The 2084 Precept (42 page)

"
Touché
, Jeremy," I agreed,
"
touché
."

"And fair enough for me also," he continued.
"I must say I consider myself fortunate to have you as an
interviewee. You are a fairly knowledgeable person on the one hand,
and on the other you have taken great trouble to provide me with as
much of that knowledge as possible in the short time available for
doing so, and this has allowed me to organize my research in a more
targeted manner than would otherwise have been feasible. You are
clearly a person who believes in complying with an agreed
arrangement to the best of his ability, and I appreciate that kind
of conscientiousness to no small degree, nor do I have any doubt
about it continuing. And that is why I consider the amounts I am
paying, which under different circumstances might be considered
excessive, perhaps exceedingly excessive, to be equitable and value
for money. And my thanks for your principled cooperation, Peter,
are sincere ones, contractual obligations aside."

"Well now, that's very kind of you, Jeremy,"
I said in turn, aren't we both being gracious to each other, "and I
thank you for your integrity regarding our agreement as well. But
what exactly is coming up next? What are we going to be doing
now?"

"Hmm…first, we need to finish our initial
interview agenda as quickly as possible. My thesis, you understand.
My dissertation. It's very important to me. Can we do the next
interview on Monday?"

"We could, Jeremy. I could make it at 2
p.m.," I said. "I have to go down to Slough in the morning."

"Good, good. That will be fine. In my view 2
p.m. is always a civilized time of the day for meetings. Let us
meet in my office again. That is no longer going to be an issue in
view of the new situation. On the contrary, we now
want
to
communicate with them." He thought for a moment. "Do you have a
means of contacting the policeman who was following you?"

"Yes."

"Then I suggest you ask him for an urgent
meeting. He will be delighted—although for the wrong reasons of
course. We need to get him and his superiors to take us up to a
higher level, ministerial involvement. To do that, we will need to
convince him with a 'hacker trick' or two. Let him choose which
ones of course, only harmless occurrences. So if you succeed in
arranging a meeting, call me on our mobile while it's going on and
tell me who, what and where and I will perform as necessary."

Now that is really very fine, absolutely
O.K. No way am I going to be embarrassed. On the contrary, if
Jeremy manages to produce a couple more computer-hacking rabbits
out of his hat, that Delsey guy will assume I am a partner in a
team of two or more persons with amazing and as yet unheard of
telepathic powers of some kind. On the downside, both Delsey and
his superiors would be going to extrapolate and conclude that these
powers made me a dangerous person or, at least, that they made
Jeremy a dangerous person. The latter of course being the same as
what I believed myself. Jeremy undoubtedly constituted a potential
for danger. True, he might never take it into his head to abuse his
powers. But what if he changed his minhd one day…what then? There
was no doubt that the poor guy was seriously deranged. Anything
could happen.

"As regards the meeting, Peter, Mr. Delsey
and his friends are going to regard me personally as a significant
danger to society after witnessing our little demonstration.
Understandable of course. Also understandable, since he is a member
of your species, that he and his superiors will wish to capture me
and hold me in custody while I am investigated, probed and
subjected to tests by an ever-increasing number of scientists,
psychiatrists, and medical researchers, and eventually on an
international basis. And for this purpose they would attempt to
restrain me and hold me in a confined space. I am thinking of the
chimpanzees you mentioned. And I consider that to be a more or less
guaranteed scenario. But a scenario which I would not allow to
happen—an easy enough exercise for me as you can imagine."

A waitress brought in more coffee and
biscuits. Good. I had eaten all of the others, it happens sometimes
when stuck in non-smoking territory. And was this normal service or
a Jeremy message, who knows? I
could
go out for a smoke of
course, but I prefer to hang on, the sooner this meeting finishes,
the better.

"Now we mustn't forget," Jeremy continued,
"that Mr. Delsey has no reason whatsoever to assume that I am a
lunatic. There are no events or occurrences of any kind to support
such a view. Certainly, he knows that I am an ex-mental patient.
But my recuperation was officially and medically certified. No…for
him, the concerns at the moment have to be either fraudulent
activity or perhaps criminal activity of a more evil kind. But he
can't act. He has nothing to act upon."

