THE YEAR ZERO
By Carl-Ben Louw
A Banana Republic Novel
Copyright Carl-Ben Louw 2012
Smashwords Edition
ISBN: 978-1-4661-9057-3
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His Royal Highness King Edouard Katzenellenbogen van der Meer de Bliksemen de Donderin, Lord Of All He Surveys, Scion of the Realm, Protector of the Faith, King of Brutain (BA Soc., Academie de Sourbone), 29, was slouched so low in his chair that his eyes were almost level with the desk. This made the stacks of documents and files on the gargantuan expanse of flawless cedar wood, arranged in neat piles and in order of importance from left to right and front to back, look to his bleary, bloodshot gaze like a range of mountain peaks that he would have to scale before reaching the overnight hut where he, the reluctant climber, could shrug off the rucksack of duty and encamp for the night.
His groping hand crawled towards the intercom like a drunk emerging grudgingly from a comfortable gutter.
“Inge? Inge!”
The hoarse rasp he emitted, sounding like a horsefly buzzing around inside a rotten tree trunk, hardly managed to convey the intended authority. Nevertheless, the door opened to admit a woman in her mid-twenties, carrying a tray.
From his low vantage point, King Edouard watched her approach. Through the opening under the desk he saw, firstly, a pair of fashionable, high-heeled pumps, secured to feet of the most exquisite delicacy by the thinnest of ankle straps, approaching. Then into view came her legs, sheathed in sheer nylons and shaped to such perfection that they would make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.
His Royal Highness had by now slid even lower in his chair, the better to appreciate the sweet curve of her instep and her perfectly proportioned shins. As his gaze moved ever higher, imagined delights starting to chase each other in circles through his sleep addled brain like hormonally charged rabbits, it inevitably encountered the desktop and the waiting stacks again.
He would have groaned inwardly, but, not being a man who hid his feelings, groaned aloud. Slowly he sat upright, lifting his gaze to meet that of his personal assistant, Inge von Mütterlich, who had rounded the huge desk and was standing by his side. Hers were eyes of purest, crystal blue, set in a face of doll-like perfection. The figure hinted at beneath the floral print dress forced another groan from his marinated throat.
“There, there, Your Majesty, nothing like some strong coffee to get you up to speed. I’ve taken the liberty of adding extra sugar. You had a late night? I assume that the opening of the new casino last night was a success?”
She adopted a motherly, tone that reached deep into his subconscious, concerned yet also with a suggestion that boys will be boys. It made him feel both like a sick child in need of care and, simultaneously, one being chastised for having taken too many cookies from the jar.
“An all-nighter, certainly. It’ll take more than coffee to get me through this paperwork. It just never seems to stop. Ouch!” he exclaimed as he gulped a mouthful of the rich, sweet brew. “What time is it?”
“Four twenty five, Your Majesty.”
“Isn’t that about the time that the civil servants go home?”
“Yes Sir.” Then, knowing what was coming: “But then, they don’t start work at four fifteen, and these documents have to be approved and signed today, Your Majesty, before you leave. The Prime Minister was most adamant.”
Just a hint that he was being chastised.
“As if the ship of state would founder on the rocks of indecision if these papers don’t have my signature.” His sarcasm could have floated lead. “It’s just a formality and everyone knows it. If I were to suggest a change to even one comma I’d get a dressing down from the Office of Constitutional Protocol. All dressed up in formal jargon, all very diplomatic, but a dressing down, nevertheless.”
While Inge wondered what a dressed up dressing down would look like, he continued, “Constitutional monarchy must be as good an example of a … what’s the word? ‘S got something to with stupid cows contradicting each other…”
“Oxymoron, Your Majesty.”
“That’s the one. As good an example of an oxymoron as you can find. Bloody farce is what it is. I mean what’s the point of being king if you have to get approval from a bunch of politicians every time you need a pee? Where are the days when the king’s word was law? ‘Bugger the queen’ he’d say, and half a dozen would be injured in the stampede.”
Inge sighed and shrugged delicately, a gesture that said we’ve been through this before; also a gesture that brought her subtle curves back to the centre of his pinging radar screen.
“The procedures have to be followed, Your Majesty. And I suggest you start with this file.”
“Yes, yes, I suppose so.” As she leaned forward to put a red (High Importance) file in front of him, he caught the scent of her judiciously applied perfume. Eau de Chenal, he thought, then with a effort of supreme will he ordered his little radar antenna to stop misbehaving and turned his reluctant attention to the document.
“An urgent request for funding the colonial administration of Bugrawlia. See what I mean, Inge? Who even cares that we still hold sway over a country that is of no value whatsoever? It’s really nothing more than grazing for civil servants put out to pasture. The whole idea of Empire rests upon the assumption that wealth should flow to the Empire from its colonies, not the other way around. We’re pouring money into the place and getting nothing back.”
Inge said nothing as King Edouard reluctantly put his signature to the document. When he was done she removed the file and put another in its place.
“Another embargo?” he exclaimed after scanning the first few paragraphs. “Why is it that, whenever the Amerussians want to punish one of their imagined enemies with another embargo, we have to follow suit? We’re supposed be a sovereign nation. What has their never ending feud with Iraquba got to do with us?”
He continued this rhetorical rant for a few moments longer, then, getting no response, noticed that Inge had already exited and that he was alone. He sighed deeply and picked up his fountain pen.
From the slopes and crags of the great Himolyan Mountains in the northern Bugrawlian province of Tibutan, we follow the Gonges River as it evolves from a snow fed torrent into a broad, fast moving stream that eventually crosses the high northern plains before it cuts a route through the many series of hills, debris left behind by the retreat of the great, continent covering glaciers of the last ice age like so many graves abandoned by a vanquished, retreating army.
