The 2084 Precept

  ***

  Joe and I had a quick meal in the factory canteen. I politely listened to a mountain of trivial details concerning the uninteresting activities of his developing offspring. It reminded me to sincerely savor my status as an unfettered single male, one unhampered by the incarcerating restrictions of those who have gone down the reproduction route.

  The second meeting was at one o'clock and was a very different kettle of fish—weird expression, who puts fish in a kettle—when compared to the one this morning. There were three of them and they were all boring. So boring, in fact, as to not only be dull themselves, but to be the cause of dullness in others. You have met the type, I’m sure. And they offered only 2% and they wouldn't budge an inch from that. So I said cheerio, we shook hands with them all, and it felt like grasping three dead fish before they had had time to stiffen.

  "Joe," I said after they had left, "you know what we are going to do with this lot?"

  "Not really," he said, "you were rattling away again about continuing the long-term relationship, irrespective of pricing."

  "Quite right. And we will continue to carry on a long-term relationship with them. We will talk to them on the phone a couple of times a year. But we won't be ordering anything for a while, we will be buying from one of their competitors. And as a new customer we probably won't have any difficulty in negotiating a lower price. But even if we can't, we'll buy from the competitor anyway. I don't like doing that—according to your summary here we've been getting top quality and faultless delivery performance from the current guys, and you can never tell how a new supplier is going to work out. If there are problems, the cheaper price just wouldn't be worth it. But we're going to go ahead and do it anyway."

  "Right you are," said good old Joe. What an agreeable guy he is.

  "What will happen, Joe," I said, "is that today's guys will contact you in a month or two, asking why we're not ordering. You will just tell them that we're overstocked at the moment, tell them our sales are down on the products we use their materials for, tell them our customers are indicating our products are too expensive and they're asking for lower prices. Whatever, just make them sweat a bit. Do not, of course, tell them we've stopped buying from them because they wouldn't give us what we wanted. I'll make a bet with you, Joe, that they come along after another couple of months with a 5% offer. And when that happens, we will merely politely repeat our 10% target requirement. And when they eventually offer us 8%, we will, with a mixture of fortitude and resignation, yield. And thank them very much for their cooperation. O.K.? Of course it might not work, Joe. I might lose my bet. Time, as time is wont to do, will provide us with the answer."

  I went back with Joe to his office and he gave me the four supplier details for tomorrow's sessions. The first one is at nine o'clock. Before leaving, I dropped in to see Fred. He had just finished his meeting with the works council and they intended organizing a workforce assembly for the Friday afternoon. "Unpleasant times, Peter," he said. "Just think of the gains," I replied, "and what a hero you're going to be next year. Roger will give you a knighthood."

  There was no blue Nissan parked in the road and, so far as I could tell, there were no blue Nissans or Nissans of any kind following me on my way back into London. I went up to my room and checked my messages. Nothing. This was really bad news. I didn't understand it. I would have to send her a message. But what kind of a message? Whatever had happened between us, we still hadn't known each other for a full twenty four hours. A lighthearted message would be best perhaps. I typed it out and sent it.

  Darling Céline, please let me know when you are arriving in London. I really am not as weird as that poem I sent you. Please bring it with you and I will tear it up, then I will shred it and then I will set fire to it and then I will throw the ashes into the River Thames. I am missing you very badly. Please email or call. Your Peter. Yes, I know, overblown drivel, and impossible for me to be 'Your Peter', no further comment.

  It was still afternoon. I thought I would trot along to the 'En Passant' and play some blitz. I was not in the mood to enjoy the good weather, Céline was weighing on my mind. And a major side-benefit of chess is that it takes your mind off other things. The need to concentrate does it, no problem at all.

  I decided to walk it, too much sitting on my ass in offices and in the car. Little Miss Ugly was at the desk again today. She was wearing a dark blouse which was more than successful in showing her breasts to be of a higher standard than her face, poor girl. I gave her another intense O'Donoghue smile and a friendly wave, and made her day again. I lit up a cigarette, took off down the street and turned the corner into Piccadilly. And there he was. The morose-looking bastard, peering interestedly into the window of a clothing shop. Not that this kind of guy could afford Piccadilly prices judging by the look of him, but I guess window-shopping is as plausible an activity as any other if your prey is not aware of you. Or if you think he isn't.

  I went straight up to him. Morose-looking was definitely an accurate description for this guy. Maybe he had a ghastly wife. Maybe he couldn't afford a divorce. Maybe he had a whore as a mistress. And maybe he had gone heavily into debt financing expensive gifts to ensure she prolonged her pretense of liking morose-looking guys. Whatever, I suppose that having to trek around following somebody all day long is enough to make anyone morose. Or maybe he was just morose by nature. Or maybe he wasn't morose at all, maybe he just looked that way. Irrespective, it made you want to ask him why he didn't solve everything by stepping out in front of one of those London buses. There are plenty of buses in London, no planning required.

  "Excuse me," I said.

  "Yes?" he asked, removing his gaze from a pair of hideous jeans, the design, in my view, as nauseating as the price tag.

  He had a pockmarked face, one of those skin diseases you can get when you're young and you can't do anything about for the rest of your life. Well, as we know, we all have our crosses to bear, some more than others of course. He looked a bit older than me, his dark hair was already going grey, not unkempt exactly but it could do with a haircut. He had thin lips, I have never liked thin lips, and his left eyelid had started to take over part of the eye, making him look as if he were permanently halfway through a wink. He was wearing a suit which didn't fit around the shoulders, an off-the-peg item. And he was sporting a blue and white striped tie which reached only half-way to his waist, accentuating a passable amount of beer-induced corpulence. And also accentuating the fact that nobody had ever educated him to ensure his tie reached the level of his belt, no more however, and also no less. But it complemented the shirt, one of those with a collar that can never be ironed properly.

  For all of that, he was a clean-shaven fellow, and he had a fairly clean appearance overall.

  "Why are you following me?" I asked. No beating about the bushes for me today, thank you very much.

  "Following you?"

  "No, that wasn't my query. My query was 'why'."

  He studied me for a moment and came to a decision.

  "Perhaps we could find a place for a coffee," he said, "and I will explain."

  "Perhaps we could. And hopefully you will."

  We headed in the direction of Leicester Square and found ourselves a place to have a coffee.

  "It has to do with Obrix Consultancy Partners," he said after we had ordered. "A Mr. Jeremy Parker."

  I said nothing, looked at him.

  "May I ask what your connection to Mr. Parker is?" he asked.

  "No, you may not. You are the one who was going to do some explaining. Kindly proceed."

  "Well, as I said, it has to do with a certain Mr. Jeremy Parker. We are interested in certain of his activities and consequently in anyone who has contact with him, other than bona fide employees of his own companies needless to say."

  "We? Who are 'we'?"

  "We are a police department."

  "A police department? What police department?"

  "We are attached to New Scotland Yard."
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  "Attached? What does that mean?"

  "Well, we are a special services unit. We tend to operate on unusual cases, ones that cannot necessarily be pursued in the normal manner. We cooperate with various departments including the Serious Organized Crime Agency, the Counter Terrorism Command, the Serious Fraud Office and even MI5 and MI6 on occasion. A 'man-of-all-trades' department, if you like, let's put it like that."