"But after your computer-hacking, we will
have the scenario you just outlined."

"Yes, but as I have said, I will be able to
deal with that. The most important thing in your first meeting will
be to convince them that you have a matter of untold importance
which can only be discussed face to face with the prime minister.
Let us not fool ourselves: our tricks will not achieve that. But
they will hopefully be sufficient to convince him and his superiors
to pull in a politician or politicians of a certain level for a
second meeting. And for that reason alone, you must not mention
that I am an alien. Or rather, that
I say
I am an
alien."

I was chewing away on the remaining
biscuits. Easy enough, I thought to myself. I wouldn't have to
disclose the topic for discussion, the hacking tricks are
persuasive enough to convince even hard-boiled cynics to arrange a
second meeting, and I wouldn't have to mention Jeremy's delusion
that he is an alien. What a way to earn a stack of money. And the
whole thing would eventually fizzle out anyway, what else? I saw no
pitfalls. It was like having a solid position in a chess game;
impossible to lose…unless you make a tactical error.

"O.K. But what I don't understand, Jeremy,"
I said, "is why don't you do all of this yourself directly? Why do
you want to involve me?"

"Because it has to be the human race itself
which does it.
I have to see whether the human race is capable
of changing itself
. I couldn't do it anyway, any more than you
could tell your ants not to invade your terrace, or your wasps to
stop stinging you. Only your species itself can do it, and then
only if it wants to.
What the only solution is and how you have
to implement it
is something I will explain once we get the
world’s leaders together. And even then we have to discover whether
your species is capable of agreeing to try instead of disagreeing.
And if it agrees to try, then we have to see whether it is capable
of turning that decision into reality. And you are the first link
in this process, the human being who will hopefully start the ball
rolling. I have to detect a willingness here, I have to detect some
kind of desire in you and your fellow beings to actually
want
to mutate and irreversibly modify your civic traits and
social behavior. I am admittedly prepared to assist initially by
introducing fear as a helpful driving force, by explaining the
mechanics of the solution, and by paying you personally more money,
but that is it. And if I see no signs, I shall abandon the attempt
and the Governing Committee will take whatever decision it decides
to take without the benefit of any further examples or additional
input from myself. That is why."

If this were a real situation instead of an
impossible Jeremy Parker delusion, that would really be putting me
on the spot. But in either event I would be doing it because of the
money, wouldn't I?

"Fair enough, Jeremy. I understand. It makes
sense."

It made sense alright. Another €400,000.
Possibly, at least.

* * * * *

Off I headed on a long walk, a beautiful
day. I didn't feel like lunch, too many biscuits. I bought myself
an ice cream instead. I headed into Hyde Park, nobody following me
as far as I could see, not that I was really checking, it's the
other way round now, it's
me
who wants to contact them. I
found a place under a tree and sat down. One of a thousand others
doing the same thing, everybody grateful for the opportunity to
absorb the life-giving warmth of their star's nuclear
reactions—with the deadly effects of the attendant radiation being
nicely deflected by our planet's magnetic fields of course. For
which thank you very much. I finished my ice cream, took out my
mobile, and dialed the Tom Delsey number.

"Delsey." The tone of his greeting was of
the kind a corpse might give to an undertaker.

"Peter O'Donoghue, good day to you, Mr.
Delsey."

"Ah…Mr. O'Donoghue, and good day to you
too."

"My apologies for calling you on a weekend,
Mr. Delsey, but something has come up. Would it be possible for us
to meet at your early convenience?"

"Certainly. Always a possibility. Got some
information for me, have you? The Parker thing?"

"Yes, I have. Quite surprising information;
not what you might think."

"Now that sounds interesting enough. Is
tomorrow soon enough?"

"Tomorrow is Sunday," I said.

"Yes, well…I'm with the family today but
tomorrow I'm on the road again. Nevertheless, if it's awkward for
you, we can make it Monday. Or if it's extremely urgent, I can fix
it for today of course. Nothing the wife hasn't had to put up with
before."

