Blood Crazy (33 page)

Yes! I could save them
. If only I could get back to Eskdale.

‘Nick …' Bernadette's voice was gentle. ‘I believe you can save your community. Only you didn't believe it yourself before. Now you can. Something wonderful has happened in here.' She touched my head. As her dark eyes studied mine, my skin goose-fleshed.

‘I've got to get back, Bernadette. I can't wait here any longer.'

‘You've got to be patient. Listen to me. Those roads are still impassable. Give it another forty-eight hours.'

I looked at my hands. They were actually vibrating they were shaking that much.

‘I'll get you a beer. Meanwhile, you go through into the bedroom and take off your shirt … Don't look at me like that. I'm not seducing you. I'll give you a massage to relax those muscles of yours. Let me feel your back. I thought so, like a slab of concrete.' She leaned forward, looking into my eyes. ‘Relax, love. If you are going to be any good to your people back home you need to arrive there in one piece.'

I did what she asked. Bernadette's hands were magic, working at the knots of muscle in my neck, shoulders and back. As she worked on me I felt my muscles relax like twisted pieces of rubber unravelling.

Sheer bliss. Pure comfort. The cold in my blood gave way to a warmth that stroked its way through my body.

She said gently, ‘That better?'

I grunted a yes. The beer helped too.

After a while we began to talk again. I told her about the rumours I'd heard about the Creosotes talking to God; or that it was a weapon that had caused the breakdown – a mind scrambler.

‘Or that it was the cumulative action of radio and TV signals on the mind that caused the madness? Yes, I've heard them all.'

‘So what did happen, Bernadette?'

She continued to massage my back as I lay face down on the double bed. ‘We've talked a lot about religion and God. Would you like to know where God fits into all of this?'

‘You're certainly an enigma, girl. You talk like you don't believe in God. Now you're telling me there
is
a God.'

‘More than that,' she said stroking my shoulders. ‘I'll show you where he lives. No … Lie still, Nick.' Her voice was still gentle. ‘I'm not mad. Only enlightened. You will be too if you lie there and let me talk as I massage your back.'

‘Jesus, Bernadette. You know how to shock. Where God lives? You mean we can just leg it round to his place and say hi?'

‘Patience, Nick Aten. Patience.'

‘What's this got to do with adults going crazy?'

‘I'll tell you, Nick. In one word: EVOLUTION.'

‘Evolution? That makes damn all sense. Evolution is supposed to improve animals. Not make them less well equipped to survive. Listen, Bernadette, adults just went psycho, then killed their children.'

‘That, Nick, is just one phase of what is an ongoing process.'

‘This is all natural, then? Some kind of metamorphosis like caterpillars changing into butterflies?'

‘See, I told you, you're smarter than you think. All I can say is while I talk keep an open mind. As I said, some people would find what I'm going to say controversial, even distressing, it would change people's lives forever.'

‘All this religious stuff for the kids on the Ark is a charade, then?'

‘Not charade in a cynical sense. What we do through there is very useful, teaching them values, a new morality. A faith to give them a sense of safety and security. When a child is old enough they will be told the truth.'

‘So you were pulling my leg about telling me where God lives?'

‘We're getting ahead of ourselves here. You wanted to know why everyone over the age of nineteen apparently went insane in April?'

‘Of course I do.'

‘Right, back to the beginning.'

I listened to her gentle voice as she spoke and felt the tender touch of her hands massaging me.

‘We don't go back to April, Nick. We go back fifty thousand years. To the time of Neanderthal man. You remember your history lessons, don't you?'

‘Only roughly. I wasn't a model student.'

‘In a nutshell Neanderthal man was our predecessor in the evolutionary line. We succeeded them. They had receding foreheads, heavy jaws, ape-like features – but they had big brains, walked liked later men and made tools; they even buried their dead.'

‘I get the picture.'