Further south the river is diverted east by the highway patrol of the Tomapos Hills, rerouted away from the vast, arid reaches of the Sahhabi Desert in the west, to the great eastern plains, where the river changes pace and becomes slower moving, even sluggish. Here, during the long dry season, it shrinks back from its flood plain. Then it heads southwards again where it is joined by the mighty Azon River, itself originating far to the east and fed by the sweat of the sweltering tropical jungles of Pilau.
We quite naturally want to follow the course of the river to its senescence on the southern flatlands. There it spreads out into the delta of the southern swamps. Our roving eye wants to direct its gaze further south and east to the allure of the unspoilt beauty of the southern coastline, but it is drawn back up north. For here, at the confluence of the two great rivers lies the city of Candoberra, capital of Bugrawlia.
Philosophers warn that the map should never be confused with the territory, a that warning would have been unnecessary if it weren’t so much fun. So let’s just pretend for a moment. Follow the current around the last elegant bend in the river before you reach the outskirts of the city, with the occasional native canoe passing up or downstream. Small, barely floating, motorised ferries chug along trailing tails of oil slicks and rust. Pass areas where the riverbanks start to disappear from view, obscured by more and more floating objects that can by no stretch of the imagination be called houseboats but which are certainly occupied by those responsible for the lumps of odoriferous matter bobbing and bopping in the current, dumplings from hell’s kitchen.
Then you’re in amongst a tide of humanity teeming on the water, on small boats and platforms and the multiple, rickety networks of walkways connecting all of these together, the nerve cells of a primitive creature self-organising from the chaos of some organic primal ooze. The noise is a collage of shouted greetings and commercial offerings overlaying the buzz-saw grind of small outboard motors. The stench is a throat clogging miasma of cooking and fish and human effluvia and diesel and it hangs over this scene like an angry ghost forced to unexpectedly vacate the body of its owner and by god it’s not leaving until it receives a satisfactory explanation why it can’t go back.
Somehow you wend your way through this until you reach a jetty where you fight your way to the shore, and immediately you’re lost in a maze of alleys and mud streets traced by one-, two- and three storey wooden buildings built on pilings to escape the regular, seasonal flooding of the river.
This is the infamous neighbourhood known as the The Wharf, where the thieves, the drunks and the pimps who control the place are said to send shivers of fear down the spine of any law enforcement officer foolish enough to venture here, and where the prostitutes are walking petri dishes, harbouring and culturing all the known and unknown bacteria of the third world.
And if you can survive and find your way out of this maze with your wallet, your virtue and your skin intact, you emerge onto a broad avenue running parallel to the river before S-curving away and up to higher ground. At first the road is hemmed in on both sides by acres of tin, wood and cardboard shacks, but as you ascend to higher ground the buildings appear less shabby, become more habitable and start displaying definite symptoms of maintenance long past – crumbling plaster, peeling gutters, graffiti daubed walls.
Eventually you reach the gates. High, ornate and imposing, these afford the only access to what is known by those who spend their days working here, administering the city and the country, as Grand Central. Here toil the expatriates sent out to see to this last, nearly forgotten remnant of the once great Brutish Empire.
Designed and built by the renowned architect Sir Willard Hadcliffe-Corbusier de la Peña at the height of empire, Grand Central was to represent regal power’s long reach and instil awe and respect in the hearts and minds of its subjects. Unfortunately, mostly due to a lack of funds - and a global political stage that saw empires being nudged into the wings and replaced by various forms of autocracies, democracies and dictatorships, Hadcliffe-Corbusier de la Pena’s grandiose vision was never to be fully realised.
Originally, budgets had been sufficient, but when it became clear that the colony of Bugrawlia was of absolutely no use to the Empire whatsoever, funds had dried up faster than snails on a hotplate. By that time, though, construction had progressed to a point where it could not be abandoned anymore, so a decision had been made to complete the façades of most of the structure to the original design, but to scale down that which lay behind the façades, to a bare minimum. This was why, behind many a five- or six-storey sculpture-bedecked and frieze-encrusted façade there lurked nothing but a two-storey jerry built, crumbling office block.
This was the administrative heart of Bugrawlia.
In one of those offices, sitting at his cluttered desk and not in a good mood, was Governor-General Lord Ludvig de Sancerre y Brava. It was not the showy office suite with the Danton XIV furniture. That was where he received important visitors, and was in the only edifice in Grand Central that had actually been completed according to De la Peña’s vision - a ghastly, pompous pile right at the centre of the walled compound.
No, Lord Ludvig was in his real, working office, on the third floor of the office block behind the façade overlooking the enormous paved but otherwise unadorned Empire Square. And his stomach was roiling.
“Damn that new chef!” he cursed under his breath, clutching at the arms of his chair as a wave of molten lava churned his bowels. “We especially import him from home to cook us some decent food and the first thing the bugger does is to prove his creative powers by preparing a local curry! Doesn’t he know that that stuff is also used in fireworks at the annual Dharma-Burn fest…”
“Dharma-Bum, Your Lordship.” came the quiet voice from the other side of the room. “Meaning no disrespect, Your Excellency, but it is not used as fireworks. It is only used as propellant for the heavier rockets, those that explode very high and most colourfully…”
“Dharma-Bum, Dharma-Burn, whatthehell difference does it make what you call the call the bloody festival, Kim Lee?!? The results on my innards are exactly the same! They should call it Burnma Bum. We’ll probably have to install a new toilet at the residence tomorrow. I know already I’m going to have a sleepless night.”
“I think in his eagerness to impress you he may have miscalculated the amount to be used, Your Excellency, although personally I found the leftovers that you so generously provided for my own lunch, quite mild”, came the soothing tones of Kim Lee, standing deferentially near the far corner.
He hesitated before continuing.
“And if I may be so bold, Your Excellency, the Dharma-Bum festival is important to the local people. It celebrates the coming to earth in a fiery chariot of the great Lord Jobula the Gentle, here to dwell amongst us mere mortals, and guide us in his infinite wisd…Are you all right, Lord Ludvig?”
