The Truth is Dead

  “There’s Councillor Lambert,” said Mum. “You see him all over town, trying to run things.”

  “Trying to stop things, you mean,” said Dr Parker. “He’s always closing places down, sending people away. I bet he’d shut the hospital if an epidemic broke out.”

  And he did, of course. As vomiting and diarrhoea spread through the town, Councillor Lambert decided that the hospital would become an epicentre of infection. He refused to let sick people inside. It hardly mattered, though. There was no medicine left, fuel for the emergency generator had run out, and most of the staff had already decided to stay away from patients for the sake (or so they told themselves) of their families. As people lost the energy to dig even the shallowest of graves for the dead, the groups of people praying to the Space Station grew larger every night. They implored the astronauts to descend and save us.

  That would have been surprising enough, but no one was prepared for the strangers who did eventually come.

  I think I may have seen them first. It was very early in the morning. I was out guarding the potatoes in the yard when I saw what looked like a horse-drawn cart. It was a cart all right, but instead of horses, it was being pulled by twenty or so half-naked, weary men. Their masters in the carriage wore long robes, headdresses, and had flowing beards. Beards are not an unusual sight these days – even I have one, of sorts, and Dr Parker doesn’t bother to pluck the straggly black hairs on her chin any more – but the beards on these men were luxurious, well-tended: an indication of status rather than desperation. These men were in command. You could guess that just from how they looked, from how clean they were, but the heavy rifle each of them carried left no room for doubt.

  I was lucky. The tightly clipped hedge that had once marked the boundary to our front garden was now overgrown, and I was able to hide behind it and watch the strange vehicle go past. Up close, I could see the faces of the team hauling the carriage. They were oddly familiar. I knew I had seen them somewhere before. On television, perhaps? Was this the filming of some new extreme reality show? Were there hidden cameras? Had some cruel director been watching us in our distress? I tried desperately to place the faces. It was no good. I couldn’t remember their names.

  But a moment later, I could recall what they did. They were the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and several other politicians familiar from a thousand boring bulletins. Here was the British Cabinet, the party people from the Millennium Dome, paraded in chains and shamed.

  A tall man, who was holding the reins, pulled his slaves to a halt. He gave instructions to the other men in the carriage in a language I could not understand, and pointed towards the centre of town. Then with a slap from his whip he steered the cart in the direction of the school. There was no one around. The cart entered the playground, and a dozen fit, armed sentries took up position, their guns pointing through the railings at the surrounding streets.

  I had to go. I had to take something to those poor enslaved men. They needed water. They needed food. I dug up some turnips and carefully poured rainwater from one of the museum chamber pots into an old plastic bottle left over from the millennium party nearly two years ago. I knew I would probably get caught, but this might be my only chance to find out what was going on. Perhaps the slaves would know what had happened to my father. Maybe they could tell me how to get us all out of this mess.

  I knew the back way into school from years of turning up late and sneaking through the cookhouse. I kept away from the window of the headmaster’s study, where I could see the leader of the captors, pacing. At last, I heard a familiar voice coming from the gym. It belonged to the Deputy Prime Minister, and he was complaining that he was hungry.

  Keeping as low as I could, so that the guards in the playground wouldn’t spot me, I slithered up to the gym door, which was slightly ajar. I could see the slaves lying on the ground, resting. I managed to attract the Deputy Prime Minister’s attention. If I hadn’t heard his voice, I would never have recognized him. His huge bulk had melted away, leaving behind flaps of flabby skin around his face and stomach. He kept talking as he rolled towards me. The guard in the gym was obviously used to his moaning, and took no notice. When the starving man was within reach, I passed in the raw turnips. He sank his teeth in. He swigged some water from the bottle.

  I couldn’t waste time. “Quick,” I said. “Tell me. Who are these people? Why have they brought you here?”

  “They are some sort of terrorists,” he said. “They’ve kept us on the go for more than a year and a half now. Ever since that night at the Dome. They had it all planned. They took a chance that the Millennium Bug would turn out to be real, and had people standing by everywhere, ready to destroy power stations, army bases and broadcasting centres as soon as everything started to fall apart. And we politicians were all in one place, of course, just handy for them to swoop on.”

  Suddenly I could believe the story of the explosion at the power station. I knew that my father would not be coming back.

  The Minister was still talking: “Now they’re going round the country checking that there’s no prospect of getting things back together. In every town they round up the young, able-bodied people, and shoot them. You must hide. You must find a way of getting the message out about what’s happening. There are pockets of resistance. We’ve heard about them. People like you have managed to reach us with news. Some truckers in Derby even managed to get an old CB radio transmitter going. It did no good. There was no one to pick up the messages.” He took another bite out of the turnip. I was worried that the guard would notice. The Minister’s chewing was louder than his whispering. “If only we’d known. I can’t think what the intelligence services were doing. We didn’t have any warning of this at all.”

  I knew I couldn’t risk staying for long, but I had a few more questions. “What do these people want?”

