-fuck-am-I-supposed-to-pronounce-istan...”

“A Conservative rally cry?” said Eric sceptically.

“Fear and suspicion are a Conservative’s best two friends,” said Callum. “Helped, of course, by plenty of cash. And you can be sure that Fox News UK’s shareholders will be willing to invest whatever it takes to ensure that news coverage on this crisis will suit your government, especially if you can get shot of that O’Donnell woman. What someone like her is doing as leader of the Conservative Party I don’t know. She might as well be Liberal or even Labour. There’s no spine to her.”

“My feelings exactly,” said Eric who warmed even more to his friend and frequent fellow guest to the sex parties organised by Fox News UK.

But although Callum’s remarks were reassuring, Eric still inwardly groaned at the prospect of the many more interviews to come. Few of them would be nearly as sympathetic as those with Fox News UK. On the other hand, Eric was grateful that his first interview in the necessary round was in the studios of the national news channel where he was most in his element, even though he’d had to suppress even a hint of his normal concerns. There was no way he could angle the interview towards an attack on alarmist Green activists, the creeping influence of socialism, or the steady loss of the nation’s moral backbone. He couldn’t find an obvious way in which he could argue for tax cuts, increased military expenditure, and rolling back the influence of the state as a solution to an apocalyptic catastrophe in these faraway lands. Instead he’d had to propose the very kind of political intervention and nanny-state interference that he was more disposed to opposed.

“Given the present state of the Exchequer, can we afford to be as generous as you suggest?” asked Eoin d’Auberge, the dusky-skinned interviewer on the pinko BBC where, for the first time in many years, Eric ventured into their cramped studios near Old Street.

Eric hated the BBC. Just as he did any media outlet that by virtue of not being conservative could only be part of the pinko liberal establishment that had sympathies for Greens, Reds, poofs and ragheads. If he had his way, what was left of the BBC would be left to wither away but, unfortunately, over half a century of starving the corporation of funds hadn’t completely destroyed the affection the general public still retained for it.

However, now wasn’t the time to go off-script. Although his instinct was to respond to the half-breed d’Auberge with an attack on him having asked such a loaded question which was so obviously a reference to his general view that the British government was already far too generous.

“These are extraordinary times that demand extraordinary measures,” said Eric bestowing on his clichéd words as much gravitas as he could muster. “The British people have shown many times before just how deeply they are willing to dig into their pockets to help those much less fortunate than themselves, especially when the disaster has happened on such a tragic scale...”

“Are you suggesting that the charitable and private sector should be wholly responsible for providing practical assistance?”

“What? No, of course not,” said Eric who could see where this might lead to, given his many pronouncements on how Foreign Aid should be entirely discretionary. “As you reported in your news headline, the British Government has made a pledge of unconditional aid and assistance that can only be described as generous. It is imperative on governments across the world to give as much as possible to the tens of millions of displaced and mortally wounded in Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan. This is an international crisis and it deserves a commensurate international response...”

“Can we be assured that the pledge will be matched by actual funds? Or will only a fraction of the pledged funds reach its intended recipients as happened, for instance, in the Indo-Pakistani Nuclear War?”

This was another trap. Christ! Eric hated these fucking pinko news reporters. Why couldn’t this d’Auberge cunt just display the same deference and respect he always got from Fox News UK and its affiliates? Eric had only a month before been pontificating on why it had been necessary to radically reduce Foreign Aid including, of course, all that earmarked for Pakistan. Now wasn’t the time, of course, to tell the BBC News anchors and their loyal (but mostly non-Conservative) viewers that every penny spent on Pakistan had dropped down a bottomless pit of local corruption while the entirely predictable consequences of the self-induced trauma of all-out nuclear war remained as insurmountable as ever. Now wasn’t the time to explain that he expected most of the Foreign Aid donated to the Stans to eventually be re-invested in the coffers of a handful of large corporations who’d already began lobbying for funds to help further British commercial influence in that part of the world.

“We have learnt many lessons from the mistakes made by the previous government during the last nuclear war,” said Eric boldly. “You can be assured that we shall ensure that the interests of the suffering millions will be the highest of all priorities for the government in which I have the privilege to serve...”

