Tom stood up, about to head for the front door. Suspects didn’t have fixed line telephones but there was a telephone point less than a quarter of a mile away.
‘You’re going to fry for this,’ Tchotchke hissed.
Puzzled, Tom paused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You deliberately pushed him down the stairs!’ said the sprout. ‘They’ll have you extradited to somewhere with the death penalty.’
‘He fell down the stairs,’ said Tom.
Tchotchke shook his head. ‘No, he did not,’ he said firmly. ‘You pushed him’ He turned ‘pushed’ into a two syllable word. He sneered at Tom. ‘Of course I could be wrong,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t matter if I am, does it? So effectively I’m not.’
Tom knew that the sprout was right. Suspects who were charged with attacking sprouts were invariably sentenced to death. Under EUDCE law, suspects were not allowed to give evidence in their own defence.
To get round the fact that EUDCE didn’t allow prisoners to be executed the sprouts regularly arranged for people they wanted executed to be transferred to less finicky parts of the world. With the help of the Americans, some went to Saudi Arabia, some to China and others to the United States of America itself where executions had become the most popular daily reality show on the American Telescreen.
‘But it was an accident,’ protested Tom.
The sprout managed a snort. ‘You’ll die for this. I’ll see to it. Now go and get help. I’ll stay with him.’
‘It really wasn’t my fault!’ said Tom.
‘You pushed him.’
‘No, no, I didn’t. He fell.’
Tchotchke looked at him. He didn’t care about Tom and he didn’t care about the crippled sprout lying on the floor. ‘You will be executed,’ he said firmly.
Tom hurried out of the front door, heading for the nearest telephone kiosk. Once there he put a coin into the box and dialled the number for medical emergencies. All emergency phone calls within EUDCE had been outsourced. Calls for what had been known as the police (and, although usually referred to as Europol, was now known as the European Defence and Public Protection Regulatory Force) went to a call centre in Germany, calls for fire services (now known as the European Conflagration Control Force) went to Poland and calls for lifeboat services (the European Maritime and Littoral Patrol Force) went to Lithuania. Calls for medical emergencies went to a telephone answering system in Italy. The reason for this was simple: the four Regions concerned had each offered the best price. The efficiency of the various systems had never been considered and the complications inevitably bound to ensue when emergency phone calls were answered by people who didn’t speak the same language, let alone understand the geography or culture of the nation from which the call emanated, had never been regarded as of any significance. In practice, the result of all these changes was that in practice, and as far as ordinary citizens were concerned, there were no effective public services.
***
A few years earlier Tom had telephoned for the police when a neighbour, a former writer of cheap thrillers, had threatened to run amok with an axe. (‘I’m going to run amok with an axe,’ had been his exact words. It was the only time anyone had ever heard the word ‘amok’ used outside a newspaper or a courtroom.) The conversation on the telephone had been conducted in a mixture of languages. A word or two of German, a word or two of French, a word or two of Turkish (only just then the official language of EUDCE) and a word or two of English.
‘Were you deprived or abused as a child?’ asked the operator who eventually answered Tom’s call.
‘No, not particularly,’ admitted Tom who had been through this sort of interrogation before. ‘Though I didn’t get a bicycle when Neville Bartholomew got one and I felt aggrieved about that for years. To be honest it still rankles. He had a red one with lots of gears.’ He had found that if you did not answer the questions fully the interrogation tended to last much longer. The questioners always liked to be able to fill in their forms.
‘Are you ethnic?’
‘What exactly do you mean by that these days?’ asked Tom.
‘Were you born outside the country in which you now reside?’
‘No.’
‘Were your parents born out of the country in which you now reside?’
‘No.’
‘Is English your first language?’
‘Yes, it is,’ admitted Tom, who knew in his heart that this was the ‘wrong’ answer. ‘I expect you’re now going to ask me if any of my relatives make objects d’art out of used gourd skins?’
The telephone operator sounded puzzled. There was a long pause as he looked at the screen in front of him. ‘That’s not on my list of questions,’ he said at last.
‘So, can you send someone round?’ asked Tom. ‘This guy is about to run amok.’
‘Has he threatened any persons of ethnic origin?’
‘Not yet. But there’s a Welsh guy living upstairs. He could be in the line of fire pretty soon.’
‘We’ll send someone round but it will probably be next Wednesday.’
‘Morning or afternoon?’
‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that for security reasons.’
***
The telephone rang and rang and rang. Eventually, Tom heard a voice. But it was, as Tom had expected, a recorded voice.
‘This is the national telephone line for medical emergencies,’ said a calm, female voice speaking first in heavily accented French and then repeating the initial message in German, Spanish and English. The woman who had recorded the message then gave a list of 39 language options. Tom pressed 16, the code for English and waited again.
‘Your call is important to us,’ said the new message. ‘We are committed to providing you with an excellent service. We have satisfied our targets for each month in the last two years. Now, please listen carefully to the following message from one of our sponsoring partners.’
