Future Tense

by Frank Almond

  “Snitch—informer.”

  “Ah, yes. With the traitor Reggie Goldenhair,” he said.

  “You’re doing this for the Princess?”

  “It is my duty,” he said. “I am sure she will attend to my rescue later. She is a fine woman.”

  “I’ll remind her,” I said.

  “Thank you, Stephen.” He paused and bowed.

  “If I remember,” I added.

  We continued.

  “You are to be married to Her Royal Highness, I hear.”

  “Er, yes,” I said. “When all this is over.”

  “Congratulations. You will make her very happy, I think.”

  “Well, I’ll try. I, um, just hope I can live up to her high expectations.” I was referring to her sexual demands, but De Quipp thought I meant something else.

  “You already have, Stephen,” he said. “That is what our duel was about.”

  “I thought that was about Emma.”

  “No. That was merely to provoke you into a fight,” he said.

  “You never loved her?”

  “Never. It was a test—a test of your manhood,” he said. “To see if you were made of the right stuff. You passed with flying colours I am pleased to say.”

  “Funny, I seem to remember I lost that little charade,” I said.

  “Yes, but you did not back down. The man who marries the Princess must show no fear,” said De Quipp. He patted my shoulder. “You were very brave.”

  I thought about telling him the truth, but since he was in the mood for confession, I decided to press him for more information.

  “What was that blood thing about then?”

  “Oh, just a device to keep you out of harm’s way—there was so much going on—Corrective Measures were closing in, we were all planning our mission to the Castle—the Princess did not want you involved. She wanted to keep you safe.”

  “She was looking out for me?”

  “She is always looking out for you,” he said. “And now I think I have said too much.”

  “One more question,” I said. “Have you told Emma any of this?”

  “Emma? Does she matter anymore?” he said—rather heartlessly, I thought.

  I stalled. Something didn’t sound right—how could this apparently honourable man, a man who seemed so sensitive and selfless when it came to the Princess, speak so callously about Emma? I was picking up some mixed messages and it was making me feel uneasy.

  “Does she still mean something to you?” he questioned.

  “Not in that way,” I said. “But she is a human being and I still care about her safety and her state of mind.”

  “And that is all?”

  “Well, she is still expecting my child,” I shrugged. I was confused, watching my words—it was like I was playing a game, without knowing the rules, or even the name of the game—or the point, for that matter.

  “You will have many offspring with the Princess,” said De Quipp.

  “Number isn’t really an issue is it though?” I said. “I mean one child is as important as a thousand.”

  “What a strange species you are,” said De Quipp. “In my world one must be prepared to die for the good of the many.”

  That explained why he was risking his life, or, at the very least, his freedom, for the rest of us.

  “Where exactly is your world?” I asked.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t know it,” he said.

  “Well, I might.”

  “Do you know where the Dropsyplevlapachord Sentaxia is?”

  “Um?”

  “It’s appluvial to the Gannexquadadraxl Cyclopse Ring.”

  “Is it?”

  “Beyond the Mormagleean Spydra.”

  “Oh—that appluvial! Why didn’t you say?”

  * * *

  De Quipp and I strolled around H Wing—not that there was much to see but bunks and bars—and had ourselves a fascinating conversation. He wouldn’t tell me much about his world, but I did draw him out on one or two other interesting details. For example, he had not slept with Emma, they had not been to bed, or spent the night together and their entire courtship had not progressed beyond a kiss. They hadn’t done anything. Anything at all. I was relieved to hear this because it would have been immoral to seduce Emma by foul means. And I was sure Emma would also have been relieved that she had not been taken advantage of when she heard the bitter truth about her precious Travis. I must admit though, I allowed myself a secret portion of smugness in the knowledge that I had been right all along.

  * * *

  We met up with the Duck and Jemmons for lunch—Reggie joined us, too, but the Duck discouraged any other inmates from sitting at our table, which was set a little distance apart from the others. Our own personal Judas tried to pump us in his own crude way for more information about the escape. The Duck handled him like a shark angler toying with a minnow.