A pained look had crept across the Governor-General’s reddening face. Then it had kept on going, creeping down his gizzard and across his heaving chest until it reached the vast expanse of his stomach, where it abruptly ran out of steam, just as, simultaneously, did His Lordship.
“I shall just open the window, shall I my lord?” said Kim Lee, attempting to speak without breathing. “Perhaps some fresh air will help.”
He sidled across the room to the window, only daring to breath in again when a soft breeze wafted in, had a good look around and wafted right out again after deciding that the swamp hadn’t been such a bad place after all.
It took Lord Ludvig a few moments to calm down, wipe the sheen of sweat from his wrinkled, sagging cheeks and regain his composure. “Now where was I? Oh yes. Hasn’t Mr Da Silva arrived yet?”
“I’ll just look, Sir.”
As Kim Lee noiselessly closed the door behind him, Lord Ludvig let out a deep sigh and reclined in his chair. He closed his eyes and tried to relax, only partially succeeding in ignoring the fire in his gut.
After a few moments he opened his eyes again, letting them roam at random across the office. Having toured the room and sent back snapshots to the synapses back home of the dull green paint, the slightly threadbare carpet, and the worn and stained upholstery, his eyes took a break and came to rest on the huge map mounted on the wall directly opposite the desk.
There, on a scale of 1:100, were depicted the six main regions of the tiny colony of Bugrawlia: the Western Desert province of Sahhabi; the Eastern Rain Forests of Entropica and Pilau, the Burnt Orange Free State on the central plains, the northern mountain province of Tibutan; Bugur’t in the great southern swamplands, and New Nippon on the southern coast. The great river systems of the Gonges and Azon rivers unequally trisected the country, a cake divided by a careless mother for three gluttonous children.
There, at the edges of the map, but not shown in as much topographical detail, were the neighbours: Costa Blanca, and Iraquba.
Projecting his aversion upon the map, and finding there little to hold his interest – indeed, Lord Ludvig had always thought it was a misrepresentation of the territory it depicted in that it had more detail than the actual country - he shifted his gaze to the smaller map alongside it. Ah, Brutain! Home!
A spasm of homesickness washed over him, competing with and then losing on points to the other spasms in his middle latitudes. Three more years, he thought. Just three more years in this ghastly place and I can go home and retire in peace.
Long his career had certainly been. Illustrious, too, but for what he called his single little misstep. And even though Lady Brünhilde had forgiven him for his lack of judgement, their marriage had suffered. The Foreign Service had been less forgiving. He had had a liaison with the Queen - of all people – and it had almost led to a national scandal and the fall of the government. It had taken all of the diplomatic skills of the Service to avert the fallout, and had resulted in him being relegated to this forgotten outpost of the Empire.
Oh, Bessie, what had possessed us? he thought ruefully. It had cost me my career and you, you had to give up your throne to that wastrel of a son of yours.
His reverie was abruptly ended by the appearance of a tall, gangly figure in the doorway. Scarfdale da Silva, representative of His Majesty, King Edward’s government’s Treasury, hesitated slightly in the doorway before striding into the room while Kim Lee quietly closed the door after him.
Da Silva was a man of nervous disposition who, at the age of fifty-five, was still given to sporadic outbreaks of acne. He was as prone to picking at this as he was to picking over the colony’s financial figures.
He wrinkled his nose, peered around the room, and without waiting for an invitation sat down opposite the Governor-General.
“Ah, Da Silva. Yes. Glad you could come,” began Lord Ludvig. “It’s about these latest budgetary constraints. You cannot be serious! How does Home Office expect us to operate? The cuts are just getting deeper and deeper. If it carries on like this for much longer we’ll have to start flogging the silverware just to buy supplies, for god’s sake!”
Scarfdale da Silva leaned back and held up his hands, palms forward. “Now, now, Your Excellency, you’re quite aware, I’m sure, of how sentiment back home is turning against the colony. People are saying that the Empire is dead and that they’re just not prepared to throw good money after bad when it comes to sponsoring your administration. People say…”
“People say, people say! You mean Mudrock says!” exploded the Governor-General. “Him and his scurrilous rag of a newspaper! The man ought to be declared an enemy of the empire…”
“…He’s already done that himself…”
“… and … and … clapped in irons or something! He has no respect, no respect for…for tradition and royalty whatsoever!” he concluded. Another spasm of pain rocked him and brought tears to his eyes.
Da Silva touched his nose before continuing. “Ah, but you see Lord Ludvig, it’s not just Rubin Mudrock and his muckraking who’re responsible. It’s a symptom of the times we live in. The age of Empires has come and gone. Bugrawlia is regarded more as a drain on resources than as any kind of asset.”
“This colony is the last outpost of a once great Empire. I’ll be damned if I’ll be party to the death of it. The people of Bugrawlia are still royal subjects and as such, they look up to the Empire for guidance, guidance that His Majesty delivers through us. I am His Majesty’s representative and I say that we need more funds to fulfil our task…Uhhnnnnn…”
Lord Ludvig had become almost apoplectic with anger and discomfort. His final outburst was accompanied by a colonic spasm even worse than before.
“Your Excellency, at the risk of being redundant, may I point out that, in certain instances, the Heimraden are not functioning as intended. Corruption is becoming increasingly widespread. Some drossaards are acting more like local strongmen, and tax revenues have fallen drastically.”
The structure of Heimraden had historically been the chosen form of government at district level, therefore serving as the tentacles through which the octopus of colonial administration could maintain contact with the rural areas of Bugrawlia.
The one who was at the head of a Heimraden – the sucker at the end of the tentacle, and by tradition always a man, except in the few matriarchal societies – was the drossaard. A drossaard had multiple duties, ranging from the legal to the administrative. Legal duties included judging of minor court cases, while among the administrative tasks were the much-despised post of tax collection.
