The Tiger-Headed Horseman (12 page)

Tengis soon discovered that, as a mass, people didn't so much seem to
read
the words as
feel
what was being said, or what was reported as having been said. Tengis knew the power of a good soundbite. There was no mention of laughter. There were only Ten Recommendations. Each Recommendation was short, concise, easy to talk about and straight to the point (if you read it as such). The Khadist laws of the land were so lengthy and numerous that they filled every floor of a string of eight-storey buildings on both sides of one of the main city boulevards. Ten was a far more manageable number, though for many still too high a number to remember or in some cases count up to. It fitted neatly into posters and was easy to use in zippy advertising: ‘The Tengis Ten’, ‘The Power of Ten’, ‘Ten-tation’, ‘Anyone for Ten-gis?’ Far better than the opposition's eighty-eight billion, two hundred and seventy-four million, six hundred and forty-three thousand, nine hundred and thirty-two edicts. That really did not work for marketing purposes and gave many Baatarulaan advertising executives no end of sleepless nights. These same executives were among the first to embrace Tengis's proclamations . . . and the shiny metal of course.

Initially, the Khadist bureaucrats’ reaction had been to simply ignore Tengis. ‘How on earth can one man and ten ideas be any threat to the might of the Khadist regime?’ asked Bureaucracy Chief Officer in Charge of Dictating Answers No.
322. Even when it had become clear that Tengis was winning considerable support with his shiny material and abbreviated approach to ideology they refused to change. ‘There are men who walk through the woods and see no trees,’ said the same Chief Officer to Tengis, ‘and there are men who walk through the same woods and dedicate their life to counting and cataloguing every pine needle, bark chipping, squirrel pooh, mouldy mushroom and mosquito, not to mention the trees themselves. We are the latter kind of men – what kind are you?’ It was meant as a threat, as much of an overt threat as a bureaucrat was ever able to conjure without contravening their own rules and regulations. Bureaucrats didn't normally need threats; people usually got so bored listening to them that they didn't hear what they were saying and ended up agreeing with whatever it was the bureaucrat wanted so long as they agreed to stop talking.

Within a week of Tengis's return, however, they had started to panic. He flew the Chinggis banner. The advertising executives had worked on Tengis's image and brand proposition. The voice in his head had insisted – against his better judgement – that, after securing the assistance of the Fun Brigade, Tengis make friends with the advertisers and marketers. They were people who knew that image was everything and that substance was insignificant. So long as people said the right things and believed strongly enough in what it was that they were saying, then other people would start to believe them, too. They found the effect of their words was magnified infinitely if they were able to sprinkle a smattering of made-up science and theory over their over-bloated words. Tengis disagreed but had reluctantly made the executives his second port of call.

‘Blue has to be the colour,’ said one executive. ‘Not only does it carefully juxtapose the infinitesimal power of your ideology with the heavens; it also embraces the Ongolian belief in the
sky as protector. After numerous focus groups we have knocked up the following – I just
know
you are going to love it.’

Tengis shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

‘I suggest setting the blue off against black and white,’ the executive continued. ‘Not only does it show that you have no favouritism, it looks really nice too, which is very important for future merchandising opportunities. I imagine a blue box framed in white. On the left- and right-hand side there is a thicker black fringe. Can you visualise this? Can you not see it as a flag flying high over the city?’

‘What does it really matter?’ asked Tengis. ‘I mean who cares what colours or images I use. I mean why do I need to use any at all? I would rather people listened to me rather than look at what designs or iconologies I have adopted.’

The executives, for whom iconology was sacrosanct, turned to one another in horror, clasped their hands over their ears, and began to burble loudly, feigning deafness. Tengis got up to leave.

‘Tengis, please! Sit down, please,’ said the executive who had been talking before. ‘I realise that you are young and have perhaps not had as much experience of this city and its people as we have. Please, have faith in what we are peddling . . . umm, I mean
saying
. Marketing is a science if not an art form. Careful consideration and contemplation mixed with a healthy dose of manipulation can truly create a thing of beauty and a thing of beauty is a joy for ever, as someone once said.’

