The 2084 Precept (52 page)

"Religious superstitions?"

"Yes, we've always had these and we always
will have them. I won't trouble you with the history of these
things, sacrificing to the Sun Gods, killing 'witches' and so on,
but here is an example from current times. A seven year old girl
was ritually sacrificed—butchered in other words—in the Bijapur
district of India in order to offer her liver to the gods holding
sway in that area. According to the police, those responsible
sincerely believed that the gods would accordingly provide them
with a 'good harvest'. Note the word
believe
again, Jeremy.
And, as their Gods undoubtedly said to them, a little girl and her
liver is a small price to pay so that the rest of you can remain
alive, right? It's a good deal in exchange for a good harvest,
agreed? And—also in current times—a forty year old mother of two
was burned alive in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, by some of her
relations whose religious beliefs had determined that she was a
sorceress whose powers had enabled her to make her uncle seriously
ill."

"Well…and what about other parts of the
world?"

"Certainly. Let us take the country I live
in, Germany. There are ongoing 'honor- killings'—year after
year—usually, but not always, of young Islamic girls who adopt
certain local social customs against their family’s wishes. Their
murderers, fathers or brothers or uncles, seriously believe that in
this way the family 'honor' will be protected or restored. This
superstition is not to be found—I rush to point out—in the Koran.
The desire and the will to murder members of your own family for
this or any other reason is down to superstition, not
religion."

I know I’m becoming too detailed again, but
never mind. I'll give him this one to ponder over as well.

"Coincidentally, Jeremy, and purely as a
matter of interest, there is currently an uproar in Germany about
reduced court sentences for Islamic murderers and other Islamic
criminals (compared to the sentences a German or other non-Islam
person would receive) because of judgments referring to the
'religious and cultural considerations' deemed to have influenced
the accused persons’ actions."

"How eccentric. Stupid of course as
well."

I rushed onward. "And this ‘kill and restore
honor’ superstition is not confined to a single religious group or
to any specific country either. Take the U.K. for example. There
are plenty of these male-dominated 'revenge' killings—revenge by
men for having their personal wishes and their perceived power and
authority ignored by female members of their family."

Jeremy coughed. "Indeed."

He was not wasting his time on words, that's
for sure. Which suited me fine, the craving for a cigarette need
was becoming extremely serious. So just one more example to finish
this off.

"Another superstition is the one believed in
by certain members of the Islamic religion—and in particular by
their suicide bombers—namely, that they will be rewarded for their
honorable deeds with 72 female virgins when they reach their
heaven. This assertion, however, is also not to be found in the
Koran, although—due to certain ambiguous translations of Verse 33
in Chapter 78—there are Muslims who would argue otherwise.
Certainly, the Koran makes mention of a variety of pleasurable
delights awaiting the faithful upon their demise, but not the 72
virgins. In fact, Allah does not appear to offer a guarantee of
even
a single
virgin. Or even a non-virgin."

"Yes, well, it still sounds like a superior
paradise to the Christian one in which you get to play the harp,
wouldn't you say?"

"Oh it does, Jeremy, it does, but only if
you are a man. There is no superstition involving 72 young studs
awaiting the ladies."

"I see," Jeremy said. "Or rather, I don't.
But I don't think I need any more on this subject. You have your
religious beliefs and you have your unfounded superstitions, and
the latter are in some cases also connected to a religion. An
intriguing planet you have here, I must say, and each of our
meetings confirms it. As usual, I will research the facts."

Great. It sounded as if we were finished.
Another interview over, another slice of the human pie explained.
Facts, not opinions. Just the way things are.

"We don't need to arrange the next meeting
today, Peter. We have finished our main agenda and you have been
successful in providing me with a condensed overview of the
selected subjects. I need to take the advice of my professor
regarding the content and form of our subsequent, more detailed,
interviews. I will let you know as soon as that has been decided.
In the meantime, you will no doubt give me a call to inform me of
the outcome of tomorrow's meeting?"

