The 2084 Precept (43 page)

Great. Four of them to witness the magical
tricks. That should get things moving. But first let them think
that I am doing them a favor, that I am a nice cooperative guy.

"Well, Mr. Delsey, that is not what I had in
mind, if you don't mind my saying so. The subject of our discussion
is going to surprise you in the extreme. Just you and I would
probably be better. As envisaged."

I looked at him, gave him the stare. He
looked at me, giving me his half-wink. He was still hoping. But
please don’t worry too much, old chap, in the end the nice Peter
O'Donoghue is going to provide you with some of his one-eighth
Irish cordiality.

“If that is the way it has to be, Mr.
O’Donoghue. Unfortunate, but there we go, I assume you have your
reasons.” And he looked at me like a dog hoping I would change my
mind and throw him a small piece of that nice, forbidden steak he
could smell on my dinner plate.

Well, I did allow him to suffer for another
ten seconds or so and then, agreeable bloke that I am, I made his
dream come true. "Well, Mr. Delsey," I said, "it does seem as if
it's important to you to have your colleagues present. And I can
understand that, your boss being among them. So O.K., we'll do it
your way. But I warn you, they are all going to be as surprised as
you will be."

He was happy to hear this, very happy, and
the talk about a surprise had clearly whetted his appetite as well.
He actually smiled briefly. "Thank you, thank you," he said, "I'll
be back in a minute or two." And off he went out through the hotel
entrance, down the steps, and turned left. I followed him out,
stood on the steps, another beautiful day, our star steadfastly
continuing to burn up its hydrogen in full sight high in the sky.
Good to have a star like that, I thought to myself. You can rely on
it, no risk at all. For another 3 billion years at least, before it
starts its prolonged death throes. And if we're still around of
course, which we won’t be, Andromeda is coming. And I wondered
what, if our star had the power of reason, it would be thinking
about what our terrible species was doing to its most beautiful
planet.

But I had no more time for further
philosophical perusal, as Tom Delsey appeared around the corner,
accompanied by three others. We greeted each other on the steps and
I led the way through the lobby to the room I had hired. We sat
down at the table and I poured myself a coke, and they poured
themselves some coffee while presenting their identification for my
inspection. They looked like genuine warrant cards, if that's what
they're called, not that I would be able to tell if they weren't,
and not that it mattered much anyway. I didn't catch any of the
names or any of the titles, not interested.

In true civil servant fashion, no-one sat on
my side of the table. That was fine by me, I had my space. Delsey
and two of the guys sat facing me and the other one had taken a
seat to my left at the head of the table. Or at the tail-end of the
table, depending on how you view these things.

I regarded them all in what one would refer
to as a calm and collected fashion, and I cogitated—in what a cynic
would describe as a mildly captious manner—on the fact that in a
few decades my visitors would possibly all be women, as by then the
women would have achieved the power necessary to prevent us men
from hindering them in their career choices, as we do at the
moment. They will also be building factories and houses all over
the place and also sports arenas to house their female boxing
tournaments.

"We appreciate your invitation," said the
guy at the head of the table, "at such short notice." He, like the
others, was dressed casually. He had a thin face, sandy hair, and
looked a bit younger than Delsey. But he was probably Delsey's
boss, judging by where he sat and by the fact that he had spoken
first.

"Well, there was no notice at all, so it
couldn't be short," I said, "but no problem, my pleasure." I gave
him a smile, one of my pleasant ones. Make sure he knows it's
my
meeting. Also that I am an agreeable guy, oh yes.

"Quite," said the boss and smiled. Smiles
all around. Except from Delsey, but then that's just his way. Maybe
he's got eight kids at home, or maybe ten, or maybe he has
complications because he has more than one mistress, which I doubt,
what with his face and his wink and his belly, but you can never
tell in these licentious days.

"Gentlemen," I began, "I have no doubt that
in the course of your duties, you have from time to time been
present at some very strange meetings. But rest assured that this
one will rank among your very strangest. A silver or even a gold
medal meeting. And there is no point in my beating about the bush.
So I will go straight ahead."

I opened a bottle of Coke and took a swig.
"You are interested in the activities of a certain Jeremy Parker,
based on certain comments you have received from a certain young
lady. And you know that I am a business consultant performing an
assignment for one of his group’s companies. Now investigate as you
may and as you no doubt will, the only conclusion you will ever be
able to provably reach is that he is a perfectly normal and
successful businessman. Take my word for it, which you won't, at
least not until you have consumed a lot of your time and wasted a
lot of your resources."

"I don't think you can call him normal,"
said the guy sitting next to Delsey. He also had sandy hair. He had
what one calls a fully-fleshed face and he wore black-framed
spectacles. "The young lady's comments were believable and
consistent and there was also proof of a very large payment."

"None of which Mr. Parker would deny, I
believe," I replied. "A business agreement was indeed reached and
the young lady broke the contract without even starting the
project. Certainly, in my view, Mr. Parker should never have made
such a payment in advance. A peculiar mistake for an experienced
businessman, no doubt about it. But that's it."

There was silence. They knew of course that
they had nothing to go on. One good thing, though, Delsey and his
boss were clearly good listeners. They would probably keep their
comments to themselves until I had finished saying whatever it was
that I had to say.

"Mr. Parker's business activities have
brought him into contact with certain matters which can only be
considered as being of extreme importance to national
security—correction, to international security. These matters are
of such import and sensitivity that they may only be discussed
directly with the prime minister. And he has charged me with
achieving that meeting, although—and I want to make this extremely
clear to you guys—I personally am unaware as to exactly what those
matters are at this moment. But I am happy enough to make the
attempt. I am being well paid for it."

