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  After this Princess Lovebud assumed an expression of agonized empathy and invited any previously bereaved mothers in the group to use the occasion of Trafford's happiness to share their grief.

  'I'll go first,' she added and began to weep.

  For five long minutes Princess Lovebud confessed loudly and extravagantly to a sorrow that would never end and a pain that would never heal. The agony was real: Trafford did not doubt that Princess Lovebud missed the babies that she had lost with the same intensity as any other bereaved parent. It was simply that she was so much louder than any of the other mothers. Everybody shouted, of course; even intimate conversations were conducted at the top of a person's voice. The Temple believed firmly that volume was a reliable benchmark of sincerity and that those who spoke quietly were not sufficiently proud of whatever it was that they had to say. The Temple expected those of faith to make a joyful noise unto the Love. Everybody was loud but Princess Lovebud was somehow always louder and the harsh, twisted vowels and wilfully misplaced consonants fell like hammer blows on Trafford's eardrums.

  'I know,' Princess Lovebud concluded, 'I know absolutely that my little kiddies ain't dead but with Jesus, safe in the Love and nestling in the tender arms of Diana. What don't kill me makes me stronger, every journey begins with a single step and I have been made a more empowered and a better woman through the pain that the Love has seen fit to visit upon my woman's breasts.'

  When Princess Lovebud had finally ceased to emote and the cheers and whoops which greeted her speech had died down, two other women followed in similar noisy vein but a third, a young black woman who had only recently lost a five-year-old to the pustules, spoke briefly and, Trafford sensed, reluctantly. She certainly did not express sufficient outward fervour to satisfy Princess Lovebud.

  'Let it out, Kahlua,' she demanded brutally. 'Lean on us. Share with us. Let us feel your pain.'

  Kahlua raised her face and opened her mouth but no sound came. She did not cry – her eyes were dry – and yet as Trafford looked at her he felt as if he was looking through an almost impenetrable veil of tears.

  'Tell us how you feel,' Princess Lovebud demanded. 'I would have thought that as an African British woman of beautiful colour you'd want to emote big time and get it all out so as you can grow stronger and us can too and all.'

  The silent, invisible, dry tears fell in torrents; to Trafford the room was awash with them and he could almost taste the salt of Kahlua's secret sadness.

  'When Duke died,' she said quietly, 'I died.'

  Princess Lovebud's expression showed that she was not impressed with Kahlua's testification but she realized it was all she was going to get and so she led the applause. After that, the celebration of Trafford's happiness began in earnest.

  It was a celebration at which Trafford found himself extremely reluctant to emote in a socially appropriate manner. This was not just because, like Kahlua, he found the moral obligation to broadcast his deepest and most complex feelings at the top of his voice difficult but also because the sadness of the bereaved mothers who had just testified had brought back memories of Phoenix Rising.

  She had been Trafford's first child, with his first wife. Phoenix Rising had died of tetanus at the age of four and no day passed when Trafford did not mourn her.

  Fortunately for him, he was rarely called upon to testify to this because the suffering of fathers did not form a major part of the emotional fabric of the community. Nor did it feature significantly in the liturgy of the Temple. It was alluded to in passing during Mourning Mass but the grief was considered to be mainly the prerogative of the mother. As serial marriage was considered the most appropriate structure within which children might be got and the Love perpetuated, fathers were transient figures in most homes. Fathers constantly moved on while mothers remained with their children. The Temple approved of this; it was in fact suspicious of long marriages since they seemed to deny the natural duty of every man since Adam to spread the Love. The elders of the Temple reserved for themselves the right of polygamy, conducting their own serial marriages in a parallel rather than a vertical fashion (Confessor Bailey had eight current wives), but they expected the wider community to marry often. After all, Jesus had blessed the marriage at Cana and what Jesus blessed must be perpetuated until death.