In the early days of Empire, the Governor-General had always appointed the drossaards. More recently, however, in an attempt to be more sensitive to the needs and sensibilities of local peoples, the practice had evolved of drawing the drossaards from the local communities. They were, therefore, often either nominated by village councils or appointed by village chieftains, the actual process being determined by local custom. It was a system that functioned with varying degrees of success, as could be expected in a multi-cultural and multi-ethnic country such as Bugrawlia.
In the worst cases, the whole structure had become utterly corrupted, with the drossaards acting as the final authority in some areas, flouting and disregarding colonial authority.
“Perhaps it’s not the collecting of the taxes, but the fact that revenues are ending up in the pockets of the drossaards instead of being paid over to the treasury. Don’t your audits show these discrepancies?” Lord Ludvig asked.
“With respect, Sir, since you cut back my department’s budget, we’ve not been able to audit the Heimraden as thoroughly as in the past. Fewer audits mean they can get away with more.”
“Hmm, yes.” Lord Ludvig spun his chair around and spent a few moments studying the map on the wall. Whereas the reluctant Governor-General saw his own failures in that jigsaw puzzle of regions and provinces, Da Silva saw them as aggregates and percentages, totals and shortfalls.
When at last Lord Ludvig turned back to Da Silva, he had a steely glint in his eye that Da Silva knew did not augur well.
Brutish imperialism had, like the depiction of a certain god of old, two faces. One was benign, presenting itself as the guiding father figure, leading his wayward and obviously – for not being Brutish - savage children to the civilizing trough of Brutish culture.
The other face was that of the stern patriarch who sometimes, albeit reluctantly, had to mete out punishment. Da Silva now saw the latter on Lord Ludvig’s face.
“Then, Mr Secretary of the Treasury,” Lord Ludvig said, “it is time for some drastic measures. I am still the authority here and still remain responsible.”
”You have a plan, My Lord?”
“Yes, Mr Secretary, I do.”
The Governor-General belched heavily. Steel was replaced by water as his eyes started to tear up from the pain, and he concluded the meeting with, “For now I leave it up to you to investigate the matter and to determine ways of increasing revenues. I think a purge is in order.”
With a mumbled “I’ll see what I can do, Lord Ludvig,” but thinking, it’s obviously not just the Empire that needs a good high colonic cleansing, a relieved Da Silva excused himself.
The blood sausage and sauerkraut that he’d had for dinner was pushing a burning surge of bile up the back of Jake Karoo‘s throat, and keeping it down, south of his ribcage, was harder than teaching a herd of cats how to play water polo, something that Jake had succeeded in only once before. He’d been a more enthusiastic circus clown at the time
It had been a hard week for Karoo’s Circus. Negotiations with the Stabstaff District Heimraden about a week’s rental of the wind-blown, gnat-infested plot at the edge of the village of Stabstaff, high up in Tibutan, the Northern Mountain province of Bugrawlia, had ended only when Jake, the circus’s owner, manager and master of ceremonies extraordinaire, agreed to fork over no less than sixty percent of the gate after every night’s show. Then, for two nights in a row, an early spring snowstorm had kept potential audiences huddled inside their huts, so several shows had had to be cancelled. Now they didn’t have the funds to even reach the next town. And it was about to get worse.
Demanding the ridiculous rental was none other than the local drossaard – the local equivalent of a magistrate - Halobsang “Holdout” Harumpa. He’d earned the nickname “Holdout” Harumpa. He was a dealmaker who always held out and got his way, no matter what it took. This usually included the threat of the brass knuckle, always implied, never openly stated but never doubted by his adversary.
He also had one of the worst cases of halitosis south of the Northern Mountains. This was due to a number of factors. There was his great fondness, in spite of a growing Lactose intolerance, for the pungent local goats-milk cheeses. Then there was the cool mountain climate that produced an ever-present stalagmite of mucus in the cavern-like network of his sinus and nasal passages and the back of his throat, and a deep-pile carpet of slime on his tongue and tonsils. And, finally, there were the garlic buttons that were imported from the southern lowlands and that he munched as if they were peanuts.
Into this virulent digestive stew could be stirred Holdout’s habit of emphasising his aitches when he spoke, always leaning his huge bulk as close to his listener as possible. This usually encouraged those on the receiving end of his tirades to conclude that it was in their best interests to agree with whatever he said and make an escape for some breathable air.
What Holdout Harumpa was doing in Jake Karoo’s caravan - which served as the circus owner’s office-cum-living quarters - at that late hour, was collecting his share of the evening’s meagre takings. Only on behalf of the Heimraden, of course.
“The way I see it, Mister Karoo,” he wheezed, “we are partners in this enterprise. You are entertainers. Artistes. You require someone like me to help smooth the bumps in the road. Deal with our colonial masters. So. As I said: partners. I think that I deserve my fair share of our little enterprise, don’t you? One hand washes the other, no?”
Jake Karoo, looking more morose than normal, didn’t say a word. The thought flashed through his mind, like a meteor on a summer’s night, that Holdout had probably last washed his hands when he was seven. He just nodded. He was in Holdout’s territory and he knew it.
The fact that Holdout was a drossaard and could grant or withhold from the circus any rights he chose to, was by the by. Brutain, Bugrawlia’s colonial master, had in recent years been relegated to a powerless observer in these lawless parts, incapable of subjugating these wild mountain peoples.
But Holdout Harumpa was the kind of man who needed to justify his venality, if only to himself.
The lone figure shuffled along the row of cages, hunched in his brown overcoat against a mountain wind as frigid as a bank manager’s stare. Making soft noises in his throat, he seemed to be conversing with the animals, soothing here, making chucking noises there, and occasionally reaching out to ruffle a furry pelt. To an observer the effect was of someone attempting to calm the captive occupants, in turn finding comfort in the act.
And he was being observed. So engrossed was he that he did not notice the two figures skulking behind him in the inky shadows. A knowledgeable observer would have appreciated their skulking technique. They had it down pat. They could have been the chancellor and vice-chancellor at the University of Skulking, and the authors of The Art of Skulking.