Tengis sat down. ‘What do you propose?’ He found what was being said entertaining. It was against everything he believed in. He was a man for whom fact and substance carried more kudos than fluff and fancy. He also thought that having a dozen mature advertising executives pandering so willingly to his every whim was utterly amusing.

‘Thank you,’ said the executive. ‘Picture this. You are standing giving one of your amazing speeches. You are standing on a
podium. Behind you, draped a hundred feet high, are your insignia. Can you see it?’

The other executives gasped and looked into the air imagining what the insignia might be.

‘What on earth would be on this insignia of mine?’ asked Tengis. He crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows.

‘Focus on the colours!’ said the executive. He waved his arms theatrically. ‘Blue, white–black. The colours of Tengis and the Ten Recommendations. What's that amid the colours? I hear you ask . . .
I hear you ask
. I can't hear you asking!’

‘What's that amid the colours?’ gasped the other executives in unison. They all appeared to be considerably more excited than Tengis about what was amid the colours.

‘Behold. The proud horse of Chinggis,’ said the executive. ‘And riding that horse, a young warrior with the head of a tiger; a youthful defender of the people; a rightful leader bedecked in a suit made of the shimmering shining sunny substance. He holds his right hand up in defiance. Grasped in that hand, the tablet of the Ten Recommendations.’ The executive began to sob. ‘We have Tengis and Chinggis united and uniting our country; the horse representing the past, the tiger signifying the future. Beneath the knight and his steed, read the following words, emblazoned in sparkling letters: “Believe in ideas and ideals not outdated ideology. What counts is what works. The objectives are radical. The means will be modern. Change is good.” ’

The other executives began to clap zealously. They stood as one and embraced the executive.

Tengis shook his head. The words were not his, although they did give an approximation of what he was trying to achieve. As for the colours and imagery, they really didn't appeal to his sense of logic. However, Tengis did what the voice in his head suggested, even if he didn't understand the wisdom behind it. That would soon change.

During the days following his meeting with the executives Tengis began to notice posters, flags, pendants, T-shirts and flyers appearing around Baatarulaan. It looked as though people didn't really know, or care, what they stood for but there was a frenzied rush to get hold of the merchandise nonetheless. People were queuing outside designated stalls just to get hold of some item or other that would show that they were part of this new political pandemic. Tengis doubted whether any of them could have recalled even one of the Ten Recommendations though he was increasingly sure that they did know they existed.

Later that week Tengis started to see people walking around with shiny paper wrapped around the outside of their clothing. These people would randomly hold aloft a large flat rock and shout: ‘Hail the Ten Recommendations!’ Everyone within earshot would cheer enthusiastically and offer up three hiphip-hoorays.

By the end of that first week Tengis had inadvertently created enough people in his own image that several thousand Deggites dressed in the same colour as the shining metal marched through the streets chanting slogans against the Khadist regime as well as no shortage of obscenities: ‘What do we want? Khadists out! When do we want it? Now!’, ‘Come try take some shining material if you think you're hard enough’, ‘There's only one Chinggis Khaan, one Chinggis Khaan, one Chinggggissss Khaaaaan!’, ‘Tengis, Tengis, he's our man; if you don't like him we'll chop off your hands!’

Tengis had found that he had a natural aptitude for addressing the mob. His professorial attire made him stand out and people immediately thought of him as an intellectual, and therefore right, just because he had the correct leather patches on the elbows of his jacket. In reality, the people didn't really care what it was that Tengis was saying. They were enraptured
by the shimmering sunny yellow-orange metal. So long as Tengis ended each meeting or speech by holding aloft a large lump of it, he was sure to be met by rapturous applause, fervent adoration and professions of absolute faith. It frightened him slightly that his fellow Ongolians could be turned so blindly and he made note that, if he was to retain their loyalty in the longer term, he would need to discipline their thinking and behaviour in some way.

After that first week he knew he had to pay his mother a visit. Winning her support might not be so straightforward given their recent parting and cross words. Still, he would offer her a lump of his newly mined resource – everybody seemed to love that. Surely she would be no different.