  Trafford was therefore thinking of Phoenix Rising even as he celebrated the birth of Caitlin Happymeal but fortunately, as he was among civil servants, the party was not as loud or as prolonged as it might have been in another workplace. There was much screaming and shouting, of course. A huge cake was wheeled in covered with sparklers, and boxes of assorted iced doughnuts were also produced. There was a video card in which everybody appeared wishing Trafford the best, and another cake for Chantorria which Trafford was expected to struggle home with on the tube. Nobody, however, suggested that they all take the afternoon off to get hopelessly drunk and, to Trafford's relief and Princess Lovebud's loudly professed disappointment, there was no karaoke.

  'What are you like?' she chided loudly. 'This is supposed to be a party!'

  But after little more than forty-five minutes the celebration was over and people began to gather up a final doughnut or two, grab another frothy, syrupy latte from the social hub and begin the day's work.

  7

  Trafford's job title was Senior Executive Analyst. Everybody on his floor was a Senior Executive Analyst. Despite the fact that there were very few ranks within government departments, those which there were had, for the purpose of promoting positivity and self-esteem, the most wonderfully empowering titles. A Senior Executive Analyst was an elevated status position, which meant that the person holding that title was one rung up from basic, which for purposes of positive self-imaging was designated 'senior'. In an idle moment, of which there were many in Trafford's working day, he had looked up the words in his job title in his computer dictionary so he knew that in fact he was neither senior nor an executive nor an analyst. After using a thesaurus he had concluded that he was in fact a clerk and in his private thoughts that was what he called himself.

  He worked in the DegSep Division of NatDat. DegSep was short for Degrees of Separation and it existed in order to establish and catalogue the connections (no matter how tenuous) between every single person, every other person and every single thing that happened.

  It was Trafford's job (along with his many thousands of colleagues) to establish new links upon which degrees of separation could be calculated. The DegSep computers had long since been programmed to link automatically all those who watched a certain television show with all those who favoured a certain salt-reduced ionizing energy drink, but unless a special program was written for it the computer would not necessarily link those who drank that particular drink while watching that particular show. Trafford helped to write such programs.

  Trafford's department had recently been astonished to discover that the DegSep computers were not linking preference in pre-cooked meals with parental star signs; hence the fact that an individual with at least one Taurean parent had a very slight statistical likelihood to eat lasagne more often than a person with two Sagittarian parents had lain completely hidden.

  Once a new link had been established, then that link had to be cross-linked to all the other links. What, for instance, was the data on the frozen lasagne-eating children of Taureans and their weekend travel habits? The DegSep computers at NatDat knew the answer and although no one would ever again ask the question the information was available should they wish to do so.

  At the previous election for civil administrators, the Prime Minister had boasted proudly that the amount of 'information' stored in the NatDat digital archive doubled almost daily and the number of 'facts' in existence about any single citizen had long since surpassed the number of atoms in the universe. The opposition complained that while these statistics were certainly encouraging, not enough was being done and what was being done was too little too late.

  Trafford was hard at work designing a p
rogram that would link choice of nail polish to the number of consonants in a person's middle name when he heard a voice behind him.

  'Care to join me for a bite of lunch? You know, just to wet the baby's head.'

  Trafford knew the voice: it was Cassius, the oldest employee on Trafford's floor. Cassius did no actual work; he was employed to ensure that the government targets for eliminating age discrimination were met. His job description required him to sit in the corner and be old, next to the woman in the wheelchair. It was not that either of them was incapable – they were both intelligent, computer-literate individuals – and the work, like all NatDat activities, was childishly simple and utterly pointless so it did not matter how efficiently it was done. It was simply that inputting data was not their job. Their job was to meet government targets.

  'Well,' Trafford replied without any great enthusiasm, for he had never spoken to Cassius before, 'I'm not sure.'

  'Or perhaps you don't want to celebrate, brother?' said Cassius, and he seemed to Trafford to be staring at him in a vaguely significant manner. 'After all, one out of every two babies dies before its fifth birthday. What's to celebrate?'

