Omega

by Bradley Stoke

  Chapter 10

  Keeping in the direction indicated by signs of a silhouetted coach, I made my way to the bus station just by the main road outside the town. Although there were no buses or coaches, there was a reassuring assembly of travellers. I was unable to get past a group of bulls who had converged, stomping and disputing, in front of the bus timetable and so could not decide which bus to take. A small dragon in an official cap and overcoat was standing by a poster promoting holidays in the Illicit Republics. I contemplated approaching him to ask where the buses were heading, but I was somewhat intimidated by the smoke billowing from his nostrils.

  I looked around in some perplexity. Where should I go next? And would I be travelling nearer to or further away from the Truth? I stood on the tip of my toes and scanned the depots in the hope of seeing some helpful signs or indicators. A Gryphon approached me, carrying a newspaper under his claws. “You look lost, young man. Can I be of help?”

  “I was just wondering where the buses went from here.”

  The Gryphon cawed slightly. “Is that all? Well, I can assure you they go to quite a few destinations. And if you are willing to transfer, you will be able to reach any point on the globe you choose. Where is it that you actually want to go?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted with embarrassment.

  “You’re not sure? You must have some idea. It is just not possible for one to have no destination at all. Do you want to go to the Suburbs? To Lambdeth? To the City? To the Country?”

  “Lambdeth sounds a very agreeable destination.”

  “And indeed it is. The great University city of our fair land. The seat of learning and the font of knowledge. Is that where you want to go?”

  “Yes!” I said decisively.

  “Well, let’s have a look at the timetable if our bovine friends will just allow us to squeeze through...” The Gryphon approached the company of bulls, many wearing cheerful straw boaters and scarves, and with a few polite and firm excuse mes, he made his way to the front and gazed up at the timetable finding instruction from its seemingly arcane symbols. He placed a claw on the back of a bullock, with the newspaper headline (Red Victory Likely) prominent. His other claw traced a route across the columns of destinations and times.

  “There’s a bus to Lambdeth Central in just a few minutes from bay number...” his eyes gazed up at the headings, “...bay number Nine. The same bay where my bus is leaving in fact. But a little later than yours, I’m afraid.” He squeezed back out past the broad backs of the bulls. “Now the next thing is to buy a ticket. I trust you have sufficient for the journey. It’ll cost you nine shillings and nine pence.”

  The Gryphon led me along to the ticket office window where another dragon took my two crowns in his claw and hesitated over a groat, before handing me three pennies as change. “Are you sure you only want a single?” he wondered. “The return fare is only a shilling more expensive.”

  “No, that’s fine,” I replied returning with the Gryphon to a bay where the huge number 9 was displayed, but no list of destinations. We sat on the narrow flap-down seats, and the Gryphon unfolded and refolded his newspaper. The headlines tantalised my eyes during this rather fastidious process: Whites Certain to Win Suburbs. Illicit Gains Spider Vote. Blacks Threaten Immigrants. A diverse selection of other passengers were lined up on the plastic seats or stood guard by their luggage. There were a few jocund bullocks; a young woman in a long green overcoat; an elderly dragon with a pitifully thin column of sulphurous smoke trailing from his nostrils; a diprotodon in a dapper three-piece suit; a snowman sweating in the mid-afternoon heat; a turtle in a bonnet with a basket of eggs; and a large black swan.

  “There are quite a few heading to Baldam,” I remarked to the Gryphon.

  He frowned slightly, wagging his large tufted ears. “I’d be very surprised indeed if very many were going to Baldam, however attractive a destination it may be. Most will, like me, be catching the following bus, which is for the City. More people go to and from the City than any other destination, so statistically I would assume so too is the majority of this motley crew.”

  “Do you live in the City?”

  “Goodness no! Although I have been tempted by the pay and availability of work. I’m a teacher, young man. I teach at a school in a town perhaps nine leagues from here. I teach Mathematics and General Science at a Lower Secondary Modern. I have been enticed by the opportunity to teach at a City Grammar School or perhaps even one in Baldam, but my wife and children are happy where they are so relocation is quite unlikely for the moment.”

  “What’s your school like?”