  “Well that’s something I do know. They go on about it enough. They’re not after anything we can bargain over. They want to destroy our way of life. They despise us and everything we stand for.”

  “And how did they know their plan would work? Did they plant the Millennium Bug? Was it some sort of virus?”

  “No, it was real, but accidental. A weakness built into the design of early computers. We had to warn people about it. The trouble was that by raising the alarm we gave Bin Laden his big idea.”

  “Bin Laden?”

  “The boss man. The tall one. The one with the crazy eyes.”

  “But wasn’t it a great risk, them planning all this? Weren’t they afraid of getting caught? What if the Millennium Bug had let them down?”

  “They had other plans if this one didn’t work. Bin Laden would have stopped at nothing to knock us out. Apparently he even had some people training to fly planes into the World Trade Center in New York. He thought that would send us into an orgy of repression and surveillance, killing our own civilization from within.”

  “No need for that now,” I whispered.

  The guard snuffled. He had fallen asleep.

  The Deputy Prime Minister had another nibble of the turnip, but he kept talking. “You get away and hide, son. Go while he’s not looking. I’d come too, but I haven’t the energy, and they’d only take it out on the others.”

  “Shoot them?”

  “If only. That would be kinder. No, they’ll make them dance together naked, or something like that. There’s no limit to the humiliations they subject us to in the name of their cause.”

  I wanted to ask more questions, but he shooed me away. “Go on. Run. They’ll probably find you, but give yourself a chance – and do anything you can to pass on the word about what’s happened.”

  I crept away, up the hill. Mum has been low lately, spending most of the day in bed, and she was still asleep when I got back. I knew that Bin Laden’s men would be with us soon, but there was no need to wake her just to tell her of new horrors ahead. What could she do about them? There’s no point running aw
ay. Where would we run to?

  So that’s why I’m here in the attic with Gran’s typewriter. I’m trying at least to leave some record behind. Not exactly Anne Frank, I admit. I’ve only been up here a few hours, and I’m sure my neighbours will shop me to the enemy as soon as the men arrive. But I’ll put this paper in a plastic bag now, and then into a jar to keep it dry. A sort of message in a bottle, just in case any future generations are interested. Just in case anyone ever wants to know the true story of the Y2K Bug.

  AT THE BALL GAME

  Frank Cottrell Boyce

  The Aztec civilization was decimated when the Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés invaded and colonized Mexico in the sixteenth century. One of the ancient beliefs of these doomed people was that the world will end in December 2012…

  Monkey8 was the last in line. She was the only girl, the smallest and the most excited in her Ten. The others had all played the game on real courts before; she had only played on the school court and in the alleyways and covered walkways of her home. They were trotting in now, under the shadow of the great arch of the New Court. She paused, took a breath, tried to steady herself. Then she too ran into the arena. The sound: the cheers of the crowd that broke over her like a wave; the colours: the wet red of the playing surface, the gold around the spectators’ necks; the shadows: the black circle in the heart of the scoring hoop, the deep, concealing shade of the stands – everything was louder, sharper, brighter, than anything she had seen before. It was so beautiful she felt she could barely move. She wanted to stand and look at it for ever.

  Then she saw the ball. It was already in play, spinning towards the ring. And then she was moving too. The ball bounced off at a crazy angle and everything about her was connected to it. Her brain was calculating its trajectory; her eye was following its flight; her feet were moving into the space without her having to think about it. Even though her eyes were on the ball, she was also aware that Jaguar3 of her own team was going for it with his left elbow, and somehow she knew that he had spotted her and would pass it to her. She stopped and turned, ready to take the ball with her right hip and pass it forward. She braced herself for the hurt and said a prayer to her guardian, the Nocturnal Monkey.

  All this took less time than it took for the hard rubber ball to fall ten feet. Jaguar3 jumped, offering his chest to the rocketing ball. But instead of twisting and sending it to her, he yelped and fell, as though shot. He lay on the ground, clutching his chest in agony while the ball bounced once, twice, three … too many times. They had lost the ball. It belonged to the other Ten now.

  Jaguar3’s brother went to help him up while the other players – from both teams – just stood and laughed at him. The spectators laughed too. Monkey8 tried to join in but her eye was fixed on the great bruise that was already blooming on Jaguar3’s chest. Mungo had told her that the ball they used on the New Court was harder than the school one and that the red surface was faster than the wooden floor. She had shouted at him and said he was only trying to scare her. Obviously he was right. She wondered if he was right about the other things too.

  Then the ball was in play again and she was no longer thinking thoughts, only moves. They were going for the scoring hoop again; their scorer was beautifully placed. She thought about running over and scratching him but the ball was quicker than she was. He jumped for it, and the next thing she knew, it was curving perfectly through the centre of the scoring hoop. He threw up his arms in delight, but instead of cheers a loud booing filled the stadium. It sounded like some monster coming nearer. The scorer had kicked the ball with his foot. He probably hadn’t meant to; sometimes it just happened. But he knew he’d done it now. He kneeled down and bowed his head and allowed his team captain to strike him on the back with his great wooden club. The crowd loved that.

