Future Tense (25 page)

“Hey!” I shouted. “Where's everybody going?”

“ReEd!” grinned Archie, the flyer-type, who had loaned me his boots. “To the Hall!”

I scrambled out of my bunk. “Can you eat it?”

“ReEducation classes, you chump—come on, it's
How to Resist Sex
today—we'll be late.”

“Think I'll give it a miss,” I said, turning back.

He caught my sleeve. “House rules, old bean.”

I went along with him—curious to meet the guy who was
gonna
deconstruct
my
sex drive.

We filtered into the flow of the main queue and found ourselves jostled and swept out of the dorm and along to what looked to me like a cinema. The Duck was already there, with De Quipp, Jemmons, and the ubiquitous Reggie Goldenhair. This was pointed out to me as soon as I came through the door by one of the guards directing the human traffic. The Duck was waving like mad from the back row. I smiled and waved back.

“I'll sit with Archie,” I said, out of the corner of my mouth.

The guard grabbed my arm and practically threw me up the steps.

“Doc says sit with him!”

Archie tried to follow me, but was pushed away.

I trudged up the steps. The Duck was cleaning his specs. He flapped a hand.

“Pull up a pew, man—the show's about to begin.”

I slumped down in the end seat.

The house lights dimmed. The screen lit up.

An orchestral soundtrack rose. Lots of swirly violins and bassy adagio—reminded me of one of those hilarious Hollywood B movies from the forties, which, of course, were always in black and white and not meant to be funny. A family of puritans were leaving a white picket-fence church. Could have been New England in the snow. A caption popped up: How to Resist Sex, Part 69.

I sniggered and looked around at the others to share the joke. But they were all deadly serious—their eyes fixed on the flickering screen. All except Jemmons, who was nodding off.

A monotone voice-over droned. The guy sounded like a mix of Walter Cronkite and Virginia Wade. I didn't know about Celebrity Voice Synth back then.

* * *

“These are the Whatmores, an ordinary God-fearing family, living in an ordinary God-fearing town. Father is a respectable undertaker and lay preacher. His good wife, a school ma'am. Their daughters, Prudence, seventeen, and Mercy, eighteen, were their pride and joy.”

* * *

We got close-ups of them all as they were named. The Abraham Lincoln pa, clutching the good book. The dough-faced ma, shepherding her little women. First, Prudence, a poker-faced bespectacled critter with a slit mouth as taut as a rubber band, and then her sister—Mercy! I did a double take. The pouting madonna stepped out onto the apron of the little church and flashed her doll eyes at the camera. She stretched her neck languidly in the sun and drew her black hood up over her platinum blonde bun.

* * *

“Till temptation came calling…”

* * *

The music built and struck a succession of tragic chords.

I chuckled and took another look along the row. Rog was snoring. The Duck had sunk right down in his seat—and was eating what looked like popcorn! A sort of darkly satisfied leer spreading across his face, his head wobbling, as he absently shovelled in the sticky mess. De Quipp stroked his ‘tache and looked faintly amused. Reggie blinked nonstop and gazed in awe at the twenty-foot vision of temptation up on the screen.

The Whatmores filed through the braille of grave mounds to their hearse. Pop folded his lanky grasshopper body in behind the wheel. Ma and the girls climbed in alongside him and the music and the cameras and the lighting followed them down a painted board mainstreet. The mainstreet of Hell—lurid and loud, flashing lights and lowlife on every street corner. And there was some strange symbolism going on—milk churns outside a grocer's store looked like shiny silver artillery shells. Icicles looked similar, only, of course, pointed down. And as the hearse passed, the icicles steamed and melted away—and—weirdest of all—a rotating barber's pole turned into a solid red tube as it turned, becoming the only colour in the monochrome film. And it was all intercut with close-ups of miserable Mr Whatmore and his expressionless family. The whole thing was so bizarre and disturbing, I thought I was watching a car advert.