  “A very ordinary school, young man. With a very ordinary syllabus: Latin, Greek, Home Economics, Physical Education, Geography. Not very different, I imagine, from the school you attended.”

  “Perhaps,” I replied, reflecting that none of my teachers had beaks, wings and leonine tails. “I suppose schools are much the same wherever you go...”

  “Well, you’re showing your ignorance there, young man. As a result of the incoherence of the Coition government’s education policies there’s quite a free-for-all of approved syllabi in this nation. Boroughs are at liberty to institute any model of education they wish. In this town, for instance, the children are not so much educated as indoctrinated. And indoctrinated it seems to me in the most appalling nonsense that there ever was. There are boroughs dominated by one or other of the multitude of churches where even such basic facts as the law of evolution, the principle of genetics, the curvature of space and Gödel’s Theorem are denied them. I abhor education which seeks not so much to enlighten as to conceal.”

  The Gryphon snorted his distaste and reorganised his newspaper. Whites May Lose Out to Blacks, I briefly glimpsed. Reds Get The Blues, another headline ambiguously announced.

  “The objectives of education are forever perverted by ideological or religious prejudice. Education isn’t simply to fit students into a mould determined by national or local government. It has the much nobler task of adapting future citizens to an unpredictable future and inculcate values of common decency and virtue without which the realm will degenerate into ignorance and dullness. It is education’s duty to anticipate the changes ahead and ensure that the student has the appropriate grounding in Ancient Latin, Classical Mythology or Euclidean Geometry to confront that future.

  “Undoubtedly, education must also pertain to ethical instruction. Without moral guidance, who is to say what degrees of amorality may pervade in the future? I would hate to see any pupil of mine ignorant of the proper rules of etiquette; lacking appreciation and respect for their elders and betters. I despair of the so-called modern schools in the City which provide not even the minimum of moral guidance, complying with anarchistic doctrines that assert that the pupil’s character is like a flower that blossoms when abandoned to free expression. Such a flower will simply be swamped by weeds and be a very sorry sight indeed.”

  “Aren’t there other reasons for education?” I questioned, finding the Gryphon’s views remarkably similar to those held by teachers in the Suburbs.

  “Yes, indeed,” the Gryphon agreed, thoughtfully scratching the feathers on his chin with a claw. “There is the provision of an educated and skilled workforce. What hope has any society unless it has the army of doctors, lawyers, accountants, clerks, estate agents, teachers and Classics scholars that all societies need?”

  The Gryphon paused to further re-organise his newspaper. He smoothed it flat with a claw so that the half-finished crossword faced upwards. He looked back at me. “Where is it that you come from, young man?”

  “The Suburbs.”

  “I guessed so. People from there are very distinctive. But you don’t find many of them so far away as this. So, why have you left the Suburbs? Are you considering settling down in the fair city of Lambdeth?”

  “No, I’m actually on a quest. A quest for the Truth.”

  “The Truth? You’re not an Illicitist are you?”

  “
No, not at all. I was intent on finding the Truth before I was aware that anyone else was interested.”

  “Is that so? I must say it is a most curious endeavour for someone from the Suburbs to engage in. But as they say, it takes all sorts! Even in the Suburbs there must be some with a penchant for the crazy, the futile and the misguided. My advice to you, young man, is simply to abandon your quest now, take your bus to Lambdeth and, after a short holiday, return to the Suburbs. You will never find the Truth by travelling about the nation by omnibus.”

  “Is it totally futile?” I asked, discomfited by the Gryphon’s apparent common sense.

  “In the way you’re going about it ... frankly, yes!” The Gryphon lowered his eyes to his crossword, hummed softly and then returned his gaze to me. “The Truth, young man, is not a physical thing that you can just go off and look for, whatever these fanatics in this town may say. The Truth is nothing more and nothing less than the accumulated wisdom and knowledge of the ages: exactly what I am paid to impart to my pupils and with which they will carry on the noble tradition of imparting the same wisdom to future generations. The Truth is just a convenient term for the knowledge gathered under such more precise headings as English Literature, Trigonometry, Algebra, Political Geography, Inorganic Chemistry and Religious Education. There is nothing mystical, fantastic or exotic about the Truth. It doesn’t wait for us in a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. It doesn’t live with the fairies at the bottom of the garden (and they have assured me of that!) It is something to be unearthed only after long hours of dedicated study and research, poring over books in libraries, taking notes in lectures and doing the exercises attached to the end of every text book chapter.”

