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A Satirical Phantasy

1

At around breakfast, on the dawn of a Suburban day much like every other
Suburban day, I contemplated forsaking home to quest for the Truth. As
usual, my preparation for the day ahead was a bowl of cereal, two slices of
toast with marmalade and butter, and a cup of instant coffee. The
television burbled in the background, catching the reflection of the early
morning sun slanting through the window.

Outside, the Suburbs was stirring. There was the low whir of the milk
float, the revving of cars preparing to leave for work, the slamming of
doors and the purposeful tread of commuters along the pavement towards the
train or bus. Sparrows and blackbirds serenaded each other from the hedges
and trees. A postman paced by oblivious to the stream of commuters as he
sifted through post that he would dispense with a dull thud onto doormats
already cluttered with free newspapers and unsolicited promotions.

The Suburbs was where I lived. Semi-detached house after semi-detached
house assembled in all directions, harmoniously separated by fences,
protected from the street by hedge, lawn, driveway and garage. Each house
adorned by television aerials, telephone wires, plumbing, electricity and
gas. Each house self-contained, and every Suburban occupant in a world
bounded by television and the garden fence. My house was no exception.
And indeed I was no exception. Except that today I was not a commuter.

Although I was not in the general procession of commuter traffic, I knew
it to be my destiny. I was to join the daily regiment heading to the City,
briefcase and umbrella in hand, to keep the Suburbs in garden gnomes,
Welcome doormats and nostalgic country ornaments. I would stampede, gallop
or trot to my destination, intent on a rat-race without which life had no
conceivable meaning.

I left my house with no purpose and no destination, envying those
hurrying by with both. I ambled towards the park to mingle with the
mothers with their children and the elderly with their dogs. Here, the
orderly rows of semi-detached houses gave way to orderly rows of trees and
hedges along well-paved paths. There were children's swings and slides,
and ornamental flowerbeds. There were no clouds in the sky and the shadows
had a sharpness that enhanced the plastic clarity of the perfect flowers
and trimmed trees.

I sat on a bench, spaced at regular intervals like all the others,
indexed by a number, in this case the number One, and dedicated in memoriam
to a dead appreciator of the park. The manicured lawn extended ahead,
eventually meeting a hedge which secluded it from a less peaceful world
where double-decker buses and family cars drove past. My mind was on many
things, mostly inconsequential. What would I need to buy from the
supermarket? Should I buy stamps from the post office to enable me to post
the bills that needed paying? How much longer should I leave the faulty
switch to the bathroom light before it required replacing? Were there
really rats under the floorboards? My mind was also occupied by meditation
of the Truth. There'd been an item on breakfast television that morning in
which experts declared that they felt sure they were getting quite close to
divining its nature. They still didn't know for sure what the Truth was,
but they had a clearer idea than ever before. Or at least they had a
better idea of what it most certainly wasn't. It was a fascinating
pursuit, occupying so many of the greatest minds of the time.

I was tempted to declare that the Truth already existed and was in the
Suburbs. Surely if the Truth was evident in a life as well organised and
purposeful as possible, blessed with the greatest degree of civilised
comfort, where else but in the Suburbs was there the degree of utilitarian
perfection which earned that description? Surely the purpose of life is in
the striving towards further perfection of an orderly state. All that was
needed was the tidying up of a few lawns, the elimination of litter and
better municipal planning of road crossings and bus stops. The striving
towards this greater perfection was constant, and, under the watchful eye
of good citizens, the perfection of the Suburbs would one day become a
reality.

However flawless a model of perfection the Suburbs might be, I was not
convinced that the Truth was really manifested in this way. The Suburbs
seemed to lack something fundamental: an objective greater than its own
perfection. I looked around the park and beyond, at the roofs of
semi-detached houses and the greenery of privately owned trees. The Truth
must be beyond all this.

But if not in the Suburbs where could the Truth be found? In Love
perhaps? Generations have supposed this to be so. By radiating Love, the
Lover receives Love, and the Truth is revealed. One feels OK. One knows
everyone else is OK. The heart ascends above the rat-infested sewer of
everyday life and gallops beyond the mundane and predictable. You do only
the best for others. And in return others do the best for you.

Great though Love is, I thought, surely Love must be focused on an
object. I regarded a woman walking purposely by on the business of her
day. Behind her the sun heightened the greenness of the grass. A thrush
hammered at the ground, no doubt equally in pursuit of its own business.
It then took off and flew like an arrow into a tree. Perhaps the Truth is
to be found in meditative contemplation of the world. The Truth is the
immanence of all the world's beauty.

All beauty and all reason must be in the ordered perfection of nature:
the balance of the ecological order and the struggle for the most fit to
survive. But is that the Truth? It is at best only the manifestation of
it, not the Truth itself. And aren't there many evils in the natural
world? Is it not brutish and for those not most fit rather deficient in its
bounty?

Divine Truth must then be the answer. I could see the spire of a church
above the television aerials casting a shadow on the houses beyond. Could
it be that God is the personification of the Truth? One would achieve
knowledge of the Truth through God. One would become one with the
omnipresence, omniscience and wisdom of God: the answer thoughtfully
provided by the prophets. A Truth, however, which required Faith. And
without Faith (and which Faith?) where then is the Truth? And if God
personifies the Truth, what is that Truth? Religion purports to give the
answer, but an answer that needs to be believed in. Not a self-evident
Truth to persuade the otherwise unpersuaded. And if religion does provide
the answer, then why the continued search for the Truth? And why the
competing interpretations of what it might be?

Ants were filing past, almost invisible in the cracks of the path's
tarmac. Everywhere you look there are insects! There are more insects
than any other phylum. Everywhere in the world there they are: beyond the
Suburbs where the Truth lies. The world outside was totally unknown to me.
I was certain that I really wouldn't like a great deal of it. Insects, for
instance. I'd heard that some were really rather large and frightening.
But if I were to find the Truth, I would have to face that and many other
hazards. I considered other aspects of life beyond the Suburbs. I had
often been told of its horrors, but some of those horrors actually sounded
quite good fun. How can one know the Truth until one has lived life to the
full? Which one cannot do in the Suburbs. The orgies and bacchanalia all
exist elsewhere. Perhaps the Truth could be found through a life of
indulgence and pleasure? But if this were so, then why have so many warned
against it? Over the millennia, there have always been arguments for
moderation. Perhaps a policy of moderation would lead me to the Truth.

Maybe I should be content to listen to those older and wiser than I, who
have learnt from centuries of history and experience, and have divined
practices and customs that enshrine the Truth in tradition and received
wisdom. However, although I was no historian, I was certain that there was
no occasion in the past when the Truth had actually been found. And I was
equally certain that traditional ceremonies and rituals were not the result
of profound insight. Indeed, in the Suburbs at least, they appeared to
trivialise such insights. But what is timeless are the thoughts of the
great philosophers over the centuries. And perhaps one could attain
knowledge of the Truth through philosophy. Perhaps there is an a priori
Truth that could be found: a tautologous statement containing a greater
Truth than that of its own linguistic construction. I mused on this for a
while, not noticing the gentle brush of the wind on my cheeks, the
insistent yapping of a nearby rat-like lapdog, nor the rumble of the
Suburban traffic.

I couldn't be certain that pure thought in itself could discover the
Truth. The Truth must be prescriptive as well as descriptive. It is not
just as an account of what there is, it is also a recipe for how to lead
one's life. And there, of course, lies the role of politics, also known as
the Art of the Possible. It is the means by which society organises itself
to achieve all that it can do. Contemplation is wasted when action is
required to improve an inequitable, unjust and inefficient world. It is
necessary for trains to run on time, for people to have faith in the
financial institutions, for the poorest to be provided for by those who are
most able to afford to do so, for the maximisation of the greatest good for
the greatest number at the most economical cost and the best
internationally competitive advantage.

Knowledge of this Truth must be provided by the education system. And
that incarnates the pursuit of knowledge. Perhaps then, the Truth is the
embodiment of knowledge, personifying all that there is already known, all
that is to be known and all that it is possible to know. Perhaps the Truth
is nothing more than the spirit of this pursuit. But can it also be other
things? Or maybe the Truth is all things, including things it cannot be.
But then how can it contain things that are not True?

My mind protested and I looked at my watch. It was now 11 o'clock. Oh
well! I thought, it's time for elevenses. I'll treat myself to a coffee
in a cafe. Whatever the Truth may be, it can surely wait for that.

Lunch, dinner, tea are essential signposts of the day marked by food,
celebrated and served at the Archer Street Cafe in pounds, shillings and
pence. Coffee at 17 shillings. Tea for a ten shilling note. A
traditional Suburban breakfast for £2 7/-. And for me a cup of coffee and
a small slice of cake for just over a guinea. The cafe was quite typical
of the Suburbs. It was adorned by flowery wallpaper, pictures of distant
meadows and valleys, a vase of plastic flowers on each Formica covered
table and plastic chairs secured firmly to the floor as a precaution
against theft. The cafe was neither empty nor full, maintaining a
comfortable middle ground where there were people to look at, but none with
their elbows up against mine. The customers at the cafe hardly warranted
any attention, being the usual collection of shoppers and shift-workers
either alone like myself and avoiding eye contact at all cost, or in
company and focusing their eyes exclusively on each other and their ears to
the affairs of the Suburbs. The state of the roads. The perennial litter
problem. The rubbish on television these days.

But almost all conversation came to an uneasy halt when the door of the
cafe tinkled open and a black woman entered. There are very few strangers
who ever visit the Suburbs, and usually they're visitors from other
suburbs. But a black person. Very rare! This in itself was remarkable,
but her impact was compounded by her wearing rather more skimpy clothes
than is normal for the Suburbs. In fact, the unspoken thought
reverberating among the blue rinses and hairpins was that she was barely
decent. Perhaps by City standards she was positively modest, but one isn't
to know much about that. All her clothes were white in significant
contrast to the blackness of her skin: a white slip supported her
substantial breasts, but revealed all her midriff, a short flared skirt
that just about obscured her knickers, short white ankle socks and white
tennis shoes. She looked as if she might have just finished playing tennis
on an exceptionally hot day. Her beaded hair dropped onto bare shoulders,
obscuring the straps of her slip.

She walked nonchalantly to the counter and ordered a cup of tea, handing
over a ten guinea note and expressed delight at all the change she was
handed in return. She then picked up her tea, balanced a plastic spoon and
several white cubes of sugar on the saucer, and then, for the first time
since she'd entered, looked around the cafe. She gave an amused smile,
strode towards my table and sat in the seat opposite me despite there being
several other empty tables. This woman was definitely not Suburban! No
one from the Suburbs would ever be so presumptuous or intrusive.

She put the plastic spoon into the cup and started stirring the tea,
while looking directly at me. "Hello, my name's Anna," she belatedly
introduced herself. "You don't mind me sitting here do you?"

"No, of course not," I said warily.

