“What are you doing?” he asks.
“What do you think I’m doing?” I say, because it seems pretty obvious to me. “I’m collecting rainwater!” And he shrugs and looks at me nonplussed. “Look!” I cry, and I’m soaking wet as I say it. “I’m not dissolving! This is drinkable!”
Now, I guess it’s different when you’re up in government with purified water on tap. But when you’re leopard-fodder like me, and your choices are weak beer or the desalinated dysentery-juice from the reservoirs, you get pretty excited about conventional rain. I guess it’s all relative. Calamine’s charmingly condescending when he tells me:
“You know I can get you fresh water whenever you want. You just have to ask.”
“And why would you do that for me?”
“Because you’re part of the team,” he says, smiling in the unflattering candlelight. But I’m thinking of those rifle butts again when he says: “Look, I think we’ve had a bit of a misunderstanding. Just give me a minute to…” and he checks his watch. “In fact, less than a minute…” He trails off, starts counting soundlessly. There’s a sudden noise that I can’t even begin to describe – honestly, I can’t – and then he rips off the watch and slings it into the pedal bin.
“No use to me now,” he says. “Do you own a computer?”
“No,” I say, bemused as ever.
“Good,” he says. “Suffice to say, everything electronic in this entire street is now screwed.”
“Why?”
“EMP.”
“I don’t know what to say to that.”
“You won’t. Not if you don’t know what an EMP is. Let me explain: We’ve just flashed your house with an electromagnetic pulse. Or a microwave pulse – I can never remember which it is… though I hope it’s not the second because I believe they make men sterile. Anyway, my point is this: the pulse fries electronic equipment – annoying if you own a computer repair shop, but quite useful if you suspect a building is bugged. By a building, I mean your house. And now, well, let’s just say we’re free to talk a little more openly.” He pulls up a chair. “So you’ve met Montgomery Burns then.”
“I don’t get the reference,” I say.
“Right. Probably a bit before your time. I mean Malmot. Tall, thin gentlemen. Grey hair. Grey complexion. Slapped you with a pigskin glove. Screamed obscenities in your face.”
“Oh, him!” I say.
“Brings a chill to the room, doesn’t he? And tends to bring out the worst in our friend, Calamari,” Calamine chuckles. “Well, you’ll be pleased to know that Mr Malmot bears you no personal grievances. He’s just, how shall we say, a little uneasy around new people. In fact, let’s say all people. He thinks you win respect by battering them to a pulp. Takes his management strategies from Stalin, you see. Personally, I prefer the subtle approach…”
“You weren’t so subtle last night.”
“That was nothing to do with me.”
“But I heard you outside.”
“Maybe you did,” he says with an edge to his voice. “In which case, you’ll have heard me describe his methods as pointless bluster; you’ll also have heard me explain that you’re already on side and need no further coercion; you’ll have heard me voice my disapproval. You may not have heard me telling the lads to go easy on you but I assure you – if I hadn’t, you’d be in a much sorrier state now.”
“My hand?”
“Yes. I was told to break it.”
“But you didn’t. Well, er, thanks for that.”
“Don’t thank me, it’s just common sense. They wanted you put firmly in your place – but you don’t hire an artist and then break his fingers before he’s finished the job. That’s just backwards. It’s plain dumb. But that’s the kind of mentality we’re dealing with here. They don’t think things through.”
He seems frustrated, and I get the feeling I’m being told a little more than I should here. So I do what anyone else in my situation would: I nod my head sympathetically and hope he spills some more.
“So this Malmot: he’s the head vampire?” I prompt.
“And we’re all expected to bite a few necks,” he laughs mirthlessly. “But I choose my necks carefully, you see. This is the thing, though: I can’t guarantee your safety unless you return to work. Because whilst I’m aware that you know comparatively little, it’s still too much. And if you’re not in, you’re out, so to speak.”
“And what’s in it for me?” I ask. “I mean, in being ‘in’?” And I’m starting to sound like he is.
“Well, you’re still eligible for the company funeral plan. Now that can be a wooden coffin in fifteen years time or a shallow ditch tomorrow. Your choice.”
“And, by being ‘in’ I stay ‘out’ of the ditch?”
“I swear, you get smarter every day, Jupiter! Glad to have you back on board!” And he claps me on the back like a drunken uncle.
Meanwhile, I’m wondering why he had to fry my house to tell me this? So I ask in some roundabout way and he tells me that the key to efficiency is commonsense and a flexible command structure. But certain parties have their ways of doing things and perhaps those ways could be handled with a little more finesse.
“Malmot wants you to report to him directly. This puts you in an ideal position to observe him and the way he goes about things. He’s a secretive man, you see, and some of us feel we’d benefit from a greater degree of transparency, a little more information to help us go about our business.”
He phrases it so eloquently.
“That’s all?” I ask.
“That’s all.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It is.”
“But he kills people. And I don’t doubt you do, too!”
“We do what’s necessary to ensure the smooth running of our country. It’s no different from any other business. We just retire a little more violently.”
“I don’t like this.”
“Mr Jupiter, of the few emotions you seem to possess, which is stronger? Your fear or your greed? Or, perhaps, it’s your lust? You know, I can get you ten women at the drop of a hat. Clean women who’ll pretend to like you.”
“I have a wife who does that.”
“Unconvincingly. I can get you a new one.”
“Can you get rid of the old one?”
“If you say so. But we’ll go back to your greed for the moment though.”
“Let’s.”
And it doesn’t take long to settle on large quantities of cash and clean water.
“I can finally sober up,” I tell him.
“I’m counting on it,” he says. “I’m sick of working with lunatics and drunks.” And he makes some hand gesture at a man up a telegraph pole. And the lights spark back to life. And the man, slips, falls and breaks his leg.
“See what I mean,” Calamine sighs. I can see why they call him Calamine. He’s strangely soothing.
So I’ve just taken delivery of a consignment of fresh H2O. What’s the first thing I do with it? I’ll give you a clue: I don’t drink it.
England has the lowest birth rate in Europe. There are many reasons for this. Reduced fertility, miscarriages triggered by poor nutrition, gas clouds full of oestrogen turning men fruity, they all play their part. But our main problem is the water. It’s dirty and diseased and it isn’t safe to wash in. So we don’t. And we honk like rotting lepers. That’s one of the main reasons our society’s falling apart, why our divorce rate’s virtually one hundred percent. Because the English are too repulsive to have sex with each other.
It’s not funny. Relationships thrive on intimacy. How intimate can you get with someone you can smell from the other side of the door?