- Are you sure that’s him? skulkmeister no. 1 asked. Not in words of course, since words (see chapter 2 of The Art of Skulking) invariably compromised a good skulk; you needed sign language (chapters seven through eleven) to be an expert skulker.
- ‘Course I’m sure, skulkmeister no. 2 signed back. - I’d recognise him anywhere.
Inside the cages, the animals were showing signs of restlessness. Sniffing, pacing, pawing the bars.
Thus it was that the engrossed animal whisperer, peering up at the faint outline of the swamp elephant towering above him behind its almost laughably flimsy containing fence, and making soft trumpeting noises with his lips while caressing the animal’s outstretched trunk, did not hear as the two figures crept up behind him.
He hardly felt the short, sharp pain of the blow behind his left ear.
Of course, no one really knows if the pain was mercifully short for the one on the receiving end. To him, it may have been an agony as everlasting as the mountains rising above him in the darkness, an agony that would dim only when the electrical flux of his brain slowly petered out, like a tank full of fish succumbing to mercury poisoning and sinking to the bottom.
- Nice one, signed skulker no. 2 to his companion with professional appreciation for a job done professionally and with a minimum of fuss. - Now, let’s get these cages open. And remember the leaflets!
What followed was the sound of bolt cutters snicking easily through chains and locks. After all, these constraints had never been meant to restrain wild beasts. These were circus animals, and therefore the cages were to contain relatively tame creatures who were expected not to want to escape from a life that guaranteed at least one square meal a day, even if the deal included occasionally wearing silly hats and running in circles.
The animals reacted tentatively at first, like any caged creature who doesn’t initially know what to make of it when the chains fall away and freedom presents itself. Suspiciously, they tested to see whether they were all the butt of some new cosmic circus joke, or if the open cage doors, and the putative freedom that they represented, were for real.
Then, to a man(drill), they seemed to conclude that they were faced with the real thing and that they damned well had to ensure that they made the best of it while it lasted. So, like a busload of hookers let loose in a mining camp on payday, they burst out from the cages.
At first they had no choice but to bunch together in the alleyway between the two rows of cages, but after much jostling and shoving they emerged into the open, scattering in all directions.
First out were the punchin’ llamas. These cousins of the camel, native to these high mountain plateaus, had been half crazed with frustration ever since the circus had encamped, so near and yet so far from their unattainable home territory. Called punchin’ llamas for their habit - part of their mating dance - of rising on their hind feet and clobbering each other with the front paws, they paused for merely a moment before bounding off towards the foothills. The last anyone heard of them was the sound of hooves cracking together as a couple of testosteronic males went for each other in anticipation of the eager young ewes that would, surely, be waiting to relieve their bottled up energies.
(In an interesting development, agents of the Comching government a few years later abducted the whole herd of punchin’ llamas. They have not been seen since. The Comching authorities, of course, have always most vociferously denied all accusations concerning any kidnapping.)
Next came the tumbling jangaroos. Imported from the warmer antipodes, they were clearly not used to the cool mountain climate. The normally powerful leaps and bounds that they were known for were, here, limited to short bouncing hops, due to the fact that their long, powerful tails were quite rigid from the cold, sticking out behind them. They, too, disappeared into the mist and into the mountains where, some time later, they encountered a flock of fortunate mountain goats. Together they were eventually to sire a hybrid species, known as mountain goataroos, which was capable of incredible jumping feats. These goataroos could cross wide crags in a single bound, where previously some of the antecedents of the goats had attempted to cross in two bounds.
(Why this destructive behavioural trait had not been evolutionarily self-culling is still a mystery to the zoologists studying them.)
Next were the two swamp elephants, small ears pinned back in uncertainty, trunks questing the night air. Since they hadn’t been in cages to begin with, but had merely been kept in by a low fence, they’d decided to set themselves free, but now were unsure of what to do with their newly found freedom. They therefore did the only sensible thing and set to grazing upon the bales of hay stacked off to one side.
Finally, over the heads of a troupe of cycling monkeys, went the members of The Amazing Parrot Choir Of The Deepest Eastern Jungles of Pilau. Squawking and cawing they fluttered to the top of the circus tent where, after a few false starts and missed cues, they gave a rousing rendition of When The Saints Go Marchin’ In.
“So, my friend, you will be on the road again tomorrow, I assume? To the next village, to entertain and enlighten? I especially enjoyed the Beasts From The Six Provinces section of the show. A clever innovation. But you know, I have been thinking…”
Holdout Harumpa’s eyes, thin slits at the best of times, narrowed even further as he slowly leaned forward, leaving no doubt in Jake’s mind that he was about to be made an offer that would be an attempt to leave him fleeced worse than ever.
Then all hell broke loose.
At the same time that a loud shout was heard from outside, there was a thunderous thump on the side of Jake’s caravan that sent it rocking from side to side, scattering the contents and shattering Jake’s favourite beer mug.
“What in the name of Harbajan The Great was that?!?” Holdout exploded.
Jake Karoo, who had inadvertently lurched towards Harumpa due to the rocking of the vehicle quite oddly seemed to cheer up for a few brief moments as the blast of Harumpa’s breath, as putrid as an acrobat’s underwear, enveloped him. Jake’s normally hangdog expression gave a yelp and ran for the nearest door, like a Beagle pup pursued by the hellhound of Holdout’s breath.
By the time Jake’s eyes stopped watering enough for him to see, Holdout had wrenched open the door of the caravan and was peering out into the snowy darkness, his bulk completely obstructing not just Jake’s view, but also impeding any attempts to get past the blasted man and see for himself what was causing the commotion.
What Jake saw next, through teary eyes, were a pair of huge gaping jaws with long, yellowish teeth, envelop Holdout’s head and, lifting his feet off the floor, pull the whole quivering mass of his body through the narrow doorway.