"The Suburbs are jolly odd!" She announced. "I've never been anywhere
so blinking reserved. You come from the Suburbs, don't you?" I nodded.
"Me, I come from the borough of Baldam. Near the University City of
Lambdeth. I've been travelling around, and made it to the Suburbs." She
glanced around her at the porcelain ornaments of country people on horses.
"And I wonder now if it was ever such a good idea coming here. What do you
think?"

In the Suburbs, one is never asked such direct questions. Especially
not from people you've never met before or who introduce themselves without
the usual excuses of circumstance. However, I coughed a little. "The
Suburbs has its own virtues. I'm sure there's some aspect of it you'd
like."

"It's so boring!" Exclaimed Anna, ignoring my comment. "Perhaps that
its appeal. There just doesn't seem to be any life here at all. It's
dead! And no one wants to know you. Honestly, everyone looks at me as if
I've arrived from the moon. I'm not that odd! I don't have four hooves or
a furry tail. I don't have claws and sharp little teeth. Everyone here
looks so much the same. And they behave like the whole world was the
Suburbs. They're jolly polite enough, if you ask them the way, but they
say as little as they can."

Anna looked at me past the condiments in flowery plastic containers and
grinned very broadly. The whiteness of her eyes and teeth penetrated
through the Suburban air like beacons, tantalising advertisements of
another world of attitudes and lifestyle. "Er, what do you do?" I asked,
not sure whether a question that would in Suburban circles be almost as
automatic as a reference to the weather or the dreadful traffic was really
appropriate.

Anna openly laughed, and somewhat loudly for a Suburban cafe. I could
feel heads turn and eyes gaze malevolently towards us. I'd never be able
to eat at this cafe again in anything like my former anonymity. "Goodness!
What a jolly funny question! I just do what I blooming well like really.
Shouldn't everyone?"

I persevered. "I mean, what do you do for a living?"

"Oh! This and that! Whatever makes enough money, you know." She beamed
in paroxysms of silent mirth. "I suppose you're also going to ask why I'm
in the Suburbs? You people are so predictable!" She picked up her cup and
sipped from it. She put it down with a look of mild disgust. "The tea's
so strong here! And the coffee so weak! I'm in the Suburbs because I just
like to travel about the country. Get out and about, you know. I suppose
people in the Suburbs just never do things like that!"

"You just travel about the country?"

"When I'm not staying in my flat in Baldam, or with friends in the City,
that's what I do. I spend about a half of my life in Baldam. It's a
fantastic city. The rest of my time is divided between the City and the
rest of the country. There's just so much to do in the City that just
staying there's like travelling the rest of the world. Have you ever been
to the City?"

I shook my head. "It's very expensive..."

"Incredibly expensive! Fabulously expensive!" Anna exclaimed.
"Everything's so much cheaper here! And whenever I'm in the City, I always
earn a bit of money. Then I've got more than enough money for everywhere
else." She fiddled with a gold ring on her finger which looked like it cost
quite a few guineas. "But there's everything in the City! Everything!
You've got to be jolly tired of life to be tired of the City! You can find
whatever you want. All of life! Everything you could ever possibly want!"

I couldn't help wondering whether the Truth could also be found there,
but I was sure that if I'd confronted Anna with that question she'd
probably just think I was trying to be amusing.

"If you want to know anywhere that's the opposite of the Suburbs, then
just look at the City," she continued. "Where it's so predictable here,
it's totally flipping inconstant, erratic and varied there! Where it's
quiet here, it's bedlam there! Where there's nothing to do here, there's
everything to do in the City! And yet," Anna surveyed the Suburban world
through the curtain-draped cafe windows, "it's mostly people from the
Suburbs who work in the City." She frowned as if perplexed by this paradox.
"How is it," she asked me, running a bejewelled hand through her hair,
"that Suburbanites can go to the City every day and never seem to have ever
been there? It's as if they go there, but never actually see the place
they're in."

Anna laid a wrist down on the table and studied her silver and gold
bangles. One was shaped as the head of what looked like a rat eating an
arrow-headed tail. She looked up at me. "Yes," she grinned. "They are
worth a bit, this jewellery, but I'm not rich. I've just known some really
wealthy people. You do, you know, going to Night Clubs and things in the
City and being, you know, an Independent Woman. But although I wouldn't
say no (not flipping likely!) if someone offered me a lot of money, I just
don't think that money's what I really want out of life."

"Why's that?" I wondered, hearing for the first time what was heresy in
the Suburbs. I'd always believed that one could measure the success of
one's life by the eventual size of one's pension at retirement. If
material wealth wasn't the object of work, and if work wasn't the object of
life, then what could be?

"I don't know," Anna answered noncommittally, perhaps sensing the
discomfiture her view had caused. "I just think that the actual pursuit of
wealth gets in the way of enjoying it. And how much more enjoyment does a
billion guineas give you that a million guineas couldn't? No! It just
seems like just too much flipping trouble to me. And people who're rich
... okay, they're not exactly miserable, but I don't think their happiness
is in direct relation to how much they earn."

"What makes you happy?"

Anna grinned with a quizzical furrowing of her brows. "You people ask
the oddest things! What makes anyone happy? What's happy? But in the
City I like going out. You know, there are oodles of Night Clubs in the
City. There are Night Clubs for every taste you can imagine. Night Clubs
for the wealthy. The young. The old. Students. Everyone. But not," she
glanced at a blue rinsed couple nearby, "I suspect for people in the
Suburbs. I just like to go out and dance the night away. And there are
all sorts of music. Bebop, House, Kora, Tango, Flamenco, Fox-trot, Waltz,
Lambada, everything. What do you expect me to do?"

"Does everyone go to night clubs?"

"Well, not everyone. Not everyone likes them, of course. Some people
simply can't dance. Or they don't like socialising. Or, of course, they
just can't afford it. You know, there are some people, even in the City,
who're what you call poor. So no nightclubbing for them."

"Are they very poor?"

"You don't have poor people in the Suburbs, do you?" Contemplated Anna.
"Or if you do they're kept hidden away like a dirty secret. But in the
City there is an overabundance of poor people. Not just in the City of
course, but somehow it's more noticeable there. The poor live in the East
End of the City, though. hidden out of sight, or probably just brushed to
one side. The City is like two different places glued together. On the
one side, there's the City of money, wealth and privilege. Theatres, Art
Galleries and Public Monuments. Department Stores, Shopping Malls and
Underpasses. On the other side, in tatty, unplanned disarray, there are
the rundown churches, dilapidated pavements, gutted shops, and bored people
sitting by the roadside throwing stones at each other. For everyone in the
City with a good job, there must be at least one other, or maybe even
eleven others, who're unemployed or doing flipping awful jobs that pay
barely anything at all."

"But you're not poor?"

"Officially, I am," confessed Anna with a conspiratorial grin. "And my
parents aren't that well off. In fact, I was born in a rather rundown part
of Lambdeth. You wouldn't want to go there at all. Suburban people like
you would just look jolly odd. Poor people would think you were there for
a reason: and they couldn't imagine it being a good one. But you wouldn't
want to go there anyway, unless it was for something illegal. The Night
Clubs are blinking horrible. The taverns are fairly intimidating. There
aren't even cinemas there, and certainly no theatres or anything like that.
So you couldn't even see a film! Mind you, I'm not so sure there's
anything very much more to do here in the Suburbs. I've seen no cinemas
here. Do you have anything like that?"

"No, not really. In the Suburbs, most people's entertainment is at
home. Mostly on television."

"Ugh! How horrible! I never watch television myself. I'd rather go
out and see a film or a play. There's so much choice in the City! There
are as many different kinds of live entertainment as you can imagine.
There are cinemas and theatres showing plays and films of the most elevated
classical art, obscure avant-garde films, popular entertainment,
pornography, ultra-violence, children's films, comedies, everything. Are
you sure there aren't any cinemas in the Suburbs? So, what can you watch
on television?"

I described some of the situation comedies, quiz shows, soap operas and
general entertainment screened on Suburban television. Anna seemed
horrified. "I'm no art critic," she admitted, "but it does appear fairly
incontrovertible that the Suburban audience is irredeemably plebeian and
Philistine in its aesthetic preference! And isn't the value of a society
best judged by the culture it produces and consumes? In which case
Suburban culture is no culture at all!"

I was slightly affronted by this opinion, though I couldn't think of any
contradictory argument except to say that different standards prevailed in
the Suburbs.

"Well," mused Anna reflectively, "It's a funny old world! And I've
certainly not seen all of it! There are strange stories you hear of the
most peculiar places hidden in the most unlikely places."

"What sort of places?"

"Weird places. Places that can be found in Police Telephone Boxes,
through wardrobes, at the top of mountains, at the end of rainbows, all
sorts of places. But I'm a practical sort of person. I'm not at all sure
what I think of things like that. Corn circles. UFOs. Weeping virgins.
Levitating meditators. But one thing I'm sure is that in this world there
just seems to be so much hidden and unknown."

"Surely scientists will find them," I said, stating a commonly held
Suburban opinion.

"Science could never solve all problems. Science is about demonstrable
quantifiable truths. And the Truth is probably not that. But scientists
are certainly having a jolly good go at it. In the City, there's an
absolutely fantastically big building. The Academy, it's called. And all
the scientists are there. Looking for the Truth, I suppose. Or just
finding out about things, people and places. Or just studying things for
their own sake. Things like zoology, equestrianism, aerial mechanics, lots
of things."

"That sounds fascinating!" I commented, taken by Anna's reference to the
Truth.

"There's just so much to learn," admitted Anna. She swallowed the last
of her tea in a single gulp and looked desultorily at the empty cup. "So
many places to go! The world's such a big place. And different countries
have such incredibly strange cultures. There are republics and kingdoms.
Democracies and dictatorships. There are some countries at war. So many
different languages, religions and customs." She leaned forward. "You've
not been anywhere abroad have you?"

"No. I've never left the Suburbs," I admitted.

"The Suburbs are as much a state of mind as a place," commented Anna
mysteriously. "You don't have to leave the country to see different things
though. Even in this country there's an incredible variety of people and
customs. It's flipping fantastic, the variety! Some boroughs and counties
are quite repressive and others are very open. There are some I'd jolly
well avoid like they were vermin. Some are jolly dangerous. Some are, I
suppose, pretty boring, like the Suburbs. But boredom is not the worst!
Or perhaps it is!"

Anna looked a little uncomfortable. She glanced up at the clock just
above the counter where the second hand circumnavigated a design of flowers
and fluffy rodents. "I suppose I ought to be going now," she announced.
She eased herself up out of the chair with a slightly embarrassed look.
"Well, I'm leaving the Suburbs now. I'll be taking myself back to
Lambdeth." She straightened herself up. "It's been really jolly
interesting talking to you. You know, if I were you I'd get out of the
Suburbs. See a bit of the world beyond. You don't have to prepare
yourself or anything. Just pack your bag and go. It's a big world outside
and you mustn't just ignore it."