  “Is the Truth really as dull as all that?”

  “It is. It must be. It is prosaic, unexciting and unremarkable.”

  “Is it possible to know all the Truth there is to know?”

  “Of course not. Well not for anyone of your species or mine, although no doubt the boffins are working hard at inventing machines which could store all the knowledge that currently exists and all that may exist in the future. What they would make of such an enormous amount of knowledge, I don’t know. So, if you still seek the Truth, take advantage of your visit to Lambdeth and ensconce yourself in the university library.”

  The Gryphon sighed and looked at the company gathered around the bus station. He discreetly indicated the woman in the green overcoat who was reading a magazine on her lap. “Do you recognise her at all, young man?”

  I scrutinised the woman carefully. She was too engrossed in her magazine to notice that we were watching her. “No, I can’t say I do.”

  “I may be wrong, and I am definitely not an expert on these matters, but I believe she’s a film actress. But what she’s doing here, I don’t know!”

  “A film actress! Are you sure?”

  “Not at all. But if she is the actress I think then she makes her living from displaying her naked body to the prurient and dissolute. An immoral and shameless harlot.”

  “A pornographic actress?”

  “No less! And what more disgusting occupation can there be? Other than prostitution of course. Spreading filth and low morals to the weak minded and the easily led. Totally perverting the moral purpose and æsthetic value of her profession. I have often had to confiscate pornographic material from my pupils and I am certain that her face is one I have seen in magazines about the pornographic film industry. Well, not certain, but the likeness is rather remarkable.”

  “Is that so?”

  Although fairly attractive there was nothing about the way she dressed or behaved that would lead me to suspect this.

  “Pornography is just one thing about modern film and theatre I find impossible to condone. And it is not merely the nature of pornography I find unacceptable, but the way it has demeaned the noble theatrical tradition represented by Shakespeare, the author of Titus Andronicus and The Rape of Lucretia. Theatre should raise the sensibilities of the audience with unambiguous moral messages and refined æstheticism. It is, or should be, an educational tool to supplement the pedagogical tradition in moulding the character.”

  “What are those?”

  “An ability to penetrate the superficialities of the story and action to see the moral truths expressed therein. Without this the audience is merely entertained, and not instructed.”

  “Is that such a very bad thing?”

  “Yes, it is, young man!” The Gryphon insisted, indicating a poster for a film, Georgia Brown and the City of the Undead, amongst the political propaganda. “Films like that, promising nothing more than sex, violence and action, beget a culturally illiterate population, who believe life is nothing more than a sequence of events lacking moral significance and in which the most disgusting and unwholesome activities are routine. It trades on being entertainment, when in truth it is a perversion of even that term. How can it be entertainment when it features violence, death, sexual perversion, crime and gross horror?”

  “Perhaps the film isn’t aspiring to be art.”

  “Only film and theatre aspiring to art is ever worth making. And if it fails to achieve any artistic value, it should not have been made at all. I cannot accept that any creative endeavour should aspire to merely divert. That is such a sad waste of effort.”

  At that moment, a double-decker bus pulled into the bay with the words Lambdeth Central prominently displayed above the driver’s cabin. The doors of the bus opened with an exhalation of air and several people disembarked. Then, after bidding farewell to the Gryphon who continued to wait for his own bus, I queued up behind a couple of bullocks in straw hats who were being escorted in by a diminutive dragon in an official uniform. Once they had filed down to the front of the lower deck, I entered the bus and climbed up to the totally empty upper deck. I walked down the aisle to sit at the front, shaded by the tinted green glass of the windows, and stretched out my legs.

  While waiting for the bus to stir and gazing at the Gryphon reading his newspaper, I heard another person clamber up the stairs and stumble down the aisle. I turned my head round to see who it was and saw the woman in the green overcoat the Gryphon had been discussing. She smiled at me, and slumped in the seat across the aisle from me.

  “Are you off to Lambdeth Central too?” she asked, crossing her long legs demurely.

  “Yes, I am. I’ve never been there before.”