* * *

“The Devil finds work for innocent hands…”

* * *

Fade to Prudence reading her bible while mom stitches another quilt and pop measures up another stiff. Cut to Mercy, upstairs on the window seat, reading her bible. But she looks bored, distracted, her blank eyes drift from the text and latch onto a drawer in her dresser. She lays aside her bible, rises slowly, and goes to open it…

“Snap their bones and blind them! Clip their wings and bind them!”

* * *

We see Mercy reach in and take out a shiny little cylinder. She twists it and the room is suddenly filled with a bright vermillion glow, emanating from the point of a lipstick.

* * *

A jazzy saxophone and tom-toms explode from the everywhere-sound system, as crazy Mercy leaps and capers around the room, waving her lipstick about like a kid with a sparkler. And then she's ogling herself in multiple mirrors and applying it thickly to her lips and doing what looks—to me anyway—like simulated sex. She rips off her bonnet and lets her hair fly! And then she's flinging herself on the bed and tearing off the rest of her clothes.

I sank down in my seat, my eyes glued to the screen, reached across Jemmons, and dipped my hand into the Duck's bag of popcorn.

That director had a ball—each time Mercy tossed her hair, a whip cracked. And we were bombarded by a succession subliminal messages, full-screen:

HARLOT. WHORE. BITCH. JEZEBEL. WANTON. WAR. RED. BUY EMPSON'S WHEETIES.

And when the action moved outside, we were treated to even more bizarre images: Mercy's blue breath; slushy steaming streets; exploding icicles; lipstick graffiti scrawled on shiny surfaces and human flesh. The naked—except for her lipstick—Mercy danced through a snowscape of tombstones and wandered wantonly into town. The actress who played her must have got frostbite in places frost could seldom have bitten. To cut the fifty-minute epic short, Mercy got hooked on evil lipstick, fell in with bad company and got herself arrested. Whatever they were trying to cure us of or convert us to, it wasn't working. What we were watching was nothing short of an art house porn movie!

Finally, the music swelled to a crescendo of emotion, as Mercy fell to her knees, her face scrubbed and blank. She raised her eyes to the light pouring in through the cell window and spoke those unforgettable, breathless words:

“Forgive me, Father…for I want to do it again…”

The End. Roll the credits. House lights up…

* * *

I looked along the line. The Duck was blowing his nose in a handkerchief. Reggie was still spellbound, following all the lines of words as they slid up the screen. De Quipp, rather disconcertingly, was staring directly at me. I looked away and nudged Jemmons.

“Hey, Rog—wake up—you missed that, mate.”

“When you've been in every bawdy house from Union Street to Calcutta, laddie—that stuff's tame,” he sniffed.

The Duck stepped past us, with De Quipp and Reggie in tow.

“Come on, Rog—we've got business,” he said.

“Where're we going?” I said.

“You're not coming—I can't take you anywhere,” said the Duck. “This is special business.” He strutted off down the steps.

“Oh, please let me be in your gang!” I jeered.

* * *

Later, hanging out in my bunk, alone again, scratching my initials on the bedpost, bored out of my box, I saw the Duck walk by.

“Hey—have you got those boards yet?” I said.

“Will you keep your voice down!” he quacked.

“Where're you going?” I said.

“Never you mind.”

I scrambled down the ladder and pursued him along the aisle.

“I need to do some work on my board,” I said, keeping my voice down.

“What work?” he scoffed.

“Four holes—quarter inch in diameter,” I said. “Two in each end.”

“Hey? Don't be daft. What d'you want to do that for?”

“That's my business,” I said.

“Well, you can't—'cos they're not here.”

“Where are they then?”

He stopped. We were at the end of the aisle. He pulled me round the corner.

“What's all this about holes?” he quacked. “I haven't got time for holes.”

“I want four, quarter inch round holes drilled through my board, one in each corner,” I said. “About two inches in from the side and six in from either end.”

“What for?”

“Just make sure it gets done,” I said. I set off back up the aisle.

“Yeah, well, just you remember, mate—I give the orders around here!”

* * *

Pleased with myself, I returned to my bunk and had another look at the trolley wheels I'd nicked. I spun each of them in turn to make sure they were all nice and fast and didn't stick anywhere. When I'd satisfied myself they were perfect, I put them back under my pillow and just lay there staring off into space.