‘So, you have a physically strong intelligent man-creature. Capable of defeating any other living creature on Earth. Why, then, did they suddenly die out to be replaced by us?'

‘Search me. I suppose they started giving birth to human babies. Eventually Neanderthals were replaced by homo sap.'

‘But if you look at the animal kingdom, mature animals destroy or abandon offspring that're born mutant or deformed. Surely the same would have happened to Neanderthals. They would have killed their mutant babies before they had a chance to grow up and threaten them.'

‘So what happened?'

‘Science shows us that evolution often occurs in dramatic leaps. And when it makes that evolutionary leap nature drives the new stage to destroy the old one.'

Understanding flashed. ‘So you're saying fifty thousand years ago the same happened to cavemen. Adults went mad, then destroyed their young.'

‘Broadly, yes. What happened wasn't an evolutionary jump that changed the physical body. It was an evolutionary jump of the mind. Scientists got it wrong thinking the young always succeed the old. In this case, the adults succeeded their children.'

‘But I still can't see that driving adults insane is an evolutionary improvement.'

‘They didn't go insane as such, Nick. What happened was a profound change in the mind. Listen, up to that point Neanderthals had the mind of an animal. True, a highly developed one, but still an animal mind. It wasn't aware of itself as an individual, it wasn't conscious. What happened in one explosive moment across the Neanderthal population was that the conscious mind was born. You can imagine one morning they woke up in their caves and suddenly they knew they were individuals – they could actually think for the first time, they could make decisions, ask questions.'

‘Why the madness, then?'

‘It wasn't an easy transition. First it was a tremendous shock. Imagine if you woke from a coma where you're only very, very dimly aware of what's happening in the world around you. Then
bang
… You know.'

‘Am I right in thinking this has something to do with what you were saying about this invisible force that we can't see but that can control our lives?'

‘You're getting there, Nick. Now, turn over, I'll do your front … That's it. Now … In effect what happened was that this new consciousness was a completely new mind. Also it was separate to the old mind that Neanderthals had possessed before. Nick, are you familiar with the scientific concept of the conscious and unconscious mind?'

‘No.'

‘Well, anyone could check the reference in an encyclopaedia, but I'll come back to that in a moment. Just imagine this, then: one night the conscious mind came into being. Neanderthals would feel as if they'd woken from a coma. Then what happened in their heads was nothing short of a civil war. The new conscious mind battled with the old animal mind for control of the body. We don't know how long they fought one another, but during this transition period the confusion would be so great they would appear stark, staring mad. Control would switch back and forth between the conscious and unconscious mind. Also during this time would come the instinctive drive to destroy their own children. After a while, the new conscious mind defeated the old animal mind.'

‘So there were two minds in one head? Fighting one another?'

‘Precisely. Imagine them struggling for control. You've seen movies where two people fight for the control of a car. Anyway, eventually the old animal mind was pushed into the back seat where he's stayed as a backseat driver ever since.'

She left me to digest this as she made supper. My head was spinning. And it wasn't just the beer. Questions spat into my mind.

As we finished the pizza Bernadette licked the tomato sauce from her finger and said, ‘Right, we're at the point where Neanderthals have suddenly acquired this new mind which has seized control of
them and has turned them into conscious human beings who can reason and make decisions. For the first time they can think like you and me.'

‘Like I can think to myself, my name is Nick Aten, I'm sitting in a room, drinking a beer. That's the conscious part of me?'

‘And that's something no other animal on earth can do. You're getting there, Nick. Right, let's get back fifty thousand years to Neanderthal man. Their young still have the old animal mind. So basically we have two different species. There isn't room in their territories for two competitors. One species must die. Now evolution has another trick up its sleeve. See that computer across there. If you hit the right keys you get my work files up on screen. If you hit other keys you get computer chess. Another key: war games. Buried in the computer's memory banks are dozens of different programs – all complete. They're just waiting for someone who knows the codes to summon them up. Your mind, Nick, and everyone else's mind contains hidden programs like that computer. If you know the right code then you get access to them, and you can use them. You don't believe me?'