  Cassius spoke quietly. Kiddie death was not a subject to be discussed lightly, certainly not with a new parent, and had Cassius made the same remark to most fathers his reward would have been a punch in the face.

  'All right,' said Trafford, rising. 'I'll come.'

  He did not know why he agreed to go except that Cassius had voiced his own unspoken thoughts. One in two. What, indeed, was there to celebrate? Better perhaps to let the public celebrations wait until the child had reached at least the age of five.

  To Trafford's surprise, Cassius did not take him to the nearest burger franchise, which was at the far end of the open-plan office, nor did he stop at the one next to the elevator or the one in the lobby of the building.

  'Got to stretch my legs,' Cassius explained loudly as they passed the CCTV camera bank at the entrance. 'Getting old. Still, can't complain about that, it's my job.'

  In fact Cassius did not take Trafford to a burger joint at all but led him to a small falafel shop in a murky, semi-submerged backstreet.

  Trafford stopped on the duckboards outside the entrance.

  'You want to eat here?' he asked.

  'You don't like falafel?' Cassius enquired.

  'No, it's . . . well . . .'

  'That this isn't a Falafel House.'

  That was it exactly. The grubby little café outside which they were standing might sell falafels but it was not part of the mighty Falafel House chain, nor was it a part of Falafel House's slightly less popular 'rival', Falafel Munch (which was owned by Falafel House). This was an independent business that catered to the local immigrant underclass. It would normally serve only illegals and the police. The implications of a respectable citizen eating in a place like this were clear. By choosing to ignore the falafel choice of millions of their fellow citizens, they were setting themselves apart from the people's choice of falafel Clearly they thought themselves too good for Falafel House, a cut above Falafel Munch, and anyone who considered themselves too good for the choices of the people was a posh snob elitist and they had better watch out.

  'Please, it's my treat,' said Cassius. 'I really do love a proper home-made falafel

  Surprised at his new companion's audacity, Trafford allowed himself to be led into the building, up the stairs from the waterlogged ground floor and into a little room above where there were three tables, all unoccupied.

  Cassius chose one and motioned Trafford to sit. This Trafford did, making a point of looking about himself before carefully positioning his chair so that he had his back to the camera.

  'Do you know,' Cassius continued in a friendly, casual tone, 'I rather find that if one wishes to go unnoticed the thing to do is not to try to go unnoticed.'

  'I wasn't . . .' But Trafford knew it was useless to protest; his manoeuvring had been too obvious.

  Cassius smiled. 'We in our department know that almost no information that the authorities collect is ever scrutinized. How could it be? We are all of us under constant surveillance. They'd need police officers for every person to watch all that material and those officers would never be able to sleep. The only time that information is scrutinized is when attention is drawn to it. Therefore, clearly the best way to avoid scrutiny is not to invite it.'

  'We are sitting in an independent café, mate,' Trafford replied a little acerbically. He did not like being patronized.

  'It's not illegal.'

  'No, but only illegals come to places like this.'

  'We might be sightseers, researchers for a documentary. Why, we might be police officers ourselves searching out foreign rapists – as long as we sit proudly and with confidence. If, on the other hand, we make obvious, self-conscious efforts to keep our faces from the camera then we are clearly up to no good.'

  'Or we could have gone to eat at a Falafel House,' Trafford replied drily. Nonetheless, he straightened up a little and made some effort to look relaxed.

  Cassius ordered two falafel and salad wraps.

  'Good?' he enquired as Trafford bit into his.

  Trafford grimaced. 'No. It's bitter.'

  'Not bitter, savoury.'

  'Bitter.'

  'Give it a chance.'

  Trafford tried another bite and as his taste buds became more accustomed he found it strange but not entirely unpleasant to eat something that wasn't sweet.

  'All right,' he admitted, 'it's . . . interesting.'

