Wednesday 30 January 2008

....more of John John

Mullard’s voice, as Barry expected, is thirtyish. Mullard's voice is not, though, as Barry pictured him, small round and balding. Mullard's voice is sharp and muscular, probably a jogger, introduces himself as Fitz.
Fitz's fashionable clothes and immaculate haircut give him the look of a devoted philanderer. Barry has met the type before: Fitz will be energetically obsessed by his work; and the energetic seduction of women will be his obsessive hobby.
To a man like Fitz his job is everything. Women are a sideline, are incidental, and his apparent preoccupation with them is a veneer of frivolity with which to disguise what he believes is the unbecoming and boorish be-all of his existence — his unwavering interest in his work.
Barry is led away from the machines, is shown into a cluttered and dribble-stained coffee room, is handed a plastic beaker of machine coffee.
"Just had a call from the gate," Fitz is smiling, "You have an entourage."
"Suddenly," Barry gives a lopsided shrug, "I’m a very important person."
"They're going to have to wait there. They," Fitz says with relish, "weren't invited." And picking up the phone Fitz makes plans to leave by another gate for the airfield.
In coming to work for the Mullard zoo Fitz must have accepted security as an inevitable part of the job; Fitz, though, obviously has no liking for security, is enjoying duping the dolts in their grey suits. Fitz, Barry decides, is one of those men who are amused by authority's pomposity. Barry it angers. Barry wishes, for his own sake, that he was more like Fitz.
The car has a uniformed chauffeuse with fat ankles and a short neck. Undistracted Fitz and Barry talk of the characteristics of the 'line', with Fitz producing sheets of printout and explaining their significance. Barry occasionally has to ask for an interpretation of Fitz's working jargon. Fitz elaborates, digresses, sketches a diagram on the back of a sheet, returns to the 'line's' constituents,
"And here, see, we've got formaldehyde, formic acid and hydrogen cyanide. It’s got to be nebula."
At the airfield they have to don pressure suits. Fitz, zipping and unzipping all the pockets, wonders if the air crew will let him keep his. Posturing before a locker room mirror he adjusts his hair, then goes off to supervise the loading and installation of equipment into the belly of the bulbous nosed Nimrod. Barry tries not to get in the way. Above the field's lights the sky appears clear.
"Wouldn't be able to see it anyway," Fitz sees Barry looking up, "We are now wrapped in that net curtain."
Barry follows the pilots and the technicians on board, sits where he is told. Every cubbyhole on the plane has a machine of some sort wired into it. On takeoff Barry misses, as he never thought he would, the comforting presence of a cosmetically smiling hostess. Then Fitz is telling him of the Nimrod’s limitations for what he hopes to learn. A technician, overhearing him, disagrees with Fitz. A technical dispute follows, unresolved when the pilot sends for Fitz. They are now over the North Sea. Far below them, like a guttering nitelight, is the orange flare of an oil rig. They are still gaining height.
Fitz returns from the pilot.
"Our mission," he raises his eyes at the word, "is simply this. We know it's coming in, like the auroras, through the poles. What we now have to determine is its density, how deep it’s coming, and how far South. You can go forward and have a look if you want," he steps aside for Barry, crouches to his equipment, "Take your camera."
Barry picks his way along the fuselage. The two pilots are silhouetted before the aurora borealis, its golden drapes like the hanging corner folds of a yellow and orange tablecloth.
"Where are we?" Berry asks the co-pilot.
"Just coming level with Scarborough."
"Bloody hell!" Barry stares hard at the fluting mirage, in depth and density as deceptive as his Line, "It's August."
"Quite," the pilot says. The plane rocks. Both pilots scan their dials. The plane tilts again.
"Better get back and strap yourself in," the pilot tells Barry, depresses a switch and orders the crew to secure themselves and their equipment.
Barry manages to take just one photograph. In the fuselage he passes Fitz on his way to see the pilot. The plane rocks again before he has strapped himself in.
Among the technicians there is now a palpable air of concentration. Those few technicians Barry is able to see are frantically adjusting knobs. The plane drops, steadies. One technician glances behind him in perplexity, in confusion, looking for his long ago instructor.
Fitz hurriedly buckles himself in beside Barry.
"They don’t believe me yet," Fitz gestures impatiently forward, "but it’s all redundant."
"What?"
"This! With this equipment it's immeasurable." He has raised his voice for the benefit of the technician he earlier disagreed with, "A measuring device has to be objective, has to be apart from the object being measured. Yes? Well all this equipment is electronic, is to a greater or lesser degree magnetised." The plane's speakers crackle. "Here we go," Fitz grips his seat.
The plane drops. And drops. Technicians, Fitz and Barry hold on to their weightlessness and wait. For death? Is this it? Crash! Broken bodies? Floating wreckage? Finish? Kismet?
With a roar they stop, are pressed into their seats. Barry's head tries to burrow into his shoulders. He wants to shut his ears to the noise but cannot lift his hands. The plane is banking, noise tailing off. They are flying level again.
"We’re only a hundred feet up," a technician says, then, "Christ the rigs!" and he bends to his instruments.
Barry looks to Fitz, who, aware that he is being looked at, relaxes and releases his grip on the seat. Some of the technicians have given up on their machines.
"It's entering all our electronic systems," Fitz says, "Including the plane's. Hear the engines stop?"
"I heard them start again," Barry smiles feebly. Fitz shakes his head in wonderment,
"This is going to be far more drastic than anyone thought." He unstraps himself, goes over to one of the technicians, returns to Barry, "Radio's out."

