by Heide Goody
They scrambled to find Aisling paper and pens. For an office, it wasn’t all that well stocked with stationery, Michael noted. Todor retrieved a folder from a high desk. It was a ring binder containing many pages of dense text and figures, printed single-sided. Todor handed a page out to everyone so they could jot down ideas to help Aisling. He also handed round a selection of herbal liqueurs that he’d picked up from their shopping trip the day before.
“To assist the creative process. It is made by monks!” he said. “Very healthy.”
It was silent for a few minutes until Aisling made a small crowing noise. “Would you believe now that super collider rhymes with health care provider?”
Michael stared at her, confused. “How does that help? Anyway, it’s the large hadron collider not the super collider.”
“Sure, I know that,” said Aisling. “But I’m thinking of the song. Super collider sounds like a pop song. Like Abba’s Super Trouper, yeah? Trust me, we call it that and we’ve got ourselves a winner.”
“I follow your logic,” conceded Michael. “However I feel compelled to point out that any song containing the lines health care provider sounds like a loser to me.”
“Ah, maybe you’re right,” said Aisling, scribbling ever faster, covering the page.
“Does it have to rhyme?” asked Ibolya. Michael leaned over to look at her page. She’d written supercollider at the top and then followed it with spider? cider?
“Well now,” said Aisling, looking at the ceiling to frame what she was about to say. “It’s generally better if the bulk of the song is formed of rhyming couplets. A simple jaunty rhythm will generally follow on from there. What can work quite well though is if we have a bursting crescendo about two thirds through. You know the sort of thing. The act will be crouching down and jump up going Ohhhhhh! Now that’ll be your moment for a witty standalone line, if you have one. Do you have one?”
“No, just asking,” said Ibolya, vigorously crossing out her efforts. “Perhaps I will practise my yodelling. I assume the song will feature yodelling? It was, after all, the main feature of my hit single, Bang Bang my Boom Boom.”
“There will be no yodelling,” said Aisling. “It’s a novelty too far, I’m afraid.”
“How can you dismiss yodelling as a novelty?” spat Ibolya, slamming down her paper. She stood up and flounced away from the group.
“Fine,” said Aisling. “We’ll open with a little low-key yodel. How would that be?”
“Don’t patronise me!” snarled Ibolya, bringing her hand down hard on the console beside her. Everyone jumped as a mechanism whirred into life and a trapdoor slid open in the floor.
“Er, is there a label on that button you just pressed, Ibolya?” asked Michael. He had seen too many James Bond movies to know good news rarely followed an automated trap door.
“It says emergency access LHC,” said Stefan.
“Supercool!” yelled Heinz and scurried down a metal ladder.
Michael peered into the gloom. He decided he’d kick himself if he didn’t take a look. Aisling was already descending; Stefan following close behind.
Michael looked at the others. Ibolya and Todor pulled a face at the prospect, but they joined him anyway.
Michael checked the control panel. Where Ibolya had hit the button there was another next to it that said lights. He pressed it, and a chorus of grateful exclamations came up from the hole. He stepped onto the ladder and followed Stefan down into a steel-lined shaft. At the bottom he was disappointed that the famous large hadron collider wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Instead it was some sort of equipment room, with protective clothing lining the walls, and a small fleet of electric vehicles plugged into charging points. The others had wasted no time in unhooking three of these and were gleefully manoeuvring them around to face a tunnel leading off the room. Michael hopped in one with Aisling before she could pull away. They sped down the tunnel until it opened out into a much larger space.
“It is the large hadron collider!” said Michael, looking in awe at the famous curved tunnel. “Drive carefully everyone!” He was conscious the others were still swigging from bottles of Todor’s dubious herbal spirit as they bowled along in the little buggies. There were complicated bits of tubing and wire all over the place, most of which did not look impact proof.
“Hey we should get some footage of us in here,” shouted Heinz. “A little bit like the classic band shot where they drive over the sand dunes in beach buggies, yeah?”