"Tomorrow will be fine," I said. "What time
and where?"

"How about your hotel? 10 o'clock suit
you?"

"Yes. See you then, Mr. Delsey. Goodbye and
enjoy your Saturday."

"And the same to you, Mr. O'Donoghue, the
same to you."

I called Jeremy on the alien phone. Told him
the time and place of the meeting with Delsey. Fast work Peter, he
said. He would be waiting for my call or calls.

I stretched out on the grass and lit a
cigarette. I felt good. What a weird way to be making money. I
can't get over it. It isn't real. But, and you can believe me, I'd
give up every cent in exchange for being able to have Céline, even
if it turned out to be only for a few months. I must check my
messages when I get back to the hotel.

Man, is it warm. Swimming is never on my
agenda for the U.K. But who cares, just to think that in a couple
of weeks I will be in Spain, pre-summer time, water temperature in
the pool around 23 degrees, not too warm, not too cold. And in
Mallorca I know exactly which hotel I will be staying in initially,
a favorite of mine, into the sea off the rocks, too expensive to
have any screaming kids running around—not their fault, kids
scream, you screamed and so did I, but no way do I want them
cluttering up my space, no apologies for that; leave all the stress
and the shit (both metaphorical and literal) to the players in the
reproduction game—and waiters all over the place, all of whom have
had some kind of training and who actually want to pay attention to
you.

And in this contented fashion I just dozed
off. It was early evening when I resurfaced. I took a stroll down
to the Knightsbridge tube station, picked up the Saturday IHT, had
an early meal in a Lebanese I know, played backgammon over coffee
and cognac in the back room with the owner—he is a mean backgammon
player, but then so am I—and wandered out again into the still warm
evening air and back to the hotel.

Yet another new girl was at the reception
desk, not particularly attractive, not too good a figure, kind of a
longish face and red-haired. But she was pleasant enough. It's just
that red-haired women are without exception precluded from my
catalogue of female prototypes. My interest in red-haired women has
always been zero for reasons we don't need to enter into here.

I booked a small conference room for
tomorrow morning’s meeting with Delsey and took the elevator to my
room.

No message from Céline, not good. See what
happens tomorrow. I finished reading the IHT, same things every
day, only the death count varies, spent some time on the chess
column and polished off the Sudoko.

I gave my neurons some work regarding
tomorrow’s meeting, mapped out what I thought would happen, decided
on a couple of preventive steps. Picked up a late sports program on
the television—my only use for television is sport, and then only
on a Saturday, and then not always—and disappeared into the land of
dreams.

Except that I didn't dream. Morpheus was
clearly away again on one of his nefarious nighttime pursuits. His
father Somnus was in charge and I slept peacefully and well and so
did my neurons. I shat and I shaved and I showered, I went down to
breakfast, I timed it to finish at five to ten, and I sauntered
leisurely along to the lobby.

Tom Delsey was already there. He was wearing
an open-neck shirt and a sweater of the kind only purchased by the
inhabitants of certain types of U.K. suburban settlements. It was a
cheap knit, it had a ghastly crisscross design, and it had a blend
of colors which brought eggs and bacon to mind. But, to be fair,
and one always tries to be fair, it did serve to disguise his beer
belly by about 20%.

"Good morning, Mr. O'Donoghue," he said.
"Pleased to meet you again."

He didn't look pleased to be meeting me
again. He looked as morose as ever and his left eye was still
halfway through a wink. This is in no way a criticism of him, or of
his person because, to be fair again, if you or I had a face as
pockmarked as his, we would probably be morose-looking
ourselves.

"Good morning, Mr. Delsey," I said. "Thank
you for coming."

"Ah…" he replied. "Hmm…er…I have three of my
colleagues with me and I wondered if they might attend also. One of
them is my direct superior by the way. We are seriously puzzled by
the mysterious Parker and are therefore more than interested to
hear anything you might have to tell us. But if you prefer not,
then we'll do it one on one and I'll fill them in afterwards."