by Heide Goody
“Em tells me you were involved in that protest in Rouen yesterday,” said Claude.
Francis flushed. “It was sort of spontaneous.”
“A flashmob. Excellent. What were you protesting against?”
“The English,” said Joan.
“No,” said Francis. “We were trying to save the whales.”
“From the English.” Joan slurred a little.
“Michel won’t let us do flashmobs,” said Claude.
“You fill in all the right Health and Safety evaluation forms and you can,” called Michel from the other table.
Claude waved his words away.
“He’s like an old lady. Too cautious. I started out in the Convergence des Luttes Anti-Capitalistes.”
“You,” said Michel, “started out among the true anarchists, the brawlers, pirates and guns-for-hire around the Bar Couteau Noir in Marseilles. If you hadn’t been such a wimp, you’d have become a soldier of fortune in the Congo or God knows where.”
“Okay,” admitted Claude. “But then I did, fortunately, grow up. In the CLACs, did the Take the Capital protests in oh-one. Street action. Direct action.”
“But that’s not Michel’s type of thing?” said Joan.
“He’s a hacktivist mostly. Online stuff. Some say he wrote the WANK Worm.”
“WANK Worm?”
“Worms Against Nuclear Killers. That’s truly old school. Eighty-nine, I think. He still does some of that stuff – he and Em pulled a similar stunt here in France a while back – but these days he’s mostly a Health and Safety nut.”
“Just because we’re anti-globalisation anarchists,” said Michel, “doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned for the health and wellbeing of our comrades. Em here shares my concerns about tomorrow’s action on the financial centre. Isn’t that right?”
“I think it’s very... interesting,” said Em diplomatically. “There are logistics to consider.”
“And a lot of heavy lifting and carrying,” said Michel. “And not all of our comrades remember to bend at the knees when lifting.”
“I think they can carry a few coins,” said Claude.
“We have a truck in the fourteenth arrondissement, laden with nine tonnes of one cent euros. Hardly a few coins.”
“We’re going to drive them into Paris’s financial heart and dump them on the street,” said Claude, “as a protest against the appalling wages offered to immigrant workers.”
“Couldn’t you just give the money directly to the poor immigrant workers?” suggested Francis but no one was listening.
“Em has agreed to come and look over my assessment paperwork,” said Michel.
“Have I?” said Em. “Oh, sure.”
She pointed at Joan and Francis in turn.
“You kids stay here. No wandering unescorted, okay?”
“Of course,” said Francis.
“I need the ladies room.” Joan clumsily got to her feet.
Em and Michel left. Joan knocked over a chair as she struggled past and just managed to catch it before it struck the floor.
“The world is falling apart,” said Claude.
“It’s not that bad,” said Joan, disappearing down the corridor.
“Look,” said Claude, slapping a copy of Le Monde on the table and turning to the middle pages. “A ship graveyard on the Karachi coast ablaze. Twelve kilometres of abandoned oil tankers and cruise liners burning up and spilling their pollutants and chemicals into the sea.”
“That’s tewwible.” Francis boggled once more at the scale of the modern world. “Twelve kilometres!”
“A coastline ruined. They say that something exploded onto one of the wrecks and started the fire. The suggestion here is that it’s some downed satellite but… Think of the damage to marine wildlife.”
“All the fishes,” said Francis.
“And the sea turtles. It’s an important nesting site for them.”
“I love turtles,” said Francis morosely.
Claude made a disgusted noise.
“You heard what they’re doing now? Sealing up live baby turtles in plastic jewellery so women can wear them as accessories. It’s sick. The pain and suffering we cause for our own vanity.” He suddenly slapped the table. “And do you know what?”
“What, comrade?” said Francis.
“A few years ago, we thought the fur trade was dead, that we had educated the world. But, no, it’s on a resurgence. There’s a ‘Coureurs de Bois’ fashion show going on right now, not half a mile from here, showcasing the latest in fur fashion.”
“The poor fluffy things killed for their hides,” said Francis. “Something must be done about it.”
“I suggested it to Michel but he said it was too risky.”
Francis drained his glass and poured the last trickle from the bottle into Claude’s glass.
“But Michel’s not here,” he said.
Francis’s gaze met Claude’s. Francis suspected that the pair of them were a tiny bit inebriated and not in the best state to make rash decisions.
“Where is this fashion show?” he asked.
Christopher wasn’t quite sure how gratifying his day had been.
On the plus side, he had received a considerable amount of reflected praise from the admirers of Titian’s work. He’d also managed to catch up with WI ladies as they left the Louvre and snaffled some of the food brought to them at a pavement restaurant. Furthermore, this meal passed without the women abusing the serving staff or causing any other form of international incident.
On the negative side, he had never felt more stymied in his inability to communicate with the people of Earth. He couldn’t correct the art lovers who mistook him for Hercules, Abraham or Arnold Schwarzenegger. He couldn’t inform the WI ladies that the ‘tête de veau’ on the restaurant menu was not beef burger. He couldn’t even ask them to pass the salt or to stop passing phone images of marble genitalia to one another through his field of vision. And walking through Paris was a nightmare, wading through a sea of rude and hurrying individuals who refused to acknowledge his existence (although, to be fair, it did appear that the locals had treated the WI ladies with identical contempt).