  “So, what happens when we hit the ice, Doctor?” asked Reggie.

  “We hit the ice running, Reggie baby,” drawled the Duck. “The rest is going to be legendary.”

  “But where do we run to?”

  “Our friends on the outside will take care of that end,” said the Duck.

  “The Resistance?” whispered Reggie.

  The Duck looked both ways and leaned in. “Otherwise known as The Levellers, Reggie—they are going to smash this Government one day—there’ll be anarchy and then the big boys will step in and take over.”

  “The big boys?” said Reggie.

  “The Desperate Men.”

  “I thought they were called The Levellers,” said Reggie, scratching his bald head.

  “They’re just a front—it’s all political—The Angry Old Men have had enough,” said the Duck.

  “But I thought you just called them The Desperate Men,” said Reggie.

  “They’re just being used—it’s the Angry Old Men who run the show—they come from the highest levels of society,” the Duck told him.

  “Toffs?” said Reggie. “Like who?”

  “The brother-in-law of the Over-Controller’s cousin for one,” said the Duck. “Now, that’s enough, ’cos the more you know the longer they’ll torture you for if you get caught.”

  “They won’t break me,” said Reggie.

  “Reggie,” said De Quipp.

  “Yes, Monsieur De Quipp?”

  “Take my plate back.”

  “Yes, Monsieur De Quipp.” He scurried away with his own and De Quipp’s plates.

  “You take unnecessary risks, Sir Julian. What if the Over-Controller does not have a cousin with a brother-in-law?” said De Quipp sharply.

  “Oh, but he does,” said the Duck, wobbling his head as he trumped De Quipp. “When these fascists blew up Duckworth Hall back in 2002, a new family took over my land and rebuilt on it—they were called Neuville—they’re still around somewhere—only now I’ve found out they’re related to the Over-Controller. That was just a little historical pay-back.”

  “You should not make our business personal,” said De Quipp, clearly irritated at being wrong.

  The Duck quacked, “Everything’s personal De Quipp. That’s what makes it fun.”

  * * *

  Our lunch party broke up. The Duck said he had to see someone about foot-straps for his boards. I didn’t want to get stuck with De Quipp, so I made some excuse about wanting to find my clothes in the laundry, because I’d left something in the pocket of my leather jacket. So, poor Jemmons found himself left with De Quipp. I didn’t wait around to see where they went. I had suddenly remembered John the android and wanted to see if he was on guard duty. I had no idea what I was going to say to him if he was, I just had a compulsion to see him, maybe ask him if he remembered me. I had decided it couldn’t do any harm—he could hardly turn me in.

  It was a long walk, but Archie had allowed me to go on borrowing his boots and since they now had laces in them, I made good, comfortable progress to the gate.

  The guards were in their guardro
om. I pressed the buzzer. Both guards came out. One was carrying a Bible.

  “What can we do for you?” asked John the android, still showing no indication that he knew me.

  “Could I just have a word with you—over here?” I pointed along the bars and started walking.

  He shrugged to the other guard and followed me. The other guard watched us for a moment or two and then went back inside.

  “What’s all this about, convict?”

  “Er, remember me, John?” I smiled.

  His head tilted slightly to one side. “No. And my name is not John. You must have me mixed up with someone else, convict.”

  I looked anxiously towards the guardroom and then back at John. “Don’t you recognise me at all?” I said.

  “Why should I? I have never seen you in my life before.”

  “You can drop the religious robot routine now, mate,” I smiled. “You remember—me, you, Jody and Emma—that night on the boat. What a party that was! Drinking, dancing—you and Jody getting it on—”

  “Stop! These are serious accusations, convict!”

  “They’re not accusations, John—I’m just saying we had a great time, man—we philosophized about life, art, and love—chilled to the Bird playing his axe—”

  “—Silence! You are impure—and a thief! It is in the good book! You are all damned! It is forbidden to speak to you of such things! Move away from the bars!” he barked, waving his Bible in my face. “Back—thou art the foot soldier of Satan!”