"Of course, Jeremy. Oh, and by the way, I
shall be going back to Germany on Friday evening. But no problem,
we will be in contact by phone, and I can fly over at any time if I
need to meet with the authorities again, or for us to continue with
our interviews."

"That will be fine, Peter. And take care of
our mobile please. I wouldn't want to be troubling my people for
permission to computer-hack a message to you regarding our next
meeting. For which, by the way, I would also need your personal
agreement. I would never computer-hack you without that."

He smiled, raised his eyebrows. "You have my
agreement on that," I said, "but I'll be taking care of the mobile
anyway, don't worry." Absolutely. No way was a lost mobile going to
be the possible cause of another €400,000 sliding down the
drain.

I went out past Miss Monroe with a big
smile, down into the street, and lit up the long-awaited cigarette
to accompany me on my way to the Dog and Duck. Miss Monroe might
have been thinking it was a pity I didn't stop to chat, or,
alternatively, she might not. She might have a boyfriend, she might
be in the middle of a huge love affair. Or she might have a
girlfriend, always a possibility in this day and age, as we all
know. But I am not—at the moment—interested. Céline is still
affecting my mood. Maybe next week. Or perhaps not, perhaps later
in the year. Because the dream, Jane, would be back in her place
again next week.

I woke up early, plenty to do today. Grey
sky again. I skipped breakfast, just two cups of Lavazza, picked up
the car from the garage, and headed off to Slough.

I opened the sun roof and lit up a
cigarette. It was not only a grey day but a windy one and a not
very warm one—and so your dedicated smoker has cigarette ash
blowing all over his car and he freezes into the bargain. But such
is life, we all have a price to pay for our sins. Nevertheless, and
invisible as it usually is for the Brits, the sun was indeed up
there, no doubt about it, burning merrily away on its suicidal road
to death and keeping every single one of us warm, and therefore
alive, while doing it. Good to know.

The 'Clark's Industrial Adhesives and
Fasteners PLC' sign was still looking good. The building itself was
still looking dilapidated—we'll be fixing that along with other
things when more of the profits are banked—and the guy at the front
desk was still looking unhappy. Mind you, this time he had good
reason to be, his salary would be less at the end of this month
than it had been in the prior month.

I went to see Fred and apologized for the
fact that I would not be staying for a parting lunch. "Don't worry,
Peter," he said, "you are continuing in a revised role anyway.
We'll do it further on down the road." And he thanked me for my
work, and I thanked him for his cooperation and for 'putting up
with me'—humble pie, sincere or otherwise, a useful lubricant for
keeping the wheels of social and professional relationships turning
smoothly—and then I toured around saying thanks, see you again
soon, to Charlie, Ron and all the others, right down to the machine
operators and the office staff, but excluding, of course, the cow.
She wouldn't have appreciated it anyway, and she would have shown
it, which might have caused me to lose control and tell her that
she would be more gainfully occupied in a field together with ten
bulls. Or, if I wanted to be nice about it, five bulls. Or, if I
wanted to be nice to the bulls, in a field on her own. But I did
say goodbye to the guy at the front desk. Poor unhappy sod, his
mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.

I smoked another cigarette and admired the
sign again. Yes, I know what some people might think; but I am just
one of those people who happen to regard a large and well-designed
sign as a very fine thing. It's just the way I am. Nobody needs to
worry about it.

I drove back to the hotel in London. I
called Monika and told her I would be back early Saturday morning,
but that I would then be sleeping until about midday. Too cold and
windy for walking, so I took a cab and had it wait while I
collected and paid for my gifts for Roger and Geoff tomorrow. And
then it was back to the hotel again. I checked out my MOD
destination, set my mobile alarm for 4 p.m. and fell asleep.

