‘Ah, Quasar. The Minister of Information is busy this morning. I am his under-secretary. We’ve been expecting your call. Have you seen the growing hysteria?’
‘Indeed, sir.’
‘Yes. Your cleansing operation was almost too successful, it might appear. His Serendipity has ordered me to tell you to lie low for a couple more weeks.’
‘I obey His Serendipity in all things.’
‘In addition, you are ordered to proceed to a more remote location. Purely as a precaution. Our brothers in the unclean police have told us your details are being circulated. We must act with stealth, and guile. Officially, we are denying complicity in your gas attack. This will win us more time to strengthen the Fellowship with new brothers and sisters. This tactic worked for our cleansing experiment in Nagano Prefecture last year. How easily misled are these dung-beetles!’
‘Indeed, sir.’
‘In the event that you are arrested, you are to assume full responsibility for your attack, and claim that you had acted entirely on your own volition, after being expelled from the Fellowship for insanity. You would then be teleported out of custody by His Serendipity.’
‘Naturally, sir. I obey His Serendipity in all things.’
‘You are a great asset to the Fellowship, Quasar. Any questions?’
‘I was wondering if phase two of the great cleansing has begun yet, sir? Have our yogic fliers been despatched to the parliament building to demand the integration of His Serendipity’s teachings into the national curriculum? If we leave it too long, then the unclean might—’
‘Quasar, you forget yourself! When was it decreed that your responsibilities included advocating Fellowship foreign policy?’
‘I understand my error, sir. Forgive me, sir. I beg you.’
‘You are already forgiven, dear son of His Serendipity! No doubt you are lonely, away from your family?’
‘Yes, sir. But I received the alpha-wave messages sent from my brothers and sisters through the news broadcasts. And His Serendipity speaks to me words of comfort in my exile as I meditate.’
‘Excellent. Two more weeks should be sufficient, Quasar. If your funds run low, you may contact the Fellowship’s Secret Service using the usual code. Otherwise maintain silence.’
‘One more thing, sir. The apostate Mayumi Aoi—’
‘The Minister of Information has noticed. The sewers of the blind unclean shall for ever be sealed. The Minister of Security will act, when the present scrutiny subsides. Perhaps we have shown too much mercy in the past. We are now at war.’
I walked to the port in the stellar heat of mid-afternoon, and collected boat schedules from a rack. I pulled open my map. I have always preferred maps to books. They don’t answer you back. Never throw a map away. The islands beckoned, imperial emeralds in a sky-blue sea. I chose one labelled Kumejima. Half a day away to the west, but not so small that a visitor would stand out. There was only one boat per day, departing at 6.45 a.m. I bought a ticket for the next day’s sailing.
I spent the rest of the day sitting on the quay. I recited all of His Serendipity’s Sacred Revelations, oblivious to the flow of lost souls passing by.
Eventually the sun sank, crimson and wobbling. I hadn’t noticed it grow dark. I walked back to my hotel, where I told the receptionist that my business was concluded and I would depart for Osaka early the next morning.
The subway train in Tokyo was as crammed as a cattle-wagon. Crammed with organs, wrapped in meat, wrapped in clothes. Silent and sweaty. I was half-afraid some fool would crush the phials prematurely. Our Minister of Science had explained to me exactly how the package worked. When I ripped open the seal and pressed the three buttons simultaneously, I would have one minute to get clear before the solenoids shattered the phials, and the great cleansing of the world would begin.
I put the package on the baggage rack and waited for the appointed minute. I focused my alpha telepathy, and sent messages of encouragement to my co-cleansers in various metro trains throughout Tokyo.
I studied the people around me. The honoured unclean, the first to be cleansed. Dumb. Sorry. Tired. Mind-rotted. Mules, in a never-ending whirpool of lies, pain, and ignorance. I was a few inches away from a baby, in a woolly cap, strapped to its mother’s back. It was asleep and dribbling and smelt of toddlers’ marshiness. A girl, I guessed from the pink Minnie Mouse sewn onto the cap. Pensioners who had nothing to look forward to but senility and wheelchairs in lonely magnolia ‘homes’. Young salarymen, supposedly in their prime, their minds conditioned for greed and bullying.
I had the life and death of those lowlives in my hands! What would they say? How would they try to dissuade me? How would they justify their insectoid existences? Where could they start? How could a tadpole address a god?
The carriage swayed, jarred and the lights dipped for a moment into brown.
Not well enough.
I remembered His Serendipity’s words that morning. ‘I have seen the comet, far beyond the farthest orbit of the mundane mind. The New Earth is approaching. The judgement of the vermin is coming. By helping it along a little, we are putting them out of their misery. Sons, you are the chosen agents of the Divine.’
In those last few moments, as we pulled into the station, His Serendipity fortified me with a vision of the future. Within three short years His Serendipity is going to enter Jerusalem. In the same year Mecca is going to bow down, and the Pope and the Dalai Lama will seek conversion. The Presidents of Russia and the US petition for His Serendipity’s patronage.
Then, in July of that year, the comet is detected by observatories all over the world. Narrowly missing Neptune, it approaches Earth, eclipsing the Moon, blazing even in the midday sky over the airfields and mountain ranges and cities of the world. The unclean rush out and welcome this latest novelty. And that will be their undoing! The Earth is bathed in microwaves from the comet, and only those with high alpha quotients will be able to insulate themselves. The unclean die, retching, scratching out their eyes, stinking of their own flesh as it cooks on their bones. The survivors begin the creation of Paradise. His Serendipity will reveal himself as His Divinity. A butterfly emerging from the chrysalis of his body.
I feel into the perforated sports bag, and I rip open the seal. I have to flick the switches, and hold them down for three seconds to set the timer. One. Two. Three. The New Earth is coming. History is ticking. I zip the bag shut, let it fall to my feet, and shunt it surreptitiously under a seat with the back of my heel. The compartment is so crammed that none of the zombies notices.
The will of His Serendipity.
The train pulls into the station, and—
I hear the noises under the manhole cover, but I dared not, dared not listen to its words.
If the noises ever become words — not now, not yet. Not ever. Where would it end?
I entered the current that flowed to the escalators, and away from there.
Over my shoulder, the train accelerated into the fumey darkness.
The palms of my hands were pricking and sweaty. A seagull strutted along the window ledge and peered in. It had a cruel face.
‘And your name, sir?’ The old lady who ran the inn grinned the grimace of a temple god. Why was she grinning? To make me nervous? She had more black gaps than stained teeth.
‘My name’s Tokunaga. Buntaro Tokunaga.’
‘Tokunaga... lovely name. It has a regal air.’
‘I’ve never thought about it.’
‘And what business are you in, Mr Tokunaga?’
Questions and questions. Do the unclean never stop?
‘I’m just an ordinary salaryman. I don’t work for a famous company. I’m the department head of a small computer business in the suburbs of Tokyo.’