It was the first time in many years that Holdout had not turned sideways before manoeuvring his huge girth through a doorway, an event immediately regretted by both Holdout and the doorway. But not, apparently, by the large tiger that now had Holdout in his jaws and was loping away into the night. The huge bulk of the drossaard incongruously jounced and bounced with every step the huge cat took as Holdout clung to its fur for all he was worth.
It took a few moments for Jake to realise that the screaming sounds he was hearing were being emitted not, as he’d first thought, by Holdout, but rather by the huge cat. It was a Ligurian tiger, a beast from the Eastern Plains of Bugrawlia, and, fearful of no creature, was now being bested by Holdout’s gasping and wheezing, the stench of which even this formidable animal, used to foraging for carrion in lean seasons on the plains, could not stomach. With a roar, it released Holdout’s bulk, and mewling like a housecat deprived of its favourite ball of twine, disappeared into the night.
By now, the occupants of the other caravans were starting to emerge bleary eyed to see what the commotion was. The sight of all their animal charges charging at them, against a backdrop of flames licking the sky from the by then burning cages, was enough to banish all thoughts of sleep. But these were circus folk; they were pros and not prone to panicking. With a collective sigh indicating an acceptance of continuous adversity, they simply formed a bucket brigade and soon had the flames under control.
When the body was found during the mêlée, everyone was too preoccupied to notice the two figures quietly disappearing down the trail leading away from the village.
An exhausted and teary-eyed troupe it was that gathered outside Jake Karoo’s caravan.
First light was painting the mountaintops a burnished copper in the distance, a beautiful sight but not one that anyone was currently in the mood to appreciate. After dousing the fire, the remainder of the night had been spent clearing up the mess. The body of the hapless victim, the clown Postinho Papalangeo, had been laid out in the living quarters of Sophie, Fortune Teller to the Stars.
Jake was standing on an upturned fire bucket. “Well, then,” he began, “does anyone have any ideas about what happened last night?” His hangdog look had returned but was even more doleful than normal.
“Seems to me it was those animal libation people again,” came the voice of Low-Down Lipzner, one of the dwarfs. “They must’ve opened the cages to libate the animals, see, and poor old Posser got caught in the charge. We found their leaflets and all, all over the place. Animals Are Humans, Too, one of ‘em said.”
A murmur from the crowd: “Damn them! Think animals’re more important than people, they do.” This from Willie Thursday, owner and trainer of The Amazing Parrot Choir Of The Deepest Eastern Jungles of Pilau, whose members had flown to the top of the badly burned big top and who were at that moment warming up to perform. “I love my birds, would never even think of abusing them, but those animal liberation people think they should be set free. Well, they set them free, all right, but look at that.” He pointed up at the Choir, from who were emanating the sound of multiple voices practising scales. “Didn’t fly far, did they? Inzar! Unsilal! Come down here, girls!”
“Yes, well,” intoned Jake, “they have been very vocal lately with all those articles in the national press back home, and at this point it does seem the most likely explanation. I just wouldn’t have thought they’d follow us here, to the boondocks, before pulling such a stunt. Not a lot of publicity in it.” He shrugged uncomprehendingly, noticeably distressed. “Ah, poor Posser.”
“He was a good-a fellow,” said Enzo Fia Tavio, leader of the Flying Fia Tavios, in his heavy accent. “I often-a saw him go out-a to the animal-a cages late at-a night-a. He liked-a being around them, could almost-a talk to them-a. Especially-a when he’d-a had a few-a drinks. Ay. Such a sad end-a. He was-a a sad man in-a many ways-a, wouldn’t-a you agree, Jason? You-a knew him quite-a well.” The last was directed at a man standing slightly apart from the small crowd.
The choir was getting it together now, and the solemn sounds of a bluesy gospel number were drifting down from the tent top. It almost seemed appropriate to the sombre mood prevailing down beneath them where the sweet chariots were certainly swinging low.
Jason Poligon had been standing off to one side throughout the proceedings without a word. The troupe was used to the idiosyncrasies of the enigmatic figure. A tall, slightly stooped man of an indeterminate age (but thought to be in his early thirties by those who cared to speculate), his habit of always wearing gloves was ascribed to fussiness, certainly strange in someone who worked with animals, but not that unusual.
The ear and nose plugs hardly solicited comment any more.
No more, at any rate, than did the dark glasses that he always had on, even at night and that, except for a tiny pinprick in the middle of each lens, were completely opaque. In the way that people have of accepting something that at first seems odd, by then they seemed perfectly normal in that they matched the wearer in opacity.
When Enzo addressed him, Jason Poligon was silent for so long they thought he was wearing double earplugs, something he did when he had to clean around the bandstand during their practice sessions.
“He was as good a friend as you could want,” he simply said, the pain in his voice obvious. Then, with a visible effort, he gathered himself. “He was low after last night’s show, and when he said he was going out to the cages, I knew enough to let him be. He just asked if he could borrow my coat, that’s all.”
The words left a bad taste in his mouth. Literally.
He fell silent again, and immediately was lost in thought. He stooped a bit more, like someone who doesn’t want to take up too much sky.
“We’ll make sure he gets a proper send-off,” Jake said into the awkward silence. “Far as I know he didn’t have any family… He was a good clown, wasn’t he?”
“The best…”,
“Loved kids…”,
“Very funny…”, came the murmurs of assent.
Done with the gospel tune, the Choir was upping the tempo somewhat, into a medium paced version of a Brutish marching song, their plumed heads bobbing in unison in time with the beat.
“But what are we going to do, Mr Karoo?” piped the shrill voice of Betsy Stuermer, Gerrt the knife-thrower’s wife and assistant. “How can we continue?” A state of shock had kept the normally garrulous woman quiet for this long. Known as Anxious Betsy for her never ending stream of consciousness chatter, the only time she was ever quiet was when she was strapped to a rapidly spinning wheel and was having handfuls of very sharp and pointy cutlery hurled at her by her husband, Gerrt, The Amazing Knife Thrower. Then she became utterly still.