As the party mooched over to the glass-roofed tourist boats on the Seine, Christopher wondered if this was how the Almighty felt: loved by many but frequently forgotten or misunderstood, free to do whatever he wished but unable to connect with humanity. It was a challenging thought and a slightly depressing one.
Christopher’s large frame took up two of the moulded plastic seats on the boat. That was fine by him. He could do with some time alone with his thoughts. He leaned back and looked up through the glass roof at the Cathedral of Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cité.
“Frankly, Lord,” he said, “I don’t know how you put up with it.”
Joan looked around and, knowing she had drunk perhaps one glass too many, wondered if she’d come into the wrong room. But, no, there was the chipped and scratched piano in the corner and, there, the remains of the four bottles of wine they had demolished between them.
She went through to the front bar and asked the barman if he had seen her friends.
“They are gone,” he said simply.
“All of them?”
He nodded and continued to clean out the coffee machine.
“But I only went to the toilet,” she said.
The barman shrugged.
“Ridiculous,” Joan muttered to herself and, in search of fresh air and someone to punch, stepped out onto the street.
She was initially surprised to discover that evening was not only falling but had pretty much fallen. She was further surprised to find a familiar face having an argument with his mobile phone on the pavement.
“Yes, Major Chevrolet. Of course, I understand that you have a home to go to. Yes, we have restraining orders in England too. I just need an update on…” The man stopped when he saw Joan. “Goodnight, major,” he said and turned the phone off.
“It’s
Matt, isn’t it?” she said.
“Joan,” he said. “I almost didn’t recognise you in…”
“In?”
“Clothes.” He gestured generally at her hoody, trousers and boots ensemble.
Joan recalled the chaos in the café gallery in Amsterdam and her all-leather outfit. Well, more holes than leather.
“Oh, that,” she said. “I was just trying it out.”
“It, um.” He made a noise. “I like this.”
Joan frowned a little. There was so much that had been confusing in their first few days on Earth that she couldn’t quite work out Matt’s role in it all. There had been those villains in search of gold and Matt’s need to speak to Em. Joan vaguely recalled he was some sort of thief-taker...
“It’s a nice surprise to see you,” said Matt. “What are you doing in Paris?”
Joan pulled a wide-eyed face of consternation.
“I think I’m lost. I’ve certainly lost all my friends.”
“You mean Mary?”
“Yes,” she nodded. “And Francis and Christopher.”
“Francis and Christopher. Is this one person or two?” said Matt. “In Amsterdam there was only one person but…”
“It’s complicated.”
“It’s not a split personality thing, is it? Listen, I can help you find them.”
Again, Joan felt that confusion and suspicion.
“What are you doing in Paris?”
“I’m looking for someone too.”
“Em?”
“Mary. Yes. I’m a detective. I do need to speak to her. It’s in the public interest. You understand?”
“Sure, I understand,” said Joan. “What’s a detective?”
Francis took a swig from the bottle of wine and passed it to Claude.
“So what do we do?”
Claude looked down from the bridge at the large pontoon on the Left Bank of the Seine. Bordered on three sides by the river and on the fourth by a mock-marble façade and a line of serious people in dark suits and sunglasses, the pontoon (despite being essentially nothing more than a huge raft floating on the Seine) was a crowded affair of red carpets, tiered seating, twinkling and flashing lights and more than a hundred people.
“That covered area is where the models and clothes will be,” said Claude, pointing with the bottle. “A morgue for a thousand furry souls.”
“Poor things,” said Francis.
“We need to get in there, make a scene, sabotage it all.”
“We could sink them all into the wiver.”
“I like your thinking,” said Claude, “but I don’t have any torpedoes on me. We need a closer look.”
“Then let’s go.”
Claude shook his head, drank deeply and passed the bottle back.
“Those security bozos will have my picture. My face is known. If anyone’s to reconnoitre the area, it’s you.”
Francis took a fortifying gulp of wine. “Just point me in the wight diwection.”
Joan and Matt walked side by side in what she guessed was a roughly northerly direction. Paris was a city of grand soaring edifices and street-level grime. It was a city of smells, of thin electric light and of constant noise, often distant but always there.
“The world is a fragile place,” explained Matt. “Our civilisation is a leaf floating on a pool of chaos and people like Mary – Em – just want to poke at it with a sharp stick.”
“I’m sure that’s not true,” said Joan.
“Really? Think of all those things you rely on. Well-stocked supermarkets. The petrol for your car. The power that heats your home. Your phone. The internet.”
“I like the internet,” said Joan, who had an idea from the films she’d seen that supermarkets were places where teenagers packed bags until they were sacked by an unsympathetic boss.
“Of course. And so do the activists and hacktivists who don’t realise that the very medium they use to organise their actions could fall apart if someone wasn’t constantly seeing what they’re up to, informing the public of the damage they do.”
