“BLOODY MESS,” says Dr. Fortismeer. He is not talking about my situation, but about his grouse, which has this minute arrived in the hand of a pretty Californian exchange student named Callista, whom Fortismeer has appointed his personal butler this year in a gesture towards equal rights for women. “Rebuke the kitchen, would you, please?” Callista favours him with a smouldering look, extremely fetching in her butler’s uniform, and departs. The grouse looks much like any other, a sort of shocked pigeon with stunted wings, but I gather that Fortismeer’s keener eye has spotted some deficiency.
“Potatoes,” he says morosely. “All over the place, and covered in muck. I loathe gravy. Always tastes of horsemeat. Ever had horse?”
“No.”
“Not bad, actually, bit horsey. Whiff of the stables, always.”
He glares at the grouse, then pokes it dejectedly with a fork. It gives a wet little noise of crisp skin being rustled by a big gentleman, and somehow looks rather sad. Fortismeer is touched, and takes pity on it, and conversation is precluded for a while because Dr. Fortismeer’s manner of eating, while scrupulously correct, is not quiet.
“You’ve got a problem,” Fortismeer murmurs finally, and I realise that he has actually been thinking about this while he demolished the unhappy grouse. My heart lifts a little.
“Silly problem,” Fortismeer murmurs. “Frightful girl, what was her name? Bloody Eva Braun waiting for Adolf. Not fair of me, of course, no destiny. Still, dobbed you in. Never liked her. Aline. Where is she now? Transferred. Buggered off. Say goodbye?”
“No,” I respond, realising for the first time that this is so. Fortismeer nods.
“Took that idiot Sebastian Sands with her, of course. Small mercies. Gifted student. Frightful pain in the arse. Rather liked him. Always wished him on another university. Lo and behold . . . Time for a bit of pudding, I think.” He rings the bell. Callista stalks back into the room with a vast bowl of rhubarb crumble steeped in cream. She has provided a second spoon, much smaller, for me. It is either a desperate attempt to prevent Fortismeer from rupturing or a backhanded comment on my relationship with him. She heaves a sigh in his direction as she puts the dish down and delivers a full-wattage pout. In Fortismeer’s place I’d be having trouble sitting, but he seems not to notice. Callista straightens sharply and marches out.
“Rhubarb’s the thing, you know. Increases circulation. Stimulates the sexual juices. Never know why they don’t investigate it. Probably worth millions. Your friend must live on it. What’s his name? Lubitsch. Eastern European blood, of course, goes at it like a weasel. Lubitsch, not Callista. She’s furious with him, you know. Stood her up. Throwing herself at me by way of revenge. Silly girl. Couldn’t be less interested. Too thin. Probably kill her if we got down to it. Snap her like a twig. She’d have to go on top. Hate that—always makes me feel like a whale being refloated. Need a woman of stature. Eh?”
Fortismeer draws an outline in the air of a woman constructed along the lines of a double bass. It is not a topic I wish to pursue, and so I remain strategically silent.
“Go and see Hoare. Knows things. Uncanny little sod. Too clever by half, and I’m so clever it’s painful.” His eyes glitter from his lax face, a fox in a thicket. “What will you tell him?”
“The truth.”
Fortismeer thinks about that.
“Yes,” he says at last. “Probably the best thing. Bloody deceptive, honesty.”
Callista brings cheese.
