1990

Alan Vickers did not notice the three men watching him as he walked up the path of yet another drab council house. Visits to the estate always depressed him. He longed to see a crude line of graffiti carved into one of the doors, or some moth-eaten budgies hanging in the windows, or a tom-cat sitting on an old dustbin. But nothing ever disturbed the bleak, antiseptic uniformity of the place.

The grey, mid-winter afternoon had soaked into his jacket until the collar felt like a damp sponge against his neck. He was glad when the woman opened the door to let him in.

His patient, a sturdy-looking man with heavily calloused hands, was waiting in a small, spartan bedroom. The 'live' show from the House of Commons dragged on in the corner, the Home Secretary reduced to midget proportions by an inadequate screen.

'The new regulations to curb parasitism pose no threat to liberty...'

The woman angrily switched the machine off.

'I want to hear the bastard!' Her husband, lying face down on the bed, flinched slightly as Vickers began examining his back.

Outside, the three men had settled to wait. They looked purposeful and respectable. Their clothes were not fashionable but sensible, designed to protect them from the elements in case they had to leave the shelter of the parked car and finish the job on foot. In the 70s they would have been traffic wardens.

'How is it there?' Vickers pressed gently on the hollow of the back.

His patient winced again. 'It bloody hurts.'

'That's what comes of listening to the Home Secretary,' the doctor smiled, then looked over at the woman.

She was nervously tidying the objects on a badly scratched dressing table. Probably secondhand, he reflected absently. Few young working couples could afford much new furniture.

'You were telling me about these men who came last night, Mrs Grey,' he said.

Her husband turned over painfully and struggled to sit up. 'Three of 'em came to see if I was moonlighting,' he said.

'He'd just had his painkillers and was nearly asleep,' his wife put in, resentfully. 'I mean, what's it coming to?'

Vickers had heard it all before, but never without an unreasonable stab of alarm, as though he, personally, was being threatened. The problem this time was obvious. Chronic back trouble does not show and Jack Grey looked far too fit. He fixed a professionally bland expression and probed at the muscular shoulders.

'Anyway, you saw them off.'

'The bastards said they'd be back.' The man was bitter. 'They could see I wasn't moonlighting, so they changed their tune.'

'Said he was malingering. Or one of them did.' Mrs Grey's voice shook.

Such incidents seemed to be increasing. Patients sick for more than the acceptable ten days, men out of work, unemployed single parents, all being vaguely intimidated during late night visits from unknown men. Vickers wrote busily on his prescription pad.

'Didn't leave their names, I suppose.'

'No names. No faces,' snarled Grey. 'Bully boys from the Public Control Department.' He eased into his pyjama jacket, then examined the incomprehensible prescription deliberately as his wife hurriedly controlled herself.

Vickers felt familiar hopelessness. Medicine was his vocation. It had to be, as the job no longer carried status or significant financial reward. Nevertheless, he had entered general practice three years before with genuine enthusiasm. But gradually his vigour had been eroded by constant official interference. Now even his medical judgements were no longer considered valid against those of untrained bureaucrats. This, together with private domestic worries, had left him with a strained face and slightly drooping body, so that he looked oddly like one of his own patients.

He heard himself telling the Greys to telephone if the faceless men called again, but knew there was little he could do to help if Jack Grey's sickness benefit was cut.

'When can I get back to work?' the man was asking.

Vickers looked down at him with sudden firmness. 'Don't let the jackboot lads push you around. You'll go back when
I
say, not
them
.'

Jack Grey grinned back, trustingly. His wife had switched on the TV again and the Home Secretary was mouthing without sound. Vickers glared at the picture on his way out.

'Parasitism!' he fumed to himself.

The three men watched him start his car, then smoothly eased their own car in behind him in the traffic as he drove off.

Kyle's fingers explored the linings of his pockets as Dan Mellor's voice droned from the office television.

It was all infinitely shabbier than they had prophesied. No armed police, no torture chambers, no magnificent, worldwide control of power. 1984 had come and gone without the emergence of Big Brother. And yet the prophets had been right.

Kyle absently tried his top pocket and let his mind wander over the current scene, as the homely Yorkshire accent boomed out reassuringly.

An army of Little Brothers had materialised; hundreds of thousands of civil servants, earnest, hardworking, sincere men, beavering away at exposing all possible and imaginary threats to the country - suspected oddballs, nonconformists, malingerers, those who might disagree, or worse, anyone with skills who might want to emigrate. Immigration had been a historical problem. Now emigration was a crime - for some.

'...And I assure this House that, as long as I remain Home Secretary, nobody will be sent to prison for parasitism...'

Kyle sighed, his nails tracing the pocket seams, carefully.

God was in his heaven, the State controlled and 'necessity' was the in-word in 1990. After the twenty-five years during which the pound had sunk too low to be salvaged even by international blackmail, it had finally become 'necessary' to waive freedom.

Yet it happened so bloodlessly, apathetically, that the only signs were the occasional
eyes
of the Public Control Department; seedy men lurking on corners and in cars, watching. And the bugs, of course.

The searching fingers closed on the minute, hard sphere at last. Kyle did not know who had planted it, but he was satisfied. Not knowing its position was like living through the day with an itch he could not reach, so that his hands were condemned to flutter constantly over his clothes, wall surfaces, containers and the undersides of furniture until he found it.