  'No corn syrup,' Cassius explained. 'Takes a moment to get used to, but worth it, I think. They make them themselves, just chick peas and seasoning. They don't think that falafels should be sweet.'

  Once more Trafford looked about himself nervously.

  'Everything should be sweet,' he said, slightly too assertively, as if speaking for the benefit of a third party. 'That's obvious. Sweet is a treat. So the sweeter things are, the more we'll enjoy them.'

  'Nobody's listening, Trafford,' Cassius said. 'For Heaven's sake, you yourself work for the National Data Bank, you're a professional busybody. You must have keyed in a billion hours of Citizens' TV. Have you ever listened to any of it?'

  Trafford smiled. It was a fair point. 'No.'

  'Of course you haven't. Nobody listens. This isn't Nineteen Eighty-Four.'

  '1984? What are you talking about?'

  'It's a year from Before The Flood.'

  'I know that.'

  'And it's the title of a story.'

  Trafford's eyes narrowed. Was he being entrapped? Everybody knew about entrapment. It was always in the news: young policemen wandering the canal banks luring sodomites to their doom, drug dealers who turned out to be narcotics agents, and of course ape-men sites on the net that purported to offer proof that life on Earth was many millions of years old but which were in fact Temple-sponsored mind traps.

  'You mean . . . fiction?' he asked cautiously.

  'Yes, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a story about a society where—'

  'I don't care, mate!' Trafford interrupted. 'I do not want to know! Stories are blasphemy and fiction is a sin, full of pretend people created by men. I am a person of faith and I know that only the Creator can create people.'

  'Goodness,' said Cassius, 'you seem to think that I am a congregation that must be enlightened . . . or perhaps you think I'm a police officer?'

  'I don't think anything,' Trafford replied evasively.

  He wanted his position clearly on record. Everybody knew that Before The Flood it was fiction that had been the principal corrupter of men. Confessor Bailey reminded them of it week in, week out. Of that terrible time when society had been colonized by made-up people. When the television channels had teemed with people pretending to be people that they were not! People who were the creation of a third party, fictional characters. A time of books, and not the sort of books that were still read in the Enlightened Age, not good books, books of faith, of personal enlightenm
ent, aspiration and self-improvement, books that told you how to get rich, make friends, have great sex and dominate your social group. Not those kinds of books but stories, thousands and thousands of stories piled high on shelves. A whole nation obsessed with what was not true, corrupted by the delusion that what man could invent was more beautiful, more interesting than what God had created. Then, thankfully, even Before The Flood, a time had come when man slowly began to turn away from stories in favour of reality. A time when, mercifully, a new generation began to celebrate only itself, to watch only itself on television, to read about only itself in books and magazines and in so doing to celebrate the reality of what God had created.

  'Please, Trafford,' Cassius said, 'I'm not a policeman. Why would a policeman sit in the corner of your office for years trying to trap you? Are you more important than I had imagined?'

  'No, of course not,' Trafford replied, feeling slightly embarrassed. 'But you mentioned Nineteen Eighty-Four. You said it was a . . .'

  'A story?'

  'Shut up, for Love's sake!'

  'I don't think that stories are a sin,' Cassius said.

  'They are!'

  'Why?'

  'You know why. Everybody knows why. Because once man had begun inventing stories his pride and vanity grew so great that he thought he could write the story of life itself – and so came about the greatest sin of all, when man wrote the story of the Earth and left out God!' 'My, my,' Cassius replied with a patronizing sniff. 'You must have been an excellent pupil at faith school, Trafford. Do you really believe all that rubbish?'

  Trafford rose to leave. Idiots who wanted to get themselves arrested for blasphemy could do it without implicating him.

  'Goodbye, Cassius,' he said loudly. 'Thanks for lunch but I don't think I'll bother again. If you want to speak to me you can do it at the office.'

  'One in two,' said Cassius quietly. 'One in two will die, Trafford.'

  Trafford remained where he stood. This grim statistic was the reason he had agreed to lunch with Cassius in the first place.