AND SO I find myself approaching the place of work of Mr. Crispin Hoare, of the Office of Procurement, which unfortunate combination of names has already caused me to snuffle briefly on the telephone, but about which, I was informed in breathless confidence by the temporary receptionist, Mr. Hoare has exactly no sense of humour at all. Mr. Hoare, indeed, does not appear to get a lot of laughs out of anything. The building in which he works is a grey slab with stern windows and poorly chosen organic paint colours which are intended to produce a stable and relaxing working environment (as per directive Ev/9) but in fact cause the entire complex to resemble the messy interior plumbing of a sickly bison. The strip lighting (low energy as per directive Ev/6) is responsible for much of this, because it emits in the green and purple areas of the spectrum, which are not tints favourable to a feeling of general good health. Further, this illumination is produced by ultra-high-frequency discharges of an electric current through a tube of fluorescing gas, meaning that they flicker at a given (enormously rapid) rate, this frequency being one which sadly produces tension, annoyance and migraines in 81 per cent of adult humans, and has the interesting side effect of causing tachycardia in shrews. Shrews being very susceptible to stress, and having in any case ill-designed cardiovascular systems, it is safe to assume that any shrew entering Mr. Hoare’s workplace with the intention of asking him for a job would be dead before it had gone five metres down the long corridor I am currently attempting, and would thereby instantly convert itself into organic waste and be disposed of by the sanitation crew. Should the shrew turn out to contain elevated or even toxic levels of chemical waste, or should there be cause to suspect, by reason of signs of aberrant and un-shrew-like behaviour or outward symptoms of transmissible disease such as, but not limited to, rashes, bleeding, elevated temperature and coughing, evidence of pre-mortem deliquescence, or petechial haemorrhaging, that the aforementioned shrew was in fact the carrier of a biological agent, the business of disposal would be handed over to a hazmat team trained in these matters, and the tiny body would be removed in a suitable container by men and women wearing spacesuits and taken to a place of investigation to ascertain the level of the threat and also to tease from the tiny, terrified corpse any forensic evidence suggesting that it might be involved in anti-statist activities, that it might, in fact, be a suicide shrew.
Since no shrew would in the normal course of events come anywhere near the Office of Procurement, the mere presence of the animal would have to be assumed evidence of abnormal activity, and a stray, confused and moribund rodent of this kind could reasonably be expected to close an entire government building for several hours and cost the taxpayer a cool quarter-mil. All of which goes through my mind as I trudge to Mr. Hoare’s office in search of some way to earn money in what has turned out to be a hostile world.
The door is closed, of course, because men like Mr. Hoare do not emphasise their availability. In my dreams I have seen this door as grand and wooden, watched it swing open before I can knock. In these visions, the door itself was heavy, reinforced with strange materials spun off from space explorations and deep-sea diving, so as to with-stand bullets, bombs and manual force for long enough to afford the priceless expertise contained in the person of Crispin Hoare ample time to summon assistance in the face of such outrageous assaults, or to take cover in the complex of tunnels spreading out from behind his study, or even to arm himself and personally repel the invasion by use of advanced weaponry and superior skill.
The door I am now approaching is mysteriously ignorant of this impressive ancestry, and seems determined to be made of a nasty prefab moulded stuff, and to have a grubby window in it, and “C. T. Hoare, i/c Proc’t.” stencilled or even transferred onto it in tatty gold leaf. I raise my hand, expecting to be pre-empted, and am not, which means that my first knock is rather muffled and ham-fisted, and I am forced to repeat the effort before a loud voice says “Come,” and I struggle with the handle for a moment because my fingers are suddenly slippery and it is one of those round ones which are a bit stiff.
“Use a hanky!” cries the voice within. Since there is a box of them resting on a school chair next to the door, I do. The door—light and definitely not reinforced—opens onto a chamber the size of a concession stand.
Mr. Hoare is by any measure a tiny, rat-like bloke with ears like solar panels on a pink, nervous satellite, and he has been orbiting here for a while in the summer heat because his unique odour permeates the room. He smells of linen and mint and of damp, male civil servant, but
is not thank God one of those men who produces a rich, salty mustard gas from their armpits, and so the effect is surprising but not revolting. He gestures me to a chair and leans forward curiously, and I have to shake my head slightly to dislodge the shrew comparison lest I say something foolish and (more crucially) unemployable. He asks what he can do for me and I tell him that I would like a job, which appears to surprise him.
“But my dear boy,” says C.T. Hoare, “surely not with us?”
Yes, it has been my life’s ambition.
“Do you know what we do here?”