Even if it was with that bitch O’Donnell, Eric thought, as he blustered his way through the remaining few minutes of his thankfully short interview in which he made sure that he emphasised again and again the bullet points with which he’d been briefed. And these were, of course, so far from what Eric would normally propound that he had to bite his tongue and almost recite his lines as if it were some kind of school assignment.

Occasionally, Eric considered the meaning of the words he was trotting out and would do so again for news organisations based both home and abroad. It helped, after all, to be able to match his emotional responses to the words he was using. Yes, it was truly shocking and appalling that millions of men, women and children had been fatally consumed by the billowing clouds of burning radioactive dust. Yes, he could only feel pity for the suffering of those whose skin had peeled off in the intense heat and whose eyeballs had been burnt out by a glare brighter than the sun and whose bones had been shattered by the flying debris. And, yes, he felt anguish for the plight of the many who now had to suffer for the rest of their lives with the threat of cancer, if, that is, they managed to survive the plagues, famines and civil war which were the still persistent legacy of the last nuclear war.

On the whole, though, for Eric all this was just a distraction that he’d much rather do without. If only the ragheads had killed each other off in a less spectacular way, then perhaps no one would have noticed and almost certainly there’d be no fresh influx of wretched refugees into the United Kingdom.

XCI

Gabrielle

2041

Like most men—even bisexual men—Ghazi wasn’t someone who’d willingly display his true emotions, especially not those such as sorrow, misery and distress. This time, however, Gabrielle was in a position she’d never been in before and one for which she was not remotely suited and that was to provide comfort to a man who’d lost his emotional self-control.

“Amritsar. Jalandhar. Jaipur,” Ghazi moaned. “These are places I’ve known and visited. My sister lives—or rather lived—in Amritsar. And now they’ve gone. Incinerated. Annihilated. Nothing left but radioactive waste.”

And then he released yet more tears on a pillow already damp with proof od his grief and despair.

Gabrielle placed a comforting hand on his bare back, but recognised the need for restraint. Ghazi was no longer in the mood for sex that was his original excuse for seeking her company. What he wanted from her was nothing more than sympathetic companionship which somehow meant more to him when it came from a woman who wasn’t Indian or Pakistani, who wasn’t Muslim or Hindu, but who understood at least something about what such differences in culture and religion might mean.

It wouldn’t do for Gabrielle to remind Ghazi that Ajit, her senior farm manager, was also in a state of abject despair although his concerns were more for the people of Rawalpindi, Gujranwala and Lahore. It wouldn’t do to bring up the subject that her long-term policy of recruiting from the dispossessed of the Indian subcontinent had now left her business functioning at rather less than half its normal capacity at a time of the year when harvests needed to be collected and mid-year tax accounts collated.

Gabrielle was as distressed as anyone by the news film that showed only too vividly what happened when nuclear warheads were used in anger rather than for show. Although she was awed by the magnificent beauty of the unfolding mushroom clouds as they rose above the cities of the Punjab, the Rajasthan and Kashmir, she was uncomfortably aware that the same awe-inspiring splendour consisted in part of the incinerated ruins of human lives, centuries of history and the hopes and dreams of the abruptly deceased.

Gabrielle had been so sure over the last few weeks that this was a catastrophe that would never happen. Surely, the very purpose of nuclear weapons was to make the prospect of all-out war inconceivable. Only the very stupid or the psychotically insane would contemplate actually unleashing such formidable weapons. The news pundits had been vying with one another to predict the moment of climb-down, capitulation and compromise. In the meantime, people who were unsure where Pakistan was in relation to India had now become familiar with the names of places and politicians they couldn’t hope to spell correctly. Nobody had expected the nations of the relatively prosperous Indian subcontinent to wreck everything that had been achieved in nearly a century of independence.

One consequence of India’s growing self-confidence was that the European, American or Oriental powers no longer had the influence to restrain the sparring nations. After all, India was a member of the Group of Five leading Economic Powers including China, America, Japan and the European Union. No one, including the Permanent Members of the United Nations, had the means to persuade India to take a more temperate stance with regards to its equally obdurate neighbour.