‘I guess I do; it takes some digesting, though.'

‘You'll have heard women say that until their first child was born they thought they'd never know how to raise children. Then as soon as baby's born, ping! Suddenly, they feel like a natural born mother. Now, Nick. Imagine you're eight years old. What would you do if a girl kissed you?'

I grinned. ‘Want to hide in a hole. Boys hate girls at that age.'

‘But if a seventeen-year-old girl was to kiss you now?'

‘Ah, that'd be different.'

‘That's because during your early teens your body clock pressed the right button and called up the new software program into your head. Not only did it overturn your old dislike of girls, it made them fascinating. It gave you information on how to get a girl for yourself and what to do, more or less, when you got her.'

‘I remember when I was thirteen, one of my friends wrote SEX, SEX, SEX all over his desk. It sounds banal now but we sniggered our heads off for hours.'

‘So fifty thousand years ago another software program was activated in the mind. And that was an overwhelming craving to
destroy their own young. We're seeing it happening now. A systematic and dedicated crusade by adults to annihilate their children. Because now we form a different species.'

‘And they won't stop hitting the genocide button until we're all dead.'

‘Or until we destroy them.'

‘So … It's us or them?'

‘Correct. That's why there are no Neanderthals left alive today.'

‘Why don't we look like cavemen then, all hairy with heavy jaws?'

‘Once the profound mental change had taken place overnight, the physical changes into what we look like today probably happened quite gradually over a few generations.'

‘But what about the conscious and unconscious minds? How does that fit in today?'

Bernadette smiled. ‘Lie down. Let me massage your back again. You know I'm getting as much pleasure from this as you are … Right.' She took a deep breath and plunged in. ‘This might come as a surprise. The fact is you have two minds in your head. Again, if you want to go into it in more detail there's a rack of psychology books there, help yourself.' She poured massaging oil onto my back and began to work it beneath my shoulder blades. ‘One mind is the thing that makes you
you
. Your personality. Your likes, dislikes. Why you like to wear that leather jacket or why you prefer such-and-such a movie.'

‘This is the new conscious mind that overthrew the old animal mind, right?'

‘Right. But the old animal mind is still there in your head. He's a back seat driver now. Now, here comes the big, BIG problem. The old animal mind was beaten, and he was locked away in the back of your head. But as the man Jung said, the ancient animal man inside your head, the unconscious mind, is actually more intelligent in some respects than your conscious mind – the Nick Aten part. To make matters worse the unconscious part is a powerful force. He still wants control of you. And over fifty thousand years locked away like a genie in a bottle he's learnt ways to do it. He has access to that buried software I was talking about. And he can trigger it. Sometimes when we don't want him to. When it's inconvenient like when we want to speak to an audience and we get an attack of
nerves. Sometimes the manipulation is more subtle – for example a passion for buying new clothes or that new car you can't really afford.'

For some reason I found myself thinking of Uncle Jack Aten, his craving to be a musician, then slowly rotting with cancer.

‘If you upset your unconscious then he can really make life tough for you.' Bernadette worked at my neck muscles, fingers slipping smoothly across the oiled skin. ‘That hairy old manbeast in your head can inflict mental illness on you. He can make you feel depressed or anxious for no apparent reason at all. Stress you out so much you develop physical illness such as ulcers, heart complaints or even cancer.'

I thought again of poor Uncle Jack and I knew she was right.

‘So,' I said, ‘the war goes on. But the unconscious is now fighting a guerrilla war, using terrorist tactics.'

‘True. But over the last few centuries he's also been saying let's call it a truce. We both want the same thing. We want our physical bodies to be healthy and live long. So the unconscious says: from now on let's work together. We'll be an unbeatable partnership. One mind ancient and wise, the other, fresh, young, inventive, adaptable.'