The 2084 Precept (53 page)

I was introduced to all of the newcomers and
they included—I can recall most of them—one of the Ministers for
Defence attending the Cabinet; the Attorney General, who, among
other things, is the government's principal legal advisor on
matters of international law; the Minister of State, Cabinet Office
(who is responsible for providing policy to the prime minister);
the boss of SIS, better known in common parlance as MI6; the
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (International Security
Strategy); one of the five ministers who, together with the Home
Secretary, head up the Home Office, which in turn is in charge of
all of the country's police forces; the First Secretary of State
and Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office; and
the boss of Wilton Park, a department located in Steyning in
Sussex, God knows why, and which is responsible, among other
things, for arranging international conferences for
politicians.

A complicated meeting, you might think. Yes,
but not as complicated as it might have been, had they wanted to
involve more top people from the government jungle. And there must
have been many who were simply unavailable at such short notice
anyway, and there must have been many more who were singularly
unimpressed with the information given to them and who didn't feel
like wasting their time listening to a load of crap or—if you
prefer the more sophisticated word we borrowed from the
French—ordure.

And of course it wasn't important
enough—yet—for some of the
really
big fish, guys like The
Minister of Defence himself, or the Secretary of State for Defence,
or the Deputy Prime Minister. But even so, they had managed to
assemble a small but acceptably heavyweight gathering on next to no
notice, so hats off to them.

There was some shuffling in the seats, some
harrumphing, some coughing, the noises you get to hear before the
curtain rises at the opera or in a theatre, and then they told me
that they would be grateful if I could arrange for an innocuous
event within this room to kick things off—a kind of aperitif said
one of them, haw, haw, haw, bloody fool. No problem, I said. And
what the government officials did, they asked all of the police
representatives to leave the room and wait outside, and then they
told me what they had agreed on. These people should please come
back in and bark like dogs, thank you. For how long, I asked. Not
for long, they said, a minute would be more than enough.

I confirmed to them what they already knew,
that I personally had none of these powers and that I would have to
telephone in the request, and I went through the door to the
toilets and pressed the green button on Jeremy's phone.

Nothing happened. I pressed again. Nothing.
Ghastly thoughts began to slam around in my brain, my neurons were
in disarray in less than a second and were formulating a series of
grim, fearful scenarios, not only involving serious ridicule, but
problems of a legal nature as well. Or of a not so legal
nature—which an affronted and embarrassed high-level police
authority would be perfectly capable of generating for a
perpetrator, a time-wasting and taking-of-the-piss perpetrator.

Until I realized that I had been using the
wrong finger, my print wasn't being recognized, and when I
corrected the error, it was—for the first time in my relationship
with Jeremy—with colossal relief that I heard his voice on the
other end, "Hi, Peter." Calm and collected. I had not yet returned
to being calm and collected myself, but I gave him the request, and
he said no problem. And so it was with a spring in my step—a
remarkably factual expression in this case—that I returned to the
room. All of the faces were looking at me, some expectant, some
interested and some openly disinterested, skeptical. And then they
looked at the main door, and then they looked back at me, and then
they looked at the door again.

But they didn't have to look for long. In
they came, barking as if they'd been born and raised in the
kennels, deep barks, squeaky barks, happy barks and one notably
depressed bark, the latter coming from—take a prize—Delsey. Now a
minute can be a long time when you've got something like that going
on. I recalled my utter disbelief the first time, with the waiter
and the girl on the street. These happenings were as impossible as
some of the things you see hypnotists doing on stage, making
members of the audience jump around by persuading them they are
standing on hot coals, or making them take their clothes off, or
whatever else hypnotists are supposedly capable of.

But the demonstration of such powers of
hypnosis requires, as far as I am aware, the physical presence of
the hypnotist. And there are no hypnotists, as far as I am aware,
who can affect a significant number of people simultaneously. And
this is what made Jeremy different. And if my neurons had spent
many days wrestling with themselves and looking for plausible
explanations, Piccadilly on Sunday had convinced them to give up
the struggle. They had had no other choice. Jeremy, quite simply,
was unique. Also not right in the head of course, but that is not
the point.

Yes, a minute of barking is a long time even
if it is dogs you are listening to. But if it's human beings you
are listening to, it has the feeling of eternity because it also
makes you feel strangely ashamed to know that you personally are
also a member of this species. I don’t know why. Psychological.

The government people couldn't believe their
eyes or their ears, and who could blame them? And when it finally
stopped, the police officials looked confused. They were wondering
why they were standing around when everyone else was seated, and
they quickly took their places at the table again.

I would guess that people are vaguely aware
of what they have been induced into doing on these occasions, but
they are not quite sure about it because their neurons, after
undoubtedly performing a rapid and intense analytical exercise, are
unable to come up with the goods.

But if the barking law enforcers were
confused, severe consternation was the initial reaction in the
ranks of the spectators. The spectators had had no choice but to
believe what their eyes and ears had just seen and heard. On top of
that, they knew that I had had no knowledge of their request
beforehand. I, or a contact, could cause things to happen.

But you could see their initial reaction of
amazed astonishment wearing off almost immediately. The sly
workings of their pea-sized brains took over as they began to
imagine in which ways this new technology might be used, if only
they could lay their hands on the metaphorical reins of the
metaphorical horse.

And so they started pressuring me. They
wanted to meet with this person calling himself an alien—meet with
him of his own free will of course, they said. They realized that
any other way might merely cause him not to 'perform' or—and this
they didn't say but you could see them thinking it—might even cause
him to retaliate by using his amazing powers on
them
, perish
the very thought.