They arranged the buggies in a neat procession. Michael climbed out of Aisling’s and videoed them zooming playfully around the curve of the tunnel.
“I’m going right round,” yelled Aisling. “I’ll see you in a minute!” She disappeared around the bend.
“How long did you say this tunnel was?” asked Michael.
“Twenty seven kilometres,” said Stefan.
“I don’t know how long the battery lasts on these things, but I think she’ll be gone for a while.”
“So let’s go back up top and work on the dance routine,” said Heinz.
“How can we have a dance routine until the song is finished?” Michael asked. “Surely it will need to fit in with the song?”
“We can fine tune when Aisling’s done,” said Heinz, “but I think we can make a few basic assumptions about what the song’s likely to have in it. What do you reckon, everyone?” he addressed the group. Stefan raised a hand.
“It will involve going round?” he ventured.
“No need to raise your hand, Stefan, we’re not at school now. Anyway, well done, yes! Ibolya?”
“It will involve a bursting crescendo,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
“Very likely!” said Heinz. “Come on everyone, let’s go and make beautiful art with our bodies!”
Reno, Nevada
The secret service agents who had arrested Clovenhoof made him wait into the small hours in a small windowless room where the table and chairs were bolted to the floor. Clovenhoof spent the first few minutes pulling faces at the mirror that he knew from his movies would be one-way glass but there was little fun in making faces if you didn’t know someone was looking.
Eventually, one of the Reservoir Dog-a-like agents, a big beefy fellow, came in and sat opposite Clovenhoof. He put Clovenhoof’s Toblerone on the table, half of it now crushed to dust by the many feet which had also trodden Clovenhoof into the convention hall floor.
“I don’t suppose you’ve also got the rolls of cash I had in my pocket, have you?” said Clovenhoof.
“What is this?” said the Dog.
“It used to be my favourite mountain-shaped chocolate bar.”
“And why were you threatening Donald Trump with it?”
“Threatening? My good man, I was merely using it to illustrate the dire situation we are all currently in.”
“Right.” The Dog put a plastic pocket on the table containing the much crumpled Apocalypse Bingo sheet. “The Trump of Doom will sound in victory, one week after All Hallows’ Day.”
“Exactly,” said Clovenhoof.
The Dog tapped the sheet. “This is stupid, sir.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“What you did was very dangerous.”
Clovenhoof automatically touched one of the bruises that had blossomed on his cheek and winced.
“You got off lightly compared to the other guy,” said the Dog.
“What other guy?”
“The guy with the Republicans Against Trump sign next to you. He says he doesn’t know you. He’s lucky some of those passionate types didn’t lynch him.”
“Passionate. Yeah,” said Clovenhoof, touching his bruise again and wincing once more.
“He’s lucky a police officer or agent didn’t shoot him.”
“Tell me something,” said Clovenhoof.
“What?” said the Dog.
“You’re trained to protect the president or, you know, those who want to be president.”
&n
bsp; “That is correct.”
“Would you leap in front of Trump and take a bullet if someone came at him with a gun.”
“Yes, I would,” said the Dog without any hesitation.
“You believe in him. You believe he’s the answer to America’s problems.”
The secret service agent smiled. He actually seemed like an easy-going fellow. If he was a Reservoir Dog, he’d be a Reservoir St Bernards.
“I’m a Democrat, sir,” he said.
“But…”
“I believe in democracy. Donald J Trump might or might not be the biggest asswipe who ever stood for office. I can neither confirm nor deny. But he’s standing for office and I don’t care what he’s said or what anyone else has said, you don’t change things with violence, with a bullet. Not for the better, anyway.” The Dog stood up. “This way, sir.”
“Is this where you take me outside, shoot me and bury me in the desert?”
“There’s no law against being a kook armed with a candy bar.”
He led Clovenhoof out through the corridors of whatever grey and soulless municipal building they were in and to the front doors.
“Leave Reno, sir,” said the Dog. “Please.”
“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” said Clovenhoof. “And like that … poof … he was gone.”
