Bête (28 page)

‘It’s war, man. Things aren’t too bad down here, but up north— Area denial, man! Area denial!’

‘What do you mean?’

‘FGR5s!’

I took another sip. ‘No notion what those letters stand for.’

‘Planes, dude. Fighter jets – overflying the countryside, bombing runs. When I was a kid, you know, I used to think that they were called bombing
runs
because it looks like the planes have the shits, you know? All those plop-plops tumbling out the back as they overfly?’

‘I don’t
think that’s why they’re called bombing runs, Jase,’ I told him.

‘No, of course not. But it’s serious, man! White phosphor, animal carcasses charred and burning across a wide,’ he stumbled. ‘Wide, you know. Swathe. Do I mean swathe?’

‘I think you mean swathe,’ I said.

‘Swathe,’ he said, trying the word out in his mouth. ‘Swathe.’ He obviously liked it. ‘Sway-athe.’ A deep glug,
and the suds were sliding down the inside of an empty glass. ‘You want another?’

‘I’m going to pace myself,’ I told him.

He toddled off to the bar, and returned with a second pint for himself. ‘Thirsty work, preaching,’ he told me, and drank a quarter-pint in one go. Then he said: ‘There’s a BA Major General stopping with us at the moment.’

‘Didn’t know British Airways went in
for ranks like that,’ I said.

Preacherman stared at me. Then he said, ‘British Army.’ He peered at me again, trying to ascertain if I had been joking or not. ‘Nice guy, actually. Nice
chap
. Name of Tat Hetheridge. Not sure what Tat is short for. If it is short for anything. He doesn’t actually have a division with him; it’s more a question of military coordination. Is why he’s here. So he
has a courtesy seat.’

‘I’m not following.’

‘On the
council
,’ Jazon said. ‘The thing is, Tat was telling me: the troops
love
it. The problem, according to him, is that when you go into combat against other human beings, you have to – you know. The problem is you have to kill human beings.’

‘I would have thought that was rather the point.’

‘Ah, but fighting bêtes is different,
you see. The troops get markedly
less
PTSD’d by gunning down cows and dogs. They still get a bit PSTD’d. Some of them. But not nearly so much. He said – Tat, I mean – that the smell plays a large part. I hadn’t realized that, but apparently odour is a bit of a morale problem on the modern battlefield. You scorch down the enemy with your modern weapons, and a lot of them burn, and there’s this
stench of burning human flesh, which is apparently really unsettling and disturbing. But fighting the bêtes? Burn them up and it just smells like a barbecue. So that’s much less likely to send your squaddie off to the company psych officer.’

‘I’d never thought of it like that before,’ I said truthfully.

‘So, yeah, the council has wartime powers. Cabinet ordinance 755. We don’t have
the aggressive marital bêtes down here, not like they have up north, but we’re readying ourselves.’

‘Marital?’ I queried.

He looked at me. ‘Martial,’ he agreed. ‘Always get those two confused. Anyway, we’re building the wall. But a lot of what the council has to do is keep up civilian morale. That’s why I’m on the panel. There is a Bishop of Reading, but he has boils.’

‘How very
biblical.’

‘No laughing matter. He has them so he can’t sit down. Painful. He’s had to go to a special clinic in London.’

‘And you’re his stand-in? I thought you were Church of Christ the Carnivore?’

‘Of England, mate,’ said Preacherman, puffing his chest out. ‘Of England. That meat-gobbling cult was a dead end. Anyway, and not to boast, but I’ve a following. Here in the town,
I mean. You saw the crowd at my sermon, just now. They love me.’

‘Apart from that one heckler.’

‘That male organ of generation.’ Preacherman nodded. ‘But there’s plenty of people in this town agree with me. The bêtes are signs of the incipient apocalypse.’ I
think
he said incipient. It wasn’t a very Jazon word, and the second pint had rubbed the sharper edges of his pronunciation,
but I think that’s what he said.

I took a deep breath. Preacherman was, I suppose, my oldest friend; or at least, the oldest still to
be
my friend. I had older ones, of course; but not many, and most of those went the other way with my divorce. Nonetheless, I was apprehensive about what I was about to say to him. As is my way, when my soul is touched in howsoever small a manner with fear,
I became wrathful.

‘It’s all bollocks, you know,’ I said, a quantum of spiteful anger flushing through me. ‘The end times. It’s always the end times, and yet the sun always comes up tomorrow. That you can prophecy the future gubbins, is just a Sphinx trick for the masses.’