  "Put it any way you wish," I said, "but I need to see some identification and I also need to make a note of your name and your superior's name as well."

  "My name and identification is not a problem," he replied, pulling out what I believe is referred to as a warrant card from his inside pocket and showing it to me. "But I am not at liberty to divulge my superior's name. And any enquiries you might wish to make regarding myself would have to be made through the normal channels. Although," he continued with a slight cough, "I wouldn't recommend that."

  "You wouldn't? Why not?"

  "Well, such things are confidential and subject to a complicated process, involving, among other things, ratification of the person or persons making the enquiry. It tends to take a long time."

  "It tends to take a long time, does it? Well, now that is a very interesting piece of information. So…and you are Tom Delsey, assuming your identification is not a fake. It looks fairly genuine though, not that I have the tiniest idea of how to judge these things. And you work for a special services unit."

  "Correct."

  "Well, I don't think much of your special services training. As a sleuth, you are close to useless. For a subject who has no reason to suspect he is being followed to notice you, you would have to be deficient to quite a degree. Inept would be a more precise word, wouldn't you agree? And in any case, why use only one person? Extremely unprofessional I would have thought. And was it you driving the blue Nissan?"

  "Your comments are understandable, Mr. O'Donoghue, but are based on a false premise. First of all, this is not a matter of high priority for us—not at present anyway. And secondly, I wasn't too concerned about your noticing me. Believe me, if that had been a concern, there is no way you would have been able to observe us at all. We are merely interested in watching you to find out which other people you contact. Eventually we would have wanted to have a conversation with you, but that is happening now, so not a problem. And yes, it was me driving the blue Nissan."

  "How do you know my name? And why would you want to know who I am visiting? And why would you want to have a conversation with me? For your information, I am a perfectly typical, honorable, law-abiding member of the general public, not someone you could classify as one of your criminal elements."

  "Well, checking up on somebody's name is not exactly an onerous task for the police, obviously. Nor is there anything illegal about it either. And as for your other two questions, Mr. O'Donoghue, the simple answer is because of Mr. Parker on the one hand, and on the other because you are a new acquaintance of his. A foreign resident one at that."

  "Why because of Mr. Parker?"

  "Well, Mr. O'Donoghue…what exactly is the nature of your acquaintanceship with Mr. Parker?"

  "I am not sitting here in order to be interrogated, Mr. Delsey. Please get that straight. I am highly pissed off, to put it mildly, at being followed in the first place. I resent the intrusion into my personal life. And I specifically resent the fact that the intrusion into my personal life has been a concealed one. It still would be in fact, were it not for your inadequate methods. So…what about Mr. Parker?"

  "Yes. Well…we received a visit from a young lady."

  "You received a visit from a young lady?"

  Yes. She had some specific comments to make about a certain Mr. Jeremy Parker. He apparently accosted her outside of a pub one evening and invited her to a meeting in his offices the next day. A meeting which, apparently, would be a particularly lucrative one for her. She did in fact attend the meeting and he paid her an advance of €100,000. Without a contract even. We know that for a fact, she allowed us to check her bank account. A most unusual event."

  "Sounds like it," I said.

  "Yes…well it turned out not to be the most unusual event in that meeting."

  "No?"

  "No. What was more unusual was that he offered her a further €400,000. And all she had to do to earn it was attend a few more meetings. Not your normal daily occurrence. A highly unnatural proposition. Difficult to believe."

  "Pretty weird, yes."

  "Yes. But that was also not the most unusual part of that meeting. The most unusual part was that he claimed to be an alien."

  "An alien? What's so unusual about that? There are thousands, maybe millions of aliens in this country."

  "Not that kind of alien, Mr. O'Donoghue," he said. "An alien from outer space."

  "Outer space? An extraterrestrial lifeform? Oh…so he's some kind of lunatic?"

  "Well, what does it sound like to you, Mr. O'Donoghue? You should be able to judge that better than I can. After all, you are acquainted with him."

  Yes I was. But I was also thinking of that additional €400,000 and the rest. It was of course clear to me that this interest on the part of the authorities could blow up any chances I might have of collecting more money from Jeremy. But it wasn't a foregone conclusion by any means. Not yet. So I decided my best plan was to continue playing dumb.

  "He seems perfectly sane to me," I said.

  Yes…well…hmm. Anyway, the young lady certainly believed he was a lunatic and was convinced that he might even be a dangerous one. She didn't go back for the next meeting. She went to the police instead. And after the usual bureaucratic convolutions, the matter ended up on our plate. And we did two things initially. We documented her statement and we asked her to sign it. And we checked up on Jeremy Parker."

  "And?"

  "And he is indeed a lunatic. Or rather, he was. He made a miraculous recovery and was eventually released back into the world inhabited by you and I. And successful in business since then, all legal and above board."

  "Well now…" I said.

  "There is not much we can do at this stage. He could simply deny the alien part and defend the money side of it as a warrantable business transaction, perhaps a more justifiable transaction than the one explained by the young lady. The point is, he has done nothing wrong yet. Nothing provably wrong."

  "So why your interest?"

  "As I said, it is not a priority for us. On the other hand, we share the young lady's views that something very strange is going on. The payment, for a start. And he was a certified lunatic, and therefore he might still be one. Or it could be some kind of a fraud. Or he could be dangerous. Perhaps violently so. Or it could even be some kind of perverse sexual entrapment, with, given the amount of money on offer to the young lady, some particularly nasty and perilous elements involved."

  "I suppose," I said.

  "Yes…well. We don't know. We haven't the faintest idea. We simply decided to observe him for a while and see what cropped up. And what cropped up was you, and I was assigned to watch you. Not something I have been taking too much trouble over, as you have explicitly and succinctly pointed out."

  "Hmm…an interesting story, Mr. Delsey," I said.

  "Yes it is," he replied. "And since I have spoken to you openly and candidly, Mr. O'Donoghue, perhaps you would be so kind as to return me the favor."

  "I have no objection to that, Mr. Delsey. I know nothing at all about your interesting story, whatever the veracity of it may turn out to be. And in case you haven't already snuffled around some more in my personal affairs, let me tell you that I am a business consultant. Based in Germany. A legal resident there. I work anywhere in Europe. I am currently working for two U.K. clients, United Fasteners in South Audley Street and Obrix Consultancy Partners just off the Strand. Both are holding companies. And before you decide to start messing around checking my bank accounts, let me tell you that I have received payments from both clients and I continue to do so. I am pro
viding them with my services in return."

  "No comments from Mr. Parker about being an alien?"

  "No. You couldn't possibly imagine I would have any interest in working for a lunatic claiming to be an alien. Or could you?"

  "Not really. Point taken. And what kind of payment or payments have you been receiving from Jeremy Parker. Or, alternatively, from his holding company?"

  "That is none of your business, Mr. Delsey. But let me tell you two things. Firstly, the payments I have received are in line with the services provided, and relate to work performed both last year and this year, as the invoices show. As regards the Obrix company, I do not invoice them on a monthly basis and there are consequently amounts still outstanding for this year's work. In other words, I will be receiving further payments. Secondly, if you possess the authority to do so, please check my German tax returns for as far back as you want. All of my income has always been declared and I pay the resulting taxation in full. On time. Every time. And that includes making the quarterly advance payments. O.K.?"