With that advice she bade me goodbye and borne by the wind of Suburban
disapprobation she sailed out of the cafe and into the sunlit streets. I
watched her black and white figure recede into the distance, bending the
necks of the curious as she passed by. Perhaps, I thought, turning back my
head to the somewhat unsatisfactory normality of the cafe, the Truth could
be found through escape from the Suburbs. Philosophical musings continued
in my mind until beyond lunch time, beyond dinner time and onto nine
o'clock that evening. A time which found me wandering about the Suburbs.
There was no direction in which I was heading, but my composure was just
too disturbed to rest at home. Although my attention was essentially drawn
internally, the streets were in a part of the Suburbs I'd never been to
before (although only familiarity with the Suburbs could possibly have
distinguished one set of hedges and pavements from another). Occasionally
I caught sight of late commuters galloping home from work - and in one
case, at least, I was sure, these commuters, carrying their briefcases,
umbrellas and bowler hats, were making their way on hooves.

However unfamiliar this district of the Suburbs was to me, I hadn't
expected to see a rather tall figure looming out of the dark shadows,
several feet larger than a human being, wearing a tri-cornered hat and a
long overcoat. I froze in fear and stared down the street at a pair of
piercing eyes. This was not the usual stray fox, cat or rat one would
expect to see in the Suburbs at night. This was clearly something very
different. The figure loomed mysteriously in the shadows casting a long
shadow from a street lamp. Then it turned round and lumbered off,
gradually receding into the distance. I stood shaken by the sight. Where
did that apparition come from and what was its significance? The headlamps
and the low roar of a passing car brought me back to the ordinary world.
Perhaps I'd just imagined it, I thought, as I continued my wanderings but
this time back in the direction I'd come from.

As I wandered, my thoughts returned to my destiny. Could I be so
certain that it couldn't be found in the Suburbs, I wondered, as another
car's headlights caught me in its beam and projected an extending shadow
ahead of me? Then as it came close, the car slowed and, on overtaking me,
pulled gently to a halt. This was another unusual sight in the Suburbs: a
limousine with foreign number-plates, twice the length of an ordinary car.
The passenger's door opened and a dark portly shadow emerged onto the
pavement, turned round to ease the door shut and passed comments through
the window to the shadows inside. Then this figure ambled towards me.

It was a rather fat gentleman wearing brightly coloured shorts with a
camcorder strapped around his neck and a floral short-sleeved shirt.
"Hiya," he announced himself. "Ya know your way round here?"

"Well yes," I admitted.

"Perhaps then y'all be able to help us. We're lost. One goddamn street
here is really just the same as another. And nobody seems to know this
area any more'n we do."

"Nobody?"

"We've been driving around for hours and I'm sure we've been back to
this spot before. It's one goddamn heck of a maze here. All roads go back
to where they started. And me and my pals are just totally lost." I
glanced towards the shadows in the car that seemed to belong to figures
somewhat larger than the gentleman. "Back home things ain't like this, I
can tell you! Back home things are much better off. Bigger houses, all
with swimming pools and with bigger cars parked in the drives. The roads
are wider and the lawns are hectare-sized. And wherever you go there are
signs to help you. Here it's just row after row of the same goddamn
houses. And you people are so goddamn suspicious. You'd think we'd come
from another planet rather than just another country. You people here are
real weird."

"Do you mean just in the Suburbs?"

"Gee! I don't know! But your Suburbs are most certainly weird! We've
seen a lot of your little old country. And none of what we've seen so
far's anything like this! We've just been driving through the Country.
And that's so goddamn peaceful. You got a real quaint countryside here.
Beautiful green fields. Lovely woods and valleys. Lakes, hills and the
weirdest kind of farm animals. Some of what you've got here looks like
it's not changed for simply millions of years. And some of it's like what
you sort of just imagined in dreams. The Country's real quaint!"

"I've never been to the Country," I confessed.

"You ain't!" exclaimed the tourist. "Well there sure is a heck of a lot
to see. And we were real impressed by the Art Gallery on the border of the
Country and the Suburbs. A heck of a weird place for an Art Gallery!
Especially one as big as you've got! I mean, I don't know doodly squat
about Art but I'm sure I saw some real famous stuff there! There's some
weird stuff I don't understand at all. Funny doodles, bits of old brickwork, dead rats decaying on darts boards. You must've been to the Art
Gallery? It ain't no distance from here!"

"No, I've not been there either."

"You ain't been nowhere!" the tourist exclaimed. "But then you live
here. You've got your whole goddamn life to see everything, ain't you!"

The tourist then asked for directions to the Centaur Hotel, which I was
thankfully able to give. It was a little complicated, so I had to draw a
map on the back of an envelope he had, carefully marking all the straight
lines and square parks that mapped out the Suburbs. He seemed genuinely
grateful and shook my hand warmly as he left.

"You must see more of the world, you know!" he advised me, as he
wandered back to his car with the camcorder bouncing on his belly. He
opened the door, and within seconds the car glided away leaving the street
appearing lonelier than before.

As I walked back home, it seemed that my thoughts and encounters this
day were surely leading only one way. I resolved at that moment to leave
the Suburbs and search for the Truth. I was sure I was not the first
person from the Suburbs, or anywhere else, to have made the same decision.
Famous kings, errant knights, little girls, chimney sweeps, commercial
travellers had all chosen the same path. To leave their homes where they
were safe and secure. And why not me?

The reasons for doing so seemed overwhelmingly compelling. I was
convinced from talking to Anna and the tourist that there was a larger,
more exciting world beyond. A world that offered so much more than the
Suburbs ever could. I could put new purpose and meaning into my life. And
what better purpose is there than the pursuit of the Truth? Not watching
television programs and saving for a mortgage. Not working five days a
week from nine to five and ending my days on the pension and savings I
would have earned. Not just passing my genes on to another generation and
dying with the clear conscience of never having seen, spoken and heard any
evil. No! A far better destiny to follow is that signposted by Greek
Travellers and Ancient Voyagers, and perhaps to actually attain the
Ultimate Object of Human History.

However, I pondered, I may not be the man for this task. After all, a
Suburban life isn't generally considered the ideal background for an
adventurer. It had scarcely given me the experience of struggle against
adversity and deprivation. Nor had it bequeathed a tradition of adventure.
But the Truth must surely rise above both nature and nurture. And as a
purpose for my life what better could there be? I imagined myself fighting
against giant rats and drunken centaurs, in shining armour, a sword and
shield in hand, and finally discovering the Truth. The Holy Grail. The
Golden Fleece. Both Alpha and Omega.

And then, after a night of restless musing, breakfast once more. The
start of another day in the Suburbs. In front of me was food for the day
ahead and in the background the television. Outside the house, the world
was waking up to the sounds of the Suburbs. And today, I had decided, was
to be my day of departure.

My mind was in total turmoil. Wasn't I just leaving on an
ill-considered and possibly contrived fancy? Who could ever imagine that
the Truth could ever be discovered by someone like myself? What was I
expecting to find? Wouldn't I just be better off staying put in the
Suburbs? What could I achieve? Where was I expecting to go? And where
would I start?

I started where everyone leaving the Suburbs does: at the Railway
Station, one of the grandest buildings in the Suburbs, the point from which
trains leave every day packed with commuters on their way to work. I was
in the general mêlee of commuting, jostled gently from side to side by
people chasing anxiously past to catch the 08.01 or the 08.11 or the late
07.24. What I still hadn't chosen was my destination.

I looked at the computerised destination board broadcasting accurately
and to the second by exactly how much each train was late or going to be
late. At the top of the board were the trains first scheduled to leave -
most to the City - and as each one departed the entire board rumbled as the
destinations below shuffled up to take their new position of prominence in
the list and a new one would appear at the bottom. All around were
commuters apprehensively staring at the board and then either trickling
towards a ticket kiosk or streaming past the ticket inspector with their
annual or monthly train passes held up in arrogant pride. I was in much
less of a hurry and not at all sure which platform to head to.

I looked at a map that showed in the most sketchy form the routes taken
by each train, colour-coded and totally out of scale. The two focal points
of the map were the Suburbs and the City, with the latter and all its
associated stations perhaps occupying a third of the entire space of the
country judging by the map. I wanted to go somewhere totally different.
Somewhere distant from the obvious destination. Somewhere diminutive, with
a name I'd never heard of, that suggested a world a thousand miles or a
thousand years away from Suburban concerns. A tiny little place like
Gotesdene.

I settled on this destination totally by chance, and then queued up at
the counter behind a commuter with a rolled newspaper discussing the
relative merits of a leave-on-Friday-and-return-on-Monday ticket over a
Long Weekend Ticket for the same days at a different cost. When he'd
finally resolved the discussion to his satisfaction, I breathlessly
requested a single to Gotesdene.

"Godsstone?" queried the ticket clerk.

"Gotesdene."

"Coatsten?"

"No, Gotesdene."

I was reduced to spelling out each letter of the name while the clerk
typed them into his console which soon issued a single ticket. He briefly
explained how it worked. It was a two-stage journey on a four-phase fare
matrix system. I would change at Ratford Central to get a steam train
which stopped at Gotesdene on its journey ultimately to Lambdeth
Peccadillo. The four phases of the fare were spelt out in pounds,
shillings, pence and farthings, which amounted to £14 6/8¼d which I paid in
a mixture of gold, silver and bronze. And then I walked towards the train
waiting for me on Platform One.

I sat somewhat nervously on a hard and threadbare seat in a tatty
compartment, watching the last of the commuters run towards it and jump on.
Then with a loud whistle and a wave of the station guard's flag, the train
growled with anticipation and purred out of the station and on towards its
destination. As the train shunted off, I could see passengers through the
misted glass waiting on the platform, station porters pushing parcels and
letters in trolleys and then the last vestige of platform giving way to
rows upon rows of the houses, parks and roads which compose Suburbia.

2

Before I had travelled very far I knew for sure that I had left the
Suburbs. The landscape through the train window became less precisely
ordered. The ragged hedges no longer enclosed well tended lawns and
flower-beds but rather rectangles of one crop or another, occasionally
enlivened by a tree or clump of trees. Goats and other agricultural
animals roamed freely about, sometimes raising their heads to watch the
train going by.

The transition from the Suburbs to the Countryside was not only apparent
outside the train but also inside. The uniform presence of Suburbanites
reading newspapers or staring blankly through the carriage window was
steadily replaced by a broader mix of people, representing a cross-section
of the people who live in the Country. The composition of the passengers
changed as the train stopped, paused and then moved on again from the
station platforms proclaimed by rustic Country names. At one station
several rats in precisely made and appropriately tiny clothes clambered
into a nearby compartment by steps provided for the use of such smaller
railway customers.

