by Tony Moyle
“Hello. How did you get in here?” said Violet, like a caring pet owner exchanging unanswered small talk with a beloved animal.
“Violet, am I glad to see you,” replied the disorientated pigeon, believing the question was his to answer.
In Violet’s world of black and white, this fitted squarely into the black section. This was bad news for Ian as her immediate reaction was to fight. Picking up the nearest object she started beating uncontrollably in the direction of the pigeon. The hardback book thumped at the bed hysterically as if someone afraid of spiders had just awoken to find that a group of arachnids were performing a Morris dance on their faces. Amidst the screams and thwack of book on furniture, Ian managed to retreat before his face was a permanent feature of Al Gore’s autobiography.
“What witchcraft or sinister plot is this?” shouted Violet, throwing the book at the door frame where Ian had briefly settled to catch his breath.
Thinking quickly was not on the shortlist of Ian’s attributes and it wasn’t going to suddenly appear from nowhere. Fortunately for Ian, this was the point where fate put in a very welcomed appearance. Unannounced, a man burst through the door, narrowly avoiding another book that had been flung through the air.
“Violet, there’s someone at the front door,” said the man hesitantly.
“Who? Everyone we know is here for the meeting?” replied Violet, only half-taking her gaze away from the pigeon.
“We’re not certain who he is, but he has the right codes and his voice recognition is in our records.”
“Well, whose voice is it?”
“I don’t quite believe it, Violet, but its John Hewson’s.”
- CHAPTER NINETEEN -
AN UNEXPECTED VOICE
As they stood in the doorway of Number 12, Blackhorse Way, the lack of activity in this unnaturally quiet road did nothing to quash John’s anxiety. The only noise was the faint rumble of cars and buses trundling along the main road in the distance. John knew this was going to be one of the most difficult jobs that he’d faced so far. Not only did he have to get inside, he also had to explain how he’d done it. In front of him on the right-hand side of the door was a screen, keypad and speaker.
“Nash, I need to take a front seat on this if we’re going to get in.”
“Okay, John, I think that might be safer for both of us,” replied Nash, who relaxed his mind and felt John seep across his body.
John opened the piece of paper from Nash’s wallet to remind himself of the numbers, knowing that he’d only have one chance before the code randomly reset itself. He pressed each number until 1593-22 shone in LED brilliance. Then he waited. The intercom buzzed and the screen illuminated to show Nash’s grainy outline against the moonlight. John tentatively pressed the button to answer the ringing and a male voice answered from inside the building.
“Declare yourself.”
“It’s John Hewson,” he replied, concentrating all of his efforts on Nash’s vocal cords. John was aware that when he took control of Nash’s body he sounded different. But he didn’t know if he sounded enough like himself to trick the system.
“Stand by for confirmation,” the man’s voice replied.
John stood on the doorstep waiting for approval like a new boyfriend meeting his girlfriend’s parents for the first time, blood pressure slowly rising in anticipation of the outcome and his potential need to flee. The people inside these walls didn’t take kindly to imposters and they wouldn’t allow them to walk away unscathed. That was before he thought about being seen on this side of the doorway by the authorities who were already following him. This door wasn’t just a barrier between two spaces, it was a portal from one dangerous situation to another. Inside the security room, Violet had just sprinted in to see what she suspected to be a hoax or some bizarre technical error.
“Let me see him,” she croaked.
It had been some years since she had last seen John Hewson, so undoubtedly his features would have changed. Although he was barely an adult back then, even in the limited light and the poor-quality black and white CCTV image, she was fairly sure that this wasn’t him.
“Show me the voice pattern.”
The man responsible for security pointed to another screen where two wavelengths, one blue and one red, danced across it. They were almost identically matched on top of each other.
“There’s no doubt, Violet, that it’s John’s voice. These things are accurate to one person in one hundred thousand.”
“Don’t underestimate the power of one.”
“Do you want me to let him in?”
“What I want to know is why you’re telling me that there’s a dead man standing on my doorstep? It must be some trick?”
“Maybe he’s not dead,” replied the man. “People fake their own deaths all the time.”
“Some do, although I don’t think this person had the talent for it. Whoever he is, what’s important now is how he got the code to come here tonight,” replied Violet.
John was contemplating legging it. They must have caught him out and were now planning exactly what nastiness they were going to inflict on him.
“OK, let him in. Let’s find out who he is. I want you to take him into the main meeting. I’ll listen in for a while and then join you for my speech once I have managed to sort out my strange little intruder,” she announced as she left the room in a blur.
The unexpected appearance of John’s voice at the front door seemed to have calmed Violet down to the fact that she had discovered a talking pigeon in her bedroom. The distraction had also given Ian some valuable thinking time.
“John, sorry for the delay. Your voice record is rather old. I’ll open the door.”
John helped Nash exhale his relief.