Voice Off. That they choose to call their heroes brave, that they try always to credit their heroes with bravery, is symptomatic of humanity’s warring mentality. A peaceful mentality does not consider bravery at all, let alone as a virtue. Without war, away from the arena of war, bravery has no value.

Early in their police careers both security men got in the way of concealing their every thought, their every emotion; and soon, presenting a phlegmatic mask to the world, they ceased to own emotions. Now, so practised are both men in the concealment of their emotions and thoughts, they have become blank-faced soulless observers of the world. They display neither fear nor anger, apprehension nor irritation, love nor pride; and showing neither compassion nor sympathy they have come to feel neither. They simply watch.
They wait now in Mullard’s carpark. The only difference between the two expressionless men is that one is older and slightly shorter and, by the brevity of his few utterances, the senior.
"So they finally let you in," Barry laughing greets them. They make no response. Barry takes his car keys from his pocket. The younger security man snatches the keys from his hand.
"From now on," the older security man levelly tells Barry — their voices are as featureless as their faces — "we're sticking close."
Infected by Fitz’s example, Barry mentally steps back a pace from the hot inner flare of anger, unpeels a smile and cheerily says,
"In that case you can drive. I'm knackered."
The two security men engage in silent communion over the car roof. The senior security man takes the car keys and tells the smiling Barry to get in the car.
Smiling Barry waits for the passenger door to be opened. Smiling Barry clips on his seat belt,
"Back to my place please." The security man starts the car, finds the gear and reverses out of the parking space.
"You know that your invitation here was unauthorised?" he tells Barry.
"Probably." Barry maintains his smile: he can't see Fitz having bothered with the proper procedures. The other car follows them through the gate.
"Until this you were low priority," the security man is still trying to scare Barry, "Not anymore you aint."
They are silent. Barry thinks of Fitz and how, much to Fitz’s disappointment, the air crew did not let them keep the pressure suits. So Fitz tried to steal his, was good-naturedly prevented, and he good-naturedly handed it back. Barry wonders that, with matters of such moment, Fitz should bother his head with pretending to steal something as frivolous as a pressure suit. And he tries to reconcile Fitz's obvious commitment to his work with his lightness of touch.
After a quarter or an hour's driving he asks the security man,
"Why exactly were you following me?"
"You’ve been acting out or the ordinary. We take notice of anyone who starts acting out of the ordinary. Phone calls to Australian subversives, your own chequered history, now this little joyride... And you ask why we're watching you?"
Of course, Barry thinks, the age of the ordinary man. Mister Ordinary Man with his ordinary failings, ordinary vices, ordinary guilts and ordinary shames. A world where the one virtue is being ordinary, is being no better no worse than... Where being ordinary is of itself the virtue. The different are dangerous. And the rule or Mr and Mrs Ordinary is total. Even internationally. Because Barry can see little difference, physically or mentally, between the administrators of any political system. All are more alike than dissimilar. All their personal bodyguards look the same. All have led themselves into the same nuclear trap; and the reactions of all administrators to that trap have been identical. This is the age of mediocrity, where only the dissenters have an identity. Mr Conformity is in charge. Mr Orthodox. The rest of us are freaks.