  “No? Well there’s a first time for everything.” She shook the blonde hair that flowed onto her shoulders and ran her fingers through it from her temples. “Did I hear you and your Gryphon friend talking about me at the bus stop?”

  I blushed slightly. “Yes. He thought you were a film actress...”

  “...And a pornographic one at that, too, I suppose? Well, your friend is right, I’m afraid. I am an actress. And a good living it is too! I gathered also from what I heard your friend was saying (so loudly and clearly!) that he believes film and theatre is all about art and education. He seems to think that it can never be entertainment.”

  “I think he was saying something like that.”

  “How amusing. I suppose that all of life is some kind of school lesson? How jolly dull! Why can’t things just be fun? Why can’t we do something just because it’s enjoyable? If we only ever do something because we think it’s good for us or because we might learn something from it, it merely debases life, which must contain an element of fun in it.”

  “I think the Gryphon was also saying that film and theatre shouldn’t just entertain...”

  “He did, did he?” mused the Actress as the bus’s quietly purring engine changed its tone and the bus moved slowly out of the depot. It curved and cornered onto the main road, leaving behind Bay Number 9, where another bus was manoeuvring in. It sped along black tarmac past fields of cattle, wheat and barley, demarcated by tall trees with white-painted trunks which filed past with the same regularity as the white markings in the centre of the road.

  “Your Gryphon friend
has a point, though,” admitted the Actress. “Whether films or plays aspire to be art or entertainment is irrelevant, they will always inculcate values into the audience. It is the task of those involved in their production, in whatever capacity, to be aware of these values however deeply hidden they may be. It is quite simply everyone’s moral and political duty to ensure not only that their principles are not compromised, but that they are furthered in whatever work they do.”

  “Are you saying that films should be like propaganda?”

  “Intentionally or not all films, all art and all creative enterprises are propaganda. They reinforce the cultural and social structures which led to their creation. It is an inevitable and inescapable aspect of everything one does. In my performances I always try to further my views on the rights of women; the struggle of the working classes; the value and vulnerability of the environment; and the self-determination of all species. It may have to be done subtly in the context of the rôles I play, within the constraints of the script and the athleticism and pathos the part demands. But it is there nonetheless.”

  “So you do believe that film is a kind of propaganda.”

  “In a way. But only insofar that film cannot avoid being so. And usually the message generated is really nothing more than a restatement of the comforting status quo, reinforcing the principles of the film financiers and the target audience.”

  The Actress smiled disarmingly and laid down a copy of her magazine, The Struggle, the cover of which featured a picture of a figure huddled in a blanket in the entrance to a shop with the words Homeless and Hungry! scrawled on a piece of cardboard. “I’m sorry to go on like this. I just get so jolly fed up when I hear people like your Gryphon friend going on about things he really doesn’t know anything about. But on a different note: who have you voted for in the General Election?”

  “I haven’t voted for anyone,” I had to admit. “The General Election wasn’t very well advertised in the Suburbs.”

  “Typical White Party indecisiveness, I imagine. And if that’s where you come from, and judging from the way you dress I can’t imagine it being anywhere else, there isn’t much point in voting for anything other than White or Blue unless you want to waste your vote. Parties like the Reds and the Greens don’t have the smallest chance there.”

  “No, they don’t.” I agreed. “Nobody in the Suburbs votes for either of them.”

  “Not like the City or Baldam where the Red Party almost always triumphs. I imagine people in the Suburbs simply agree with the general misrepresentation of the Red Party: that they will immediately shut down the Stock Exchange, nationalise all industries, depose Her Maphrodite and instantly impose punitive taxation on the rich.”

  “Isn’t that just exactly what the Red Party wants to do?”

  “All socialists, including me, would like to see the capitalist system replaced by a fairer system which focuses on the needs of the poor and the most disadvantaged, rather than perpetuate the injustices which make such a misery of the lives of those least able to defend themselves. All socialists are affronted by a system of patronage which permits wealth to be amassed by those like Her Maphrodite who have gained it entirely by virtue of birth. All socialists want a more equable distribution of wealth and power. But the Red Party represents a very broad amalgamation of socialist, communist, anarcho-syndicalist and social democratic interests, and although individual comrades may have opinions and views much more radical than others, the Party is committed to a gradualist reformist policy. It would not do in a society as complex and integrated as ours to make changes that are too sudden and too radical. Experience has shown that the immediate satisfaction it might give to the more far left members of the party is more than outweighed by the distrust and lack of co-operation it engenders in society as a whole. And a true socialist utopia cannot be achieved without the full approval and commitment of all members of society.”