* * * * *

It was raining when I woke up and so it was
another cab for the short trip to Whitehall. Whitehall is a wide
road, plenty of statues and monuments. It's full of ministries and
ministers and ministers' staffs, and you would not be in error if
you referred to it as the center of the U.K. government. One of
these buildings houses the Ministry of Defence and the headquarters
of the British Armed Forces. To be precise, my actual destination
was not in fact in Whitehall but in Horse Guards Avenue, not to be
confused with Horse Guards Road by the way. This avenue intersects
with Whitehall and is where the northern entrance to the MOD Main
Building is to be found. Sloppy directions from Delsey, lucky for
him he doesn't work for me, but he can't cause problems for people
who check their destinations in advance, no sweat.

Even so, the rain was raining and the wind
was gusting and my umbrella was in the car back at the hotel, and
so I got soaked covering the ground to the building entrance. There
is a statue of a Gurkha there, one of those Nepalese folk
originally drafted into the British Army, poor buggers. Or maybe
not such poor buggers. A Field Marshall in charge of the British
Indian Army once said that if a man asserts he is not afraid to
die, then he is either a liar or he is a Gurkha. Well…maybe. Or
maybe the Field Marshall was simply full of shit. There are also a
couple of monumental statues, or statuary monuments if you prefer,
Earth and Water they are called. Not that I took any notice of
these governmental decorations, I was getting soaked. But never
mind, there are worse things than water and it's good for the
hair.

Into the building itself, not a very old
one, a neoclassical affair finished about fifty or sixty years ago.
I checked my watch, ten minutes early. Delsey was already waiting
for me there, my 'contact person'. He hadn't changed, he was his
usual dreary-looking self, a human reproduction of an envelope
without an address on it.

He guided me through a large number of
corridors and into a big room which had clearly undergone some
refurbishment at some point in time. It was a comfortable looking
room, obviously for use by VIPs, and it had a large table in it
with over twenty comfortable looking chairs surrounding it, nearly
half of which were occupied. I didn't recognize anybody except
Delsey's boss, the others could possibly be superior members of the
police hierarchy perhaps.

There were polite greetings and polite
introductions and they were indeed all representatives of various
branches of the so-called enforcement organization. But we were
clearly waiting for additions to the party and so I excused myself
and was directed to a door leading to the toilets or—as so eerily
referred to by the Americans—to the restrooms. I suppose you
could
have a rest of some kind in there, but then you could
do that in just about any room, couldn't you? Being a European, I
took no rest, but I dried myself off, I shook my suit jacket, I ran
my fingers through my hair, I checked that my rain-damaged
appearance had improved by around 1%, and I headed back into the
meeting. The seats were now nearly all occupied and two more
persons were entering as I sat down.

There is no end to the number of ministries
in any given country, it seems, and there is no end, it also seems,
to the number of departments within most of those ministries. Their
task is to control and manage just about any aspect of the
activities of the other human beings over whom they have power. The
Ministry of Defence is no exception to this. It has a civilian
staff of over 80,000 in order to run itself. It even has
departments such as the Naval Education Service, the Royal Army
Educational Corps, the Queen's Army Schoolmistresses, and the
Children's Education Service—the headquarters of the latter being
in Germany, by the way. It makes you think. Even a country like the
U.K., which represents less than 1% of the world's population,
requires hundreds of government departments, staffed by a vast army
of hundreds of thousands of people, to tell others what to do, to
create laws for them, to try and ensure those laws are obeyed, and
to deal with those who don't obey them. None of which is of any
particular interest other than that it makes it easier to
understand one of the ways in which politicians spend money they
don't have and bankrupt their countries with crippling burdens of
debt.

Well…I must say that we had some of the
really big fish here today. The Piccadilly demonstration had of
course been an exceedingly convincing one and it must have been
given a lot of serious internal publicity. And it must have been
clear to a lot of people that such abilities could prove to be of
unimaginable advantage to whichever country managed to lay its
hands on them.