As the crescendo of retaliation and counter-retaliation became inexorably more serious over the passing week, Gabrielle had already forgotten what it was that either India or Pakistan had originally been demanding of the other. The conflict had taken on its own remorseless logic and any kind of compromise had become ever more unlikely. The mood progressed from sound and fury that would eventually extinguish itself to alarm and resignation about the near-certainty of a suicidal exchange of nuclear warheads. The predictions became less about which nation would stand back first as to which one would be so foolish as to be first to press the red button.

There was an uneasy stand-off as each day went by and yet another prediction of imminent disaster was confounded by an absence of nuclear conflagration, while at the same time the bombardment by more conventional but still highly destructive weapons continued to rain on the cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Srinagar and Islamabad. Armies were gathered at the borders. Aircraft carriers were floating on the seas around Karachi and Ahmedabad. Armed drones were flying over the mountains, plains and forests. The rhetoric became ever more uncompromising.

And then—when Gabrielle got so used to the unfolding crisis that she’d forgotten what it was like to live in a time when imminent nuclear war was nothing more than a theoretical scenario—there came the first explosion of a nuclear device by one lethally armed nation on another in all human history. Those punters who’d taken the grim bet at the bookmakers that it would be India who’d be the more lunatic of the two belligerent nations were well-rewarded. The response as the city of Rawalpindi dissolved into nuclear heat and radioactive dust was predictable. Pakistan’s reply was cautious in terms of the republic’s military capability but it was devastating to the citizens of Jaipur who might have assumed that their city’s survival was guaranteed by its sublime beauty and historical significance. But all such considerations and many others became meaningless as the day went on and more and more of the subcontinent’s magnificence was reduced to nuclear waste whose legacy was likely to last longer in terms of lethal half-lives than the histories of either Islam or Hinduism.

Normal life in Britain or, indeed, in every country in the world was suspended while every few minutes came rumours and later confirmation of another nuclear explosion and then yet another and not long after, still another. If the Second World War had been covered in such blow-by-blow detail, then it could scarcely have been more compelling television news. Gabrielle was unable to concentrate on any one thing for more than a moment until her attention was drawn towards the mobile feed on her phone or the high-definition images on the television. Although the news presentation, even on Fox News UK, was coherent and informative, Gabrielle couldn’t retain more than a staccato pattern in her head as atrocity followed by catastrophe followed by humanitarian crisis. There was too much to assimilate. It was far too apocalyptic in its scale and implications for her to put it into any kind of context.

This was just too much news for one day.

All these ancient cities whose history was more venerable than most European civilisations; all those lives lost in the most appalling suffering; all those mushroom clouds sprouting over the Punjab, Gujarat and the Kashmir: all of this was far far too much for Gabrielle to take in. She preferred her life-defining epic international events to happen at a more readily comprehensible pace. Barely had she grasped that Rawalpindi was now a city that more resembled the caldera of an active volcano than a home for millions of Pakistanis, than she had to assimilate the news that the desert surrounding Jaipur was now more hospitable than the city itself.

“This isn’t right,” Ghazi moaned. “It’s not right at all.”

Gabrielle could only agree, but what else could she do?

She was also aware that unlike most wars in the last century, she and other British citizens couldn’t just view a war between India and Pakistan as just another regrettable foreign conflict which, even if British soldiers were involved, was mostly just another televisual diversion.

This was a war whose radioactive pollution would be carried across the globe by the prevailing winds and where—although those neighbouring countries unfortunate enough to be in the path would be the ones to suffer the most from the fallout—very soon there would be nowhere on the planet that wouldn’t see a lethal increase in cancer and other radioactive ailments. And there was also scientific speculation that this would lead to an unusually cold winter as a result of all the Punjabi dust and Kashmiri soil ejected in tiny particles into the planet’s outer atmosphere and then smeared evenly over every single square kilometre of the planet.

Radiation and bad weather was indiscriminate and random. It was the chill wind of post-conflict readjustment that Gabrielle dreaded most. After all, her most loyal lover, her most senior managers and the greatest proportion of her employees all came from the blighted regions that would now for the rest of her life be associated with a single devastating event. No one from now on could contemplate Jaipur, Lahore or Srinagar without reflecting on its demise, any more than they could Hiroshima, Dresden or the World Trade Center.

It was more than lives lost. It was a permanent scar on human history.