A moth fluttered past my bunk. I didn't take too much notice. And then it fluttered back again and hovered in front of my face. It was a small white thing with a handful of orange spots on each wing. I tried to swat it away with the flat of my hand, but it rose sharply and dodged the blow. I sat up and attempted to squat it between my hands, but again it evaded me and zoomed off down the end of my bunk, where it settled on the edge of the curtain, facing me.

Just then, Archie came back carrying three books. He climbed up into his bunk and gave me the Churchillian victory salute. I raised two fingers in what has come to be the peace sign in my time, and lay back down on my pillow, looking up at the canopy.

A minute or two later, I felt someone coming up the ladder and Archie's jovial face appeared—all handlebar moustache and teeth.

“What—ho, old chap—brought you that book you wanted,” he beamed.

“What book?”

He thrust a copy of
Famous British Aircraft of the Second World War
into my hands.

“I've marked that page on spitfires I was telling you about—damn fine aircraft, the old spit,” he said.

“Oh, that book,” I said. “Thanks, Archie.”

He rattled back down the ladder and returned to his bunk, whistling the theme from
The Dam Busters
.

I opened it to the page Archie had marked with a strip of paper, but couldn't see anything special about the old black and white photographs of spitfires or the captions around them. And then I noticed that he'd written something on the bookmark. It read,
Don't look now, but you're under surveillance—the moth at six o'clock.

It had never occurred to me—but, yes, it made sense—there were mechanical beetles and spiders—why not mechanical moths? Its eyes would be microscopic cameras. I was under observation in my own bunk! I was just thinking what a violation of privacy that was, when I heard a THWANG!

Something fast and small had been fired from the direction of Archie's bunk and whatever it was had hit the moth and knocked it off the curtain. It all happened so quickly, I didn't see where the moth went.

“Got the little blighter!” cried Archie. He waved a small homemade catapult in a victory salute.

“Where did it go?” I said.

I looked around in my bunk for the moth. Archie hurried down his ladder and back up mine.

“There it is!” he said, grinning from handlebar to handlebar. “A direct hit. What?”

I followed his pointing finger and spotted the moth on its back in a fold of the blanket, its tiny legs still pedalling the air. Archie reached in and grabbed it in his fist and squeezed. There was a crunch. He opened his hand. The debris of the little electronic moth gave up a wispy plume of smoke.

“They must be very interested in you,” said Archie.

“I can't think why,” I said. “I'm just an ordinary time traveller like the rest of you.”

He switched his eyes from left to right and leaned in. “I know there's something going down, old man—you can trust Flight Lieutenant Archibald St John-Jones to keep mum,” he whispered.

“I have no idea what you're on about,” I said.

“Walls have ears—what?”

“What?” I said.

“Careless talk cost lives and all that,” he said. “Know the value of playing one's cards close to one's chest, old man—you don't need to tell me—I was there in forty guarding the skies over the Home Counties, giving Jerry a good roasting. What?”

“What?” I said.

“Good luck with the escape, old chap—that's all I'm saying—mum's the word,” he said.

“Yeah. Right. Give my regards to Douglas Bader, mate,” I said.

“What's that, old man—code?”

“Code?” I said. “You must know old tin legs.”

“Only flew spits and hurricanes, old man,” he said.

“No, Douglas Bader had tin legs,” I said.

“Yes, spot on—old tin legs. Must dash—evidence to dispose of—tootle-pip, old chap!”

He slid down the ladder and hurried off along the aisle with his kill.

I remember I did a lot of chin rubbing after that rather bizarre incident and conversation. And when the Duck returned and disappeared into his bunk I went straight down and swished his curtain open to tell him about my concerns. I found him sitting cross-legged on his bunk, rolling a joint.

“Shut that bloody light out!” he quacked.

I climbed in next to him and watched him light up and take his first contented draw.

“How well do you know Archie?” I said.

He expelled a sweet-smelling cloud of marijuana smoke. “Archie? Why—what's he done?”