Other than having a dimly lit quality, the hallway of this typically Georgian building had been beautifully kept throughout. In front of them a staircase engorged the centre of the room, turning to the left and the right as it reached the first floor and on into unseen places. In the centre of the ceiling a magnificent chandelier, decorated around its base with rings of red and blue crystal glass cascaded down to a great orb that hung like a silver moon in silent orbit. The security man didn’t direct them up in the direction of the staircase, but rather down to the right where a less impressive staircase led down into the basement. John approached them nervously.
“The meeting will start in about twenty minutes,” said the man, as he pointed them towards the stairs. “You’ll find a number of people already down there so grab a cup of tea and make yourself comfortable.”
John edged carefully down the narrow steps into an area that was even gloomier than the one they had come from. At the bottom there was none of the elegance that they had witnessed upstairs. This was what first-time homeowners referred to as basic. The bowels of the house had been completely stripped out to create a huge, sprawling open-plan cellar. Pillars at regular intervals were the last remnants of the walls that would have previously separated this vast chamber into small basement rooms.
The cellar itself was about forty metres long by about twenty metres wide, and housed a crudely built stage across the width of one end. The venue wouldn’t have been out of place in the low-quality end of the Edinburgh Fringe. In rows facing the stage dozens of chairs dominated the floor space and at least half were already occupied.
Considering that there were about fifty people in the room, it lacked the volume level that John would have expected. Most of the people were sitting quietly, deep in their own thoughts. A few had huddled in small groups of three or four, whispering between swigs of tea from beaten-up china mugs. They were an interesting mix of people. If most people were asked to describe a bunch of animal welfare protestors, then they’d have pictured the same type of person. They’d be wrong. Here sat men in suits, well-dressed old-age pensioners, students, muscly builders, and some that you might describe as traditional ‘crusties’.
John made his way to one of the back row seats where
a man sat with his feet up against the row of chairs in front of him. Almost completely covered by a long, dark trench coat, his trilby hat was tipped forward to cover his eyes from view. John thought for a moment that he was asleep so, not wanting to disturb him, sat in the row behind a few seats to the right.
“Excited about the speech?” came a stony voice from the row in front, where the man quite unnaturally made no attempt to turn to speak with him.
“Yes,” replied John, unmotivated to offer more than the very minimum of responses.
“I’ve not seen you at this meeting before. New to this, are you?”
“First one for a long time. What’s your name, maybe I know you from then?” asked John, suspicious of this dark stranger’s inquisition.
“I doubt that. I understand that Violet might have some rather interesting news for us tonight. Apparently we might find out what happened to Sandy.”
“Really,” replied John impassively.
“What’s your guess, then? What do you think happened to him?”
This was a strange question to someone who had just indicated that they had not been involved for a long time.
“No idea,” John lied, in a tone that would tell anyone the conversation was over.
“Oh, so you do know who he is, then?”
“Well, um, I didn’t say that, did I?”
“But you implied it,” said the stranger.
“No I didn’t,” huffed John.
“What does he look like?”
“What’s that got to do with the price of fish?”
“It just seems odd that few of these people here,” he waved his hand in the general direction of the others, “ever saw him in the flesh, that’s all. I find it quite interesting that there was a man so influential in this organisation that almost no one ever saw him. It’s funny, he could walk in the room and no one would know it was him.”
*****
Gently, Violet pushed open the door of her bedroom, peeking around the side in search of her guest. In her absence, Ian had spent the time wisely. After catching his breath he’d taken up position at the highest point he found, the ceiling light. Fortunately, like all the others in the house, it had been turned off for some time, avoiding any potential singeing of tail feathers. Violet stared around the room clutching a metal fire poker she’d picked up en route.
“Violet, you must listen to me. I know it’s hard to believe but I am Ian Noble. What’s more, Sandy is also a pigeon,” said Ian, not sure where to start and sure that it wouldn’t matter, given the absurdity of the message.
“Where are you, creature of Satan?” said Violet, spinning around to locate its voice, brandishing the poker in front of her.
“Look, I know it’s hard to take in, believe me, I’m still doing that myself. Let me prove it to you.”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Just before Sandy died he left you a message warning you about a weapon that the government was making at Tavistock. Think, how else could I know this?”
“You couldn’t know that. I’m going mad, tell me I am?” She finally looked up at the white bird sitting on the edge of a lampshade.
“You’re not going mad. We need your help, Violet. We don’t know how to get out of this. We think it has something to do with Emorfed.”
“That’s the name of the compound that Sandy talked about in his message,” said Violet. “I’ve only given that information to one other person. It really is you. But it can’t be.”
“You must believe me. There’s much more that you need to know. Sandy has told me all that he remembers.”
“So why isn’t he here?”
“Too risky, you know what they’d give to get their hands on him,” cooed Ian from his perch. “You need to warn the others, mobilise them against it or this country might never be the same again.”