  "That is O.K., Mr. O'Donoghue. There is no need to be annoyed. We have no reason to wish to check up on your financial affairs, nor do we have any intention of doing so."

  Not for the moment, they didn't. It would no doubt be a troublesome cross-border request which would need to be appropriately justified. It would involve bureaucracy, it would involve work. But he and his boss could of course change their minds on the subject whenever they felt like it.

  "Do you," he continued, "have anything at all that might assist me? Have you seen or heard anything unusual? Any peculiarities concerning Mr. Parker himself or his group of companies?"

  "No," I said, using my thoughtful tone of voice, the one which denotes considered truthfulness, integrity as pure as the driven snow. Or undriven snow, come to that. "Quite honestly, nothing at all, nothing whatever."

  "Well," he said, gazing at me meaningfully, "I am sure you understand our interest in this affair. Something is not right, as I am sure you agree. In our experience, when large amounts of money start to float around for no apparently rational purpose, there is more often than not some kind of criminal activity involved."

  "I can understand your interest," I replied, giving him a meaningful look of my own, "but not your interest in me. Your so-called affair is decidedly unusual, but the whole thing may turn out to be an illusion, there may be nothing to it. That is to say, there may be a good explanation for it, different to the one the young lady has provided you with. Or there may indeed be some hidden criminal machinations underway, which I agree would need to be prevented. But none of this has anything to do with me. I am a normal person, I am working in a normal manner, and as far as my experience on this assignment goes, Jeremy Parker is also a perfectly normal person and a perfectly normal businessman. Even if, as you tell me, he has a history of mental illness in his past."

  "I see. Well…in case you do come across something, here is my card. I would be grateful if you would contact me if you notice anything strange, out of the ordinary, anything you think might be of assistance to us."

  "Now just a moment, Mr. Delsey, just a moment. It just so happens that I am being followed. By you. And I do not wish to be followed. Not by you and not by anyone else. In fact, I do not want to be followed ever again until I kick the bucket. By anybody, unless it's an erotic female, and with all due respect you do not fall into that category. I want this following me to be stopped. Now. And if not, you had better believe me when I say that you and any of your gumshoe colleagues, including your gumshoe boss, will regret it. Not in a way that could put me into prison of course. But don't underestimate me. I am perfectly capable of negatively affecting the personal lives of people like you who, as it happens, have taken a conscious decision to negatively affect mine."

  A bluff of course. There are things you can do, starting off in a small way like registering an annual subscription to a pornographic magazine in the name of a happily married man, or you can move on to child pornography. And you can arrange for far worse things than that, far worse. But I am not the type, I can't do things like that, no way. And even for those unprincipled and nauseating types who can, it involves a lot of work—or a lot of money paying somebody else to do it for you.

  "I can understand your aggressiveness," he said, "although I do not understand the need for you to express it so unpleasantly. We will do a deal."

  "A deal?"

  "Yes. We will stop following you. I don't mind telling you that we would probably stop anyway. In return, however, I would be grateful if you would call me if anything irregular comes to your attention. Please take note that we shall, nevertheless, continue to observe Mr. Parker and his activities until the matter has been cleared up one way or the other. As I am sure you agree, this is something which needs to be continued. And it would also be beneficial, Mr. O'Donoghue, if you did not find it necessary to mention this conversation to him. Or to anyone else for that matter."

  "O.K.," I said, "it's a deal."

  And we shook hands. He even paid for the coffee, which made me feel bad, his salary couldn't be that much. Still, he had a job with plenty of security, a fair compensation in these times of economic disaster, national debt mountains swelling like unstoppable tumors, nothing to do with the pin-striped representatives of the people of course; somebody else had been doing the spending and borrowing. And in any case, maybe he was just going to include the coffee on his next expense claim.

  Off he went back toward Piccadilly, taking his moroseness, his pock-marked face and his ignorantly knotted neckwear with him, poor guy.

  I didn't feel like chess any more. It was still sunny but it was early evening and it was becoming cool. So I bought an IHT, found a steakhouse and had a sirloin—well done, burnt to death as usual—and French fries. I read about the wars and the bombs and the atrocities and the tennis and the start of the cricket season. Cricket, just by the way, is a game—according to Lord Mancroft—which the British, not being a spiritual people, had to invent in order to have some concept of eternity.

  I walked back to the hotel. A new girl was at the desk. Not bad looking, quite elegant with her brown hair done up in a bun at the back; automatic thoughts of course about pulling it loose and proceeding on to other things. Such thoughts are automatic, they are not within our control, nor do I wish them to be. I gave her the friendly smile and the slightly, but only slightly, penetrating look and received a decent smile back.

  There were quite a few people in the bar including a couple of possible females chatting to each other. But I wasn't interested in finding out about them. Céline was very much on my mind. I went up to my room and checked my messages. Nothing. And so I got into bed and read a couple of stories from my current book, a timeless collection of Stanley Ellin's amazing short stories, and fell into the hands of Somnus, the god of sleep; avoiding, on this occasion, those of his son Morpheus, the god of dreams.

  DAY 14

  It was cloudy this morning but not raining. I performed the s, s, and s routine and sat down on the bed to call Jeremy on his alien phone. Pressed the green button.

  "Good morning, Peter." He sounded as if he were in a reasonable mood.

  "Good morning, Jeremy. How are you this morning?"

  "I'm fine, I'm fine," he said. "And yourself?"

  "Not so bad, thanks. I spoke to the guy who has been following me."

  "Yes?"

  "Yes. His name is Delsey. And he admitted it, he didn't try to evade it. He is a police officer of some sort. He said I was being followed because of you and certain of your non-business activities."

  "Interesting, but not a surprise. Something like this was always a possibility. I assume it was the young lady to whom I paid the €100,000 who reported me?"

  "Correct. It could have been one of the others, but you are right, it was her."

  "Unlikely to have been one of the others, I would say. They would have had the same thoughts as you had, Peter."

  "How do you mean?" br />
  "I mean that they would have worked out that I could deny it, that I could prove my identity, that I could prove I was a successful and legal business man, and so on. Unlike the young lady, they wouldn't have been able to show a payment to support their story, circumstantial though that would be in any case. Hence my assumption that it was the young lady."

  "Well, and so it was."

  "Presumably this Mr. Delsey questioned you? May I ask what position you took?"

  "I told him that you and I had a perfectly normal business relationship. I told him I had received payments from your company but that these related to consultancy services provided to your company through the end of last year. And I denied everything else."

  "Fine. That's good to hear, Peter. You clearly intend to go ahead and earn your money," he chuckled. "And of course the benefit for me is that I don't have to start searching for a new interview candidate. Will they be continuing to keep you under supervision?"

  "No. At least, that is what he said. Of course, he might have lied. They could do it more professionally, use different people and so on, and I probably wouldn't be aware of it. You, on the other hand, will definitely continue to be watched. Logical, if you think about it. You represent a big query in their minds. Fraud, mental illness, something even worse, they just don't know. But obviously, they have good reason to suspect something is afoot."