No way was I going to let them think that I
knew anything, that could really result in some troubled times for
me. On top of which, come to think of it, one of them might even be
recording this meeting without my knowledge. A nasty trick, but
they
are
humans, so you never know.

"Mr. O'Donoghue," said the other guy on
Delsey's side of the table, a dark-haired person with remarkably
tiny ears, starting to go grey (the hair, not the ears), probably
the wrong side of forty, "do you realize how many requests the
prime minister, or rather his office, receives every month from
both people and institutions wanting to meet with him?” There are
hundreds, and for all kinds of reasons—official ones, serious ones,
trivial ones and insane ones. I think you are going to have to
forget about that idea. All the more so since you are not prepared
to, or cannot, say what it's all about. You know how these things
work, Mr. O’Donoghue. Be reasonable."

"I understand your reaction. It couldn't be
otherwise of course. No offence taken. But I am sure you will
change your minds. You see…these matters of national and
international security include a specific telepathic power—I use
telepathic for want of a better word—which constitutes, potentially
anyway, a huge and colossal threat which I doubt any country has
the means to successfully counter, or even contain. And," I
continued, "I am going to demonstrate this to you right now and
leave it up to your imagination as to what unbelievable events
could be unleashed anywhere on earth. Or, indeed,
everywhere
on earth."

I detected a significant quantity of
skepticism. What else? But a cautious skepticism, they were going
to witness a demonstration of something or other. Good Sunday fun,
is what they must have been thinking. The same as I did a couple of
weeks ago. And, in fact, the same as I was doing again today. I
wondered what kind of experiment they were going to choose.

"This is what we will do," I said. "You are
going to choose a person or persons whose minds you would like to
influence. You can even choose yourselves. Or animals. Or anything,
in fact, with a brain. You are then going to tell me what you would
like them to do. I will transfer your requests on my mobile and all
you have to do is watch. Please make sure it is something harmless
and please make sure that, whatever it is, it is something which is
going to convince you—fully."

I leaned back in my chair. This was going to
be great fun. Unless Jeremy let me down, unless he couldn't do it
anymore. And then it wouldn't be fun. Then it would simply be
horribly and appallingly embarrassing.

"Who will you be calling?" asked Delsey's
boss.

"First the demonstration, gentlemen, and
then I will answer any question I can." But none that I don't want
to, goes without saying.

There was a lot of harrumphing and general
shuffling around in their seats and the boss asked them for
suggestions but no-one wanted to make one, they preferred him to do
it. And he was thinking about it.

"Persons in the plural?" he asked.

"Also," I said.

"Well, we could take a stroll toward the
park for example and watch all the traffic in Piccadilly stop. For
at least five minutes."

He raised his eyebrows at me.

"In which direction?" I asked. Piccadilly
had reconverted to two-way traffic some years ago after the
politicians had discovered that their decades-old decision to make
it a one-way street had been an error. What's new?

"In both directions," he said.

"Very well, then let us take a stroll into
the park," I said. We all stood up and headed through the hotel and
out into the street and across into Green Park. The day was
overcast, but still, warm, stuffy. Delsey took off his sweater,
beer belly on full show, it didn't seem to bother him. Why should
it, the word aesthetic would be as foreign to him as a novel by
Oscar Wilde. They all watched as I fished out the alien mobile from
my back pocket and pressed the call button. "Peter here," I
whispered with a hand over the phone, "all traffic in Piccadilly to
stop, also any traffic entering, both directions, for at least five
minutes." "Understood," said Jeremy. Click. They had of course been
trying to listen to what I was saying—success denied, not that it
would have mattered much—and they watched me as I returned the
phone to my back pocket.

I am not stupid. I had done some thinking
about this last night. These guys were going to react like human
beings and want to know whom I had called, who was capable of this
telepathy and how, and they were possibly going to use force if
necessary to find out. And they would start off by compelling me to
hand over my mobile so that they could trace the call and go and
seize the person on the receiving end.

The traffic started stopping. And they all
stared. And I took hold of my own mobile and pressed the dial
button for the pre-set number I had prepared. It was a
non-allocated number. Not in China, not in the USA, not in any
place which might trigger unfounded speculations by a Ministry of
Defence—a beautiful name for a ministry, just think of all those
countries defending themselves like crazy in Vietnam, Iraq,
Afghanistan or wherever—or by any other elected idiots. It was a
non-allocated number in Madeira in the middle of the Atlantic
Ocean. I recommend Madeira if you like wild flowers and don't mind
landing on a runway which has been carved out of sheer mountain
cliffs (on your left) and borders the ocean (on your right) and
which, following a fatal air crash some decades ago, was extended
to run out further into the ocean on stilts. It has been classified
as one of the world's ten most dangerous airports. Strong winds and
bad visibility and you explode against a rock-face; or if you
overrun the runway, you die a salty death.

Now all of the traffic had stopped. I cut
off the call and put my phone into the back pocket of my trousers
and transferred the alien one into my inside coin pocket. Some of
the drivers had stepped out of their cars, seemingly unconcerned
about anything at all. A couple of them went into the tube station
and came back out again. Others just remained in their cars, some
quite calmly, I saw one of them reading some ghastly Sunday
tabloid. And others…well, others were suffering from varying
degrees of epileptic convulsion.

My visitors turned back to stare at me one
by one. And then they turned back to look at the scene in
Piccadilly again. And then they looked back at me again. And at
Piccadilly again.

"Unbelievable," said Delsey's boss.

"Unbelievable," said Delsey, morose does not
describe it.

"Unbelievable," said the other two.

I must admit that I was enjoying it. Quite a
demonstration. And scary at the same time, those are some powers
that Jeremy possesses, no two ways about it. We all continued
looking until suddenly there was a stirring, the cars began to
move, and within a minute or so everything had returned to
normal.