  I stepped back a couple of paces. “What happened to you, John? Did they get Jody, too? You must remember Jody. You were going to do the Kerouac thing with her—you know, go on the road—find yourself.”

  He felt his temple and stared at me, almost as though he was beginning to remember.

  “Love and peace, man,” I said. “Do your own thing, yeah?”

  He swallowed hard and looked down at the book he was clutching so tightly in his hands, and then back at me. His eyes were switching from side to side.

  “I love you, man,” I said.

  “Fornicator!” he screeched. “Blasphemer! Liar! Devil worshipper! False prophet! Sperm of Satan!”

  He put the fear of God into me. I backed away and turned tail and ran. I looked back a couple of times—thinking maybe I’d turn into a pillar of salt—and he was still standing there, bent and rocking forwards and backwards on the same spot, screaming at the top of his voice. And then he dropped to his knees and his partner came to his aid. I carried on running.

  Finally, I ran out of gas and hid behind some laundry trolleys. I squatted down with my back to one and then I sat right down and closed my eyes, with my feet pushing against another one. I don’t know what I’d expected John to say, or how I expected him to react, but it saddened me to think that all my good work had been in vain. I know he was only an android, but I was sort of proud of my two conversions, and I really wanted to know what happened to Jody. I would most likely never know.

  My mind switched off. I opened my eyes and let them stray over the laundry on the other trolley. It was probably safe to come out, but something kept me sitting there—a kind of lazy boredom. For a while, there didn’t seem much point in doing anything. And then I had an idea that snapped me out of it—completely unconnected with John and Jody—it was about the wheels on the laundry trolleys. They were fixed on the underside of the trolleys like those caster wheel things you find on furniture. Only these were made of clear plastic and reminded me of my old skateboard wheels. I hope you can see the way my mind was working. Why not grab myself four to take along—just for a little extra insurance? If I had four holes drilled in my snowboard, I could just slot them in and be lightning when I got down on that ice.

  * * *

  In the middle of the afternoon, I was lying on my bed, wondering where everybody was, when a bell rang. There was a commotion below. I swished my curtain open. The guys were climbing out of their bunks and filing down the aisle like Pavlov’s dogs.

  “Hey!” I shouted. “Where’s everybody going?”

  “ReEd!” grinned Archie, the flyer-type, who had loaned me his boots. “To the Hall!”

  I scrambled out of my bunk. “Can you eat it?”

  “ReEducation classes, you chump—come on, it’s How to Resist Sex today—we’ll be late.”

  “Think I’ll give it a miss,” I said, turning back.

  He caught my sleeve. “House rules, old bean.”

  I went along with him—curious to meet the guy who was gonna deconstruct my sex drive.

  We filtered into the flow of the main queue and found ourselves jostled and swept out of the dorm and along to what looked to me like a cinema. The Duck was already there, with De Quipp, Jemmons, and the ubiquitous Reggie Goldenhair. This was pointed out to me as soon as I came through the door by one of the guards directing the human traffic. The Duck was waving like mad from the back row. I smiled and waved back.

  “I’ll sit with Archie,” I said, out of the corner of my mouth.

  The guard grabbed my arm and practically threw me up the steps.

  “Doc says sit with him!”

  Archie tried to follow me, but was pushed away.

  I trudged up the steps. The Duck was cleaning his specs. He flapped a hand.

  “Pull up a pew, man—the show’s about to begin.”

  I slumped down in the end seat.

  The house lights dimmed. The screen lit up.

  An orchestral soundtrack rose. Lots of swirly violins and bassy adagio—reminded me of one of those hilarious Hollywood B movies from the forties, which, of course, were always in black and white and not meant to be funny. A family of puritans were leaving a white picket-fence church. Could have been New England in the snow. A caption popped up: How to Resist Sex, Part 69.

  I sniggered and looked around at the others to share the joke. But they were all deadly serious—their eyes fixed on the flickering screen. All except Jemmons, who was nodding off.

  A monotone voice-over droned. The guy sounded like a mix of Walter Cronkite and Virginia Wade. I didn’t know about Celebrity Voice Synth back then.

