The Fandom of the Operator (12 page)

I let the count buy me further drinks and I enjoyed the band. Quilten Balthazar was great. And what can you say about Zagger To Mega Therion? That master bladesman had paid his dues. But I was thinking. Thinking and plotting and planning.

All right. I know how this works. You don’t have to tell me. People only struggle against oppression when they actually
are
oppressed. If they’re not actually oppressed themselves, then they only pay lip service to the struggle against other people’s oppression. They like to think of themselves as caring individuals. But they don’t actually really
do
anything. They might contribute a little money to some worthy cause or other, but they don’t actually
do
.

Funny thing is, now I’m looking back at all this and telling this tale, what I didn’t know was that my struggle against oppression was actually going to further the cause of My Struggle,
Mein Kampf
, as it were. I suppose that, somewhere down the line, I had actually lost myself. I’d been fascinated by death and the whole idea of death and what might be beyond it. And I had tried to reanimate Mr Penrose, my all-time, then and now, favourite writer, but where had my youthful ideas and interests gone? Into nothing and nowhere. I’d lost my
true
self. But this business at the telephone exchange had actually woken me up from my slumber. Life had hit me right in the face. And life and death being brothers and all that, it all fell together.

But I didn’t know that then. I didn’t know that this was synchronicity. That I was in the right place at the right time and that my struggle against oppression was going to bucket me into the position that it did. In fact, that it would prove that my life had a specific purpose. And that the purpose it had was linked to what I was as a child, which had led – the child being the father of the man, and all that kind of guff – into what I would become as an adult.

Phew! Are you getting any of this?

Perhaps I have become drunk. I was certainly drunk when I left the Shrunken Head and stumbled home with only the prospect of the good hiding I meant to give Sandra as a distant light to steer my stumblings towards.

But I had really, truly, actually, if drunkenly, found a purpose in life for myself. And I would begin on my quest the very next day.

And I would triumph.

And not just for myself.

But for the good of all.

I’d change things for ever.

I would.

I really would.

I suppose I must have dozed off.

Although not on the job.

I never once dozed off on the job.

It would have been more than my job was worth to ever doze off on the job. An unmanned bulb is an accident waiting to happen, as Mr Holland used to say. And he knew what he was talking about. That man knew his business when it came to bulbs.

But perhaps I had dozed off at some time or other. Because the next time I was truly, fully aware, I was drinking again with Count Otto, and he was asking me how things were going at the telephone exchange.

“How are things going at the telephone exchange?” he asked.

“So, so,” I said. “I had fourteen flash-ups today. I have my reaction time down to point-three of a second. Point-two-two is my fastest ever, but that was in the first summer when there was a double flash. That’s quite a rarity, two flash-ups in less than an hour. I kind of sensed it that time: I knew the second one was coming. A good bulbsman has a sixth sense. You develop it. Only last week I—”

“Excuse me,” said Count Otto. “I need to go and count some tiles in the men’s room.” And then he departed and was gone.

“He’s a weirdo,” I said to Sandra, because she had come out with me for a drink. For some specific reason that quite escaped me at the time. “He’s always going off to the bog when I’m having a chat.”

“Perhaps it’s because you’re so boring nowadays,” said Sandra.

“Yeah, right,” I replied.

“I am,” said Sandra. “Your job is all you ever talk about. That exciting double flash in the summer of ’seventy-one. How you’ve installed your own bulb tester and how through yoga you can hold your bladder for a twelve-hour stretch without even a dribble coming out of your winkie.”

“Don’t be crude,” I said to Sandra.

“You’ve lost your edge,” said my spouse. “You’re no fun any more.”

“
I’m
no fun? How dare you! If you took a little more interest in my work …”

“Ha,” went Sandra. “Ha ha ha. Switching a fugging bulb off all day long! How interesting can that be?”

“See what I mean?” I said to her. “That’s all
you
know about the job. I don’t switch it
off all day long
. Only at the specific moment when it flashes. Not before and not afterwards. Well, obviously afterwards, but you can hardly tell, my timing is so precise.”

“Just listen to yourself.” Sandra was drinking a Cuba Library, which was the popular drink of the day. It was a cocktail – something to do with cigars and library books. Or it might have been gazelles and bicycle pumps, for all I cared. Sandra supped at it and went right on talking at me. “When you came home after that first day at the exchange you were dripping with piss and ranting like a loon. Then you went off for a drink and came back pissed and ranting like a drunken loon, saying how you were going to strike a blow for the workers and change everything. Do you remember that?”

“Of course I remember that,” I said, for I vaguely remembered that.

“Now it’s five years later,” Sandra emptied her drink down her throat and handed me the glass, “and have you struck a blow for the workers?”

“Well,” I said.

“No,” said Sandra. “You haven’t. The second day in, you took sandwiches and a bucket and another book to read.”

“God,” I said. “Don’t tell me about it.”

“Why?” asked Sandra.