There was a faint click and then Tom heard a male voice. ‘Medical emergencies are always difficult times,’ said the man. The agency who had hired him had found an actor with a rich, warm voice. He sounded kindly and sympathetic. In the background Tom could hear comforting organ music being played. Although he recognised it as something by Bach he couldn’t decide precisely what. ‘At times like this we all feel frightened and anxious. But we often also feel angry and upset. We may feel that the emergency with which we are dealing could be the result of someone else’s carelessness or incompetence. At times like this there is only one sensible action to take: to seek immediate expert help from someone who cares about you and your problem. Delay can be very damaging to your aims. We have many years of experience of dealing with problems of all kinds and we know that most people want to make sure that no one else is allowed to fall victim to the same error, the same carelessness or the same incompetence. To help satisfy this aim we provide a comprehensive legal service designed to defend your interests and to prosecute those responsible. And although we know that money can never be a cure for pain in the heart, we do our utmost to ensure that the pain and distress which have been caused are made a little lighter by the payment of the most substantial sum possible. To speak to one of our accredited and fully qualified experts press one, to continue with your call press two and to obtain full information about our other forms of legal representation press three.’
Tom pressed two and waited.
‘Thank you for calling,’ said a female voice which may or may not have been the original voice Tom had heard. ‘Your call is important to us. All our operators are busy dealing with other emergencies at the moment but your call is in a queue and will be dealt with as soon as possible. Meanwhile, please keep holding and listen to the following messages from our partner sponsors.’
A man’s voice then broke in. The first few words were cut by clumsy editing but it didn’t matter much.
‘... sad fact of life that despite the miracles so often worked by doctors, nurses, aides, laboratory te
chnicians and others involved in professional health care, illness can often result in the demise of the one we love. At times like this we often feel confused, bewildered and worried. What must we do? How do we cope? What are our obligations? To whom can we turn? These are difficult questions at any time but when they occur in the aftermath of a sad personal loss they are doubly, trebly difficult to cope with. Our EUDCE approved funeral undertakers can help you thread your way through the dark and difficult days ahead. To obtain advice, a no-obligation quote and a chance to win a mobile telephone with three free historically significant ring tones simply press six. To continue holding press one.’
Tom pressed one.
‘I’m afraid all our specialist operatives are still busy dealing with emergency calls,’ said the female voice again, ‘but you will soon be rising fast to the top of the queue and your call, which is important to us, will be dealt with very soon. Meanwhile, please listen to the following message from one of our partner sponsors.’
Tom sighed and waited.
‘Organ donation and supply has come a long way in the last few years,’ said a woman, who spoke with a slightly squeaky voice. She spoke very quickly, obviously anxious to get as much message as possible into the allotted time. ‘Whether you are a would-be organ donor or a recipient-to-be it is our aim to help you speedily and with the least possible inconvenience. Our service is widely recognised to be the best in the world and is endorsed by a number of celebrities including Olympic Sudoku bronze medallist Voluptua Bottomley. Our supply service offers fully guaranteed livers, kidneys, hearts, eyes, lungs and other organs at the very lowest prices – ask now for details of our buy one get one free offer which must end soon – while our skilled and highly qualified purchasing team, working in our organ purchasing partner division offers the very best prices for previously owned organs. Whether you are selling an unwanted organ of your own, or an organ which belonged to a loved one, or you are selling a vital organ under our pre-deceasement cash-now scheme, you will be staggered by our keen prices. Don’t sell your kidneys anywhere else until you’ve had a quote from us. Our surgeons, whether installing or removing, are among the best available and many are fully qualified. Our teams also provide full after care.’
There was a click as the message ended. Tom lowered the handset for a moment and looked at it as though he blamed it for the recordings he’d been listening to. Or, perhaps, as though he still found it difficult to believe that he’d heard what he’d been listening to. The kiosk was scarred where previous callers, driven to rage by waiting for the recordings to end, had attacked the receiver and the walls with the seemingly indestructible handset.
‘Your call is important...’ said the familiar female voice, coming back. But before she could continue she was interrupted by another female voice.
‘I’m afraid your time is up. To continue your important call please insert more money.’
Tom stared at the telephone and cursed. He reached into his pocket. It was empty. He slammed down the telephone and hurried back to the house. For the first time in his life he missed the simple, good old days when telephone kiosks had taken ID cards and had been equipped with fingerprint scanners.
Chapter 9
‘You bloody fool!’ snarled Tschotchke, when Tom explained what had happened.
‘How is he?’
Tchotchke looked down and kicked Perovskite with his foot. The Senior Inspector opened his eyes and looked up.
‘Still alive – just’ said Tschotchke, sounding disappointed. He handed Tom two coins. ‘Hurry up!’ he said. ‘And don’t come back without an ambulance.’
Tom headed back for the door.
‘You’re going to pay for this!’ he snarled. ‘I’m going to make sure that you, your aunt and your wife all die.’
‘But they had nothing to do with it!’ protested Tom.
‘They’re guilty by association,’ said the sprout. ‘They can be punished just as easily as you can.’
Tom knew that the sprout was right. Sprouts had enormous power over suspects. Any sprout could arrest a suspect and turn them over to the European Defence and Public Protection Regulatory Force. And suspects’ families were often arrested under the ‘guilty by association’ laws which meant that a suspect who knew, or was closely related to, another suspect could be charged with the full offence.