‘You can take that bloody lump of metal and shove it somewhere jolly horrid!’ shouted Mrs Khaan. She threw the object at her son. ‘Don't you come round here trying to recommend things to me, young man. I know the rules and you're breaking just about every one of them.’

‘But, Mum,’ said Tengis, ‘I am trying to make things better. I am trying to get rid of the Khadists and reinstate the memory of Chinggis. I thought that was what you always wanted?’

‘Don't you try and pin this one on me,’ said Mrs Khaan. ‘I love my Chinggis, I do, but I also know that it's them Khadists that runs things here. All this Chinggis worship will not end well, mark my words!’

‘Mother,’ said Tengis, ‘you have just about every item of Chinggis memorabilia that's available; I thought you would be happy that I am spreading the word, encouraging everyone to share in the glory of Chinggis?’

‘He's
my
Chinggis,’ said Mrs Khaan. ‘You and your lot keep your grubby little hands off him, will you, he's mine! I love him more than anyone else. I have loved him longer than anyone else. You lot clear off and go and find your own Chinggis. This
one's mine.’ And with that she slammed the front door in her son's face.

The meeting with his mother had not gone quite as well as Tengis had hoped it would. It did make Tengis feel less guilty for having been a little bit horrible to his mother, though. Despite having changed from being a weirdo school kid into a political activist cum would-be emperor Tengis had still felt a little bit bad for having walked out on his mother. She was the only one he had.

He walked away from his childhood home towards the centre of town. He needed to pay a visit to the only other person he had ever really truly cared for. Unfortunately, he had also been unduly nasty to that person in the past fortnight, too. He hoped that his meeting with Odval would work out more amicably than that with his mother.

As he wandered through the streets towards the home of Odval's parents, Tengis noticed some peculiar things. Before Tengis had left for the Steppe, in fact for as long as Tengis could remember, the people of Baatarulaan had been proudly lazy and profoundly antisocial. Few if any of the city's population would move if they could possibly avoid doing so; even fewer would actively participate in conversation with someone they didn't know. Now he noticed that there were people walking with purpose through the streets. There were people talking in groups, people chatting on street corners, people speaking in shops and people conversing in cafés. Furthermore, they didn't appear to be discussing where to score the best Khem or whom they should rob to pay for the next beetle drive. They seemed to be talking about the Ten Recommendations, the desire for change; a wish to see an end to the strict Khadist regime that had repressed them for so long. Tengis smiled. His movement was gaining momentum more quickly than he could have hoped for and more quickly than he could ever have warranted.
He could not believe just how malleable people seemed to be. It was a valuable lesson.

Odval lived with her parents and brother in the smartest district of Baatarulaan. Theirs was a home other citizens of Ongolium could only ever aspire to. It had four walls and a roof that didn't leak. Each member of the family had their own room and the family shared two bathrooms. The house also had a front door that locked and a fireplace. There were not many in Baatarulaan who could boast of such things. Only the very wealthiest and most powerful families had homes such as this and Odval's was among the finest. Their home had luxuries that weren't found anywhere else in Ongolium. It had a toilet that flushed, taps with clean running water, and, luxury of luxuries, central heating; only top Khadist bureaucrats had central heating. Tengis and his mother had shared a two-room apartment all his life. They shared a small bedroom. A larger room served for cooking, eating and living. Their bathroom privacy comprised a makeshift curtain held up by washing pegs. The bathroom! There was no bath to speak of. Like most people in Baatarulaan, Tengis and his mother washed in the river. The river was frozen solid six months of the year.

Although Tengis had visited Odval's home many times, he was nervous. He and Odval had been sincere soulmates since childhood but the revelation concerning his destiny had all but blown that friendship apart. He was here to see if he could rescue their friendship in any way. He also needed someone to talk to. He needed somebody to share things with. His first week in Baatarulaan as Tengis the Politician had been more than a little eventful. He needed Odval back in his life. He just wasn't sure whether she would want him. He knocked loudly on the door and stood back, his hands clasped behind his back fidgeting madly.