“It’s so embarrassing,” I said. “How could I have been so irresponsible? Taking a book into the bulb booth? I could have been so engrossed in the book that I mightn’t have noticed the bulb go on. Imagine that! It doesn’t bear thinking about.”

“It certainly doesn’t,” said Sandra, pointing pointedly towards her empty glass. “So I shan’t think about it at all.”

“Good,” I told her. “Don’t.”

“Drink,” said Sandra.

So I drank.

“No,” said Sandra. “I meant drink for me.”

“To
you
, then,” I said, raising my glass and drinking again.

“
No
!” said Sandra. “Not drink
to
me. Buy me another fugging drink, you stupid twonk!”

“Language!” I told her. “Language, please.”

“Five years,” said Sandra, spitting somewhat as she spoke. “Five fugging years. What happened to you? Where did your spirit go?”

“I would have thought you’d have been pleased that I was now in full-time regular employment. A job for life. You wanted security, didn’t you? Wasn’t that why your brother so diligently made sure that I got there in the first place?”

“Oh yes,” said Sandra. “I wanted security. There’s nothing wrong with security. But I’d also like a holiday once in a while. You know, a week away at a caravan park in Camber Sands. That’s not much to ask, is it?”

“A bulbsman is always on the job,” I said to Sandra. “A bulbsman has no time for holidays.”

“Unbelievable,” said Sandra, shaking her head in what looked for all the world to be dismay. “You are unbelievable.”

“Thank you very much,” I said and I made my way to the bar.

There wasn’t any pushing and shoving to get served in this bar. But then, this wasn’t the Shrunken Head. Eric had sold the Shrunken Head to an entrepreneur called Sandy and had moved himself away to a quieter bar.

This
quieter bar. The Golden Dawn, on the corner of Abbadon Street. It was mostly a fogeys’ hangout. Old boys who played in the bowls league. Regular, dependable fellows, many of whom had worked in the telephone exchange. And put in years of sterling service. Although none of them appeared to be ex-bulbsmen.

I liked the Golden Dawn. It was a good place to come and relax after a stressful day in the booth. Like the one I’d had the Thursday before last when there were twenty-two flashes. Four within a single hour, which was almost an all-time record. The record being six, back in the autumn of ’seventy-four, on the tenth of September, a Tuesday. Three-fifteen to four-fifteen. I keep a record, you see. Study it in the evenings, actually, just to check the patterns. They crop up at occasional intervals. You can be right on the alert then. Not that I could really be much more on the alert than I am now. That would be impossible.

“Well, well, well, well, well,” said Eric Blaine a.k.a. Kimberlin Malkuth, Lord of a Thousand Suns. “If it isn’t my old comrade the Honourable Valdec Firesword of Alpha Centuri.”

“Yes,” I said to him. “As it was ten minutes ago, when I came up for the last round.”

“Exactly,” said Eric. “Which means that this time it’s Count Otto’s round. But he’s hiding out in the toilets again, isn’t he?”

“He’s counting tiles,” I said. “That’s what counts do, I suppose: count things.”

The landlord rolled his eyes. Which I found most unappealing. And then he shook his head from side to side. “I see the Lady Fairflower of the Rainbow Mountains is looking particularly radiant tonight,” he observed, casting one of his rolling eyes in his shaking head towards my Sandra.

“Nifty eye-work,” I said, for I appreciate talent. “But, frankly, the Lady Fairflower has been getting right up my nose of late. I labour away at my place of employment, drag my weary body home and what do I get?”

“A blowjob?” asked the landlord.

“No,” I said. “Not even a blow-dry. Not that I have long hair any more. I keep mine well trimmed behind the ears and especially across the forehead. A flopping fringe is a bulbsman’s enemy. I tried keeping it long and wearing a cap, but I felt that it detracted from the dignity of the job. Hey, by the way, what do you think of these?” I raised my arms to the landlord.

The landlord stared hard and then he said. “You appear to have tiny roller skates strapped onto your elbows.”

“Yes,” I said. “But they’re not tiny roller skates, they’re elbow trolleys. I designed them myself.”

“Very nice,” said the landlord, in a tone that I felt lacked for sincerity. “What exactly do they do?”

“Give me added speed, of course.” I placed my elbows on the bar counter. “Take that empty cocktail glass.”

“This one?” said the landlord.

“That one. Hold it up.”

The landlord held it up.

“Now drop it.”

“No,” said the landlord. “It will break on the counter.”

“No, it won’t. Go on, do it. Whenever you want. Don’t give me any warning.”

“You pay if it breaks, then.”

“No problem. I—”

But the sneaky barman dropped it as I spoke.

And
Snatch
!

“Impressed?” I asked.

And the landlord clearly was. “You snatched it right out of the air almost before it had left my hand,” he said.

“I’m a bulbsman,” I said. “Speed is my middle name.”

The landlord pulled me a pint of Large and knocked up another cocktail for Sandra.

“What is this one called?” I asked.