Moreover, in the world controlled by EUDCE, suspects had no rights. The soulless and the ruthless bullied the helpless and the innocent with impunity. In a clever political move EUDCE commissioners had given all EUDCE suspects American citizenship. This had been promoted as a great achievement, a cause for much celebrating and another step towards world peace and eternal happiness for all. The fact that sprouts were not included in the deal had been widely regarded as a blow to EUDCE employees. It was announced that they had been excluded from this agreement because of their oath of loyalty to the European project. A small group of angry sprouts protested in public but the protests were half-hearted and quickly subsided. It was later suspected that these protests had been orchestrated by EUDCE itself
It was only weeks after the agreement had been signed that the reasoning behind it became apparent. Britain had previously signed an extradition agreement with the USA, enabling the Americans to extradite Britons who had broken American laws, and this treaty had later been expanded to cover the new United States of Europe. The combination of the two treaties meant that since every suspect in Europe was officially also an American citizen and, therefore, subject to American law, any suspect who broke the law in Europe would also be breaking the law in America and liable, therefore, to extradition. The agreement saved EUDCE the cost and trouble of providing lawyers, trials and prisons for suspects. (‘The whole idea of having trials is a calculated insult to our security services,’ one judge had famously announced. ‘Arranging trials implies an unacceptable level of trust in the probity of security staff and, therefore, a lack of faith in the State itself. If the officers employed by the State say that someone is guilty then that should be enough for the State.’)
All suspects who were arrested under this new arrangement (and who were not considered guilty of crimes meriting execution) were transported to one of the African or South American countries with which the USA had made arrangements. Once there, suspects would be held in a state of limbo. They were never tried or convicted and so, since they had never been sentenced, they could never appeal against their sentences.
To have a suspect arrested, charged, sentenced and deported a sprout simply had to fill in a form called a GB746 in which he detailed the suspect’s crime against the State. Sprouts routinely picked out anyone who looked 16 years or older and seemed fairly fit. They drew the line at the frail and the sick. They didn’t send small children. But they’d send 12-year-olds who looked 16. Either sex.
Once at their destination suspects were fitted with sternal implant tracker microchips to ensure that they did not escape (after some suspects had used pieces of razor blade to cut out subdermal implants, the authorities had taken to putting a microchip into each suspect’s sternum, using a gun that looked and worked rather like a staple gun – it was an excruciatingly painful procedure and no anaesthetic was used). And then they were put to work in the fields.
The desperate need for crops (both for food and biofuel), and the shortage of oil for running farm equipment, meant that vast armies of labourers were needed. Land had to be prepared by hand. Seeds had to be sown by hand. Crops had to be harvested by hand. The global water shortage meant that crops had to be tended carefully, by hand, and watered individually to ensure that there was no waste.
Controlled and managed by Monsanto-Goldman-Sachs on behalf of EUDCE, huge areas of Africa had been planted with staple crops such as wheat, com, soya and tobacco. (EUDCE still made huge amounts of money selling tobacco crops to addicted smokers around the world.) These crops needed constant attention. Designated European criminals (those who were suspected and, therefore, convicted of having com
mitted crimes) were the perfect source of long-term labour and a vital replacement for the countless millions of indigent Africans who had died of starvation during the second decade of the 21st century when genetically engineered crops succumbed to a lethal virus and created a supranational famine which had, to no one’s great surprise, impacted least of all on the USA and Europe and most of all on the developing world.
The imported workers lived in small, simple, wooden cabins. They worked half naked, dressed in the remains of the clothes in which they had arrived; they bathed, if they chose to do so, in a tin tub (in water that was changed once a week and which looked like mud within an hour) and they envied those among their number who had the foresight or the good luck to arrive wearing stout shoes or boots. Women who arrived wearing high heels and chose to walk barefoot rarely lasted more than a week. Cut feet turned septic within hours. Workers who fell ill and were unable to work were moved into a hut decorated with a EUDCE flag and a sign describing it as the local ‘EUDCE Hospital’ but there were no beds and no nurses, no doctors and no medicines. A study had shown that new workers were so cheaply ‘recruited’ that there was no financial benefit to be obtained by treating ones who fell sick. Patients (if that is the right word to describe people who are registered to receive medical treatment but not actually receiving any) lay, untreated, in the dark until they died. Every evening two workers would drag out the dead bodies and toss them onto an ever-burning bonfire so that their ashes could be used to fertilise the land. The stench of burning flesh covered the countryside for miles around.
Chapter 10
Tom, who was half way to the front door, ready to run back to the telephone point, stopped and turned back. He knew that the sprout spoke the truth. European law meant that close relatives and associates could be held legally responsible for the actions of those close to them. As in Communist Russia, just being related to a criminal (or, rather, someone accused of a crime against the State, the two not being the same thing in principle but being very much the same thing in practice) was every bit as bad as being a criminal. In that moment Tom made a decision that changed his life, and the lives of many others, for ever. It was a moment that was, much later, to be referred to as the very beginning of the beginning.
Revolt Page 6