At each station, a loudspeaker trailed off a list of destinations and,
just as the train was beginning to leave, recommenced the list from the
beginning for anyone who wanted the first few names repeated. By this
means I was aware that I was approaching the station at which I would have
to change trains for Gotesdene. The train soon reached this stop and
shook, shuddered and clanked as it steadied to a halt. I reluctantly
sacrificed the warmth of my seat and disembarked onto the busy platform.

Barley Junction was quite a different station from the one I had left in
the Suburbs. Goats jostled freely about the platform place, some entering
the train I'd just left and some trotting out of it. One goat with a
station porter's cap and an official uniform was bleating more loudly and
insistently than the others, and I soon became aware that it was he who was
broadcasting the platform announcements. It took a few moments to adapt my
ear to his bleat and rustic dialect, but presently I managed to couple the
name Gotesdene with an appropriate platform number and with this
information I headed over the station bridge, sidestepping the family of
rats I had seen before, and descended to where a Steam Train was waiting.

Being completely unfamiliar with the customs of the area - so different
from the Suburbs - I looked for an indicator board that might confirm to me
that this train, emitting large clouds of black smoke from its funnel, was
the one I wanted, but there was no digital display unit to be found
anywhere. There was only a wooden sign protruding from a post, with a list
of names including that of Gotesdene. So this was it. I searched for an
empty compartment, opened the door and sat on a hard upholstered seat by
the window and watched the bustle of activity outside.

There were the bleats of goats to one other: some advertising tea and
newspapers. Above all this, was the more resonant voice of the station
master listing where the train was due to stop. To lessen the platform
din, and avoid the unpleasant smell of smoking coal, I pulled up the
carriage window which promptly coccooned me from the world outside. I was
alone in the company of two facing rows of upholstery, two opposing mirrors
partly obscured by the rusting metal plate backing them and advertisements
for dental chewing gum, rat-killer, the Green Party and the Times.

I was not alone for long. The carriage door opened and in poked the
head of a young woman about my age. "Is this compartment free?" She asked.

"Why certainly," I said in a slightly panicked voice. This was not
merely because her presence had perturbed my composure, but it also by her
physical appearance. Partly this was due to the strangeness of her long
straight green hair which cascaded down beyond her shoulders and to her
waist. Mostly however this was to do with the fact that she wore no
clothes whatsoever. This was not a sight often seen in the Suburbs. Her
pale but warm and friendly face was illuminated by sparkling bright green
eyes.

"Then you won't mind us joining you," she continued climbing into the
compartment. Her bare feet walked obliviously over the varnished
floorboards and she sat on the seat immediately opposite me. I was
uncomfortably conscious of her bare apple-round breasts and the green bush
of hair between her crossed thighs. She was followed by a boy of about
fifteen also with green hair, but in his case styled into a neat short back
and sides, and wearing an outfit that would not look out of place in the
Suburbs. Indeed only the colour of his hair might ever attract any
comment. His face was also pale, but the eyes failed to illuminate it at
all. He sat next to the girl and I felt sure I could see a family resemblance.

"My name's Beta and this is my brother," continued the girl with an
unselfconscious openness very rare in the Suburbs. "We're off to the City
of Lambdeth. Do you know it?"

"I've heard of it."

"I've never been there myself, but Bacon has. He's going to college there and I'm escorting him."

"Not that I need escorting!" The boy sniffed unenthusiastically. "I'm
just pleased to get away from the Country. It's about time I moved into
the Modern Age. I'm had enough of the ignorance and backwardness of the
Village."

"Oh, Bacon!" Beta responded. "You don't have to be so harsh on the
Village. It's where we've lived all our lives."

"Progress has just passed us by," Bacon continued. "The years go by and
the Village and the Country just remain the same." He looked at me with a
sardonic smile. "You just wouldn't believe how primitive the Village is.
If you went there you'd think you'd been through a time warp."

"It's the way it is because its way of life has been so successful over
the years," defended Beta. "Why change a place where people are quite
happy with things as they are?" She leaned forward towards me, her hair
falling off her shoulders and breasts to drop in curtains of green in front
of her. "What do you think?"

As I had no wish to offend either the attractive naked girl or her
brother I decided to be diplomatic. "I don't know your village, so I
really can't comment."

"It's so beautiful and natural! A sweet little brook babbles alongside
a wood and open fields, and goats and other animals wander freely in the
lanes. Everyone is friendly and helpful - and, excepting my brother,
nobody feels the need to wear clothes..."

"So? How primitive can you get!" snorted Bacon. "If dressing like
savages was so wonderful, how come it's not more universal? People in the
Suburbs wear clothes. And so do people in Lambdeth. Babbling brooks and
goats aren't everything! You didn't mention, Beta, that the roads are
unmetalled; the electricity is unreliable and intermittent; the water still
comes from a well; there are no street-lamps and the only transport we've
got is oxen-, goat- or mule-driven. It's only a paradise if you think
deprivation's a good thing."

"But you don't need all those things if everything else is fine..."

"How can it be? The Village is barely self-sufficient at the moment.
It produces very little surplus product and not many people from elsewhere
are that enthusiastic about buying our organic vegetables and dairy
products. It won't be long until the Village will have to diversify its
production or everyone will starve."

"Who says the Village will starve! Everyone has enough to eat now.
Nobody's unhappy."

"It'll happen! Nowhere can last forever contented on just enough
surplus to afford a single television for the whole Village and hardly any
of the other luxuries that people in, for instance, the Suburbs take for
granted. One bad harvest and the Village will collapse!"

"There have been people saying that for centuries and it's never
happened!" Beta indignantly retorted. "All that's happened is that more
people like you predict it to try and get people to change their ways and
become more progressive. And it is self-fulfilling prophecy when people
like you leave and it becomes more difficult for the Village to get by."

"And what's wrong with me for wanting to do that? If there's a better
world beyond, why not go for it!"

At that moment, the train discharged sounds of scraping, puffing and
snorting, and then accompanied by a chorus of cries, particularly from the
station announcer, the Steam Train slowly puffed out of the platform.
Bacon and Beta dropped their conversation to watch Barley Junction recede
behind and green fields open up ahead.

As the train settled into its rhythm of railway-track breaks and
occasional hoots, I continued the halted conversation: "There are certainly
a lot of goats around here! Far more than you'd ever meet in the Suburbs!"

"That just demonstrates how much more Progressive the Suburbs are!"
agreed Bacon. "You're right. There are far too many goats in the
Countryside. There really should be fewer of them."

"Now you're being unfair to goats!" Complained Beta with a frown.

"They smell. They eat anything and everything. Left to their own
resources they'd just eat the entire Countryside and we'd be left with
nothing but desert"

"But they still have rights just like everyone else. You can't dismiss
them just like that."

"Yes, you can! The issue is quite straightforward. There are too many
goats! What you've got to do is reduce the number. And if it involves
deportation or birth control then so be it."

"Or anything else, I suppose?" Wondered Beta sadly.

"Exactly so!" Bacon said adamantly. "Goats are a menace, and they've
got to be eliminated by one means or another!"

I could see that I hadn't chosen as safe a topic for conversation as I'd
thought, but I listened as the two siblings discussed what Bacon termed the
Goat Problem. Some of his solutions were quite drastic and not too
dissimilar to some I'd occasionally heard in the Suburbs when considering
eliminating vermin. "It's entirely a question of Progress!" Bacon
insisted. "There should never be obstacles set in its way. We're all
better off in the end - Goats too! - if less attention were paid to the
finer feelings of the outmoded and obsolete..."

"For no fault of their own!" Beta interrupted.

"It doesn't matter! If there is any purpose to life at all, it must be
the pursuit of Progress and Truth!"

I was just about to rejoin the conversation to announce my own interest
in the Truth, when the engine released a series of hoots as it noisily came
to a halt at another station. This one was extremely small, consisting of
a platform, a derelict ticket office and a waiting room. A border of
flowers and vegetables brightened the platform and beyond there was nothing
but an uninterrupted series of open fields with a few scattered windmills
in the distance.

"We'll be here for ages!" complained Bacon. "The train always is."

Beta stood up and pulled down the window. Instantly the Country air
rushed in, carrying the smell of hay and the buzz of little insects. "I
don't see why that should be!" she commented as she leaned her shoulders on
the top of the pulled-down window, her head and mass of hair outside and
her bare bottom sticking out in front of my nose. The sun sparkled on her
cheeks and lit up her hair, revealing long thin strands that floated about.

"Last time I was here I had to wait while they were shooing some animals off the tracks. I'm sure they were goats! You wouldn't get such gross
inefficiency in Baldam I'm sure!"

Beta ignored her brother. "It's such a nice place here!" She remarked
cheerfully. "There's a whitewashed wooden church over there. And a little
château. And some donkeys trotting by on their way to the fields." She
leaned out even further, her arms straightened, her buttocks tautened and
her face soaking in the warm morning Sun. "And there's a large mouse
there!"

"A mouse! Are you sure? Not a rat or something like that?" sniffed
Bacon.

"I've known enough rats and mice to know the difference!" Beta retorted.
"And I do believe this mouse is Tudor!"

"Tudor!" snorted her brother, leaning over to peer through the window
himself. "Why should he be catching a train I wonder?"

Beta didn't answer, but instead waved her arms and shouted. "Tudor!
Over here! Tudor!" I looked through the window to see what this mouse
might be like, but I didn't expect to see one standing upright nearly five
foot tall, wearing a smart blue jerkin, red codpiece and stockings with a
ruff round his neck just below the muzzle. He was bareheaded with whiskers
proudly displayed, bright eyes prominent in grey-brown fur and large flat
ears twitching with a life of their own. He waved a gloved paw at Beta and
strode towards us in red boots while his other paw supported a sheathed
sword secured to his waist.

"Beta!" he cried. "'Tis thou! How dost? Art alone?"

"No, I'm with Bacon. We're off to Baldam. Come and share the carriage
with us!" Beta pulled her head in through the window to enable Tudor to
open the compartment door.

"Verily shalt I!" Tudor said resolutely, as he pulled himself in. "'Tis
most happy and meet that I should so encounter ye!" He nodded at Bacon and
me, and removed his belt and sword which he placed on the luggage rack
above my head. He then sat next to me facing Bacon, his long scaly tail
winding around behind him and falling discreetly onto the compartment
floor. He crossed his short legs, his boots reaching nearly up to his knee.

"Good morrow, sire," he addressed me. "Art also bound for Baldam?"

"No," answered Bacon on my behalf. "He's not one of our party at all."

"I come from the Suburbs," I explained.

"The Suburbs!" mused the mouse flicking his tail slightly. "'Tis a
borough to which I have never been. Art many such as I there?"

"No, not at all," I answered honestly. "I've never seen anyone like you
in the Suburbs."

"'Tis pity," he sighed. "Thou know'st me not. I am hight Tudor as Beta
hath told thee and I abide in mine estate many a league distant from here."
He looked up at Beta and Bacon. "'Tis rare I should venture so far afield,
but I have affairs to attend in Rattesthwaite. Dost thou know't?"