“In your posh bars up west, this would be called a ‘Horse’s Neck’,” said the landlord. “But as this is a poor neighbourhood, I call it a half of lager-top.”

“Wow,” I said. “Very exotic”

“And expensive too. That will be four pounds, seventeen and six.”

I parted with a five-pound note.

The landlord parted with the change.

“I’m sixpence short,” I said to him.

And then he parted with the missing sixpence.

“We live in strange days, Gary,” the landlord said to me.

“Gary?” I said. “Why are you calling me that?”

“I think I might be losing my powers.”

“What, your powers of True-Naming? Never, surely.”

“I don’t know. But once or twice, lately, a new customer has come in and I haven’t been able to perceive their true name.”

“More exceptions to the rule, perhaps? Like Count Otto.”

“No, Count Otto is a one-off. But it has been odd and I don’t understand it.”

“Perhaps they don’t have any true names.”

“Everyone has a true name. It’s just that most people aren’t aware of theirs.”

I shrugged. “I’ve never truly understood the concept,” I said. “In fact, I think you’ll find that you are possibly the only man on Earth who really understands the concept.”

“Hardly,” said the landlord. And he laughed. Not in the way that Sandra laughed. He laughed in a lower key. “There was a travelling man in here last week. A tinker looking for old chairs to mend. And I hailed him as Galaxion Zimmer of the Emerald Light. And he said, ‘Well met, Kimberlin Malkuth, Lord of a Thousand Suns.’”

“He knew
your
True Name?”

“He’d had a revelation, like me, back in the sixties.”

“There was a lot of it about,” I said. “Although I didn’t take any of it. Sold a bit, but didn’t use. If you know what I mean and I’m sure that you do.”

“Well, he knew and I knew that he knew. He identified all my regulars correctly. But, as I say, there’s been one or two. In fact there’s one over there.”

“Over where?” I asked.

“Over there. Fat bloke. I can’t perceive his True Name.”

I followed the direction of the landlord’s pointing. “That’s Neil,” I said. “That’s Neil Collins. He’s in Developmental Services.”

“What the fugg is Developmental Services?”

“At the exchange. Seventeenth floor, office twenty-three. Developmental Services.”

“And how would you know that, penned up in your little booth all day?”

I tapped my nose in the manner known as “conspiratorial”.

“Sinus problems?” asked the landlord.

“No,” I said. “Interdepartmental memorandums, files, technical specifications.”

“What about them?” asked the landlord.

“They all go through me,” I said.

“You
eat
them?”

“They go through my office. They’re not meant to, but they do. After I’d been at the exchange for about six months, this new bob poked his head round the door of my booth.”

“New bob?” asked the landlord.

“Stop asking all these questions,” I said. “New bob, new boy … He said he was lost and he had confidential files for Mr Holland and where was his office. And I don’t know what got into me – high spirits I suppose – but I said, ‘All confidential files come through me.’ And they have ever since.”

“And you read this stuff in the firm’s time?”

I looked aghast at the landlord. “Certainly not!” I said. “I would never be that irresponsible.”

“Oh,” said the landlord. “Sorry.”

“I take them home and read them,” I said. “Then I pop them into Mr Holland’s in-tray next morning, before he gets in. I’m always early. A good bulbsman is always ready and eager and in his booth on time.”

“Unbelievable,” said the landlord.

“Thank you very much,” I said.

“So this Neil Collins is in Developmental Services. And what do they do, then?”

I shook my head towards the landlord. “You’re expecting me to divulge confidential material to a Humburg?”

“I never wear a Homburg,” said the landlord, feeling at his hatless head.

“Not Homburg: Humburg. It’s a term we use for plebs, non-company people, folk who don’t work in the exchange.”

“Twonk!” said the landlord.

“No, Humburg!” I corrected him. “So I’m not likely to divulge that kind of information to a Humburg, am I?”

The landlord grinned at me. Well, he didn’t so much grin as leer. “You signed the Official Secrets Act, didn’t you?” he said.

“Yes, I did, and I’m proud of it.” And I
was. Now
.

“Yet you’ve already given me classified information by identifying Neil Collins as being in Developmental Services. If I grassed you up, you’d go to prison.”

A terrible sweat broke out on my brow. “You wouldn’t do that, would you?”

“No,” said the landlord. “Of course I wouldn’t.”

“Phew,” I said. And I meant it.

“Not as long as you tell me
all
about Developmental Services.”

“But that’s more than my job’s worth.”

“It’s exactly what your job’s worth. You bought into the company ethic,
Gary
. I don’t know why. Because you didn’t really have the stuff in you to rebel against it, would be my bet. But you’re a company man now, and if I grassed you up you’d lose your job and be off to prison.”

“No,” I said. “Don’t do it. If I lost my job, anyone could get it. The first man in the queue. Harry maybe.”

“I don’t think Harry would fall for
that
. And, anyway, Harry runs a world-famous night club now.”