Future Tense (16 page)

“Where are the others?” she barked.

“They were not here,” said the male Corrective Measures agent. “We will wait.”

She slapped me across the back of the head. “Where are they, Sloane? Tell us!” She hit me again.

I don't want to brag here, but I should point out these agents were not humanoid—they were androids from the fourth millennium—and when they hit you, it bloody well hurt. I slumped forward and laid my head on the table, to try and stay out of range.

“I don't know,” I said.

“You are a liar!” screeched the female, pinning my head with her hand and applying pressure. “If you do not tell us I will squash your head into paste.”

“For God's sake tell them, Stephen!” cried Emma.

“Don't worry love—they won't kill us, they need us for research.”

“We do not need you in full working order,” said the female android. “Your ears, nose—these fingers—they are expendable.”

“All right, all right,” I said. “I'll tell you. But first tell him to let Emma's head go—and let me sit up.”

She nodded to the John Lennon look-alike and he released Emma's skull. She let me up.

I rubbed the back of my head. I knew I was in a no-win situation. I had no plan, so I decided to play for time, until I could think of one, or an opportunity presented itself, so I suppose you could call that a sort of plan. It depends what you mean by plan really, doesn't it?

“There are two others,” I began. “One is very, very tall. The other is young, a young female. She is not so tall really, she's sort of average height, well, maybe a little below average height. She has hair the colour of gold or some might say it's more the colour of ripe corn in sunshine. And it kind of moves like a cornfield—you know that way corn moves when the summer breeze passes over it? It's like an ocean, rolling waves and ripples from end to end of the field. Of course, the individual strands are not as thick as a stalk of corn…”

Emma looked at me incredulously and then at each of the engrossed androids in turn. And shook her head.

I continued in this vein for nearly an hour. You have to remember our captors were androids—half-machines—they were not going to refuse any information I was prepared to reel off. They would be storing it all in their memory chips, collating and processing it, adding little bits here and little bits there to their files, reviewing and revising—cross-referencing—the whole time I was talking. They had never met me before and probably thought it was the way I always talked. Besides, they wouldn't think it was a waste of time to let me carry on spinning out my tale, like Scheherazade. They would just think they were extracting an excellent statement from me—very detailed and full. Just the way Corrective Measures liked them.

“Coffee?” said Emma.

“Yes, please, Em,” I smiled, breaking off briefly from my discourse. I checked with the droids. They both nodded. “Make that three, love.”

“…so why, you might ask, did we compare him to a tree—we might just as well have compared him to a lamppost or a flagpole. Metaphors are all a matter of personal taste, don't you think? That was a rhetorical question—you don't have to answer it if you don't want to. I know you're not here to answer questions—that's what you want me to do—right? Er, that was a rhetorical question, too—when I said ‘right.' Um, I think. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes—Shakespeare's use of metaphor and simile in the sonnet sequence…”

* * *

Two hours later I was still going strong.

“…you see, what the neo-classicists were attempting to do was eradicate all ambiguity and—and wishy-washy woolly thinking and imagery from their writing—”

“But not Pope,” interrupted John.

“Well, true, um, he was into extended metaphor,” I said.

“The whole Rape of the Lock,” nodded Jody, helping herself to another one of John's cigarettes.

“The whole of ‘The Rape of the Lock,'” I agreed, not too sure about that one. “You see, Romanticism, as exemplified by Keats, Byron et al, at this particular period in the Age of Enlightenment would have been almost incomprehensible to Dryden. He could only see the classical model.”

“The baroque was dead,” said Jody.

“As a doornail,” I nodded, patting her hand, where it lay on the table, next to mine.

“The rococo rules!” exclaimed John, punching the air with his fist.

I smiled and waved my arms about like a conductor. “Light, airy—ephemeral—with the delicacy and grace of a butterfly's flight, the perfection and symmetry of a shell.”

“Hmm,” sighed Jody gazing off into space. “Like Watteau's swinger.”