"It's further down the line," remarked the boy.

"'Tis so," Tudor acknowledged. The train shunted forward and back
unbalancing the mouse and forcing him to grip my arm with his sharp claws
to avoid falling to the floor. The train hooted and a cloud of sooty dust
floated past the window. It then puffed off. The mouse clung painfully to
my arm as the platform receded. While the train was moving, I observed a
large hoarding featuring two hands held together. Better Together! it
read ambiguously. I bent my head around to watch it go by and caught a
glimpse of green writing at the foot of the poster, featuring a person's
name and a green cross in a box.

"It's not long till the General Election's, is it?" commented Beta
noting the poster.

"General Election?" I wondered. "Is there one due soon?"

"Where have you been?" sneered Bacon. "Of course there is! Perhaps the
most important one this country's ever known!"

"I just didn't know about it," I admitted. It can't have seemed so
important in the apolitical Suburbs. "Which parties are contesting it?"

"Oh! The usual six," commented Beta putting up one hand of outspread
fingers and a thumb. She then withdrew all but her index finger. "There's
the red Party. They're the left wing party."

"Bloody communists!" snorted Bacon. "Luddites! They'll have us all
living like peasants."

Tudor snorted equally disdainfully. "'Sblood! 'Twill be but the rule
of the mobus populis. 'Twould be a disaster unpareil an 'twere they the
government."

Beta raised a second finger. "Then there's the Blue Party. They're the
right wing party. That's the one Bacon supports, I think."

"Dashed right I will!"

"Then there's the Green Party. They're the ones I quite like. They're
the party of the Countryside, tradition and environment." Beta now had
three fingers standing, and then before her brother could comment on her
choice, she hurried on by raising a fourth finger. "Then the Black Party.
I think Bacon's got some sympathy for them, but even he doesn't like the
militaristic aspect of the party or their dislike for foreigners." She
raised her thumb. "The Illicit Party, which is quite a new one, and I'm
not sure what they're about. And finally," she raised the thumb of her
other hand, "there's the White Party and I don't know what they represent
at all either."

"I don't think even they do!" scoffed Bacon. He smiled at me. "Perhaps
you do. I read somewhere that they always do well in the Suburbs."

"Yes they do," I agreed, but I couldn't answer what they represented.
They always appeared to win local elections by fighting for such local
issues as clearer markings on public highways, more books in the public
library and more flower shows. Their candidates always seemed frightfully
nice and when they spoke it was hard to identify any policy they advocated
that one could actively oppose. "But what's so very important about this
General Election?"

"I thought this kind of gross ignorance was confined to the Country,"
said Bacon disparagingly. "It's to break up the Coition Government that's
been running this country - badly! - for as long as anyone can remember.
They've changed the constitution such that whichever party wins will become
the sole government and not have to work with all the other parties."

"How are they doing that?" I wondered.

"It's terribly complicated," Beta continued. "Something to do with how
the votes will be transferred. But as a result they hope that it will
resolve the mess the government's got into - you know, with never being
able to make a decision without it being vetoed by some minority interest
in the Coition."

"What sort of mess is the government in?"

"Perhaps it just doesn't affect people in the Suburbs," Bacon commented.
"But everywhere else things have just drifted aimlessly for years. There's
virtually no central government at all. Everything is decided at a local
level and in the meantime there's a ridiculous budget deficit, foreign
policy is totally ineffectual, the taxation system is creaking at the seams
and not one part of the country fits well with any other part. In one part
of the country the roads are metalled and well-signposted, but as soon as
your car enters another borough, the dual carriageway abruptly becomes a
pot-holed dirt-track. In some districts the cars even drive on different
sides of the road. The gauge on the railways are all different, so that
you can't travel any distance by train without having to change. And the
cost of things just varies ridiculously from one place to another."

"I'sooth!" agreed Tudor. "'Tis great need for more consistency in the
nation. 'Tis all chaos and confusion."

"Who do you think will form the next government?" I asked.

"Nobody knows!" exclaimed Beta. "Past results are just no guide
apparently. I'd like it to be the Green Party, but there's probably not
enough support for them in the City or the Suburbs."

"I pledge my support for the Blue Party," Tudor said, twitching his
whiskers agitatedly. "But in truth there is but little in them that I
love. I have sympathies for the Black Party, but they too are unlikely to
triumph. 'Twill not be an ideal result for me, I fear."

"I've also got sympathies with the Blacks," Bacon confessed, "but I fear
they aren't sufficiently committed to Progress or the Modern World.
However, they are more honest than the Blue Party and if they were in power
they'd definitely get things moving! I too would like to see a final
solution to the cat problem, end all these damaging industrial disputes and
make the nation strong again. Nevertheless, informed opinion says that it
will be a fight between the Red, Blue and White Parties and I know which of
those I prefer!"

The train came to another halt at a platform equally as remote as the
one before. In the commotion of arrival, conversation came to a halt and
Beta once again took the opportunity to pull down the window and stick her
head and shoulders out through it. I also peered out and saw a cat about
the same size as Tudor sitting on his rear on a platform bench beside
another poster for the Green Party. Like Tudor, he was fully clothed with
only his head and front paws showing. He was reading a newspaper and wore
looser clothes than Tudor, but nonetheless quite colourful ones. They were
a blend of black, gold, green and blue, with trousers that reached to his
knees below which he wore white stockings and buckled shoes. His jerkin
was decorated by a flamboyant lace frill around the neck, and like Tudor he
carried a sword attached to a belt round his waist. Beside him and lying
on the bench was a large broad-brimmed hat with a magnificent feather
sprouting from it. He didn't appear at all interested in our train and
must presumably have been waiting for another one.

"That's another sight you don't often see in the Suburbs," I commented
absently. "Cats like that are just not common at all."

"If only 'twere the same everywhere!" Sighed Tudor. "Wouldst 'twere
fewer Cats altogether. Sooth, I am content he hath no wish to embark."

The train didn't stop for very long, and soon chuffed off leaving the
feline beneath the station clock. "I detest Cats!" Hissed Tudor.
"Throughout history they have been a great enemy to mine people. It
matters not which continent nor island Mice have settled, Cats have ever
pursued us mercilessly and caused great grief. I trow 'tis but for jest
they do molest us. They kill us for their sport as we might kill flies.
And still now they pursue us: disinheriting and enslaving us." He looked at
me, his whiskers twitching agitatedly and his tail flicking up and down
with a ponderous rhythm. "Ere now, in the historic land of Mice, we art
under the occupation of the illegitimate Kingdom of Cats. A Kingdom
recognised by many nations but intent only on the supremacy of the Feline
scourge. In mine historic home there be Cats where once Mice stood tall.
'Tis said 'tis but fair recompense for many centuries of Feline
persecution, but 'tis verily unjust that now 'tis Mice who art scattered
like pollen on the wind throughout the world. 'Tis now my kind who art the
servile class in many a land, bereft of an ancestral home or spiritual
centre."

"Have you personally been dispossessed?" I wondered.

"Ay, spiritually!" Sighed Tudor. "In my heart and soul I too have been
dispossessed, but - thanks be to the Lord! - not in mine means. Mice have
been in this land for many centuries. Mice who have struggled hard against
injustice and prejudice. And to them I owest my wealth and repute." He
rested a paw on his sword which I was afraid he might choose to unsheathe.
"'Tis the Cats I hate. 'Tis they who have raped Mice of their land and
forced subservience to their pagan ways. 'Twere best that Cats wert dealt
with as they deserve. E'en here - far from the timeless struggle 'twixt
Mouse and cat - there be cause to hate Cats who bring misery and grief by
their ruthless exploitation of the wealth and riches of this land. 'Tis
they more than any other who have brought things in this land to such a
sorry state - and any support I hath for the Black Party ist in recognition
of their fine words in this crusade."

It wasn't long until the train came to another stop where the name of
Rattesthwaite was clearly visible on the station platform. Tudor preened
his whiskers with the claws of an ungloved paw. When the train finally
ceased to shudder, he eased himself off the seat allowing his long tail to
unravel behind him and fastened his belt and sword to his waist. Then he
bade us all farewell as he got off the train.

"It probably wasn't such a good idea to mention Cats with Tudor here!"
Smiled Beta as the Mouse hastened towards the ticket barrier brandishing a
cardboard ticket where a goat was collecting them. "It's a subject that's
bound to get him steamed up!"

"But essentially Tudor's right!" Butted in Bacon. "Cats have caused
considerable misery to Mice. It's a historic and unending conflict. And
the Black Party is also right. The world would be a better place without
Cats!"

"I just don't think that's true at all," Beta argued. "How can anyone
believe that Cats as individuals deserve to be treated any differently from
anyone else?"

"But they are different and they'd be the first to say so! They are an
alien species who work only for their own individual benefit or the benefit
of their kind in collusion with international capitalism to appropriate the
wealth of the land and claim it as their own. I mean, have you ever come
across a poor Cat?"

"Well, no! But it doesn't follow that all Cats are bad and I'm sure
there are plenty that aren't particularly well-off."

"Essentially Cats despise everyone else. They ingratiate themselves on
people with their purring and apparent affectionateness, but all they're
concerned about is their own interests. And what they do is siphon the
wealth of nations from where the Feline Diaspora has taken them and send it
back to the cat Kingdom."

"Even if that were true," argued Beta passionately, "it doesn't mean
that Cats have to be locked in concentration camps, robbed of their wealth
or methodically slaughtered as the Black Party propose."

"That's only the view of a minority in the Black Party," disagreed
Bacon. "The main source of misgiving is the cat Kingdom itself. Ever since
it was formed by the international community in the so-called historic
homeland of the Cats - which so inconveniently overlaps the ancestral
homeland of both Mice and Dogs - it's been nothing but a blight on this
planet. Always having wars, always taking territory from other species in
its own interest and creaming off the wealth of countries such as ours."

"What's true of the cat Kingdom needn't be true for Cats as
individuals!" Beta contested.

Bacon ignored her. "It's essentially to do with the Feline notion of
Divine Right. Cats believe that they have a Divine Right to occupy their
territories just as their King seems to believe he has to rule that
territory. There's no democracy for the Cats - not like in our country,
however inefficient. What the King commands is what the Cats obey.
Whatever nonsense he comes out with." Bacon leaned forward towards me.
"You wouldn't believe the stupid decrees the King of the Cats issues on
occasion. In a Kingdom where the population is absurdly out of control,
there is no contraception or abortion. In a Kingdom where meat is in short
supply for a species which is necessarily carnivorous there are ridiculous
rules about what can and cannot be eaten. Rats, for instance, are
classified as unclean and therefore not to be eaten in a Kingdom totally
infested by them. All sorts of things are forbidden to the Cat. They have
to stay at home one day a week and are forbidden to do anything but sleep.
How can the Cats deserve to be part of the Modern World if they follow such
idiotic decrees?"