‘Is not,’ he said, staring into his pint. ‘It’s real. It’s true.’

‘The thing about the Egyptian Sphinx,’
I went on, ‘is that it was an
animal
. It used to devour those who couldn’t answer its riddle. It was the world’s first talking beast – Mama Bête.’

‘What about the snake in Eden, eh?’ Preacherman retorted. ‘That predates any of your gypsy nonsense.’

‘Jaze,’ I said.

‘Sss,’ he hissed. I thought for a moment he was carrying on his point about the Edenic serpent by performing hissing
impression of the creature. But then I saw his eyes, and realized. I corrected myself immediately, and gulped back my annoyance. Because, after all, I needed him.

‘Jason,’ I said. ‘Sorry. Jase. On. Look, I need your help.’

He glowered at me. ‘With an s,’ he said, and took another slug of beer. ‘Jason.’

‘I’m serious, mate,’ I pressed him. ‘This is important. When have I ever asked
you for a favour before? I won’t ever again, either. This once, this only.’

He sighed. ‘All right, I’ll sort it. For you, I’ll sort it. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy! Let me go to the town hall, ’cause I’ll need to do it in person.’

This surprised me. ‘You don’t even know what the favour is, yet!’

‘You want somewhere to stay,’ he said, in a
what else
? tone of voice. ‘You’ve
been away from the city for a while, and now you want accommodation. Well join the blinkin’ queue, mate.’

‘Not that,’ I said.

‘Of course, that.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want accommodation. I don’t want
you
to sort out my accommodation. I’ll shift for myself on that score.’

‘Unless someone like me does it, you won’t get any. There’s a real squeeze on property, Gray.’

‘That’s not,’ I insisted, ‘the favour.’

‘Yes it is,’ Preacherman said indulgently. ‘I’ll get us both another pint.’ He stood up, and I had to grab his arm and drag him forcibly down into the chair.

‘Listen to me, you dog-collar dog-breath, I don’t
want
you to sort my accommodation. I have a big favour to ask you, and it has nothing to do with fucking housing allocation. Will you listen?
Or should I take you into the lavs and flush your head in the bowl to sober you up a little?’

‘Sheesh, Gray,’ he said, in a hurt tone of voice. Then his eyebrows bunched. ‘Oh, wait. I shouldn’t say that!’

He was being infuriating, and it was an effort of will on my part preventing the red mist from descending. ‘Say what?’

‘Sheesh. And now I’ve said it twice!’

‘
Sheesh
is
hardly a fucking swear, Jazon!’

‘It’s a version of the name of the Saviour,’ he said. ‘Taking the Lord’s name in vain. Isn’t it? Or is it something else? Wait. Maybe,’ he mused, staring into space, ‘it’s, like, a version of shush? You know: like shhhh.’

‘Shhh,’ I hissed at him.

‘Yeah, that could be it.’

‘No,
you
shush. Listen to me. Do you know what I did after Anne died?’

He looked blearily at me. ‘I don’t even know who Anne is.’

‘Anne was the woman who died.’

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding slowly. ‘You know what? I could have intuited that fact from the question you asked, by a process of logical induction, if I’d put my mind to it.’

‘After Anne died I went native. I lived in the forest – best part of a year. Just me in a tent, living off the land,
not another human being anywhere around.’

‘Which forest?’

‘What? Bracknell forest. Does it fucking matter?’

‘Just trying to pain’ the picture,’ said Preacherman, defensively.

‘Anne had a cat – a bête. Garrulous little bastard, actually. But she loved him.’

‘Who’s Anne, again?’

‘Anne was the woman who died,’ I said again, hotly. ‘Try to focus, Jazon, this is
really important. The cat took a liking to me. I mean, Christ knows Anne loved that cat as only a cat-lover can. But I’ll tell you: I think the cat loved her back.’

‘OK, so two things,’ said Preacherman, holding up his right hand like a policeman directing traffic. ‘One, bêtes are devils and machines and are incapable of love, which comes only from God. And two, I’m not appreciating you
taking the Lord’s name in vain, my friend. I don’t approve.’

‘You don’t
approve
, Mr Sheesh?’

He looked pained. ‘Fair point, well made,’ he said, in a smaller voice. ‘Proceed.’

‘Look, I heard your sermon. Maybe I don’t agree these bêtes are signs of biblical end times, but I’ve no love for them. You know? What little fame I have amongst their kind derives from the fact that I
was one of the last people to kill a bête before the law changed and they were granted citizen status.’