  “Naturally, yes…but not a problem. I don't see how they can possibly arrest me. They might eventually wish to haul me in for questioning but they have no facts to go on, other than a statement from a young lady and a perplexed denial from myself. And yes, she demanded a large advance payment, which indeed was made. And then she broke our verbal contract, never appeared again. Our lawyers have already commenced preparations to pursue recovery of the sum involved via such legal procedures as are applicable in these cases."

  Jeremy paused for a moment and then added, "And of course, if absolutely necessary, I could utilize what you refer to as my computer-hacking skills and have them apologize profusely and release me. As often as I would need to."

  "What," I said, "if they were to cut off your funds and your access to your companies' funds until they get to the bottom of the matter?"

  "Oh, I don't think they could do that based on the meager facts available to them. And even if they could, I could apply the computer-hacking to that as well. Alternatively, I could use the other human identity I have created for myself, fully documented of course, and use the funds that are already in that identity's name."

  He may be mad, I thought to myself, but he has everything worked out, all the potential eventualities. And, mad or not, there can be no denying that ability of his to influence other people's minds. Advanced hypnosis skills. Maybe.

  "We're safe on the phone side, Peter," he continued, "but I think we should meet without their knowledge in future. Somewhere else, a different place. Just to avoid any irritating inconveniences to you and, indeed, to myself. We agreed to meet tomorrow. Would 2 p.m. suit you?”

  "No problem."

  "Good. I'll book a meeting room at the Ritz Hotel for the afternoon. In my name, Parker. Better to leave Obrix out of this. Just ask for me. I will ensure they are expecting you."

  "And if they try to follow me without my knowing?"

  "Just use some tricks that would shake them off if they happen to be doing it. Climb into a cab to somewhere. Change cabs and go somewhere else. Take a third cab. Whatever. And in any case, perhaps I am exaggerating the consequences if they find out that we're meeting. You told them we had a business relationship. An ongoing one. So what could be more normal? It changes nothing. See you then."

  "See you then. Goodbye, Jeremy."

  I was feeling more relaxed. My chances of earning the €400,000 were still good. A few more interviews, that's all. And I had no qualms about it. Jeremy was definitely a very sick man but by paying me the money, he would not be harmed and nor would anybody else. His group of companies would merely have a few hundred thousand less available for dividends, reserves, investments or whatever.

  I checked my laptop again for messages. Nothing. I checked my phone for messages. Nothing. Either something has happened to her, or I'm not going to hear from her again. This time, life’s tidal undercurrents were taking me back to somewhere I didn't want to go.

  I didn't feel like breakfast, this morning’s mood eradicated hunger. On top of that I was running a bit late for the first meeting at Clark's. I went down to the car, lit up a cigarette—yes, they are good for nursing despondency as well—and drove off to Slough. Made it in time.

  Today's supplier meetings were all different. The first one was a very satisfying one, more than satisfying. I was midway through my initial blurb when the guy in charge interrupted me and said, "How much?" I gave him the lie about the analysis and ended up with the 10.2% and he didn't blink an eyelid, just said, "We can accept that. We wish to cooperate to the full." I kept my mouth closed although it metaphorically gaped, widely in fact. And then we chatted away for a while about nothing at all and then they left.

  "Joe," I said, "we've been overpaying them."

  "No, I don't think so, Peter," he said with a smile. "I think they were merely hypnotized by your prodigious charm." Ha, so Joe has some irony in him too.

  The second meeting involved us talking to a lady sales director, a tough one. She wouldn't go beyond 5%. I told Joe to heavily reduce our ordering, similar procedure as for yesterday's goons.

  The next meeting was after lunch and dragged itself on into prolonged discussions, each side lying its head off about just about everything. But in the end we ended up with the 8%. These are big percentages, I think Joe was slowly beginning to realize just how much the previous lack of negotiating activity had been costing the company. But it's obvious. Suppliers are not stupid. When they see some of their customers faithfully accepting all and any proposed price increases year after year without a murmur, they are going to be taking the biggest margins they can get.

  The last meeting of the day was also a long one. It didn't finish until 6 o'clock. They only wanted to assist with 2%. But this was a bad supplier and Joe was able to wade in with details of quality problems, exaggerating the losses incurred by Clark's as a result, including occasions when some of our finished product had had to be junked as a result. This scared them up to 5%. And then Joe recited some late deliveries he had documented, and exaggerated the production delays caused as a result. But their only reaction to this was to promise to look into the issues and resolve them. So then Joe showed them some of their invoices charging Clark's for quantities ordered and he also showed them the related delivery notes which revealed that lower quantities had been delivered. Which had also resulted in production problems. And then he handed them a list of Clark's credit note claims in this connection, highlighting the ones which had not yet been settled.

  They were rattled, no doubt about it. But I don't think they had been authorized to increase the offer they had already made. And so I told them to go away and think about it and let us know the result of their deliberations by next week at the latest. I pointed out that we had been extremely cooperative in the face of all these difficulties, and that now we were asking them for some cooperation in return. For added measure I told them that we would also like some volume rebates. After all, the rebates wouldn't arise unless we purchased predetermined amounts, and that wouldn't hurt their sales volumes at all.

  "Well, Joe," I said after they had gone, "we had to get tough on that one."

  "Yes," he said. "I noticed your distinct lack of charm this time. But judging by the facial contortions toward the end, I would be happy to bet they'll be back with a 8% offer; perhaps even the 10% we are asking."

  "Right enough. But I would guess you are going to have to change suppliers in this case anyway. Even allowing for our exaggerations, the problems they are causing are not acceptable to us. See what happens.”

  “Will do,” said Joe. “Hopefully we are finishe
d and you want to go home now?”

  “No and yes. There are two overall projects we should start implementing as soon as possible, and it won’t take long to run through them."

  "Not long?" An ironic smile.

  "Not long," I said, slinging him a smile back. "We need to set up a system whereby your department receives purchased material defect reports on at least a weekly basis. The same goes for delivery issues. And a monthly report detailing incorrect invoices received. And your department becomes responsible for doing something about it all. Regularly. Continuous improvement. We are the customer, we tell our suppliers how things are going to be if they want to continue selling to us. And the second thing we need to do is set up a planned alternative supplier review. Price is not the only factor in determining from whom we buy, and sometimes not even the most important one. But we do need to know where we stand at all times, and price comparisons with alternative suppliers should be part of our regular procedures."

  "Great," said Joe, "I like all of that. But I would need to have an additional person to take over some of my day-to-day duties. I wouldn't have the time to properly manage all of that, be involved in negotiations, and still deal with my current daily workload."

  "Quite right, Joe, and you will get that person, I assure you. The cost will be nothing compared to the benefits. And at the same time, we may be upgrading your department. Your function is important enough. Maybe we'll have you report directly to the top instead of through Ron. But keep your hat on that one for the moment, Joe. I would like management to see some results from our activities first. And by the way, how would you feel about handling these supplier meetings yourself from now on? Starting tomorrow? Program it to fit in as far as your workload allows?”