  Lord Tekokiztakitl himself threw the ball back into play – in the Final it would be the king. The ball went high into the air, where the gods could decide who should have it.

  The gods decided on Monkey8. Now that it was coming to her, she was not afraid. She leaped high; she broadened her chest. The ball struck like a fist but she controlled it. She knew where Jaguar3 was. She knew the others were not watching him because he was dishonoured, so she flipped it to him. He flung his hip at the ball and it curved back into the air. She knew where it would go and was there waiting when it arrived. She caught it with her knee. She bounced it three times, killing its spin. They were coming at her; their captain had his club raised.

  It was too late. She pulled back her leg and kneed the ball confidently through the middle of the stone scoring hoop. Then, for honour only, she trapped it on her chest as it dropped through the other side, softly as fruit.

  The cheer she won then made the earlier cheers sound like mutters. Lord Tekokiztakitl stood up, so everyone else stood up. He took his gold ornaments from around his neck and she ran to receive them. Because he had done it, others did it, and she walked around the pitch allowing people to drape her with gold.

  She was the first girl ever to score on a New Court. Surely they must let her play in the finals.

  – It wasn’t a dream, was it?

  – You mean you have dreamed of this before?

  – No.

  – Because that would mean something if you had.

  – No.

  – It might also mean something if you never had.

  The Interpretation were questioning her. It was part of how they decided whether she would go through to the finals. Everyone said the Interpretation were scary but they seemed lovely. They bought her a cactus syrup at a street cafe in the shade of the New Court. She sat and watched the painters finishing the new mural. The New Court had been built specially for the 2012 finals. The mural showed scenes from the whole history of Aztec Europa. There was Montezuma floating into the River Clyde on his imperial raft, over five hundred years ago, his huge nodding feather headdress making him look eight feet tall. No wonder the ghostfolk who lived here – with their pale speckly skin – thought he was a god. Apparently their god walked on water. Montezuma’s raft was so low in the water, it looked like he was doing just that. They thought their god had come back to them.

  – Where did you learn ulama? asked the man from the Interpretation.

  – My father is a rubber importer. He gave me my first rubber ball to play with when I was five. The ghostfolk who work in our house and gardens have a boy, and he was forever kicking a fitba – those pig’s bladder ghostfolk balls that hardly bounce. They kick it with their feet. When he saw how a real ball bounces, he couldn’t leave it alone. We’ve played all day. Every day. Ever since. Father is busy; my mother is dead. We play in the corridors and in the delivery alley.

  – You learned ulama from a ghostboy?

  – We learned together. His name is Mungo.

  – We don’t need to know the ghostboy’s name. You know that most of the players who are on the list for the finals are from great families? They were taught by other great players. One of them was taught by Neza himself. And Neza has declared him the greatest player he has ever seen.

  – Let me play him and we’ll see.

  – This will be a game of universal significance. No girl has ever played in such a game. And a girl who learned her ulama skills in an alleyway … you must admit it seems unlikely.

  – Unlikely things are mostly from the gods, she said. – Look at Montezuma. He went for a ride on the imperial raft one day, got caught up in the Gulf Stream and ended up here in a village called Glasgow. He founded the second empire and made that village into the greatest city on earth.

  – You are comparing yourself to Montezuma?

  – My father said we should all strive to be like him. So, yes, I compare myself to him. Every night before I sleep, I ask myself, did I do as Montezuma would have done?

  – And how do you answer?

  – When he was adrift, he was not scared. He didn’t try to paddle back. He knew the gods were taking him somewhere, so he stood calm and stro
ng like a god; and when he came here, they took him for a god. All I ever wanted to do was play the game. When I got older and I heard that no one born in the month of the Monkey had ever played in the New Court, I still played. When I realized that no girl was ever allowed to play, I still played. When my father tried to stop me, that was like the waves and the winds and the monsters that Montezuma fought. I still played. If the gods had made me want something so wrong, it must be because they had some purpose. I stood tall.

  – So you lied to your father?

  – Yes.

  – You had better tell him the truth now. Because you will be playing in the semi-final and all the world will know.

  She burst into tears when they told her, and they had to remind her that weeping was a beating offence.

  She tried to remember all she had said to the Interpretation. After all, if she had convinced them, she should surely be able to convince her own father. When she got home, he had already heard. Before she could say a word, he had locked her in her room. She tried to sleep, hoping to dream of the Final. Then she sat up suddenly. Something was tapping at the window. She saw the pale freckly face pushed up against the glass.

  – Mungo, she whispered and opened the window. – He won’t let me play in the semi-final. It’s so unfair.

  – He’s sacked my father and sent us away. He says it’s all my fault, that I taught you ulama.

  – At least your father will get another job and another house. I will never have another chance to play the game.

  Mungo laughed at her. – A spoiled wee idiot, he called her.

  – Do you know why it’s called the Final? Because it’s the final game. The gods are going to destroy this world and start a new one and everyone’s going to die.

  – No one’s going to destroy the world.