  “Are those your views?”

  “If they are the views of the political bureau of the Red Party then as a comrade in the struggle towards a fair and just society they will be my views as well. The Red Party will not gain power if it does not present a unified and coherent front, attractive to all factions of the working class and unlikely to alienate too large a proportion of the bourgeoisie. Once in power, it will not hold onto it for very long if it does not consolidate its support. Otherwise, the socialist revolution is lost before it has even begun.”

  The Actress studied me carefully. “I know that you’re unlikely to vote for the Red Party. It would be incredible that anyone from the Suburbs would vote for the relief of poverty and prejudice they have never witnessed and will never suffer from. So, what are you doing here on a bus to Lambdeth so many leagues from the Suburbs? Why haven’t you stayed behind and voted in the General Election?”

  “I’m on a quest for the Truth.”

  The Actress raised her eyebrows in surprise. “That’s a jolly odd thing for someone from the Suburbs to be doing! The Truth! Flipping heck! It must be a jolly fashionable thing to do these days. These flipping Illicitists are searching for it I believe. Are you in the Illicit Party?”

  “Not at all. I just think it’s a worthwhile thing to do.”

  The Actress smiled wanly. She leaned forward, her overcoat opening to reveal a plunging neckline and a pearl necklace. “I really don’t agree with you. The search for the Truth is diversionary and counter-productive. And anyway, I just don’t believe it can ever be found.”

  “Surely if it exists, it can be found.”

  “Even if that were true, I would like to know how anyone could ever be sure that what they’d found was actually the Truth. How can you be sure that it is not something that merely looks like the blooming Truth, walks like the Truth but is merely masquerading as the Truth? And even if one could be sure, even if it could be verified as the Truth by some expert, or had a label attached to it reading The Truth, The Universe and Everything, or if the certainty of the Truth was intrinsic in its own discovery, what then? What do you do with it? Is it going to feed people? Or house them? Or solve all the terrible problems of war, pestilence, plague and famine that trouble the world?

  “If the Truth exists, it’s always been there, and doesn’t need to be found to alleviate the world’s ills. In fact, if the Truth were ever found, by you or anyone else, it would become just yet another expensive luxury stored at colossal expense in a museum or research institute, further diverting attention from the needs of the underprivileged, the underdeveloped and the undernourished. Even the search for it merely diverts valuable resources away from where they are needed. Surely, it is better to sort out all that which is wrong in this world before leaping ahead and looking for things of interest only to philosophers, scientists and academics.”

  “You don’t believe that my quest is at all worthwhile.”

  The Actress laughed kindly. “I don’t wish to down-hearten you too much. You do exactly what you like. You’re only one individual, and what you do isn’t really going to change very much. Even if you do find the Truth, which I frankly doubt. However, if you think that you’re going to find it in Lambdeth Central, you’d better steel yourself as I believe it’s just coming up!”

  I looked out of the window and noticed that the bus was no longer speeding along past fields or forests, but along a series of raised roadways around which were tall buildings and warehouses. The view was dominated by enormous hoardings, neon-lit product names, traffic lights soaring above and road signs. The roar of the bus’s engine was partly obscured by that of other traffic passing above it, below it, and on either side. Then, sure enough, the bus turned off the main motorway, descended down and around a loop of roads, through a tunnel illuminated by the message Lambdeth Central Welcomes Careful Drivers and finally drew to a halt at a bus station attached to a much larger railway station.

  The buildings all around were constructed of plastic, steel, glass and concrete. People swarmed around escalators, elevators, robots, blinking li
ghts and small trucks. “So, here we are!” announced the Actress, standing up. “It’s been jolly nice meeting you. I’m off to the City now, but I hope you enjoy your stay in Lambdeth. I warn you though. It may be a pleasant sort of place, but it’s no utopia!”