  "No problem, Peter. I'm enjoying it. Of course, I wouldn't necessarily be handling the meetings in your particular charming style, but I think I can be reasonably successful in my own way. It's a tough target you've set, but I've changed my thinking about it somewhat. In other words, I no longer view the target as an unachievable one."

  "That's good to hear, Joe. So you'll be managing this from now on. And I wish you luck! As I think you already know, I'll be leaving toward the end of next week. And I won't be in tomorrow. But I think I shall be continuing on a kind of ad hoc basis for another year or two. That means that if you ever need to contact me or would like me to make an appearance, all you have to do is let me know. Email or mobile, it doesn't matter. In the meantime, we'll probably be seeing each other next week."

  And so that was that. I went out to the car and smoked a cigarette. A reward cigarette, the purchasing initiative was properly under way. It was coming up to seven p.m.. I drove back to London and there were no cars following me. None that I could see anyway.

  I went up to my room and checked my messages. Hey, a message from Céline! And about time too, I wonder what has been happening. Well, I wasn't due to find that out yet. I opened up the message and it read: Peter, I am very sorry not to have contacted you before. I have some complications in Rouen. I cannot come to London at this time. I will write to you again over the weekend. Céline. P.S. Your poem was great. The pupils loved it.

  I am not an idiot. The message was clear. There were no erotic wishes, there were no mots romantiques, no loving à bientôt, no je t'aime, no je t'adore, just her name. One of life's big waves, no doubt about it, one with an undercurrent you can't fight against. I lay down on the bed and decided to be depressed. A common reaction for many when self-interest is knocked hard on the head. And self-interest it was. Céline was a very special girl and there is not much I wouldn't have done—O.K., within justifiable limits—to have been her guy, to see if it could work out. It doesn't happen very often, I mean that you find a girl who takes over your feelings so completely that you would refuse an offer from the Dream, the Crooked Smile and Little Miss Ugly all rolled into one. I mean, that was one hell of an effect that this Céline had had on me.

  However, not being an idiot does not eliminate my potential for having idiotic thoughts. She had referred to 'complications'. That was not a very definitive statement. And she could not come to London 'at this time'. Which, while it doesn't have to mean that she will come at some other time, certainly implies the possibility—otherwise why write it?

  My depression lasted for about five minutes. Like all true cynics, one has learned to deal with the waves, including the big ones, up on the swell and down the other side, wait for the currents to subside, check out what kind of waves are waiting up ahead, and observe each situation with regard to its significance within the overall cosmic perspective. Reality rules the cynics' world.

  But it didn't stop me feeling sad, nothing to be done about that. I went down to the bar, ordered a single malt, checked the females, automatic pilot. But there were none of any interest, and even if there had been, I wouldn't have been interested.

  And cosmic perspective or not, I didn't feel like eating. I went outside to smoke a cigarette, went back to my room, read Ellin's prodigious 'The Betrayers', and fell asleep.

  DAY 15

  I got up reasonably late. Overcast again, suited my mood. Had coffee in the breakfast room, still didn't feel like eating. I went for a walk to Park Lane and picked up my IHT on the way and then crossed over into Hyde Park. Lots of people around, plenty of women, dogs in abundance. How do these people earn their living, how come they can just be sauntering around a park mid-morning on a Friday? The conundrums of life on this planet. Well…not necessarily a conundrum regarding the women, a lot of them live on money provided by a man. Their money could be coming from hubby, sitting on his ass somewhere in an office or squashed immovably into an airplane seat. Or they've got a rich lover. Or they've inherited money from dear old dead under-the-turf Daddy. Or incinerated Daddy. Or from Grandad. Or from Auntie whoever, who inherited from Uncle whoever. Or they have had a divorce, another way of distilling money from the male brewery. Who can tell? Life on this planet is simply the way it is and there they all are.

  I walked for a couple of hours, including some IHT reading time sitting against a tree trunk, and headed back toward the hotel. I was still sad after the walk but I had an appetite now. So I decided to have an early lunch before going to my meeting with Jeremy. There is an excellent restaurant in Piccadilly, used to be a bank in the old days, high ceilings and so forth, sits just along from the Ritz. The problem is that you can't get a table there unless you've reserved. Or unless you know the guy in charge, which I did. Not because I am a frequent visitor. On the contrary, I am an extremely infrequent visitor. But he plays chess in the En Passant, or tries to, and he remembers me from there. He also remembers my big tips, an investment I restrict to those few establishments in which I consider it to be useful to be known. And that doesn't work always either. But I was early enough today and it wasn't a problem he couldn't resolve.

  I ordered some fish. A certain religion—for reasons I do not comprehend—strongly recommends that you eat fish on Fridays. Apparently, this ritual activity enhances your chances of entering the musical profession (you can learn to play the harp for free). As said, I do not understand why this should be so and maybe it isn’t so, just another of their many rituals. Whatever, I ordered fish because I felt like eating fish and because in a restaurant such as this one you know the fish is going to be good. I ordered a Riesling to go with it and I finished off reading about the most recent human slaughtering and the Giro d'Italia and the cricket news while I ate.

  Lord Mancroft’s views on cricket are not shared by everybody. I noted an article in the cricket news which quoted William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury, who said (in 1925) that he personally had always looked upon cricket as organized loafing.

  I took a cab to Haymarket and then another one up and around to Marble Arch. I didn't notice anything or anyone. I waited until another cab came along and hopped into that, back down to the bottom of Park Lane, and then walked along into the Ritz. Five minutes to two.

  The Ritz, lik
e all hotels of its class, has fully trained employees, the customer is king, and there is not much they won't do for you providing it is legal. I even had the feeling they might have provided me with a golf cart to get me to Jeremy's conference room, had I so wished. But I didn't need a golf-cart and I was escorted there in the normal manner by a courteous employee who gave me the impression that he might have cleaned my shoes en route had I asked him to. The sensation I get in hotels like these is that I am a fantastic, superior, wonderful person, to be taken care of as only someone of my station and worth in life could possibly merit. The ego boost is worth every penny.

  "Nice to see you again, Peter," said Jeremy. "Punctual as usual. Please take a seat, everything is on the table."

  "Glad to see you looking happier than the last time we met, Jeremy," I said. "Not a very joyful topic, was it?"

  "No, Peter, it wasn't. I performed a significant amount of additional research on your hatred for each other and your killing habits, before completing and transmitting my thesis' draft text on this aspect. It makes for some sickly reading and I am afraid we will need to have a discussion on that later on. But first, we should go ahead with today's subject if you don't mind. By the way, any problems on your way here?"

  "No problems. I'm fairly sure that nobody followed my first two cabs and I'm absolutely certain about the last one."

  I paused. I needed to adapt myself to alien mode again, send firm instructions to my neurons that we were indeed meeting with somebody unacquainted with our planet.

  "Jeremy, today's subject is ‘Social and Organizational Characteristics’. This is truly a vast theme and we could probably sit here for a weeks and still not cover everything. Even if I were knowledgeable enough on everything. Which, by the way, I am not. Not by a long way."

  He smiled his warm smile. His round face really did look like the man in the moon, but a much friendlier-looking one than the one illuminated for us by our star.

  "Peter, the same comment as before. Just choose what seem to you to be the most important items, and we'll see how far we can get."