This is something of a poser. It is either so obvious that it needs no explanation, or so secret that it may not be mentioned, because nowhere in the many pages of literature I have scrutinised in order to isolate the name of Crispin Hoare and obtain his coordinates have I been able to ascertain the precise function of his office.
“Looked at intelligently,” I say, looking at Crispin Hoare intelligently, “this is the most important branch of the civil service.”
“Oh yes, undoubtedly,” says Crispin Hoare, very pleased, “but what drew your attention to us? Not a lot of people,” he says sadly, “are even aware we exist. Necessary, of course, but sad.”
I have no idea what ought to have drawn my attention, and no desire to lay claim to having had my attention drawn by routes either improper or unfeasible, so I agree with the necessity and dodge the question, and so it goes on, and with every one of my evasions Crispin Hoare seems to get a little more tired and sad, and each of my non-responses is a springboard into another question I cannot answer, and finally he holds up his hand for a halt and I know, absolutely clearly, that I have been busted wide open like a cantaloupe, and the only thing left is whether he takes pity on me or throws me out on my lying, untouchable arse.
Crispin Hoare looks at me across the desk and takes stock. He lets out a long, slow sigh.
“Forgive me,” he says. “I think the reason you came to me is that you have no other choice. You are here,” Crispin Hoare says, “because someone has given you nowhere else to go.” He nods to himself, and I realise that his satellite head is not one of those ones which beams long-distance phone calls from Estonia to Kashmir, it is one of the ones which can photograph your hair follicles and read your mail from up there. C.T. Hoare is not someone you can kid with some unrehearsed blather and a Gonzo grin.
“There is an annexe attached to your record. I would imagine,” C.T. Hoare says, over his cluttered, amiable desk, “that not one of the other people you went to for employment even talked to you about the job.” He gazes at me steadily, with sympathy. “I would imagine that they talked about everything but the job. And despite some splendid prevarication, I would venture that you have no notion of what I do. Very good effort, though.” At which point I nearly burst into tears, but manage instead a manly nod which is intended to convey that none of this is now or has ever been my fault, and yet I carry the cross without complaint or expectation of redress. Crispin Hoare opens a Manila folder and studies the single page contained therein. It takes him not very long at all. He reads it again, just to make sure. He shrugs.
“Would you like to see what it says?” And he slides the file halfway across the table towards me.
I consider several options, most of which are not options at all. I dismiss instantly all the ones which involve screaming, shouting or beating him to death with the heavy stapler by the window. Similarly I discard the possibility of kissing his hands and swearing my firstborn daughter to him as a handmaiden, or my son as a footrest. The only real question is whether I will reach across and accept the file and find out why I am unemployable, or leap to my feet and flee, and spend the rest of my life cleaning windows and wondering. It is a closer thing than you would think. The white page is mighty scary, and I glance down to assess its magic, only then realising that I have accepted it.
“REFER TO GEORGE LOURDES COPSEN” in large print, and then a note, in Lydia’s father’s wandering script: “Stat filler. Send him over if you like the cut.” This last is a naval expression, the cut of a ship’s jib being the angle of her foresail, the defining feature of her character as a vessel, hence also a man or woman’s bearing, and thus by overextension possibly the jib becomes the nose. It seems improbable to me that George Lourdes Copsen is concerned with the formation of my nose, he being the possessor of a set of grade A epicanthic folds and hence a man well aware that the soul’s complexion is not readily legible in the face. It seems more likely that he wishes Crispin Hoare to exercise his judgement, and that my future prospects hinge entirely on the decision of a man I have just failed to gull, who has seen through my impoverished blarney, who has no cause to love me and whom I have secretly likened to a geosynchronous shrew. C.T. Hoare looks at me, and allows the full weight of his intelligence to appear for a moment behind his genial, ugly little face, and like Master Wu he finds in me whatever it is that he is looking for.
“Stat filler,” he says, sounding like the Evangelist (in her genuine, profane mode) talking about cross burnings. “Do you know what that is?”
I do not.