"I agree that some of the ways in the Kingdom of Cats are a bit odd,"
Beta retorted. "I've heard of how female Cats have to wear dresses which
cover all their legs and ankles and have to attend different schools to Tom
Cats. But what's true of Cats in their Kingdom isn't true of Cats
everywhere."

"Yes it is, Beta. It's what distinguishes Cats from other species.
It's their religious and cultural views which say that they are different
from everyone else. You might respect the Cats' rights and freedoms, but I
don't think they'd respect yours or anyone else's. If they are so
wonderful, why is it that they're constantly at war with their neighbours."

"You mean the various Canine Republics? I don't really know a lot about
them, but they don't appear to be blameless themselves!"

"They may not be blameless, but the Canine Republics have every reason
to be aggrieved about the cat Kingdom and the appalling way in which Dogs
are treated there. Cats show no respect for the puritanical and literary
traditions of Dogs in the land they've acquired. They even deny Dogs the
right to read books written in anything but the Feline language. They
don't even allow dogs to bark in their own tongue. And do you think the
Dogs relish the way that soldiers from the Kingdom intrude into their
sovereign territories for what they call security reasons."

"Whatever you say about the cat Kingdom," Beta asserted, "does not
change my view at all that Cats are individuals who shouldn't be
discriminated against on the basis of some characteristic that their
species might have."

Bacon was just about to counter Beta's view, but decided instead to
change the subject. "Anyway, I'm sure our travelling companion must be
getting tired of all this talk about Cats."

"No, not at all!" I said politely.

"So, why are you going to Gotesdene? It's quite an odd place for
someone from the Suburbs to be going to, isn't it?" Beta asked, leaning
forward towards me so that her curtains of green hair cascaded onto her
bare legs. "Do you know anyone there?"

"No, I don't!" I admitted. "In fact I don't know anything about it at
all. I'm actually going there to search for the Truth."

Bacon laughed out loud. "The Truth! You expect to find the Truth in a
primitive backwater like Gotesdene?"

"Well, I have to start somewhere," I feebly defended myself. "I was
convinced that I wouldn't find the Truth in the Suburbs so I thought I
might find it in a place so absolutely different."

"Quite so!" agreed Beta. "And why not Gotesdene, indeed." She tossed a
lock of hair back off her face revealing her bare bosom. "A search for the
Truth is an excellent idea! Think what a better place the world would be
if only we had possession of the Truth. There'd be no wars. Everyone
would be at peace because no one would be able to claim to be right and
someone else wrong, when everyone knew who was right or not. With the
Truth everyone everywhere would be rich - or as rich as they could be.
Everyone would know all that they would need to know to be as wealthy as
they desired. And with the Truth, there would be no more disease, no more
pollution, no more injustice and everyone would be happy! It wouldn't be
possible to argue like my brother and I do about issues like Cats because
everyone would know the answer. And so would the Cats themselves. And
there wouldn't be a need to have General Elections because government
wouldn't be determined by the whims of the people but rather according to
the dictates of the Truth!"

"I don't see how the Truth would necessarily achieve all that!" sniffed
Bacon. "And even if we had the Truth, would everyone necessarily agree on
how to use it? And would it really be used for the best?"

"I'm sure it would!" Beta continued enthusing. "With the Truth, there'd
be no cause for argument because everyone would agree about everything and
I'm sure everyone would work towards the best for everyone else. Why
should anyone ever do differently?"

"I'm just not so sure," Bacon countered. "I don't believe people's
nature necessarily works like that. Knowledge of the Truth could easily be
used for quite different purposes to those you imagine. It could well be
that peace and prosperity are not determined by knowledge of the Truth
anyway. Why should the Truth have to be concerned with the greater good of
anyone?"

"It wouldn't be the Truth if it wasn't!" Beta replied idealistically.

"That's making an assumption about the Truth that simply cannot be made
before knowing what it is. And anyhow, I don't believe the Truth is a
thing that you just find like a crock of gold or a holy grail. It must be
an abstract entity beyond material dimensions, and you can't just expect to
find it lying around. Do you expect to find it hidden underneath someone's
bed? Or stored in a casket? Or buried in the ground? That makes nonsense
of the whole concept of the Truth. No. The Truth is what will be found
eventually as a result of scientific research - which is what I shall be
pursuing in Lambdeth - and I am more likely to discover it in a test-tube
than you will hanging around in archaic villages like Gotesdene. I don't
believe it will be found in my lifetime; and probably not for many
generations yet. But eventually it will be found as a result of empirical
and scientific research coupled with the genius of individual scientists."

"You think that Science and Progress provide all the answers," Beta
riposted. "I just can't believe that something like the Truth could
possibly be found by something as dry and abstract as a mathematical
equation or the formal proof of a theorem. If I could, I would join our
companion here and search for the Truth with him. I don't know where it is
any more than he does, but I doubt that the pursuit of Science and Progress
is at all the same thing as the search for the Truth."

I was about to thank Beta for her support in my quest, when the train
made another of its periodic hoots and drew noisily into another station. I
took my eyes off Beta and focused on the platform where the platform name
of GOTESDENE was displayed. "This is it!" I announced.

"So this is where we part," smiled Beta. "What a funny little place!"
She was right. The station at Gotesdene was nothing more than a raised
wooden platform and a platform name painted quite crudely on an old wooden
board. On the platform were several goats and rats, and around the station
were open fields dotted by the occasional copse and windmill.

I proffered my farewells to Beta and Bacon, and clambered down onto the
platform. I waved to Beta as the train shunted off as she leaned out the
window, waving at me, her long hair lifted up by the rush of wind. The
train puffed away into the distance, the funnel trailing black and white
clouds as it departed.

I suddenly felt alone. I was at a place I'd never heard of before,
quite clearly dissimilar in almost every way from the Suburbs. Instead of
neat and tidy borders and hedges, pavements and roads, lampposts and
television aerials, I was confronted by a neighbourhood of nothing but
fields stretching away in all directions, bisected by the railway line from
one horizon to another. Perpendicular to that and proceeding only towards
one horizon was a long and winding brick road, barely wide enough for a
small car to drive along. The platform was populated mostly by goats who
were simply sitting about and not waiting for anything. Most of them had
barely stirred when the train had arrived and paid no attention to its
departure. A few watched me lethargically while chewing at hay or
thistles, their tails occasionally flicking aside the insects around.

I jumped off the platform - there were no steps provided - and strolled
to the brick road that didn't quite reach the station and terminated in a
patch of dusty worn ground. Just by the road was a signpost which pointed
along the length of the brick road to only one destination. As this read
Gotes Dene, I decided to follow this dusty brick road to start my quest for
the ultimate enigma.

3

Gotesdene and its surrounding environs were very different to the
Suburbs I decided as I walked along the long and winding road. There was
none of the obsessive order and neatness that characterises the Suburbs.
Rather, the fields on either side were a quilted hodgepodge of different
crops with goats, oxen and other animals working on the land: pulling
ploughs, walking around in circles to grind grain in primitive mills,
gathering crops in their teeth and throwing the produce into the back of
carts. On several occasions, I had to step off the brick road into dried
mud to allow an oxen- pulled wagon to ponderously lumber by. The midday
sun was beating down on me but there was no shelter to be seen: there were
few trees in sight and most of these were far off the road with many
branches torn off, and their trunks ravished by the gnawing goats.
Swallows occasionally dove down past me chasing after the insects buzzing
around the corpses of animals by the roadside.

After two or three miles of walking through this rural scenery with my
feet getting increasingly sore, I at last arrived at a village. There was
no doubt that this was the village of Gotesdene, as just outside the fence
barricading it was a painted board supported by two wooden posts which
welcomed me to the village and requested me to drive carefully. Large
ornate metal gates broke the monotony of the fencing, featuring the crest
of a rampant goat and ox, and supported by two pillars crowned by identical
statues of rampant elephants bearing arms.

Initially I thought there might be some kind of toll required to enter
the village as in front of the gates was a family of goats kneeling down by
a wooden platter. They bleated at me piteously in a dialect I couldn't
understand at all, but I soon inferred that they were begging for alms: a
practice that had long been discontinued in the Suburbs. I pulled out a
groat from my trouser pocket which I threw into the platter, believing this
to be the absolute minimum that I could decently give. I wasn't at all
prepared for the effusiveness with which the goat incomprehensibly
expressed his gratitude. Although I could distinguish the occasional
English word, I speculated that he was speaking a totally different
language altogether.

I pushed open the gate, which creaked noisily as it resisted me, and
ventured in. The village comprised a wide space of open land around which
there were numerous wood and mud hovels, and was traversed by a dirt track
from which the slightest breeze blew up clouds of dust. Goats, oxen and
others wandered listlessly amongst the scattered waste and detritus. In
the centre of the patch of common land there were a stocks, a gallows and a
tall gaily coloured pole from which dangled multicoloured strands. There
were also some tall oak trees and a tall stone cross.

A collection of market stalls was gathered at one end of the common. As
I hadn't eaten since breakfast, I decided to look for a stall selling
convenience food, such as a hamburger or a pizza. As I approached, I saw
that there was little likelihood of buying a microwaved pizza, a deep-fried
chicken or even chips. The stalls mostly sold such things as agricultural
implements, live chickens and vegetables. Many of these products flowed
off the stalls and onto the ground, where decaying wicker baskets protected
them from the dust and dirt. One stall was conducting a profitable trade
in hay, around which gathered a crowd of acquisitive ungulates.

I understood very little of the stall-holders' cries, but I assumed that
they were referring to their produce and how much a pound of this or an
ounce of that would cost. I soon observed that the cost of living here was
substantially lower than that in the Suburbs. Very little cost less than a
florin or half crown in the Suburbs, whilst most goods in the Gotesdene
market were selling for under a penny. This explained the gratitude the
beggar at the gate had shown for a groat. I thought I might have a problem
finding a stall furnished with sufficient change for the smallest
denomination coin I had on me.

I bought a pound of apples for a farthing from a vegetable stall and had
to resort to gestures to express what I wanted. I carried the apples loose
in my pockets - as like other buyers I was clearly expected to have brought
my own basket to the market - together with innumerable ha'pennies and
farthings of change. While biting into a small acidic apple, I found
myself being addressed by a voice which despite a rustic accent I was at
last able to understand.

"You don't speak Anglo-Saxon, I presume?" asked a relatively small white
elephant standing upright, in very colourful silk clothes swathed by a long
red cloak secured by a large brooch beneath the chin.

"No, I don't," I admitted through a mouthful of apple. "Is that what's
spoken here?" I was surprised to find an elephant addressing me: especially
by a white one, who I had heard was very rare. I had never spoken to an
elephant, white or otherwise, before. He flapped his large ears using his
trunk to pull his cloak together at the front. He had two quite short
tusks, which nevertheless looked too dangerous to approach too closely.

"Ay, that is what they speak hereabouts," the White Elephant said.
"Gotesdene is a very old-fashioned place. You as an outsider must find it
extraordinarily undeveloped."