"All that line has to do with me," Barry tells the security man, "is my name. You lot, though, don't see the obvious until it slaps you in the face. And it's going to do that soon enough."
"What're you talking about?"
"I think you’d better prepare your masters for a shock. Soon as you drop me I suggest you contact your superiors and tell them what I am now going to tell you."
"We’re not dropping you anywhere. From now on we're living with you."
"In that case you can use my phone. If it's still working. But I do devoutly suggest that, by whatever means possible, you contact those superiors or yours."
"Why?"
"Because life is never going to be the same again."
The man was at the observatory last night, heard the Director describe the known physical characteristics of the line, heard Barry’s own speculations later. No need to dwell on that.
"My line has now entered the Earth’s atmosphere through both poles. Satellite communication is already down. That Nimrod we went up in lost control. When we got down we tried phoning Iceland. No luck. We tried the Shetlands. No luck. We tried Inverness. No luck. Edinburgh answered, but the interference made it almost impossible to hear what was being said. What we did hear is that radio and television there are out, cars and buses are stalling. And it's heading South."
Barry notices that the driver, probably subconsciously, has accelerated.
"How long," he asks Barry, "before it reaches here?"
"No idea. Its effect might diminish as it spreads South. There's an awful lot of it though."
"So we're going to lose communication temporarily," the security man dismisses it as another scare story. He doesn't slow the car.
"How temporary," Barry asks him, "is temporary? A day? Three days? Three weeks? Ten years? And you’re going to lose far more than communications. Every single thing that depends on magnetised circuitry is going to be affected. Anything that comprises one single magnetic switch is now just so much junk. That means all computers, all internal combustion engines. Steam engines will still work. That's a thought... Overnight, literally, we're going to lose an era of technology. Look at your own profession of arms, and remember that everything dependent on electricity is obsolete. Like I said last night — your missiles are now redundant. I'll give you an update on that. Your most sophisticated weapon now is the rifle, and the artillery shell. And your most mobile troops are the cavalry."
"You'd like to believe that."
"Whatever... I recommend that you relay this seditious talk to your masters. For your own sake. I daresay they'll be more credulous than you."
The Dartford bridge is soon behind them. The security man is trying to think of things that won't be affected. To all — electricity, water, gas, sewage — Barry answers,
"Computerised circuits."
"It can’t be that easy," the security man refuses to accept it.
"Internationally we're down to landlines now. By tomorrow we’ll be back to pigeon post and heliograph."
"Still got fibre optics," the security man clutches at that straw.
"Need electronic processors to encode and decipher."
"You're enjoying this," the security man accuses Barry.
"One thing it will cure," Barry says as they enter Hastings, "unemployment. Automation is now a thing of the past."
The security man precedes Barry indoors. The younger security man follows once he has parked their car.
"Keep your eye on him," the newcomer is told, "I've got to make a call."
"Good boy," Barry tells him, "Tea anyone?"

Voice Off. The expectation of constancy is the greatest corrupter of all intelligence.

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