“Come with me.” And Crispin Hoare gets up from his desk and leads me out of his office, down one corridor and up another, until we are in an office almost exactly like his own with a man named Pont. Pont has no first name, or no last. The little banker’s plate on his desk reads “PONT” in capitals, so I wonder whether PONT is his title. Person Of Natural Talent. Political Organiser for Nebulous Treaties. Penguin Officer, North Territory. This last one sounds improbable, but it would explain why Pont’s wallspace is covered in meticulous graphs and charts. I am looking for signs of Arctic birdlife and blubber studies, when Crispin Hoare speaks again.
“Pont,” says Crispin Hoare, “I propose a Socratic sort of dialogue, culminating perhaps in a brief excursus.”
“Oh, right ho,” says Pont gamely, and, laying down whatever data set he is reading for his personal amusement, he gives every indication of pricking up his ears. Pont, like my new friend Crispin Hoare, has a distinctly small-mammal thing going on. Unlike Crispin Hoare, he looks to be nocturnal. He blinks and rubs at his nose with a cupped hand, and communicates his readiness to proceed. Crispin Hoare leans against the wall next to the door and begins.
“Hobbes [the political thinker, not the rather delightful cartoon tiger of the same name] asserted that the natural state of mankind is war. What say you?”
“I say he was a pessimistic old fart with a bee in his bonnet about the need for big government.”
“Pont . . .”
“All right, all right. The position is not utterly baseless. Proceed.”
“I should be delighted. Thus, the creation of the state, with its first duty being essentially to prevent one man from preying on another. Yes?”
“Hnqgglflmmpf.”
“I shall take that as a ‘yes.’ Now, are those engaged in the business of governing any different by nature from those they govern?”
“Yes. They’re prideful and tend to sexual misconduct. Also, the situation of being in government tends to drive you mad.”
“But are they more virtuous or more intelligent? Or more compassionate?”
“Ha!”
“Let’s call that one a ‘no.’ So, in order to protect the populace from their own governors, the law must be universal. More, it must require transparent and consistent behaviour from those appointed to rule. Hence the rulers must function, not as individuals, but as applicators of perfect justice, the willing part (and here I use the term ‘willing’ meaning intending and asserting rather than merely accepting) of a machine for good government. Personal considerations are inadmissible, lest the whole structure be compromised by privi lege—private law. We are talking about a Government Machine. Yes?”
“I hope you’re going somewhere with this, Crispin, because I’ve got a whole exciting pile of reports on potassium purchasing to get through.”
“Trust in me, stout Pont. I am but a little way off my
goal.”
“Forge ahead, then.”
“Such a mechanism cannot function without accurate information. Quite obviously, with every degree of imperfection in the input, the output will be wrong by that degree multiplied by whatever other relevant false information is already there, and by whatever drift is inherent in the system’s construction (it being impossible according to the laws of thermodynamics to build any engine which does not dissipate energy in the process of performing its task). Since this machine is informational, of course, that loss of accuracy will not produce heat, but rather nonsense. Yes?”
“Garbage in, garbage out. Or rather more felicitously: the tree of nonsense is watered with error, and from its branches swing the pumpkins of disaster.”
“Oh, my dear Pont, that’s rather good!”
“Potassium-purchasing reports are so exciting, Crispin, that every so often I have to pull myself back down to Earth with a bit of hard labour at the creative coalface. But please, continue.”
Crispin Hoare nods. “To recap: it is possible to put decent information into a Government Machine, have ordinary, good people running the thing, and a reasonable system in place, and still get utter idiocy out of the dispenser.”
“More than possible. Likely.”
“So let us look at a specific hypothetical case: let us suppose that the machine were looking for enemies within its own population.”
“Well, inevitably it will have enemies. It’s unfair, so people will inveigh against it. The question is how it perceives those enemies. Initially, it will see them as legitimate opposition, because that’s written in. But each time it looks at them, the predisposition established in the last investigation towards the possibility of criminal activity will be emphasised.”