"It's very different from the Suburbs."

"Very antiquated," the White Elephant continued. "But it is the village
for which I have the honour to serve as mayor. And as so, I feel it to be
my duty to take this underdeveloped little community however reluctantly
into the modern age. You sophisticated Suburbanites probably can't imagine
that villages like ours still exist: no running water, no electricity and
mains gas, no metalled roads, no supermarket or video rental store. But I
shall ensure that Gotesdene will very soon be as modern a village as any
other in the realm. The centuries have passed Gotesdene by for far too
long. I pledge that every home shall have fibreglass cabling, hot and cold
running water and a roof. The roads shall have sensory speed detectors,
traffic lights and tar macadam. Gotesdene shall be abreast of the world,
with television, videophones and computer networking. You probably find it
amazing to discover a place so lacking in the basics of modern life."

"I didn't expect to find life in Gotesdene so very different," I
admitted.

The White Elephant swung his trunk around dramatically, while prudent
villagers kept their distance from its range. "Gotesdene has probably not
changed in 1500 years. It is a fossil yet to make the transition into the
modern era. Almost everyone in the village and the surrounding countryside
live off the land, and as they are unable to afford to pay taxes to Her
Maphrodite's government, they provide work in kind to me, the Lord of this
Manor. This work provides the surplus wealth - agricultural wealth I admit
- which I sell to pay taxes. It's an arrangement by which we all work
together. But I am resolved that Gotesdene shall diversify. Move into
microchip manufacture, network services, aerospace and more.

"But great effort is needed to persuade the City to assist. I know that
City financiers and banks are reluctant to invest their capital where there
is so little infrastructure, where so few people have the necessary
technological and management skills and expertise, and where communications
are limited to the speed of an ox- drawn carriage. But this is just City
prejudice. Understandable, perhaps, given the vast contrast of culture,
but I am convinced that the low-wage opportunities here will eventually
persuade the City institutions otherwise.

"I have my own wealth, inherited from centuries of White Elephants here
in Gotesdene, and mostly invested in property throughout the realm. I
admit it is at least partly my ancestors' fault that Gotesdene has remained
so primitive, by repeatedly opposing any modern developments in or around
the village, but the base stupidity of the peasant is to blame as well." He
snorted dismissively, which through a trunk as long as his came out almost
as a trumpet call. "Look at them!" he said, waving his trunk about at the
villagers, many wearing very ragged clothes secured precariously by cord.
"You'd never see such a mean crowd of scum in the Suburbs, would you?"

I shook my head. It is unlikely that a single one of the villagers
could stay for very long in the Suburbs before being arrested on charges of
vagrancy.

"White Elephants such as I have held the estates here from time
immemorial," he continued. "In that time, we have become increasingly
sophisticated. Connoisseurs of art, captains of industry, members of
parliament. It is people such as I who have selflessly guided and directed
the culture in the nation for the good of the peasant, whose rôle is to
support our exalted projects. The long and grand tradition of my family has given communities like this the continuity and stability that it needs.
It is only now that it is necessary to force the pace. Make of Gotesdene
what it has to be."

"What plans do you have?"

"I have such plans. Such great plans! I will build factories, power
stations, mines and motorways. The primitive waste of this land, dedicated
only to inefficient and outmoded methods of agriculture, will be
transformed into a landscape of concrete and steel. Tower blocks will
replace the mud-huts. Airport runways will crisscross the open fields. A
giant shopping mall will be built where this market now stands. I have a
vision of industrial estates, tower blocks, factories, flyovers and
television aerials! All I need is the investment from the City."

"Do you work in business yourself?"

"I own many companies in the City and abroad. I own a hotel, a chain of
restaurants, several factories and shares in shipping, insurance and
defence. But while Her Maphrodite's government dithers and flounders, I
will never get the planning permission I need to modernise Gotesdene.
Perhaps after the General Election there will be more decisiveness and
direction. And then Gotesdene will no longer be dismissed as a primitive
Anglo-Saxon theme park, but will be recognised as a modern, thriving
community!"

The White Elephant shook his large ears and I followed him as he strode
away from the market through the dusty streets, past obsequious peasants to
the stone cross in the common land. We sheltered under the shade of the
massive overwhelming oak trees whose bark was protected from vandalism by
vicious spikes forced into the trunk. The cross was exquisitely ornate
depicting an elephant heroically brandishing a sword in his trunk.

"So, young man, what finds you in our village so far from the Suburbs?"
the White Elephant asked. I told him of my quest for the Truth.

"I believe I should be flattered by the notion that the Truth abides in
Gotesdene," laughed the White Elephant. "I know that many have admired the
village, but you are the first I have heard of to come this way on such a
quest. But mayhap in a community such as this, unpolluted by the vices and
vagaries of modern irreligious heresy, the Truth you are looking for may
indeed be found."

"The Truth is here! What is it?" I asked enthusiastically.

"The Truth is balance and order. It is respect for the Lord and the
world that He has graciously created for us. And that essential Truth is
manifest in the elements of Earth, Fire, Air and Water. It is these to
which the universe is essentially reducible." The White Elephant waved his
trunk around at the village. "Everything here is composed of these Four
Elements, myself included. They govern the World physically and
spiritually, proportioned by the mystical qualities of numbers. Numbers
are the Universe's abstract foundations. The smaller the Number, the more
potent. The number One is the Universe and all in it. Two is the manifest
division between the Spiritual and the Material. Three is the Trinity of
the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Three is also the number of times
which something need be said to be known as the Truth. And Four is the
number of the Elements.

"From the Four Elements are derived the Four Humours which govern the
Soul of each individual. Just as a person is the physical union of matter,
energy, water and oxygen so his Soul is governed by different proportions
of the Spiritual Qualities of these Elements. There are, in addition, the
Five Senses, the thrice Six which is the Number of the Beast, the Seven
Sins, the Twelve Houses of the Heavens and the Twenty-Four Hours of the
Day. All in its natural and God-given place in the Universe.

"The Truth is but the balance and order in which God has invested the
Universe, and it is the Duty of all to ensure that this balance is
undisturbed by proboscidean, artiodactyl nor human endeavour. Nothing
hastens more the Chaos and Destruction of the End than the rejection and
perversion of the Natural Order by which the Truth is made manifest."

"How is the Truth perverted?" I wondered.

"In many ways. By the practice of perversions which transgress the
Natural Order such as Sodomy, Heresy and Witchcraft. These must be
suppressed with extreme prejudice, or, as surely as Three is the Number of
the Lord, the Natural Order will unravel, power will be wrested by foreign
despots, laws will be disregarded, monsters will yet again roam the Earth
and the Heavens will open!

"The good people of Gotesdene strive hard to keep Satan at bay,"
continued the White Elephant indicating the stocks and the gallows with a
wave of his trunk. "Here is where transgressors are purged of their sins.
And if the Soul is to be purged from the Body to achieve its Salvation,
then that is a sacrifice worth making. Gotesdene has a long and proud
tradition of suppressing Witchcraft, and I speak proudly when I say that no
Witch who is accused is ever found other than guilty and punished
accordingly. Does this not compare well with the pusillanimity of Justice
elsewhere which so frequently permits Witches to wander free spreading
their vice, perversion, magic and heterodoxy?"

"How are Witches punished?" I wondered, looking nervously at the
scaffold.

"Not all Witches are hanged," the White Elephant sighed. "For many it
is felt that there is opportunity for redemption, and if it be that their
confessions of guilt are sufficiently sincere and detailed they may suffer
only a whipping or the stocks. This is especially so if they are young and
pretty, because if the exterior is fair then the interior cannot all be
rotten. But occasionally a Witch will join the Homosexual, the Murderer or
the Heretic on the platform with the noose around the neck. These
occasions are a public event, where all can learn from seeing the
ignominious end others come to and will reflect on their own
transgressions. This is not, I believe, how Justice is conducted in the
Suburbs?"

"No," I admitted. "It's a much more complicated procedure - and many of
the things you mention are not illegal at all!"

"When the Day of Judgement comes," the White Elephant bellowed, "it will
surely visit the most ills on those who treat the Natural Order with not so
much contempt as indifference. Much as I admire the progress and order of
the Suburbs, there are many features I find alarming. These are so much in
conflict with the Truth that I marvel not that you should feel the need to
leave the Suburbs to seek the Truth elsewhere. All are treated equally in
the Suburbs: Women as equals with Men, the Poor as with the Rich, the
Believer as with the Unbeliever. How can this be right? When God created
the Natural Order, He didn't do so only that places such as the Suburbs and
the City should disregard it and substitute a New Order of their own
invention. When Progress and Modernity are established in Gotesdene, it
will not be to subvert the Natural Order, but to reinforce it. To ensure
that it is followed by all."

"However," continued the White Elephant reflectively, "the Suburbs have
but little sin and vice when compared to the City, where I have been many
times and have been many times appalled. From the virtue and decency of
the village of Gotesdene, through the indifference to vice and the Truth in
the Suburbs, to the depravity and decadence of the City is painted a
triptych of the ethics of Heaven, Limbo and Hell. In the City, there is no
limit to what is permitted and practised. There are no moral constraints.
No regard for the Natural Order. Indeed, the practice of vice at its most
vicious, sin at its most sinful and decadence at its most despicable. Have
you ever been to the City?"

"No, not once," I admitted.

"Perhaps, then, there is hope for you yet," snorted the White Elephant.
"In the City, there is no likelihood that you will ever find the Truth for
which you quest. Indeed, there is complete absence of the Truth. The City
is a Hell of fast-moving traffic on many-laned motorways; buildings which
scrape the very roof of the sky; frantic and hectic activity; ceaseless
noise and light; a wind that pursues the innocent pedestrian as he walks
between the towering buildings. In all directions the City spreads out,
enclosing pockets of green, whereas Gotesdene is a village enclosed by
countless green acres. There is nothing but concrete and steel; petrol
fumes and neon lights; people coming and people going. Not, as in
Gotesdene, merely being: they restlessly move from one place to another.
And so many of them!"

"The City is very big, is it?"

"It is tall. It is wide. It houses many millions. It is the economic,
financial, political, social and cultural capital of this land, and also
the nation's whorehouse, bordello and opium den. It is also very
expensive. In Gotesdene, the possessor of a guinea is a rich man. He has
enough to live for a long time on one single guinea, which composes two
hundred and fifty-two pennies! A fortune! That is over a thousand
farthings! In the City, a guinea is but what a farthing is here. Perhaps
less! But despite the expense and the hideous environment and the
loathsome depravity, despite all this, many millions choose to live in and
amongst its garbage and degeneracy."

"You don't recommend that I ever visit the City?"