How would Gabrielle’s agricultural business survive this crisis? Would her staff work harder given that they no longer had a home in the East to which they could return? Or would they be so despondent that nothing useful could be done? How long would it take Ghazi to recover from his despair? This was itself indicative of the intermittent depression he’d suffered from ever since the day he’d been badly beaten up in Oxford

“Do you want me to turn the TV off?” Gabrielle suggested as Ghazi’s gaze was drawn to the image replayed over and over again as the dust and debris of the once little known city of Jalandhar ascended into the brilliant blue sky. “Isn’t this all a bit too much, don’t you think?”

“It’s certainly too much,” Ghazi admitted as his tear-stained face reluctantly dragged its gaze away from the huge flat screen that dominated the living room wall. “It’s more than too much. It’s a lifetime’s worth of too much. But I fear that if I don’t watch what’s happening I’ll miss something and that will be the something that I’ll forever regret not seeing...”

“Like what?”

“Like the bombing of New Delhi,” suggested Ghazi. “Like the end of Indian democracy. Like an atrocity that will somehow make even the destruction of Jaipur seem like a footnote. I don’t know. This is history. And, what’s worse, it’s my history.”

Gabrielle resisted the temptation of reminding Ghazi of how many generations it had been since anyone in his family had lived in India or anywhere outside of Europe and America. But she couldn’t just sit here and watch Ghazi weep over the unfolding tragedy, however naked he was,

“I’ll phone Ajit,” she said. “I’ll find out how he is.”

Ghazi nodded. “You do that,” he said. “Tell him that I feel his pain, even if he is Pakistani.”

“I appreciate your call,” said Ajit when he picked up the phone. “My wife is overwhelmed by grief. The boys don’t really understand what’s going on, but they can’t be dragged away from the television.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Gabrielle asked.

“Nothing,” said Ajit, and then thinking better of it: “My wife... She needs company. Many of her relatives in Pakistan, you understand. There may be funerals. I just don’t know...”

Gabrielle inwardly groaned but she knew what she needed to say. “These are special circumstances. You can take as much time off work as you feel you need to...”

“But the farm...” Ajit protested half-heartedly.

“Don’t worry about that,” said Gabrielle. “We might just have to write off the harvest this year. Especially given the likelihood of radioactive dust...”

“It will affect all farmers in Britain equally,” said Ajit.

Gabrielle appreciated Ajit’s comforting words, but she knew as Ajit also did that with a workforce absent in mourning, radioactive dust falling from the sky and the likelihood of an unusually cold winter, the immediate commercial prospects could not be especially good.

“Whatever happens to me and my business is as nothing compared to what’s happened over in your home country,” she said diplomatically.

XCII

Alex

2036

Alex was now possessed of an opinion he once believed that he’d never hold. And that somewhat dispiriting opinion was that those women whose company he most enjoyed were those he could never rate as his social equals. A woman like the new Chief Executive Officer, for example, was a real balls-breaker whose greatest talent was to keep Alex and his fellow directors on their toes. Alex still wasn’t sure whether their brief relationship together counted as a positive or a negative asset in his executive career. And he didn’t really enjoy the company of women who were his intellectual equal. They so often made him feel that he was a fraud for earning so much but achieving so little.

The worst thing about women who were in any sense Alex’s equal was that they were also generally much the same age as him. That, as Alex now had to admit, was not an age when women were at their most physically attractive. It also troubled him that just as women of his own age was now no longer his first choice, he’d now become the sort of man who was theirs. No wonder most men who’d got married preferred to stay that way.

So the solution to this dilemma, and an increasingly expensive one, was to rely on the company of women with whom there was no pretence or illusion, most especially regarding relative social or intellectual status, and, best of all, where there was no likelihood of any kind of commitment beyond that of actually paying for her services.

Alex was pretty certain that the naked woman lying beside him on his huge double-bed was never actually christened Opal, but that was the name by which she introduced herself and by which she was listed on the escort agency’s website. Alex could easily have chosen Mirabella, Goldie, Ember or Alicia, but today it was once again Opal’s turn. She was attractive in a peculiarly non-specific way, although just on the cusp of being dumpy and short. Her main virtue was how reliable she was beneath the sheets and in holding a reassuringly non-threatening conversation on other occasions.

And today, of all days, one thing Alex really did not want was something that might further disturb his composure.