I can conceive of three possibilities, I
told them. You have either forgotten the conditions for this
meeting, or else you are wanting to void them or—worse still—you
were not even informed of the conditions. Whichever it is, it
doesn't matter because I am now leaving. The prime minister will
have missed out on the most important piece of information he has
ever received, or could ever possibly have received. Nice to have
met you all, thank you for your time, and have a good day. And I
stood up to leave.

This had the required effect. If, they said,
I could arrange for an extraordinarily major event to occur, a
momentous one—that word again—within the next two or three days and
let them know in advance what it was and when and where it would
occur, this would greatly enhance their chances of being able to
convince the prime minister to agree to a meeting with Mr. Parker.
The prime minister, by the way, could possibly have some thirty
minutes available next week on the Wednesday afternoon.

No problem, I told them, I would contact
Mr.Delsey tomorrow morning with the necessary information. Many
thanks for your coming, several of them said, and I left them to
what would no doubt be a huge discussion of all of the possible
explanations for what they had just experienced. Except that there
was only one possible explanation available and, let us be honest,
it was not an easy one for neurons of any type, size or
denomination to be able to grasp.

Delsey caught up with me before I made it
outside and asked if I would be staying in London over the next few
days. I told him no. I had a private life and I would be back in
Germany for the weekend and perhaps longer. No point in my trying
to hide it, they would know anyway; electronic communication,
electronic tracking, hiya there George Orwell. I told him that I
would be contactable at all times and could fly back without notice
if necessary—up until the point that Jeremy Parker and the prime
minister were in direct contact. After that, I would no longer be
involved and would consider myself free of any obligation to be in
contact with him or to allow my private activities to be the
subject of further scrutiny by him or his colleagues. Of course,
you can always arrest me, I told him, but he didn't find that
amusing. He wasn't worried in any case, I could tell that, he knew
they could locate me whenever they needed to. Well…maybe he was
right and maybe he wasn't.

The rain had stopped and so I left the
building and walked along into Whitehall, down past Downing Street
on the other side, turned right and on into St.James's Park and up
towards Piccadilly and back to my hotel.

I didn't do much else today. I had a light
meal in the hotel,
revueltos à la basquaise,
they'd
certainly scrambled the languages here but it was a dish I had long
since taken a liking to on my trips to Bilbao. It was always a
choice for me if I felt like something light and healthy. I washed
it down with a half-bottle of red, a good one, a Château Hautes
Combes 2005, actually a very ordinary Bordeaux from a very ordinary
year, it couldn't have cost them much. But then taste has never
been directly connected to what something costs.

I went outside for the day's last cigarette,
yes, must be. Back in my room, I called Jeremy on his mobile and
recounted the afternoon's proceedings. He was pleasant enough but
his tone sounded non-committal, perhaps he'd had a hard day at the
office and we were, after all, only ants and wasps. Fantasy ants
and fantasy wasps of course, inhabiting his fantasy universe. He
promised to think of something worthwhile for the ministers and
their cohorts and would let me know tomorrow morning. I typed and
printed the United Fasteners invoice for the past few weeks:
€25,200, not to be sniffed at.

And off I wandered to the land of Nod. The
word Nod, in case you are interested, derives from the Hebrew verb
'to wander'. It is the land referred to in Genesis to which God
sent the crop-farmer Cain after he (Cain, that is) had murdered his
younger brother, Abel. Both were the sons of Adam and Eve and as a
result, Cain retains the distinction not only of being the first
human being to be born, but also of being the first one to commit
murder—by murdering the second human being to be born—which also
made him the first to have committed fratricide. Although not the
last of course. And this tale—merely as a matter of interest—is
also identical to the one recounted in the Islamic Koran.
Interesting.

Nod is also the name of a small village in
the U.K. near Holme-on-Spalding-Moor in East Yorkshire. Actually,
the word village is an exaggeration when referring to one or two
ramshackle buildings, but it is the version of Nod I prefer to
picture when going there.

I woke up late. A window check showed me
patches of blue sky today along with a bunch of fast-moving white
clouds, so still windy out there. But the clouds were not rainy
ones and the days when I know I am going to catch some regular
glimpses of that broiling ball of gas up there always enhance my
mood, as they naturally do for most of us. Except, needless to say,
for the Delseys of the world.

I had breakfast at the hotel, a leisurely
one with the poached eggs. I then took a walk, returned to the
hotel and collected the invoice and the gifts for Roger and Geoff,
and strolled over to Shepherd's Market. There I picked up a gift
for Susi and some really good flowers, and headed with my packages
into South Audley Street. Up to the third floor and there she was,
Susanne Brown, looking as swish as usual and smiling a smile as
crooked as ever.

"Hello, Peter," she said, "out enjoying the
sun today?"

"The sun is great," I said, looking straight
at her, "but not as great as some of the things you get to see
indoors."

"Ah, well that is nice to hear.
Very
nice to hear." Could it be there was a slight blush appearing
there? Surely not, a woman of the world like this one. But both her
eyes and her smile were as inviting as last time. Perhaps she was
just a little embarrassed about showing some interest, who
knows?

"Some flowers for Susanne," I said, "and a
small gift as well for having had to put up with your company's
weird visitor over the past few months."

And yes, she was definitely blushing now.
"Oh Peter, you really are a very nice and thoughtful man. This
really isn't at all necessary you know, but thank you, thank you
very much, it is extremely kind of you." And she opened the package
and it was her perfume, the one I had noticed her using a couple of
months ago. By chance, that had been, but it's always good to store
these nuggets of information away in your neuron filing cabinet.
You never know if the day will come when they can give you that
definitive edge in the sexual safari stakes.