"No. Not if you value your Soul!" the White Elephant said emphatically.
"I have visited the City many times, but I pride myself that I stay immune
from infection by its vices. I may admire the technical and material
progress and modernity of the City, and I may make my material fortune by
investment in City institutions, but I have no wish to further my
familiarity with it. I am always content when I leave the City and can
purge myself not only of the physical muck and grime of its noxious
environment, but can retreat to my private chapel and purge my Soul of the
temptations of the flesh and intellect to which I have been exposed.

"In the City, there is all the depravity and decline which will surely
hasten the Day of Judgment. As the City grows in its influence and its
geographical spread, it is like a cancer infesting the moral, economic,
political and environmental body of this land. The City congests its
inhabitants into smaller and less congenial spaces, spreads pollution into
the air, the street, the water supply and the ether, exhausting the
atmosphere, the soil, the reservoir and the power station. Worse than its
physical despoliation and exploitation, is its spiritual barrenness and
pollution. It spreads prostitution, pornography, atheism, sexual
perversity and a cult of instant gratification. And this is what is most
despicable in the City and what it represents. Gotesdene will not be so
corrupted as it pursues the path of Progress that I have planned for it.
It will forever remain a bastion of virtue, faith and, yea, the Truth!"

The White Elephant paused in his tirade and looked about him at the
village. His great claims for it did not seem particularly well
illustrated by the general atmosphere of poverty and decay. A peasant was
urinating against a tree. Several goats were plaintively bleating for alms
around a pottery saucer. One goat had both rear legs missing and one eye.
The ground was dusty and barren, dotted occasionally by piles of ox dung
and attendant flies. The White Elephant appeared not to see any of this
disorder, which would arouse automatic disgust in the Suburbs, but was
instead satisfied that the greater virtues of the village were immediately
evident.

"I have much business to which I must attend," he announced proudly. "I
shall leave you now. But I hope that as you stay here you will reflect on
all that I have said and focus anew your quest for the Truth." With that he
bade me farewell, and walked away from the village green, his cloak raising
a cloud of dust behind him, responding with a gracious wave of his trunk to
the obsequies of the villagers who stood aside for him.

A passing goat was selling meat pies which looked quite unappetising,
but my hunger resolved that I off-load some of the farthings I had
accumulated for a pie that was fortunately cool enough for me to eat with
my fingers. I sat down at the base of the stone cross with my feet resting
in dried mud and decomposing faeces. I passively observed the bustle of
the village, still slightly nauseated by the dirt and decay.

While chewing on a particularly unforgiving piece of unidentifiable
meat, I noticed some men and women wearing unsophisticated flaxen clothes
roughly push a woman towards the common. They headed towards the stocks,
shouting and jeering at the woman as they proceeded. She was punched and
kicked and some of her clothes had been ripped off. She seemed resigned to
her misfortune and didn't struggle, but from the evidence of the bruises on
her face and her bare arms and shoulders, she'd probably lost all the
resistance she'd ever had. The stocks were opened, her head, hands and
legs were pushed through, and then they were clamped shut. She sat in a
very undignified position, with only the dusty ground on which to rest her
bottom which condemned her to exceptional discomfort. The men forcing her
in didn't ameliorate this at all, and indeed made it worse by kicking her
when they'd secured the stocks with a peg through the hole by the side.

Her punishment wasn't over then, as the group of men and women continued
jeering at her, and began throwing earth and moist cow-pats at her. One or
two children even threw stones - one catching her on the cheek and
immediately opened a bloody gash. An ox passing by did a very good trade
in the fruit he was selling, which judging from the messy way it splattered
as it hit her must have been less than fresh and firm. I had never seen
justice dispensed like this in the Suburbs, where punishment was generally
either monetary or concealed in penal institutions. I felt uneasy about
the unbridled enthusiasm with which this rough justice was dealt.

"Poor girl!" Commented a voice next to me. "Even if she is a witch, I'm
certain she doesn't deserve what she's getting."

I turned my head away from the action to look straight into the eyes of
a horse. At least, I initially thought it was a horse, judging from his
muzzle, but he had a graceful white body with delicate cloven feet, a long
sinuous tail and a single golden horn rising from his forehead. After
encountering so many singular individuals today, encountering a Unicorn
didn't appear so strange. But I'd always believed that Unicorns no longer
existed.

This Unicorn was by no means extinct. He shook his golden mane and
whinnied slightly. "It may be she is a witch. But if she is, there's not
a great deal to show of her sorcery. I'd always thought she was more a
veterinary surgeon, from the evidence of her care for pets and farm workers, but the good people of Gotesdene have clearly judged her guilty.
Not that I'm at all sure what's wrong with witchcraft, despite the fact
that in my several millennia I've not seen much to convince me that it ever
actually works. Still, she's lucky in a way! If you'd been here a few
days ago, you'd have seen the still decaying corpse of another convicted
witch hanging from the gallows."

"How dreadful!" I exclaimed. "What happened to her?"

"Well, eventually the maggots, or whatever it is that eats decaying
bodies, had loosened her neck sufficiently so that it snapped. Then her
head fell off where it cracked open and rolled towards the oak trees. Her
body just dropped down in a heap where the dogs straightaway pounced on her
rancid flesh. It wasn't a pleasant sight!"

"I'm sure it wasn't," I agreed, still in awe of the Unicorn whose long
tail gracefully looped round and with great accuracy snapped like a
whipcord at the many flies showing interest in his rump. "Why don't people
in Gotesdene like witches?"

"To say I don't know would be a lie. I've lived too long and in too
many communities not to understand how people everywhere feel the need to
find victims in their midst. Communists, Homosexuals, Jews, Cats,
Pakistanis, Goats, Cockatrices, - they've all been victimised at one time
or another. I suppose I should consider myself rather lucky that unicorns
have never really been disliked by anyone. People in Gotesdene are very
set in their ways, and anyone whose behaviour or attitude seems a bit odd
or unusual means that they will almost certainly be accused of Sodomy or
Witchcraft. And sometimes both at the same time. Which I suppose is just
about feasible.

"But I make a point of coming to Gotesdene every now and then. I'm very
popular with the villagers. There just doesn't seem to be anything that I
can't do as far as they're concerned. They probably think I can vault tall
buildings or stop speeding express trains. They certainly believe I can do
wonders for impotence and gonorrhoea. Absolute nonsense, of course, but
I'm certainly made to feel very welcome. But it's probably not so unusual
to find someone like me in a place like Gotesdene. What is bizarre is that
someone like you should be. Are you from the City?"

"No. The Suburbs," I admitted. "Indeed, I've never even visited the
City!"

"Really, that does seem curious to me! But then I've never been to the
Suburbs, although I've been to the City many times. Very many times. It's
changed so much over the centuries: you wouldn't believe! I recall when it
wasn't any bigger than Gotesdene here. In fact, I can remember when the
modern-day Gotesdene villagers would seem positive sophisticates. In those
days, people used to think I could cure them of laryngitis, leprosy or
haemophilia just by touching them with my horn. It seemed that it didn't
matter how many people I'd touch with my horn who didn't get in the
slightest bit better, my reputation didn't suffer at all. Often tales of
the medical achievements I'd made without the slightest recourse to surgery
or antibiotics preceded me and I was well fêted wherever I went. In a way,
those were good days, but I like to keep a lower profile nowadays. I don't
like the way some people think they might solve the mystery as to how I've
achieved so many miracles by dissecting me. I'd rather remain a mystery
and alive."

The Unicorn shook his head sadly and blew agitatedly through his wide
nostrils. "I like the City. If I were you, I'd make a point of visiting
it some time. You can't hope to understand the world today without seeing
the City. It's the exact opposite to here. In Gotesdene (bless it!) there
really is nothing of any great interest, although I imagine its modernising
mayor might think differently. In the City is literally everything of
interest. It's almost too much. The reason people want to escape from the
City is not so much for what they are running towards, but from the
tremendous bewilderment they're running away from."

"It sounds very forbidding."

"I daresay it does. And the first time one is there, one is astonished
by how very busy it is. Everyone is rushing around from place to place.
There is an astonishing network of trams, buses and trains: all full as
they carry people to and from work, around the tourist sites, to the
nightclubs, theatres and brothels. The City is alive all day and all
night. In fact it's a cliche to say the City never sleeps, but it never
does. Quite unlike Gotesdene which you could say could hardly be described
as even fully awake.

"I'm forever astounded at how the City continues to grow and expand over
the centuries. I've often thought: this is it! It can never get busier,
or wealthier, or more crowded, or the buildings any taller. I've often
thought that I was privileged to see the City at the pinnacle of its
history, reaching the logical peak of its relentless progression, only to
see yet again how mistaken I was. But then I have a very unusual
perspective, having lived for such a very long time."

"How long have you lived?"

"I'm sure it's still considered rude in some cultures to discuss age,"
laughed the Unicorn. He shook his head with a rough snort through his
nostrils, while a couple of oxen passed by chatting and laughing as they
went. One of them shyly signalled to the Unicorn with his tail, and then
returned to his conversation. "I am, as it happens rather more than two
thousand years, probably close to three thousand. Quite a great age by
your standards I imagine, but not at all unusual for Unicorns. I suppose
we make up in number of years for what we lack in number of individuals."

I was quite astonished. This degree of longevity was extremely rare in
the Suburbs. Indeed, as I reflected, the Suburbs, despite its apparent
timelessness, probably didn't exist as such when the Unicorn was born.
"You must have seen and done an astonishing number of things in your life."

"I have that," he laughed good-naturedly. "I've been to almost every
corner of the globe at one time or another. I've had the luxury of enough
time to spend what you might call a lifetime in rather a few of these
places. In fact, in some of the better places, for rather more than a
lifetime. I've been the companion of royalty: quite a few princesses have
felt strangely enamoured towards me, but I've successfully resisted any
indecent advances. Perhaps it's the Unicorn's very ability to resist such
temptation, that's kept our numbers down, but like the manticore and the
chimera I have great reasons to suspect the propriety of some of my
ancestors." He glanced down at the cloven hoof at the end of his slender
deer-like legs. "I really am such a curious mixture of things. It's
difficult to imagine how anyone could ever have conceived of someone like
me!"

"What places have you visited?" I wondered, hoping that perhaps he might
give me some insight as to where I might find the Truth.

"Oh, so many places! Islands inhabited by moas, dodos and æpyornises.
Plains full of quaggas and aurochs. Forests of giant lemurs, pygmy
elephants and ground sloths. Seas full of great whales, giant auks and
dugongs. Countries where people are sacrificed to the sun, nations which
randomly enslave more than a tenth of their own people and work them until
they die, and nations dedicated entirely to the pursuit of pleasure. I
much prefer the last ones. I've been the guest of chancellors, viziers,
cæsars, walis and prime ministers. I've met some of the most famous people
in all history. In fact, I've had one of the most rich and fulfilling
lives you can imagine!"

"How do you manage to afford all this?"

"It's amazing how much a small investment can accumulate over a few
centuries, let alone a few millennia. I've always been very careful to
invest wisely, although I've lost a several fortunes in my time! The