The last few days had been fraught and there was a very real possibility that they could be amongst his last. And not just for Alex, but pretty much for all humanity.

Events in Korea had taken a critical turn. The armed forces massed on North Korea’s southern and northern borders were bristling with weaponry that was dramatically more devastating than that usually used in a distant foreign conflict. It wasn’t only the two Koreas that had the thermonuclear capacity to reduce the peninsular to radioactive waste. The Americans and their close allies, the Russians, were on one side of the border. While on the other side was the world’s wealthiest nation and its most heavily armed nuclear power: the Federal Republic of China.

This could end up being very nasty indeed.

Alex had faith that the warring parties would somehow come to a satisfactory face-saving resolution. After all, international business could suffer even in a stalemate. China had investments in America, Russia and even the UK. There was no country in the world, except perhaps the most unhinged, that had a good word for North Korea. It was a nation that had squandered every penny of its wealth on an preposterously well-armed military and a thoroughly pampered political elite whose quality of life exceeded that of most billionaires even in neighbouring China. It was incredible and anachronistic that the people of North Korea should continue to live in ignorance of the world beyond their borders in an age where the internet was truly ubiquitous and the cheapest mobile phone could store a library of movies that would take a lifetime to view in their entirety.

“What do you think about what’s happening in Korea?” Alex asked Opal, expecting (and probably hoping) that she would respond with something crass and ignorant that would somehow justify his objectification of her as appetising sex meat.

“Shall we turn on the TV and find out?” she suggested as she rolled over and clicked on the remote control. She was betraying rather more interest in current affairs than one would normally expect. On a previous occasion she claimed not to know which of Tokyo or Beijing was the capital of Japan. Alex suspected then, and even more now as she listened intently to the academic discussion on Fox News UK, that her show of ignorance was nothing more than an act and that the real woman who Alex would never get to know was somewhat more abreast of international news than Opal the whore who liked to be fucked in the arse and was expert at the messiest kind of blowjob that Alex had ever enjoyed.

It was the on-screen tickertape that broadcast the news Alex was most worried about regarding the continued stand-off. Alex wondered just how long over five million men in arms and a planet’s worth of thermonuclear firepower could remain idle on the 38th parallel. It wouldn’t take much for the affair to escalate from a skirmish to all-out conflagration. Every report of an island bombed, a battalion defecting and an armed scuffle on the borders made Alex either cheer or despair. And this same uneasiness was even apparent on the faces of the normally self-assured news anchors. And it was fairly apparent on Opal’s face as well.

“How far do you think the Chinese will go to protect their ally?” Opal asked, flatteringly implying that this was something on which Alex might be an authority.

He was nothing of the sort of course, but after all the conversations and chats with colleagues and the blow-by-blow accounts provided by television and internet journalists, Alex felt that he’d dedicated enough of his life to have some kind of authoritative opinion. But whatever he might argue, his main concern was that he and everyone else on the planet should still be alive at the end of the week.

“I can’t believe anyone in the world, not the Chinese and not even the North Koreans, would be so stupid as to start a World War,” he said.

It didn’t seem right. The world wasn’t ready for conflagration, although Alex wondered whether there would ever be a time when it would be. How ready was the world when the meteor hit Chicxulub 65 million years ago? How ready were the Minoans for their civilisation to be annihilated by a volcanic eruption? Did the people of Poland expect their country to be invaded from both the East and the West in 1945? Perhaps the most devastating events came when people were least ready for them.

It was a cliché of most movies and television programmes that whenever a big event happened there would be bold headlines everywhere with words like War, Chaos and Catastrophe. Everyone would excitedly discuss the news and associated with it there would be a palpable atmosphere of expectation. This was exactly what was happening, but buses and trains were still continuing to run, there was no break in the transmission of situation comedies, soap operas and quiz shows on television, and sports fixtures still dominated the last few pages of the newspapers. The world may be due for extinction within the week, but Arsenal was still due to play against Sheffield Wednesday and a new superhero movie was due to have its premiere in Leicester Square.