“We’re letting you go,” said the secret service agent. “You are not Keyser Soze.”
“And like that – poof! – he was gone,” Clovenhoof insisted dramatically. He banged his nose trying to get out of a locked emergency exit. Grinning sheepishly, he worked his way to the automatic sliding doors and out into the early morning gloom.
CERN, Switzerland
The dance class was a great idea, Michael decided. Heinz had rigged up the building’s sound system to play pop tunes, and coached them all on some basic steps. It was immediately obvious Todor had a real problem remembering which was his left and which was his right. Ibolya used her lipstick to write an L and an R on his shoes to help him remember.
“You need to relax, Stefan!” called Heinz. “You look as if you’re on a burning bridge above a vat of boiling oil! Loosen those shoulders! Own the stage, my man!”
Ibolya was adept at the routine, but Heinz complained at her habitually stomping her feet. “On your toes, Ibolya, on your toes!”
Michael enjoyed the step-two-three-thrust-and-kick routine. It was a pleasing type of discipline. He pulled out his phone and took a brief selfie of himself doing the thrusting motion. He’d send it to Andy later.
Heinz introduced a spin to the routine. He explained how stunning they would look, as they circled around the stage mimicking the large hadron collider. He ignored the complaints about dizziness, saying they would soon get used to it.
“Todor, step to the left on my third count. One, two three. No, the other left! Oh God, the trapdoor!”
Todor’s uncoordinated staggering took him to the open trapdoor and he stepped back into the void.
Michael gasped. How far down was the shaft? A hundred metres? He’d never survive the fall!
Todor’s foot stepped on something – on nothing. There was an “Ow!” from below the hatch. Todor stumbled away, miraculously saved from death. Aisling emerged from the trapdoor, rubbing the top of her head.
“Bloody great eejit!” she grumbled. “Hey, did you know it’s a really feckin’ long way around that tunnel?”
Reno, Nevada
Clovenhoof knew he was running out of time. The election was in two days’ time, he’d not been to the toilet in five, he had no cash or credit card, and Trump, despite all Clovenhoof’s efforts, was neither discredited nor dissuaded. The polls still put Clinton miles ahead but Clovenhoof didn’t trust either pollsters or the voting public to do the right thing.
At Reno-Taho Airport, after Clovenhoof confirmed that he couldn’t get a flight for the four dollars and sixty five cents he had in his pocket, Clovenhoof made a phone call.
“Mason, I’m coming back to Florida.”
“That’s great, bro,” yawned the Miami taxi driver. “How’s Reno?”
“Hot. Deserty. I ate a lot of prawns, threw up and got my ass kicked by some Republicans.”
“Sounds like Reno,” Mason agreed. “When can we expect you?”
“I don’t know,” said Clovenhoof. “How soon can you get here?”
Mason laughed even though he knew Clovenhoof wasn’t joking. “Good one, bro. What you need to do is get a flight.”
“I can’t.”
“Then you’ll have to do it cross-country. Car, coach. Beg, borrow, steal. I’m sure you’ll manage it. We’ll have boat drinks when you get here.” Mason hung up.
CERN, Switzerland
As Michael closed the trapdoor, Ibolya comforted Todor, who was muttering darkly about the dangers of trying to tame his wild spirit.
“I know my love,” she cooed, handing him a tomato. “Your unruly, passionate nature is a blessing and also a curse.”
“I had a thought about the song while I was going the long way round,” announced Aisling. They all looked at her expectantly. “Right, so. Now I wouldn’t normally advocate this sort of thing, but time is tight, so maybe we need a shortcut. Who here remembers a song from the early eighties called Torpedoes? It was by a band called Havana Let’s Go, if that helps?”
They all gazed back at her with an assortment of blank faces and shrugs.