“Well, the word swinger has other connotations these days, but, yes, grace personified,” I smiled. We linked arms and swayed together to the imaginary music we were hearing.

“What's a swinger?” said John.

“Er, love,” I said to Emma, “do you think you could make some more coffee?”

Jody put her hand over her cup. “Not for me, thanks, Stephen.”

I looked to John.

“Oh, go on then,” he grinned.

“Make that two, love,” I said.

Emma came and snatched our cups off the table, chinked them together, and said to John, “A swinger is disgrace personified, love.” And then she stamped out to the galley and slammed them down on the draining board.

“Er, and so to Lord Byron,” I said. “Byron was a Romantic from the quiff of his mullet to the polish on the toes of his riding boots…um, did you know he had a club foot?”

* * *

In the wee small hours, long after we had progressed to the wine, we retired to the cushioned lounge area and were lying about listening to Tree's collection of jazz records, and rolling joints. I had totally corrupted the two androids from Corrective Measures. The power of free expression of the self is staggering. In '60s America, psychologists introduced the concept of the freeing the inner self to the initiates of a convent, within six months over half the sisters had broken their vows and left the institution, and the rest were practising a sort of lesbian version of free worship. It's true!

“…I like the Parker—it's freer—don't you agree, Stevie?”

“Jody, you don't know what you're talking about—how can you sit there and say that?” argued John.

“All I'm saying,” said Jody, “is that Bix's syncopation is more accessible and the Bird's technique is a natural extension of that. Stephen, tell this creep what I mean for pity's sake!”

“The Bird flies, man,” I said. I jumped up, stuck my thumb in my mouth, and played the imaginary sax stops up and down my chest with my other hand. “He floats, he flits!” I skipped around the cabin. “He blow that horn like he's grown a new tongue, cats—it don't just sing—it makes
lurve
!”

Jody laughed and clapped her hands. John shook his head and poured himself another glass of red wine.

“You the man!” he said.

“Sit down, you buffoon!” hollered Jody, finally.

“Who you calling a buffoon, girl?” I laughed, throwing myself back down on the bench seat with her.

“I'm going to bed,” said Emma, who had been sitting at the dining table. She padded past us in her bare feet. We heard her slam her cabin door and all fell about laughing.

“So,” said Jody, playing with my hair, “the French existentialists, led by Sartre, were not only saying we had free will, but that we have too much?”

“Too much choice,” I nodded, topping up my glass and Jody's with more wine. “We don't know what to do with it all. We walk into a supermarket, we don't even know what breakfast cereal we want to snap, crackle or pop. That post-industrialism-consumerism complex—that whole Freud-Bernhays thing—has spawned a new religion—shopping! The will has been set free! We can be and do and buy whatever we want! We're all so free it's like being in a cage of freedom!”

“I like that image,” said John. “Cage of freedom. Oxymoron. Bravo, mon ami.”

“But we still have Rome,” sighed Jody. “We still have original sin and we still have guilt. We are still repressed by that medieval rack inside our heads—those old philosophers, like Aquinas, still tell us it's all preordained. The bastards!”

“Well, not Aquinas—he, er, sort of believed in free choice,” I corrected.

“Sorry. I meant that whole Spanish Inquisition—Reformation-Counter-Reformation chain thing—it's still pulling us, spinning our souls on the wheel of St Catherine! Whipping us to the Cross!” cried Jody, with scary passion. “We'll never be free! God isn't dead in our heads, man!” She burst into tears and threw herself against me and pounded me with her fists. “I just want to be who I want to be—I just want to be me! I have to be free! Oh, Steve—set me free!”

I held her head in my arms and stroked her hair. “Shh, shh—I've got you, babe…”

* * *

At dawn my students and I were sitting cross-legged up on deck, meditating and composing freeform poems.

“…rain drops Venn diagrams on the still lake,” offered John.

“…the peeled lips of their swastikas speak of rage rage rage!” hissed Jody.

I was worried about Jody.