Alex was genuinely worried. He’d even phoned up his ex-wife so that he could talk to his six-year old daughter. Even Iris had a vague idea of what was happening at the furthest end of the world, but she seemed to think that after everyone in the world was killed things would just magically get to be all right again. Several work colleagues were absent without leave and there was a real sense that no one any longer cared whether production figures were met or deadlines achieved given that all of that might soon be utterly irrelevant. Every announcement by the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom or, most of all, the President of the Federal Republic of China was listened to with rapt attention. The names of the Presidents of both Koreas were now more familiar to the world than at any time since the mid-twentieth century.

“There’s a special announcement from Clooney,” said Opal referring to the American President. “It looks like it’ll be important. Shall we watch?”

Alex nodded, forgetting for the moment the real nature of the relationship that should exist between Opal and her client. It wasn’t for the escort to dictate what the client should do, but Alex no more than Opal wanted to miss an important announcement. He wondered whether he should now be fleeing towards the nearest underground station if the president was just about to declare all-out nuclear war. Although Alex was sure that there was nowhere truly safe from a thermonuclear device even of fairly modest mega-tonnage, there must surely be some level of security on the Northern or Metropolitan Lines. Unless, of course, overground explosions were to cause the tunnels to collapse.

The president’s demeanour was stern and commanding. At least this president wasn’t the kind of idiot that the Americans were increasingly prone to elect as it adjusted to its diminished relative status in the world with astonishingly poor grace. Alex wondered what kind of mess the standard issue president would leave the world. With their inability to string together coherent sentences and their tendency to make frighteningly inane and foolhardy statements of policy, American presidents had mostly become as much a poor joke in the world as their desperate assertions of America’s divine mission became more obviously derisory and self-deluding. On the other hand, Alex wasn’t sure that Britain’s own rather dull Prime Ministers or the other elected heads of Europe were actually any better.

The president’s address spun out the tension for several moments as he stressed the gravity of the international situation, emphasised the seriousness of the threat and praised the endeavours toward peace made by the allies, in particular the presidents of Russia and Brazil.

Come on, come on, thought Alex. Cut to the chase. Are we all going to die?

“I think it’s going to be all right,” said Opal with a tone of relief in her voice.

“How can you tell?”

“Body language,” Opal explained.

“Body language?”

“I’m a Psychology Major,” said Opal who for the first time in their many carnal encounters confessed that she wasn’t just a fluffy sperm receptacle. “You can tell by the eyes, the breathing, the stress pattern in the sentences... It’s all there. He’s about to announce that it’s all been resolved.”

And indeed it was. The sentences rolled out as the president announced the terms by which North Korea had capitulated to the allies’ demands and how the Federal Republic of China had made bold steps towards bringing the crisis to a satisfactory conclusion. At the same time there were hints about the breakdown of civil order in North Korea, the substantial level of defections to the south and the brave rebellion by the starved and frightened who didn’t really want to serve as gun-fodder for their leaders’ manic ambitions. Alex suspected that the real story about North Korea’s abrupt and humiliating climbdown from the intransigent position it had taken earlier that morning was rather less to do with a sudden outbreak of sanity and reason and more to do with the final collapse of the world’s most insane country.

And so it was over.

World War Three had been averted.

What a relief!

And as he returned his attention to Opal in the hope that they could celebrate the good news together at a special discount rate, Alex reflected on the good news.

If the world could survive this crisis, it could surely survive anything.

Table of Contents

. 516

LXVI Roland 2090. 523

LXVII Odile 2110. 531

LXVIII Sally 2091. 538

LXIX Iris 2058. 546

LXX Gabrielle 2040. 554

LXXI Mark & Molly 2075. 563

LXXII Alex 2034. 571

LXXIII Tamara 2098. 579

LXXIV Alex 2035. 587

LXXV Eugenie 2101. 594

LXXVI Eugenie 2102. 602

LXXVII Psychlone 2107. 610

LXXVIII Iris 2059. 618

LXXIX Lindiwe 2069. 626

LXXX Olive 2085. 633

LXXXI Sir Norman 2080. 639

LXXXII Phil 2104. 647

LXXXIII Iris 2060. 655

LXXXIV Chris 2105. 663

LXXXV Iris 2061. 671

LXXXVI Psychlone 2108. 678

LXXXVII Iris 2062. 685

LXXXVIII Odile 2111. 693

LXXXIX Mark & Molly 2076. 701

XC Eric Esterhazy 2046. 709

XCI Gabrielle 2041. 717

XCII Alex 2036. 725