  What a way to earn money. No stress in these meetings at all. Apart from the subject matter which is negative all round. But that affects him more than it affects me. I just accept the way things are, have done for as long as I can remember. Certainly there were more pleasant things I could be doing with my time. But feeding his delusions was a small price to pay, no problem. For this kind of money, no problem at all.

  "Then I'll start," I said, "by outlining our species’ organization. First of all, through wars and so on, we have divided up our planet into 197 separate countries, give or take a couple and depending on how you define a country. Some countries are huge. The largest one measures 17 million km2. And some are tiny. The smallest one measures all of 3 km2. Not very logical, but then you wouldn't expect that from us, would you? And most of them are not even reasonably divided by straight lines. They are just illogical shapes and squiggly frontiers and some frontiers are still changing, and some are being argued about, and new countries tend to sprout on a regular basis."

  "How strange," said Jeremy. "May I ask why have you divided up your planet in this way? And why you are still arguing and changing things?"

  "Basically, Jeremy, because we human beings don't get on with each other. We have never been able to get on with each other. We just can't do it and, for all the religious chanting and pleas to the various deities and the throwing of white doves into the air, annually or otherwise, we never will. It's just the way we are. I think our last meeting made that clear. And we are indeed still changing everything. We continue to chop everything up, we continue to create new countries. We no longer have the Soviet Union, we no longer have Yugoslavia, we have lots of different countries instead, all because of the fact that their inhabitants are incapable of living together in a single country. We need to be separated by frontiers and passports. Somalia has lost its northern territory to something calling itself Somalialand, but this, similar to the something else calling itself Kurdistan, has not been internationally recognized by those who have determined they have the prerogative to do so. Recently, even Sudan split; there is now a country called South Sudan. But they are also killing each other in South Sudan now, another battle for power, we'll wait and see what happens. And Ukraine and the Crimea. We'll wait and see what happens there also."

  I paused. Jeremy was typing something into his laptop. He was frowning and he didn't look up. I poured myself some coffee and continued.

  "The number of countries on the planet may have changed again this morning for all I know. And in my part of the world, the Scots wish to split from the English, the Belgians want to divide themselves into a Flemish-speaking country and a French-speaking one, the Spanish want at least three countries, Spain, Catalonia and the Basque country, and there are stirrings from Andalusia, Galicia and Asturias as well. Corsica wants to be a brand new country, it doesn't want to continue being part of France. And so on around the globe. It never stops and it never will."

  "Fascinating. But nauseous and pathetic in a way," said Jeremy. "One dominant species, one undivided planet, is all I have ever come across before. I have seen none of the strife, mistrust, aversion, antipathy, aggressiveness, hate and brutality or whatever else it is that causes your species to separate itself, if you will forgive me, in such a ludicrous and ridiculous fashion."

  "Of course I forgive you," I said, "and both of your chosen adjectives are entirely appropriate. They are the very words my friend Steve used to describe the split of Czechoslovakia."

  "Czechoslovakia?"

  "Yes. That was one of the repressed countries forming part of the Soviet-dominated European empire. And when that empire fell apart, as empires tend to do, the Czechoslovaks spent the first few days celebrating their freedom from the Soviet yoke, and the next few days saying 'Ah…but wait a minute…oh dear, oh dear…we can't live together…we don't even like each other, we have to split into two countries, we’ll call them the Czech Republic and Slovakia and be separated by frontiers and passports'".

  "That is the second time you have mentioned 'separated by frontiers and passports', Peter. What exactly do you mean by that?"

  "Well…we…that is the human race…have decided that we should not be allowed to wander around our own planet without authorization from our birdbrains, those weird and wonderful creatures voted into power by the masses. Authorization by our birdbrains, or rather their minions, at both ends of the journey, by the way. And in many cases, passports are not enough, we need to go to the trouble of asking those minions for visas as well—and they, of course, are not always granted."

  "Do I understand that, not only are you not allowed to live where you want to on your relatively small planet, but you are not even allowed to travel around on it unless other members of your species allow you to?"

  "Yes, Jeremy. Astounding, I know. But yes. Precisely so."

  "Hmm…a most extraordinary species."

  "And while we are on the subject of travel," I continued, "we can't do that without killing ourselves either. There are 380,000 travel deaths per year; planes, trains, ships, road vehicles. That is over 1,000 deaths per day. Every day. Non-stop. And far more injured, far more maimed for life."

  "You mean that your intelligence has not yet reached a level…let me put that a different way. You haven't yet found out how to travel around your own planet without killing yourselves, and what's more, at the rate of over 1,000 per day? 1,000 humans for each single spin of your planet on its axis?"

  "That is correct, Jeremy. That is the way it is. We still haven't figured out how to travel without killing ourselves."

  "But you consider yourselves to be intelligent."

  "Oh yes, we do, we do indeed. Very intelligent"

  "Then that in turn denotes a colossal amount of arrogance. Which is also the cause of your inability to self-evaluate. Which in turn prevents you from classifying yourselves as stupid."

  "Yes."

&nb
sp; "Well…please continue."

  "Yes, well, as I was saying, we, as a species, cannot tolerate each other—within or without the innumerable boundaries we have created for ourselves. Consequently we use about 100 million human beings as military personnel, soldiers, sailors and airmen. Their job is either to attack and kill other humans, or to defend against other humans trying to attack and kill them, or to represent a threat which enables us to impose our own interests on others, or to defend against others who are threatening to impose their interests on us. Of course, not all of these military forces are successful. But usually, on this planet, the strongest military force wins."

  "And these are the sole purposes for creating such forces?"

  "Yes, Jeremy, and being the way we are, they are very necessary ones too. But they are not enough. Military forces are used mainly, although not always, to resolve cross-border altercations between different members of our species. Within our borders, however, we have the same issues and we need something else. We call them police forces. An additional estimated 15 million human beings are employed all over our planet as policemen. Without them, the human species would descend immediately, rapidly and unchecked into total anarchy. This way we maintain a controlled, partial form of anarchy.”

  “None of those religious leaders,” I continued, “who have been recommending peace for a few millennia by praying and praying and praying, and regularly releasing small white birds into the air, would be able to prevent it. Listen to this, Jeremy, even with the police, the situation on this planet is a horrendous one. In addition to the murders I told you about—don't forget, one murder per minute according to the U.N. statistics—there are 8 million rapes of women each year, including gang rapes. That is nearly 1,000 rapes per hour. And then there are huge numbers of other crimes—simple theft, armed robbery, corruption, kidnapping, child molestation, fraud and a whole host of others, you name it, you’ve got it. All over the planet, and not confined to any specific region.

  "So you need policemen as well."

  "Yes…and as I said, we need millions of them to prevent the descent into a terrifying, lawless, barbaric abyss. Airports, railway stations, Jewish and similar ethnic and religious establishments all need to be watched 7/24 in many countries.”

  “Because of…?

  “Because of terrorists or because of simple criminals, many of them imported. The bad news is, however, that even the combined military and police forces are not sufficient. We need secret police in addition: the CIA, the NSA, the KGB as it used to be called, MI5 and all the others. It's just the way we are, we cannot exist in any other form."

