“Tonight I want to concentrate your attention on one thing and one thing only. Budget Day. In a few weeks’ time the Government will be bringing in yet another Budget, its thirty-fourth since it first came to power. Since then there have been nine years in which the Government did not feel it necessary to introduce a formal Budget and merely contented itself with using its majority to bulldose through one or two more economically restrictive measures in the normal course of Parliamentary business.”
“We elected them to make laws, Matlock. What’s wrong with that?”
” Matlock nodded genially at the interrupter.
“I shall answer you in a minute, friend. But let me continue. This means that this Government has had forty-two years of uninterrupted power. It is forty-two years since the Unirads first won office. And it is thirty-eight years since the introduction of the measure which has been central to all Budgets since. I mean the Age Bill.”
“That’s history, Matlock!” a derisive voice jeered.
“How did you vote then, Matlock? You were keen enough then!”
“Getting on a bit now, aren’t you?” “Anarchist bastard!”
Something swung through the air and dropped at his feet. It was an egg. Matlock was unmoved. He didn’t mind eggs.
“My friends,” he shouted. “Listen to me. In a few weeks we’ll get a new Age. And you know and I know which way it’s going. It can’t go up. It MUST come down. In a few weeks, Jack Browning, our beloved and ageless Prime Minister, will be covering up his mistakes with years of our lives. OUR LIVES!”
There was a lull in the tumult building up below. For a brief and rare optimistic moment, Matlock thought he might get a hearing.
The neat man in the front row, still impassive, straightened up and half- looked round.
“My friends,” said Matlock in a quieter tone, then gave a gasp of pain and clapped his hand to his face. A marble hurled from the back of the hall had struck him just below the eye. A cheer went up mixed with mocking laughter and suddenly there was a tremendous rattling as a shower of marbles and ball-bearings bounced on the bare boards of the stage. Matlock and Percy turned their backs on the audience and bent forward to protect their heads. This also had the effect, they had learnt from experience, of inviting the missile throwers to aim at their behinds. A politician’s arse can absorb anything, Percy was fond of saying, and besides it puts the audience in a good mood. The English have always found the backside comic.
There was some more laughter now, but things were obviously planned to go further. A couple of dozen men were moving purposefully towards the platform, pushing chairs and their occupants to one side with equal violence. Others were tearing down pro-Matlock posters from the walls. Matlock’s own supporters protested vociferously. The neat man settled in his seat and relaxed.
The hail of marbles eased off as the hecklers found other work to do, and Matlock turned round. Below him in the hall a small riot was developing. Much of it was still verbal and the noise itself was bent and twisted by the warped acoustics of the old room. Here and there pushes were changing into punches and already there was the splintering noise caused by the breaking of legs off chairs.
Matlock took his handkerchief from his breast pocket and blew his nose.
“MY FRIENDS!”
The harsh, ear-shattering, metallic tones cut almost contemptuously into the hubbub and stilled action and noise alike.
“MY FRIENDS, WHILE YOU ARE FIGHTING EACH OTHER, JACK BROWNING IS TRIMMING YOUR LIVES. IT IS NO SECRET THAT IF HE DARED HE WOULD GO BELOW THE SO-CALLED BIBLE BARRIER. EVEN THOSE OF YOU WHO BELIEVE IN THE AGE LAWS MUST BE DISTURBED THAT ALREADY WE HAVE THE LOWEST EXPECTATION OF LIFE IN EUROPE!”
The neat man rose to his feet and looked round at the audience. The hecklers were puzzled, uncertain what to do. One tried a shout but the metallic voice, now clearly recognizable as Matlock’s, swallowed up the sound without trace.
“BUT MORE DISTURBING STILL IS THE CRIMINAL INCOMPETENCE WHICH HAS PERPETUATED THE VERY CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH MADE AGE CONTROL ACCEPTABLE IN THE FIRST PLACE.”
Some of the audience began to sit down again. The neat man nodded to someone in the shadows.
“FORTY YEARS AGO THIS COUNTRY ALONG WITH MANY OTHERS WAS BANKRUPT. THE CAUSE, WE WERE TOLD, WAS OVER POPULATION. THE REAL CAUSE, THEN AS NOW, WAS UNDER PRODUCTION; THAT IS, BAD MANAGEMENT, AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS.”
From the shadows at the very rear of the hall a line of policemen moved forward on a word of command. They wore crash-helmets and carried truncheons.
“Come on now. Break it up, will you. Come on.”
They picked their way methodically through the overturned chairs.
“IT WAS THEN THAT THE PARTY WHICH HAS SINCE SPAWNED BROWNING PUT FORWARD ITS SOLUTION. I KNOW. FOR IT WAS MY SOLUTION.”
Only the hecklers and the police were still standing. Even some of the former were taking their seats. Then Matlock saw one of their number, a swarthy, burly man he had already recognized as some kind of leader, turn to the nearest policeman and knee him viciously in the crutch. His agonized scream rose above even the recording and within seconds the police were full into the seated audience swinging their truncheons indiscriminately.
Matlock rushed to the front of the platform.
“Colin! Ernst! Get Lizzie out of here!”
Even in speaking he saw he was too late. Already the fighting had reached the front of the hall. He reached forward to pull Lizzie up on to the platform but his own arm was seized by a fresh-faced youth who dragged him down to the floor. He lay stunned, his arms instinctively raised to protect himself from the blows the youth was raining into his face.
“You old bastard — you old bastardyou want to live for ever — I’ll show you what you’ll get — what you deserve — you old bastard! bastard! bastard!”
The youth was weak with hysteria, his rosy cheeks stained with angry tears, and his blows were losing force. For a moment Matlock saw Ernst trying to drag his attacker off him, but he in turn was seized from behind and disappeared backwards into the mèlée. Matlock carefully thrust his index fingers up the youth’s nostrils and rose with him, then gently deposited the screaming boy on the edge of the platform. He could hear his own recorded voice still booming out in the background — but very much in the background now.
“Lizzie!” he called, “Lizzie!”
There was no sign of her in the mass of struggling, wrestling, punching bodies. He tried to force his way forward to where he had last seen her, but found it impossible to make any progress. Women were screaming all over the hall and he was certain he recognized her voice in one of the screams. Leaping forward again, he began dragging men out of the solid heaving wall in front of him and casting them to one side. He seized a uniformed figure by the shoulders and pulled him back. The man turned round with great agility and swung his truncheon. Matlock’s arms were trapped against his sides by sheer pressure of bodies and he watched the truncheon’s back swing with helpless horror.
But before it could descend, a delicate white hand touched momentarily on the policeman’s wrist.
“Not this one, thank you, Sergeant. Come along, please, Mr. Matlock.”
It was the neat man, unruffled by the violence. He guided Matlock through the crowd with no more difficulty than he would have found moving through a well-attended cocktail party.
“In here, please, Mr. Matlock,” he said opening a door. They stepped out into the corridor and he closed the door behind them which cut out most of the noise except Matlock’s voice booming out of the hidden loudspeakers.
“WHAT HAVE WE LEFT TO FEAR? WHAT HAVE WE LEFT TO PREVENT EVERY ONE OF US LEADING A USEFUL, ACTIVE, COMPLETE LIFE TILL NINETY? TILL A HUNDRED? WE NEED HARDLY FEAR DISEASE. MEDICAL SCIENCE CAN CURE THEM ALL. WE NEED FEAR ACCIDENTS, I SUPPOSE. BUT CARE CAN PREVENT THEM.