*****
The basement room was almost full. Only a couple of empty seats were dotted amongst the crowd. Over the last five minutes the volume had gradually faded in anticipation that the meeting was about to start. Out of a side door next to the platform, Violet Stokes burst in with a renewed sense of determination. She didn’t look much different from what John remembered of her, even though many years had passed since their last meeting. Her dark hair was still matted and in desperate need of a wash. The worn and tatty recycled clothing was still a central feature of her appearance. The biggest difference was not how she appeared but how she acted.
John’s outstanding memory was how her behaviour was always calm, at least amongst her own people. Just like making a successful complaint to a business, the best emotion is calm and that’s how she approached her colleagues. Out on a protest march it was quite different. There she would outshout a town crier. Right now, as she shuffled her notes ready to address the crowd, her face was drawn and her body visibly twitched with anger.
“Friends, welcome to the quarterly meeting of Justice for Animals, Whatever Species, and as always thank you for being here. Never before has the name of our organisation been more appropriate than it is today. In the years that I have been a part of it there was one species that I never thought would need justice, one species that would never need our help. Today I have a very important campaign that I need all of you to commit to with the utmost sense of energy and urgency. This season we will be saving mankind, for it is our own species that is most at risk.”
A surprised gasp went up around the room. People bickered and gossiped amongst themselves. Violet wasn’t one for jokes. Behind her back it was once commented that she had the sense of humour of an organic chemist whose hobby was the history of motorways. This couldn’t possibly be a joke. If it was, then her body language certainly wasn’t letting on. There was only one person that didn’t react in the way the congregation had. The man with the black hat in the row in front of John remained motionless. Even John was taken aback by the announcement. After all, he’d only come here to find Sandy and Ian, he didn’t really have any interest in J.A.W.S., its campaigns or its objectives anymore.
“Quieten down, people,” shouted Violet, uncharacteristically.
The group regained their composure.
“As some of you may know, Sandy Logan, one of our biggest contributors, has not been seen or heard from for some months. Until tonight, I had believed him to be dead. I believed this because he called me on the night of the Tavistock bombing to warn me about something that was hidden there. At the time the information he gave me was limited and I repeatedly attempted to contact him through the usual means. I gave the details to a reporter who investigated his accusations. It was through this journalist that I learnt that Sandy and Ian Noble had been killed in the Tavistock blast. This information was only partly true. Indeed they were in the blast, but they were not completely killed.”
Violet had carefully chosen that last sentence to create the most ambiguity but the smallest amount of comment. The congregation started to mutter again but were cut off before they got into their stride.
“In fact, Ian Noble is here with me tonight and has given me the full and terrible picture that threatens our very way of life. The government has created a drug called Emorfed, which has a number of effects when taken. Primarily it permanently removes all human addiction, but in doing so has the side effect of quashing the human spirit. It redirects our desires, cravings, instincts and behaviours to a utopian model designed by the government itself. It’s been designed to suppress mankind to act as model citizens. You’ve heard of genetic engineering, well, welcome to a world of spiritual engineering.”
John was dumbfounded. How could any government go to such lengths to keep control of its people? This was misuse of power on an unprecedented scale, dictatorship by prescription. John considered what this drug would do to a human’s soul. It appeared to John that with Emorfed, every single soul would turn out to be neutral. No one would be doing anything wrong, but likewise no one would have the inclination to help one another. They’d be like robots.
Having been to Limbo as a neutral soul, he didn’t wish that on anyone, particularly as the decisions made there were by anyone’s standards a little dubious. What was the point in him saving humanity, if humanity didn’t end up being human at all? This news had even distracted him away from the news that should have made him dance in the aisles. Ian was here. All he had to do was to seek him out and half of the job would be done.
“Okay, I don’t need to tell you the severity of this situation. I want you all to stop your current activities and follow a new strategy. This will be like nothing we have ever been involved with before. We can’t merely campaign as we have done in the past, we will need to act in total secrecy. If this is to be stopped we need to infiltrate the very heart of government. Ian and I have talked through a plan and each of you will play your part. Jenkins, give me the attendees list.”
She snapped her fingers at a spotty kid, standing unnoticed to her left, quickly passed her a clipboard, and hurried back out of sight. Violet’s fingers tiptoed down the list, both counting the numbers and observing the names. Sporadically she would pick someone out and shout an action.
“Fletcher Conrad, I need you to talk to your contacts at Defra. Find out what they know about this…Sally Palmer, I need you to take a couple of your group down to the Tavistock site and stake it out. I want to know what goods come out and where they go…”
After six people had been given their duties she called out a name without appreciating its significance.
“Sandy Logan…” She paused. “Jenkins, come here, you snivelling little git. All I asked you to do was the bloody register.”
Jenkins cowered over to Violet.
“It’s not a mistake, Mrs. Stokes. He came through the front door with all the checks, I remember it.”
“So, where is he, then?” whispered Violet sceptically, pretending to look around the faces in the crowd.