  "It is absolutely impossible to classify you humans as a benevolent species."

  "Quite."

  "And despite this massive deployment of various constraint organizations, you still don't seem to be able to adequately control yourselves."

  "Nothing could be truer, Jeremy. We certainly try, but an average 7% of the human race is constantly behind bars, in prison. The ones we have caught and punished, that is. That means around 500 million human beings."

  Jeremy's eyes were pretending to be chapel hat pegs again.

  "So there are 500 hundred million of you behind bars at any given point in time," he repeated, looking at me as if he suspected me of intentionally trying to deceive him, or of trying to pull his leg, or of taking the piss, or, if you are German, of trying to pull him over the table.

  "There certainly are," I said. "We are the only species on the planet which is mentally sick enough to have to adopt such a system in order to protect ourselves."

  "What surprises me about you, Peter, is that none of this seems to trouble you. For example, you keep saying 'that's the way things are'. Nothing seems to upset you."

  "Well…it doesn't upset me. That doesn't mean to say that I necessarily respect or have a fondness for the human species, of which, of course, I am myself a member. No, I do not like how we treat ourselves and I do not like how we treat our animals and I do not like how we treat our planet. But I can't do anything about it, we are the products of nature and evolution. The majority wins. I merely observe."

  "But doesn't anybody try to do anything about it?"

  "Hah, Jeremy, not the first time you have asked that question. The answer is yes indeed, some people do, they always have and they presumably always will. We have rebellions, we have revolutions, we have civil wars, martyrs die, but in the end it doesn't change anything. Let me tell you about a short story I read once. There was a town in the Middle Ages, surrounded by high walls, manned watch towers at regular intervals, and the populace was more or less imprisoned inside. They were only allowed out under armed supervision to plough the fields, perform the harvesting and so on. Well, one day they rebelled, they stormed the watch towers, they killed the guards, they tore open the city gates and they ran out into the countryside shouting 'we are free", 'liberty at last', and so on and so forth. And free indeed they were. Their leaders and others had died martyrs' deaths and those remaining were as free as flying elephants in a zero-gravity universe. But after a while, one began to notice that they were forming into groups. And in each group, there was a man standing on an orange box. 'Now that we are free,' said one of them, 'I would like to explain to you how I think we should organize ourselves…'. 'We now have our liberty,' said another, 'and I believe that I should propose to you the best way in which we should proceed…'; and so on and so on throughout all of the groups. And the point of the story? The point of the story was that everything went back to being more or less the same as it had been before."

  "The same as it had been before?"

  "Yes. Various groups of humans listening to various other humans telling them what should be done, how everything should be organized, who should be in charge, who should have what powers, and so on. It's the only way we know how to operate, Jeremy. The problem of course was that the proposals in each of the groups were different to the proposals in each of the other ones. And so the arguments started up, the humans’ favorite hobby. And to resolve that problem, they decided that the best thing to do would be to start voting. The masses should decide for themselves. And the most powerful group, the one with the most votes, would rule. The obvious anomaly in all of that is that only 10% of the human race is really intelligent, but…it's the majority vote which gets to decide who is going to run things. And if the victorious party received only 51% of the vote versus 49% for the other, then so be it. It’s obvious that the two or more sides are going to spend most of their time arguing. And of course, the really funny thing is that the clowns who receive the votes and the power to govern us are also part of the human race.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that only 10% of them are intelligent as well.”

  "Haha, I get it. But back to arguing. Arguing is one of your species' favorite activities."

  "Indeed it is. We just cannot agree. Ever. It's in the nature of the beast. And sometimes we do our disagreeing with weapons—but we've dealt with that already—and sometimes we do it without. We only need to listen to the politicians on any given day, in any legislative body in any of the countries anywhere on the planet. Or to the television talk shows. All they do is argue, argue, argue. Century after century after century and on into infinity, infinity being an exaggeration, needless to say. All of them trying to force their own views onto everybody else and, while I'm about it, that goes for our religions as well. And, if you will forgive me for repeating myself, Jeremy, it is just the way we are. As I have said, I merely observe—usually with a mild and cynical interest but also from time to time with a metaphorically open mouth."

  I paused. Jeremy just sat there, trying to take it all in. I decided to continue, to complete the picture for him, give him his money's worth.

  "And because of all the arguing,” I resumed, “in addition to the soldiers and the police and the secret police we also have to employ vast numbers of human beings as lawyers to resolve our non-violent disputes, or to try to."
br />   "Vast numbers of lawyers?"

  "Yes. There are about 11 million lawyers worldwide at the last count. Our species could not exist without them. There is a firm belief that if we start a nuclear war, there will be only two surviving life forms—ants and lawyers."

  "And, according to my research, cockroaches as well." Jeremy grinned. "Well, at least non-stop dissonance is one weakness you recognize in yourselves."

  "Yes, Jeremy, but at the same time, the lawyers themselves disagree with each other. And therefore we have to employ a lot of people we call judges.

  "You'll be telling me soon that even the judges disagree," said Jeremy with a chuckle.

  "Don't chuckle, Jeremy! The judges do indeed also disagree, and so we have to employ even more human beings to constitute what we call higher courts and appeals courts."

  Jeremy might have chuckled before but he didn't chuckle again. He looked despondent. It was clearly proving difficult for him to absorb and understand this confusion, the ghastly, chaotic, revolting mess that I was describing.

  "What a system," he sighed. "What a society. What a species. And please don't tell me again that it's just because it's the way you are."

  "Understood, Jeremy, understood. Would you like me to stop or continue?"

  "Continue, Peter, if you would please. It's all information that will assist me."

  "O.K., Jeremy, here goes. Talking about lawyers leads me on to the subject of politics again. This is because the pin-striped clowns, to use another variation of my friend's aphorism, are the so-called law makers. Needless to say, the laws they create differ from country to country. And the job of the lawyers and the judges in each country is to apply these laws, or to try to. And so we have criminal lawyers, divorce lawyers, property lawyers, tax lawyers, international lawyers and a whole host of other kinds of lawyers. The lawmakers create thousands and thousands of new laws, and in true clown fashion they make them extremely complicated as well. Also in true clown fashion, they continuously discover that a lot of their laws are bad or inadequate and they are therefore constantly modifying untold thousands of them. And as no-one can keep up to date with the vast morass these clowns create and continue to create, flap, flap, specialist lawyers exist who spend their lives trying to stay on top of everything and unravel all of the non-stop modifications. No ordinary person could do it."

  "I have changed my mind, Peter. I don't think we need to go into detail on this. What a huge waste of potentially productive energy on your planet. I think just one example would suffice, if you don’t mind."

  "O.K. No problem. I’ll take tax law. It is as good an example as any, and I’ll keep it very brief. Just to remind you again, this is the human race we are talking about, so the laws are different in every country. I'll just take one country: the United States of America. Vast documentation is required, 70,000 pages to be precise, merely to cover this single branch of law. And because many of these tax laws are ridiculous or unfair or both, or simply because some of their elected clowns happen to disagree with what their predecessors had decided, flap, flap, huge numbers of changes are made to these laws—a never-ending state of affairs as I have already explained—in addition to the never-ending creation of new laws. Non-stop.