'Who are these parasites? Who?' A backbencher's aggrieved voice called from the set.

'My friend knows we are discussing the work-shy.'

Cheers and boos hummed into the reply like an electronic chorus.

Kyle nodded at Marly's typewriter. 'He'll be calling us work-shy, if we don't get on with this piece.'

She glanced at the voice impetus machine in the corner, but he shook his head.

'That makes too many mistakes. I'd rather dictate.'

The grey-haired woman smiled, 'Newspaper men are supposed to keep up with the times.'

'It was mis-spelling like a teenage secretary yesterday. And all the mechanics who might have put it right have gone to the States.'

Home Affairs correspondent on one of the last two semi-independent newspapers, Kyle was no cliche newsman. He took himself too seriously. He also dressed with panache. Certain women found his basic indifference to them interesting, which is why he had been married twice and why his second marriage had cooled.

He rated his own office and it had an efficient look, one wall taken up with a large relief map of the U.K., Eire and the Channel ports of France, Belgium and Holland. All seaports and airfields were marked with different symbols, as were a number of rural spots in such diverse places as Norfolk, Devon, Yorkshire, central Wales, Cumberland and Scotland.

As Marly peeled the cover off her typewriter, he crossed to study them and began, 'Catchline ARCs.'

'Arcs?'

'A.R.C.S...' Kyle stopped suddenly, leaned over his secretary and pressed a switch on her desk.

Less than a mile away, an operator in the Surveillance Room of the Public Control Department pulled an agonised face and wrenched off his headset as a shrill screech invaded his ears.

Kyle winked at Marly, flicked off the desk switch and increased the TV volume.

The Home Secretary roared, '...I will not shirk from seeing that parasites of every kind will be encouraged...'

Hear, hears and laughter resounded round the room.

'...will be encouraged to see the error of their laziness and find useful places in society.'

'Full marks for the iron hand in a glove of steel,' shouted Kyle.

The surveillance operator turned to check his tape recorder, then gingerly re-established his earphones.

Kyle snapped on the screecher, left it on and resumed dictating. 'ARCs. Adult Rehabilitation Centres.'

Marly gave a slight shudder.

'Five large country houses - two of them once classed as ancestral homes - have been bought by the Government for conversion into special psychiatry hospitals for the treatment of social misfits. New paragraph. These quote hospitals unquote are referred to in secret Whitehall papers as Adult Rehabilitation Centres. They will come under the Home Office Public Control Department.'

The concise phrases came easily. Flair for a good story had made Kyle a top columnist in his early twenties. Later, a fascination had developed with the intrigues and political in-fighting taking place in the struggle to dominate the Left. Contacts made then were still paying off and formed the skeleton on which he had built up his present position as the most widely read journalist in the U.K.

For Kyle specialised in brinkmanship. The premature disclosure of secret government plans. The naming of names. The exposure of whitewashed scandals, with such ambivalence that his features could actually seem to be supporting the Establishment. He was not so much a thorn in the side of authority, as a human nettlebed.

It was a situation he relished with a certain vanity, subconsciously carrying a picture of himself as the Robin Hood of The Street.

It was also a situation which snowballed. The more confidential files he published, the more material poured into his office, as by-passed clerks, frustrated members of the public, innumerable anonymous 'phone calls and even anxious policemen vied to supply tip-offs.

His fan-mail was tidal, deluging the room twice daily. It was Marly's nightmare and she had settled, Canute-like, to control it once more as he read over the completed draft typescript of the ARC report. The telephone rang.

'...One moment, Miss Lomas...' she said, lifting her eyebrows at him, questioningly.

Kyle shook his head and resumed reading.

'...I'm afraid he's not here just now, Miss Lomas. Should I get him to call you?'

Delly Lomas completed a couple of memos and a short briefing to her department during the next fifteen minutes, while waiting for Kyle to return her call.

Fleet Street was clearly visible from her window in the Public Control Department skyscraper, which had blasted upwards on the site of the old Covent Garden market a decade ago and was already showing signs of extreme age.

Delly buzzed for the male secretary she shared with Tasker to remove some files. Then she leant back impatiently in her chair and lit a cigarette.

She was one of those tall, sleek brunettes whose movements are all legs. Her wide mouth and amused eyes hinted at an electric mixture of sensuality and wit, but her hard intelligence could be alarming. At 34 and well forward in her career, she was the classic product of the Sex Discrimination Act and the Whitehall merit promotion scheme. Her dad may have been an unskilled worker in Northampton, but Delly's world was metropolitan and she knew that it did not end at the Dover entrance to the Channel Tunnel. She headed a one-parent family from choice, with the fathers kept strictly anonymous.

The blue light over the door flashed. She stubbed out the cigarette and made for the corridor. Tasker was leaving his office at the same time. The two nodded from habit. Both were PCD Deputies and had as much love for each other as any other two executives in line for a single promotion.

Minutes later, they were in the Controller's office, facing him across a vast plastic desk.

'Did he call back?' Skardon looked up sharply at Delly.

'No.'

'Gone to earth again?' her boss asked.

'Surveillance shows him still at the office,' she answered easily.

'Surveillance!' Skardon snorted. 'They never know whether he's in his office, his bath, or Kingdom Come.'