“But Em…”
“… is not a nice woman. She’s part of a ring of European anarchists who attempted to bring down the Nuclear Operations and Military Intelligence System – the Systѐme Intelligent Militaire et Opérations Nucléaires if you will — here in France. That’s World War Three type stuff. Have you ever seen the film, War Games? Nah, you’re too young. Matthew Broderick plays this young computer nerd —”
“Who hacks into the computer controlling the nuclear weapons,” said Joan. “It’s a good movie, although I prefer him in Ferris Bueller.”
“Right,” said Matt. “At least you didn’t say you preferred him in Godzilla. It’s that kind of Armageddon scenario one of these activist nuts is going to set off some day. And what will they do when Armageddon comes knocking at their door, eh?”
“Plant beans,” said Joan.
“What?”
She waved the comment away.
“I’ll tell you later. So, what, you chase thieves around the European Empire…”
“Union.”
“European Union, right.”
“I’m a British police officer, but we have to try and work closely with our European buddies. The bad guys won't stay in the same place, so a pan-European police presence is essential.”
Joan nodded. From her time in rural France, subduing wrongdoers with a pan was something she understood.
“A knight errant then,” she said.
“What?”
“You. On your noble quest in unknown lands.”
Matt laughed.
“Seriously?”
She shrugged.
“Just trying to make sense of it.”
“I don’t know if you’re mocking me, being deliberately obtuse or you’re just wonderfully, unbelievably naïve.”
“Maybe all three,” said Joan.
“How old are you, Joan?”
“That’s not an easy question to answer.”
“I think it is.”
“I’m nineteen.”
He shook his head.
“I can’t quite believe that.”
“Oh?” she said. “You’re saying that I look like an old woman.”
“Don’t put words in my mouth,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s… You’re a contradictory character.”
“You mean contrary?”
“Contradictory. You’ve got this wide-eyed ingénue look about you, like you’ve spent your whole life locked up in a commune somewhere. You’ve not escaped from some weird cult have you? That guy you were with, Frank or Christopher, he was wearing some new age robes.”
“His religious habit.”
“If you like. You act as though you’ve been locked away half your life or stuck on some nowhere Amish farm —”
“Shockingly close to the truth.”
“— and that the world around you is just one surprise after another. And yet – and yet – you seem very… mature.”
“Old?”
“Wise.”
Joan raised her eyebrows.
“Teenagers are, by and large, idiots,” said Matt.
“Harsh,” said Joan.
“Hey. I was one a few short years ago. I know I seem like a man of the world with my jet-setting lifestyle, but I clearly remember my voice breaking when I still thought that lego was more interesting than girls.” He coughed, and averted his eyes. “I want to make it clear though that I don’t make a habit of hanging out with unaccompanied young women.”
“Only the ones you’ve followed across northern Europe.”
Matt stopped and looked at her.
“I’m sure I was trying to make a point,” he said.
“You were saying I was mature.”
“Wise. You look like someone with a plan, a person who can cope with whatever the world throws at them.”
“The world has thrown a lot at me so far,” agreed Joan, thinking of the pink rubber dragons, angry Belgi
ans and rude old ladies she’d had to contend with recently.
“Most of us don’t get our act together until we’re in our mid-twenties at the earliest. I’m getting there. Nearly. Maybe we need to get the craziness out of our systems when we’re young,” Matt suggested. “I’m sure you’ve been known to let your hair down.”
“My hair…?” Joan’s hand went to her head.
“When we’re young, we all want to go out and just do stuff.”
“Stuff?”
“You know, break the rules, find our own place in the world, fall in love…”
Joan stopped by the crowded doorway to a place called Club Dinosaure. A muffled, distant but insistent bass beat thrummed around them.
“Have you done all those things?” asked Joan.
Matt looked up in thought.
“Pretty much. Broke a lot of rules, certainly.”
“Oh?”
“Bunch of mates and I got drunk on the local scrumpy one night and decided to bungee jump off the Clifton Suspension Bridge, using my dad’s roof rack straps. That was stupid.”
“Well, yes,” said Joan, who wasn’t sure what scrumpy, bungee or roof racks were.
“And then the inevitable house party when my parents were away in Exeter.”
“Inevitable?”
“Mmmm. And I think all of them end the same way. We partied all night, I thoroughly failed to make an impression on any of the girls who came. I woke up the next morning in the potting shed and discovered that there had been a massive flour and egg fight in the house in the wee small hours.”
“It’s terrible that your guests would abuse your parents’ house so much.”
“Oh no,” said Matt. “I woke covered in flour and eggs myself. Apparently, even though I have no recollection at all, I stood on the dining table, declared myself the ‘Pantry King’ and led the charge with a bag of self-raising in one hand and a sieve in the other.”
Joan considered this.
“I’ve never bungee jumped or partied all night or got drunk and declared myself to be the ‘Panty King.’”
“Pantry King,” said Matt. “Well, it’s clear that you are currently a little drunk, Joan.”