‘Thousands of soldiers combing the north country as we speak,’ said Jazon, ‘killing bêtes left right and centre.’

‘Sure. But that’s war – right? And you know what? That’s exactly what I want to talk to you about. War. And peace.’

He looked momentarily confused. ‘You want to
talk about Tolstoy?’

‘No, you prick, I want to talk about us being peacemakers. I’ve no love for bêtes. You know that.’

‘I know that,’ he said.

‘Well, this cat found me in the forest. It turns out it was … well connected.’ I thought about telling Jazon about the Lamb; but thinking back to the earnestness of his sermon, and his present beery state, I decided that would be a bad
idea. ‘There was a kind of … moot.’

‘Moot?’ said Preacherman.

‘Yeah, you know. A bête moot.’

‘A bemoot?’

‘A meeting. A parliament. Lots of animals for the tribes to the south of here, I guess. I can’t say I’m entirely sure of the internal political dynamic of it all. But, you know: dogs are running farms.’

At this Preacherman nodded sagely. ‘Not just dogs. Of the
eleven big farms that ship vegetables into Reading, eight are bête-owned. Eight! And of those three have no human staff at all. You think I’m happy about this? I’m not happy about it. But the people of the town must be fed. They need their bread and sermons, as the Romans used to say.’

‘I don’t believe the Romans said anything of the sort,’ I said. ‘Just concentrate on what I’m telling you.
I was present at this moot. They met for my benefit.’

‘They met at the moot? They met
you
at the moot?’

‘They want to open negotiations. They know what’s going on up north, and they don’t want that happening down here. Nobody, nobête, wants that down here.’

‘There are military officers who do,’ said Jazon. He appeared to have sobered up a little. ‘At the last council meeting
we had a presentation from a government observer. He said— Look, this is official secrets, so you can’t blog it. But the human collateral from the Big Push is high. High. You can’t fight a war without civilian deaths. So,’ he looked at me. ‘You’re right. We don’t want the push extended down here.’

‘Despite it being the end of the world, and all?’

‘That’s God’s business. Our business
is to follow Christ’s teachings. Ploughshares, not swords. Even if the ploughshares
are
being used by bêtes. I’ll tell you what I think, Gray. I think the Archangel Michael will do a better job of smiting the devils than the British Army. And he won’t accidentally kill a bunch of women and children on the side, the way the BA, sometimes, the way, or so the
reports
say, the way they are reportedly
… yeah.’ He shook his head.

This seemed hopeful. ‘So that’s why I’m here. I’m an emissary.’

‘So you’re a diplomat now,’ said Jaze, nodding. ‘I wouldn’t have thunk it of you, Graham. But here you are!’

‘Can you put me in a room with people in authority? I have,’ I added, with a little flutter of nerves, ‘a peace proposal from the animal kingdom. I mean, in my pocket. My understanding
is: the bêtes of the south are ready to make a number of concessions, in order to secure peace.’

‘It’ll be irrelevant when the angels blow their trumpets and roll up the corners of the world,’ Jaze said. ‘But that may be months away.’ He stared at his empty pint glass. ‘I worked on the earliest chips, you know,’ he said.

‘Of course I know that. Have you forgotten who I am? I’ve known
you for years, mate.’

But he didn’t seem to be listening to my words. ‘Nobody anticipated the feedback loop. Loop’s not the word, actually; it’s infinitely more … feathery than that. Do I mean feathery?’

‘No idea
what
you mean.’

‘It’s like feedback vortices. Anyway: put a chip in a vacuum cleaner, or a high-rise elevator, or a cellphone and it will talk to you in ways you can
predict. It will work within its programming parameters. But put a chip in a working brain, even a simple brain like a cow’s brain or a dog’s brain, and it steps up to something else. Something unpredictable. Sumit used to say: proves there’s no soul, don’t you think, Jason? Sumit was,’ he added, for my benefit, ‘a fellow programmer at Forth and Nate.’ He peered at me. ‘Forth and Nate was the company
I used to work for.’

‘Get on with it, for Sheeh’s sake,’ I pressed.

‘Sumit was an atheist. He thought the bêtes showed that higher consciousness was just a functioning of a structured chaotic system of programming subroutines. But I say the opposite. I say it shows that we are something special. The thing that bêtes have that phones and lifts and hoovers don’t have – that thing is
the devil. And the thing that we have that phones and lifts and hoovers don’t have is: God. I’ll put you in a room, Graham.’