“You don’t remember it!” crowed Aisling. “Well let me tell you, it was a lovely little pop song. Perfectly crafted. The reason it got nowhere was Margaret Thatcher made the BBC stop playing it during the Falklands war. Well that’s the rumour anyway. The point is, nobody remembers it. So I was thinking we take the song and adapt it for our purposes. I’m thinking we call it Neutrinos. Cool, huh? It will go like this:
“Neutrinos! Neutrinos!
“How I long to see you.”
Michael waved his hands. She stopped, mid-flow. “Wait, wait, wait. Don’t the rules of Eurovision say that the song must be original?”
“Sure, now,” said Aisling “And the song will be original. Maybe somewhat derivative of Torpedoes, but nobody will know.”
“I’ll know,” said Michael tapping his chest. “I couldn’t possibly support an idea like that. We can’t unite Europe based on a lie!”
“But it’s fine to unite Europe by stealing a coach, blackmailing a receptionist with pornography and mucking about with one of the world’s most expensive scientific projects?” Aisling pulled a face. She huffed. “Grand. Well I need some sleep if I’m to come up with an amazing new song. I’m turning in for the night.” She dragged a sleeping bag and bottle of Todor’s dubious liqueur into a corner and curled up with her back to the rest of them.
“I believe that story about Margaret Thatcher,” said Ibolya, taking a large layer cake from a carrier bag and sharing it out. “I’m afraid your country has always been a little bit crazy. Why else would they want to leave Europe? See this cake? It is of the sort that you can buy across many countries in Europe. Obviously the Hungarian Dobostorta is superior in every way, but Austria, Switzerland, Italy all have something similar. It is a delicate thing, made with skill and care. I went once to London, and asked in a bakery what cakes they had for sale. The thing they sold me was a stale bun with icing and a cherry on the top. Appalling!”
“There is good food to be found in England,” said Michael defensively, “Although I know our reputation is not built upon it. It’s the first time I’ve heard cake mentioned as a reason for staying or leaving Europe, though.”
“The cake merely illustrates a wider malaise,” said Ibolya haughtily. “An island nation that refuses to engage with its neighbours. Human rights? No thank you! Cheaper labour for the jobs you don’t like? No thank you! It certainly looks like madness from my point of view.”
“But Ibolya, you make it sound as if the rest of Europe gets along so well!” said Heinz. “It is very easy to observe that th
is is simply not the case. There are so many national stereotypes, and the petty grievances that go along with them. How will the people of Europe ever get along properly as long as we all believe that Germans are control freaks, Italians are crazy drivers and the French are a nation of sex maniacs?”
“And yet,” said Todor, exchanging a look with Ibolya as she fed him a large scoop of cake. “And yet is possible to overcome this. We have so many things in common. This cake is good enough to overcome boundaries.”
“Although it is not as good as Hungarian Dobostorta,” corrected Ibolya.
“We know power of song can do the same,” smiled Todor. “We have everything we need in this room to make Europe great again.”
Stefan, who had been going through the carrier bags, scooted over as though he had something important to say. Michael was interested to know what his take on Brexit might be.
“I’ve looked everywhere for the last two bundles of those sausages, but I just can’t find them,” he said.
Reno, Nevada
Begging for a car failed. Borrowing a car was apparently not a thing. So, on Mason’s advice, Clovenhoof stole one. Since he was in America, Clovenhoof thought he ought to drive like an American so he stole a big car that looked like it would go really fast and get really shitty gas mileage.
It ran out of fuel in Death Valley. There was no one else in sight in any direction so Clovenhoof lay down on the tarmac (which was scorching hot already, even though it was not yet nine in the morning) and played at being dead for a while. Something pecked at him occasionally but he ignored it. He only got up again when a truck pulled up in front of him and an elderly trucker called Truman asked him if he was dead or stupid.
Happy to confirm he was stupid, Clovenhoof jumped up and rode with Truman to Las Vegas, where Clovenhoof wisely stole a car with a full tank and good fuel economy. By nightfall, he had got as far as Flagstaff, Arizona. The most cursory glance at a map showed he had made barely any impact on the three thousand or so miles he needed to cover. He was nearer to Guatemala than he was to Florida.