  * * *

  “These are the Whatmores, an ordinary God-fearing family, living in an ordinary God-fearing town. Father is a respectable undertaker and lay preacher. His good wife, a school ma’am. Their daughters, Prudence, seventeen, and Mercy, eighteen, were their pride and joy.”

  * * *

  We got close-ups of them all as they were named. The Abraham Lincoln pa, clutching the good book. The dough-faced ma, shepherding her little women. First, Prudence, a poker-faced bespectacled critter with a slit mouth as taut as a rubber band, and then her sister—Mercy! I did a double take. The pouting madonna stepped out onto the apron of the little church and flashed her doll eyes at the camera. She stretched her neck languidly in the sun and drew her black hood up over her platinum blonde bun.

  * * *

  “Till temptation came calling…”

  * * *

  The music built and struck a succession of tragic chords.

  I chuckled and took another look along the row. Rog was snoring. The Duck had sunk right down in his seat—and was eating what looked like popcorn! A sort of darkly satisfied leer spreading across his face, his head wobbling, as he absently shovelled in the sticky mess. De Quipp stroked his ‘tache and looked faintly amused. Reggie blinked nonstop and gazed in awe at the twenty-foot vision of temptation up on the screen.

  The Whatmores filed through the braille of grave mounds to their hearse. Pop folded his lanky grasshopper body in behind the wheel. Ma and the girls climbed in alongside him and the music and the cameras and the lighting followed them down a painted board mainstreet. The mainstreet of Hell—lurid and loud, flashing lights and lowlife on every street corner. And there was some strange symbolism going on—milk churns outside a grocer’s store looked like shiny silver artillery shells. Icicles looked similar, only, of course, pointed down. And as the hearse passed, the icicles steamed and me
lted away—and—weirdest of all—a rotating barber’s pole turned into a solid red tube as it turned, becoming the only colour in the monochrome film. And it was all intercut with close-ups of miserable Mr Whatmore and his expressionless family. The whole thing was so bizarre and disturbing, I thought I was watching a car advert.

  * * *

  “The Devil finds work for innocent hands…”

  * * *

  Fade to Prudence reading her bible while mom stitches another quilt and pop measures up another stiff. Cut to Mercy, upstairs on the window seat, reading her bible. But she looks bored, distracted, her blank eyes drift from the text and latch onto a drawer in her dresser. She lays aside her bible, rises slowly, and goes to open it…

  “Snap their bones and blind them! Clip their wings and bind them!”

  * * *

  We see Mercy reach in and take out a shiny little cylinder. She twists it and the room is suddenly filled with a bright vermillion glow, emanating from the point of a lipstick.

  * * *

  A jazzy saxophone and tom-toms explode from the everywhere-sound system, as crazy Mercy leaps and capers around the room, waving her lipstick about like a kid with a sparkler. And then she’s ogling herself in multiple mirrors and applying it thickly to her lips and doing what looks—to me anyway—like simulated sex. She rips off her bonnet and lets her hair fly! And then she’s flinging herself on the bed and tearing off the rest of her clothes.

  I sank down in my seat, my eyes glued to the screen, reached across Jemmons, and dipped my hand into the Duck’s bag of popcorn.

  That director had a ball—each time Mercy tossed her hair, a whip cracked. And we were bombarded by a succession subliminal messages, full-screen:

  HARLOT. WHORE. BITCH. JEZEBEL. WANTON. WAR. RED. BUY EMPSON’S WHEETIES.

  And when the action moved outside, we were treated to even more bizarre images: Mercy’s blue breath; slushy steaming streets; exploding icicles; lipstick graffiti scrawled on shiny surfaces and human flesh. The naked—except for her lipstick—Mercy danced through a snowscape of tombstones and wandered wantonly into town. The actress who played her must have got frostbite in places frost could seldom have bitten. To cut the fifty-minute epic short, Mercy got hooked on evil lipstick, fell in with bad company and got herself arrested. Whatever they were trying to cure us of or convert us to, it wasn’t working. What we were watching was nothing short of an art house porn movie!