Perhaps it was from a deep sense of fatalism.
Or perhaps it was because Gerrt was known amongst his peers in the knife-throwing fraternity as Sweaty Hands Stuermer.
Anxious faces turned towards Jake Karoo. They all knew what was coming, but such is the human heart that hope springs eternal.
“No choice, I’m afraid. No animals, no big top, no funds to speak of. We’ll have to call it quits. I’ll be paying you what I can manage for now. A disaster is what it is. Disaster. Let’s first all have a bit of rest and a cleanup. We’ll talk after breakfast.” With slumped shoulders, he turned towards his caravan as the crowd started drifting away.
The Choir, which had exhausted their marching song repertoire, and seeing that they were losing their audience, chose that exact moment to burst into a full throated, fully counter-pointed version of the Brutish national anthem, O Empire Glorious, completely ignoring Willie Thursday’s shouts of “Inzar! Unsilal! Jokram! Polly! Knock that off and come down here, right this minute!”
Thus, the despondent ex-circus members drifted to their respective caravans hearing the words
…Proud we stand and proud we’ll stay
Ours the future, for always!
being raucously cackled behind them, adding mockery to their creeping despair.
The Amerussian capitol
Knowledge Gathering Intelligence Agency Headquarters.
KGIA headquarters is a place of secrets.
Everyone knows it is because the big sign at the entrance says so:
LOOSE LIPS SINK SHIPS
(To which someone has added, in tiny, artful graffiti letters:
WHILE LIPS THAT ARE TIGHT ARE A SAILOR’S DELIGHT!)
It is a place of guarded whispers. Of shadowy people with Need To Know security clearance.
Mostly, what those working here need to know is, firstly, how to keep their heads down so as to not attract the attention of their supervisors.
Secondly, it is essential to know who the current enemy is supposed to be. This is especially useful to those who may oversleep and subsequently miss the morning news on television.
Thirdly, they have to know what is on the canteen’s luncheon menu.
The final two pieces of information are posted on a notice board in the foyer, with the latter piece normally garnering the most attention.
Deceptively, the suite of offices on the seventh floor appears no different from the others. From the water cooler at the end of the corridor to the secretary sitting at her desk in the alcove next to a door marked Dir. Spec. Ops., everything seems as unremarkable for an organisation of this nature as the standard issue medium weave carpet (light grey, medium grey or dark grey) or the always shuttered vertical blinds on the windows.
But things are different in this part of KGIA HQ, for this is the nerve centre of a shadowy group that officially does not exist. Its budget does not go through normal channels. Its missions are not approved by the normal oversight committees. In fact, not even the Director of the KGIA knows more about it other than that it exists and that it is answerable to no one but the Chief Executive of Amerus, the President himself.
Here, no one is ever addressed by his or her real name. Only code names are allowed.
Here, everyone speaks in code. Nothing is ever written down. Orders are exclusively given orally.
Here, in these quiet hallways, the concept of denial has been elevated to a fine art.
Here, the levels of paranoia are so high that no one trusts anyone, least of all their colleagues in the rest of the building, who are utterly unaware that, hiding in plain sight amongst them, is an arm of their organisation that, like no other, gives credence to the KGIA nickname: the ‘Cagey Eye Agency’.
Any superpower worth its salt needs an organisation like the Directorate of Special Operations, and even a putative democracy such as Amerus is no exception.
For those surveillance jobs where such democratic trappings as special judicial authorization are regarded as bureaucratic flim-flam, Dir. Spec. Ops. is the answer.
When the provision of weapons and training personnel to the currently favoured foreign-rebel-group-of-the-month is deemed too sensitive for the democratically elected representatives of the people to oversee and monitor, Dir. Spec. Ops. is the answer.
Or, when any operation similar in nature to any of the above goes wrong and some wet work is required to mop up any potentially treasonous (read: embarrassing) loose ends, Dir. Spec. Ops. is the answer.
In short, when the complexities of a situation can be reduced to its essentials and be expressed in one word, “Oops!” Dir. Spec. Ops. is the answer.
While levels of paranoia are high in the rest of the KGIA, in the Directorate of Special Operations it is at a fever pitch. So much so that Dir. Spec. Ops. has created an in-house surveillance unit to spy on itself.
That tight budgets mean that no one is available to analyse the recordings is beside the point.
Known to each other only as Hekyll and Jekyll, the members of today’s designated listening team sit hunched in the gloom of the surveillance center, each tuned to a different room of Dir. Spec. Ops.
When Jekyll hears the word “Oops!” uttered in the corner office on the seventh floor, followed by the bump of furniture being shoved about, his ears prick up. Then he relaxes. The voice is that of Special Agent James Basildon.
Jekyll switches off the recorder. By now, the listeners know better than to record Agent Special Grade Daisy Cutter when she is orally debriefing one of her field agents.
Jekyll’s palms are slightly moist. He surreptitiously slips his right hand under the table and into the pocket of his trousers. He presses the button of a tiny recording device nestling in the warm folds of his pocket. Soon he will be adding a new recording to his personal collection, a compilation he has named Daisy’s Cutters.
Hekyll is tuned in to the small conference room adjoining the Director, Special Operations’ office, where another debriefing is in progress. Present are the director of Dir. Spec. Ops., who is using the code name Ms Queen (Hekyll silently attaches the prefix Ice), and two gentlemen referred to as Mr Rook and Mr Bishop. Ms Queen is doing most of the talking. To Hekyll she seems in a rare, laudatory mood. This was less like ice turning to water than it was solid nitrogen turning to liquid nitrogen. One touch could still take your hand off.
“So. The package has been disposed of. Good.”
“Yes Ma’am. Express postage. Applied the stamp and off he … it went,” Mr Bishop says.