“…but they also spoke of love love love,” I added, “uh, because love is all you need.”

John opened his eyes and nodded at me. “Cool, man,” he said dreamily.

“…there is nothing you can do that cannot be done,” I went on, “nowhere you can be where you are not supposed to be—it's easy…”

It seemed to be working.

Jody said, “…all you need is someone else to live in hell with…”

“…there is no one you cannot be if you really want to be somebody—it's easy…” said John, getting the hang of it.

“All you need is love—la-la-
la
-
la
-
la
! Keep it up!” I sang, conducting them with one hand, while I lifted myself up with my other.

“All you need is love—la-la-
la
-
la
-
la
!” we all chorused.

“Now,” I said, backing away, towards the hatchway, “keep adding verses and don't stop, till I get back.”

I swung down the last few wooden rungs of the hatch stairs into the main cabin, pleased with myself, and found Emma lounging full length on the sofa bench, reading a paperback and sipping coffee.

“Hallelujah! Give me black coffee!” I cried, clapping my hands and rubbing them together.

We could just hear John and Jody singing their improvised version of “All You Need is Love” right over our heads.

“In the pot,” said Emma, without taking her nose out of her book.

I poured myself a coffee and went over to join her on the bench. She was forced to move her feet slightly to make room for me, and tutted.

“Well, aren't you going to say anything?” I said.

“Morning, Sloane.”

“No, I meant about that,” I said, pointing my finger up at the ceiling.

“You mean, The Temple of the Seventh Day Sloanites? Yeah—tell them not to chant so loud, I'm trying to become one with this book.”

“Emma, last night they were going to crack open our heads like eggs—now they're singing hippie anthems and making up avant garde poetry. I've converted them!”

“Yes, but into what?” she said. “I think I liked them better when they were psychopaths.”

“Well, I think I did a pretty good job,” I said, a bit miffed. “What you reading?”

She flashed the cover in my face and carried on reading.

“Hm,
Lucky Jim
,” I said. “Isn't that supposed to be funny?”

“It's hilarious,” she said, without lifting her eyes off the page.

“Then why aren't you laughing?” I said.

“I'm laughing in my mind. Now, leave me alone—go and sacrifice a goat or something.”

I was not put off—I had just converted two aggressive automata into peace-loving poets—I was on a roll.

“What first attracted you to me, Em?”

“Your silence.”

Undeterred, I said, “I wonder what love is.” I clutched my coffee cup to my heart. “They say love grows and it can die, but it can't be organic, can it? 'Cos the lover still lives on. Is it merely a bio-chemical reaction? I ask myself. Or just an instinctive animal urge, over which we have no control, no say in the matter? Can this be all there is to love? I think not. I think love is like a faith, a faith in the one you love.”

Emma heaved a huge sigh and turned the page.

“I have faith in you, Em. A faith that cannot be shaken or broken. I will never give up my faith in you. Because I love you.”

“The baby is not yours, Stephen—it's Matt's,” she said, without interrupting her reading.

I drank the rest of my coffee in one, got up, walked stiffly out to the galley, and smashed the mug in the sink. I charged back in.

“Matthew bloody Turner! How could you sleep with that shithead—that bird-brained, fish-faced, ass-licking, little shite of a pratt? How could you?”

“I thought he was your mate,” she said, finally looking up from her bloody book and smiling sweetly at me.

“Mate? Mate? I hate the little tosser! I hate him! I hate everything about the slimy, two-faced bastard! You slept with Matthew Turner? I hope you showered all the slime off afterwards! Do you realise you're carrying the seed of Matthew Turner? Men like Matthew Turner shouldn't be allowed to breed—they should be castrated at birth! That's a point—when's the little shit's birthday? I could fast forward to the day he was spawned and go round to the maternity unit and do it myself!”

“But you told me you wanted good old Matt to be your best man,” said Emma. “Oh, my mate, Matt will do it—Matt's so cool—Matt this, Matt that. Do you really want him making his speech in a squeaky voice?”