  This requires enormous quantities of administrators, tax lawyers, judges, accountants and economists to administer. Unproductive and very expensive labor for the sole purpose of administering this swamp of complex stupidity created by the birdbrains, flap, flap, whom the birdbrain masses have voted into power in the first place."

  "Yes, Peter, the level of intelligence of your species is already clear to me from the way you slaughter yourselves and everything else," said Jeremy. "And this example of socio-economic activity merely confirms it. But hopefully at least your intentions are good. I assume, for example, that the poor pay less taxes than the rich?"

  "I'm afraid not, Jeremy. The laws themselves, assisted by the impossibly intricate quagmire of birdbrain-created complications and exceptions, permit many very rich people and many very large corporations to pay lower taxes than the rest of us."

  "So…not even that."

  "No. Nothing equitable results. And of course, as the clowns can never properly control their own ludicrous inventions, there is a lot of corruption and fraud as well, the human race—begging your pardon Jeremy—being as it is."

  "But couldn't you at least start to simplify these laws?"

  "No, Jeremy. I am afraid not. I hate to repeat myself, but you have to try and remember that these are human beings at work here, disagreeing with themselves on just about everything, day and night, you name it. Arguing and arguing their way through the eons of time until they self-destruct or their solar system collapses."

  "And this is just one of hundreds of branches of law that you people need in order to exist as an organized society?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I don't think I need to hear more about your socio-political organizations, Peter. It would probably take days. Months. Years. I think I prefer just to do the additional research myself. Keep it to the salient points required for my dissertation. But it would be helpful to me if you could please just summarize your different types of political organization…provide me with a brief overview."

  "Certainly, Jeremy. None of them work of course. As I have already mentioned, democracy doesn't work because the majority of the citizens decides who is going to be given the power, and the small intelligent minority is hopelessly outnumbered. And, as I have pointed out, that same mix applies for those who are elected. And so they spend most of their time arguing with each other anyway. And in any case, it doesn't much matter who wins an election. They all promise a kind of Utopia, better schools, full employment, no poverty, no national debt increase and so on and so forth. But they never keep their promises. Or what they implement never really works. Or it is impossible to finance. And so the arguing continues. And then the masses start complaining again. But they shouldn't. They should keep their mouths shut, because they decided who they wanted to run things. And for a cynical observer such as myself, that of course is the big laugh. The masses actually believe they can influence events on their planet, or in their own particular section of the planet, by voting. But—needless to say—sooner or later they become disillusioned and they vote a different person into power the next time around. And with the same results as before of course. Actually, Peter, the masses are not actually allowed to vote for whomever they wish—they are instructed as to whom they may choose from. And finally, this system can be fairly undemocratic. In the world's best known democracy, the USA, a lot of political power has been in the hands of families for decades. The Kennedy family, Bush father, Bush son, Mr. Clinton, Mrs. Clinton. Families! And they call it democracy."

  "This is what they call a democracy."

  "Yes, and those are the facts, that is what happens. And then we have tried alternatives to ‘democracy’. Communism. Large parts of the planet operated under this system: China, Russia, Soviet Union countries, Eastern Europe, parts of Asia and lesser nations such as Cuba, Albania and North Korea. But communism didn't work either. It only lasted about seventy years although, to be faithful to the facts, some vestiges still remain. Cuba and North Korea come to mind. China has abandoned communistic economics but is still being run by a single communist party. Communism operated by power, threat and fear and the masses were imprisoned within their own countries and not allowed to travel except—what else—for the élite and a few favored comrades such as outstanding musicians, athletes and other sports heroes. But communism involved human beings and therefore was, and what remains of it still is, plagued by corruption—just as in a democracy. And also just as in a democracy, the rich and the powerful live in luxury and the weak and the downtrodden live in poverty."

  "Communism. I see."

  "Yes. And then we have had dictatorship. We have always had dictatorships, thousands of them. The Caesars, the old European kings, the Napoleans, the Stalins, the Hitlers, the Castro
s, the Ghadaffis, the Saddam Husseins and all the others. You may not know of their deeds, but…"

  "It doesn't matter, Peter," said Jeremy. "Everything is recorded and I shall do as I always do, acquaint myself with them as part of my research."

  "Good. And we still have dictators today, and bloody rebellions and revolts have been taking place in certain central African countries and in others such as Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen and so forth. With results similar to that Middle Ages story I told you about."

  "Bloody revolutions, ongoing? Surprise, surprise."

  "Quite so. Well, dictatorships don't work either because we are incapable as a species of ensuring that a dictator is one of the minority, namely one of the 'intelligent' humans. I use my definition of intelligence here, which is not necessarily the one generally understood by the human masses. The masses might say, 'but what if he is an intelligent dictator but an evil one or a corrupt one?' Failing completely to understand that real intelligence automatically embodies benevolence and incorruptibility, among other things. But as I have said, the 10% minority has no chance on this planet and dictatorship is consequently an unworkable system for us as well."

  "So…," said Jeremy, "what political system does work? Or could work?"

  "I don't know," I replied. "And I have no opinion to offer either."

  "But you do have an opinion? If so, I would be very grateful to hear it. The theories and conclusions in my dissertation are going to be difficult enough to formulate, as it is. Your view would be something for me to consider."

  Theories, conclusions, dissertations, fantasies, far-away planets. It was all becoming a bit wearying. If it weren't for the fact that this sick, deluded guy had a lot of money and I would hopefully soon be receiving some of it, or some more of it I should say, then I think I would have been resigning at just about this point.

  "Right you are," I said. "I have a view and here it is. No system can work. You couldn't invent one if you tried. Nothing can ever really work for a species of animal such as ours. There is nothing that is feasible. Certainly, we have a sprinkling of beliefs in a variety of 'gods' and these serve as a kind of preventive anaesthetic. But the only thing that these various sects and religions do is argue among themselves as well. Just like the rest of us. And so we'll just have to carry on like that until we blow ourselves apart. There is no system, Jeremy. Permanent strife is the only system."

  "Hmm…I appreciate your giving me your view, Peter. I do not, at this point, know whether I share that view. But my dissertation most definitely needs to end up with an opinion, and the input from you in your dual role as both evaluator and evaluated is of importance to me."

  "And now," he continued, "how about a short break? A cigarette break for you, I should imagine." And he smiled his moon-shaped smile, tugged at his short blond hair and added, "and to avoid us sitting here for a few more days, do you think you could select, let us say, just two more important themes on this social and organizational subject please? That should be sufficient for me to complete an overview on which to direct my research in this area."

  "No problem," I said. "I'll be back in ten minutes." And I went down to the lobby and out into Piccadilly and I lit up a cigarette and I inhaled deeply. For a guy like me who doesn't care, who just accepts the status quo and gets on with it in his own way, these meetings were decidedly onerous. But let's face it, it was still an easy way to be earning a lot of money, so I wasn't arguing. I checked the street. I checked the passers-by. Nobody had the slightest interest in me as far as I could tell. I thought about which two remaining subjects I should choose for Jeremy and smoked another cigarette. I went back inside, visited the luxurious loo and continued on back to the conference room.