“And then we made sure the other…er…letters were delivered as well, Ma’am. And we turned loose…er…liberated the postal workers,” Mr Rook, who often has problems speaking in code, adds. He finds that the metaphors tend to get away from him, leaving his listeners quite nonplussed. However, when it looks as if Ms Queen has picked some meat from the bones of that one, he breathes a quiet sigh of relief.
“We have independent – if unofficial – confirmation as well.” Ms Queen indicates a newspaper open on the table off to one side. Messrs Rook and Bishop crane their necks to read the article on page five of the Brutish paper Le Times:
Disaster Strikes Circus. Man Dies!
Disaster struck Karoo’s Circus three nights ago on the last night of its run in the northern Bugrawlian town of Stabstaff. One person was killed after animal rights activists set free all the animals and then started a fire that destroyed most of the cages and part of the big top.
’We had finished the evening show and closed up for the night’, said Jake Karoo, circus owner and Master of Ceremonies. ‘Many of us had already retired for the night when we heard a commotion. What it was, was, all the animals were running around and the cages were on fire. It was pandemonium! By the time we’d got the flames under control, most of the animals were gone, the cages were burnt irreparably and part of the big top had gone up in flames as well. One of our clowns was killed in the stampede. Terrible. It’s a terrible thing, I tell you.’
Asked if he had any clue as to the perpetrators of this awful deed, Karoo said: ‘Well, it’s obvious that it was the Anti-Animal Abuse League. They left their pamphlets strewn all over the place. It’s a sad day when people think that an animal’s life is worth more than a man’s.’
At reading this, a small, self-satisfied smirk creeps over Mr Rook’s face. Mr Bishop just keeps on reading expressionlessly.
Karoo added that they had had run-ins with AAAL before, but mostly in the form of protests. ‘We even met with them a few times to try to iron out our differences, show them how well we treated the animals. I never expected them to go this far!’ he said.
At the time of going to press, the AAAL had released a statement that reiterated their stated goal of ‘freeing all animals from human abuse wherever it may occur.’ However, they denied any involvement in this instance and of ever advocating the use of violence.
Well known and beloved by all, young and old, due to having entertained three generations of the young at heart, Karoo’s Circus, based in the city of Kraak, has had to cancel its tour of the Bugrawlian provinces.
The circus was on a tour of Bugrawlia as part of a cultural exchange program.
Inexplicably, the circus also had its licence revoked by Mr Halobsang Harumpa, the District Commissioner of the Northern Mountain Province of Bugrawlia. When approached by this newspaper, a spokesperson for Harumpa said that the circus obviously did not have sufficient safety procedures in place and could therefore not be allowed to continue operating.
It is not known when the cremation of the deceased circus member, known as Posser to his colleagues, is to take place.
“Posser, eh?” Mr Rook says under his breath. “So that’s what they called him. Funny how’s nicknames work, ain’t it…”
“Well done, gentlemen,” says Ms Queen. “I believe we can now close the book on the whole squalid affair of Operation Just Try And Say No. The only people still alive who know anything about it are all in this room. And neither of you will ever say anything to anyone, I’m sure…”
She leaves the sentence hanging. Messrs Rook and Bishop can tell from the look that she gives them that if the matter is ever mentioned again, they too would be left hanging. No metaphor intended.
Hekyll listens to the door open and close. He does not even attempt to make sense of the disjointed conversation he has just heard. For a few seconds he keeps listening but all that he hears through his earphones is a faint hiss of static, which he equates with a remnant of Ms Queen’s malevolent spirit. He shivers melodramatically. Then he turns a dial to deactivate the microphone in the empty room.
The dining room table in the Governor-General’s mansion in the Bugrawlian capitol of Candoberra was long enough to stage a fashion show. In fact, once upon a time it even had. Lady Longbones Longines, the anorexic wife of an earlier Governor-General, had regarded herself as quite the designer and had held numerous, intimate little fashion shows where her hapless chambermaids were coerced into showing off her fey and self-indulgent creations.
Thing had changed considerably since then. At one end of the expanse of pitted hardwood sat His Excellency Governor-General Lord Ludvig de Sancerre y Brava and, at the other end but still within shouting distance, sat Lady Brünhilde.
In happier days, the great room in which they were having supper had seen many great social occasions, formal as well as informal. Guests had included such luminaries as Presidents, Prime Ministers and minor royalty of numerous countries.
That had been when those representatives of lesser powers requiring Brutish aid had still regarded Bugrawlia as a prized Brutish colony worthy of a state visit. A chamber orchestra could always be heard in the background, finessing a little piece of baroque fluffery while well turned out guests mingled and chatted, jewellery agleam amid heaving bosoms.
And that was even truer for the women. The latest haute couture from the Brutish capital was always in evidence. Delicacies such as snail antlers in aspic sauce were often flown in especially for such occasions, having been prepared by the finest Brutish chefs.
Many were the diplomatic agreements reached between various states, if not directly at those illustrious affairs then during quiet discussions that took place in smoky rooms elsewhere in the residence.
Rumour had it that it was at one such occasion that the groundwork for a peace accord in the endless and intractable feud between Costa Blanca and Iraquba was laid post-prandially over cognac and cigars.
Others snidely ascribed the breakthrough to the convivial atmosphere created by the chef’s special of that day, boeuf médaillons avec vin rouge et cannabis sativa.
Alas, those times were over. Lord Ludvig and Lady Brünhilde now were invariably alone at supper. Communication was limited to the essentials. Eye contact was avoided except for those icy glances that she sent high stepping down the length of the enormous runway of a table like Lady Longines’ fashion models coolly showing the latest winter fashions. Often those suppers ended with Lady Brünhilde dissolving in tears, hurling her napkin to one side and storming off to her room, leaving a bewildered and contrite Lord Ludvig with her recriminations ringing in his ears. About how much of a failure he had turned out to be. That Papa had warned her she was making a mistake. That she must have known she should never have trusted him with that royal weibchen and how all her dreams had been shattered and look how they were now stuck in this provincial backwater, and on and on.