Omega (25) "I don't like this at all!" Beta asserted, though seeming strangely excited at the same time. "Let's leave here as soon as we can!" She strode on, and I followed as close behind her as I could, ignoring as best I could the curious calls from the more human women who stood in shop doorways in little more than their underwear. My ears burnt with embarrassment while the pressure against the inside of my trousers was somehow reappraising my feelings towards Beta in a way that I couldn't claim to be proud of. Beta steered us off the main roads down some quite narrow roads, framed on either side by the windowless hulk of tall buildings, but it was not long until we felt lost and longed to return to the relative comfort of a more populated street. The few people we passed seemed somehow menacing and unwelcome, however innocuous they might otherwise appear. We zigzagged across the roads to avoid them, huddling together for protection. It was very dark in the shadows of the buildings on all sides, and despite being nearly midday on a sunny day it seemed more like twilight. Our nerves, already on edge in this unfamiliar and threatening locality, were further troubled by what appeared to be the sudden and shrieking scream of a large bird. "What was that?" Gasped Beta. "I don't know. Whatever it is, I don't want to find out! Let's go!" The scream came out again, and this time it sounded much more like someone shouting in distress. "I don't think that's the right thing to do at all!" reproved Beta sternly. "If someone's in trouble we ought to try and help." She strode off in the direction of the scream and, abashed but still reluctantly, I chased after her. We followed the punctuated cries around a series of anonymous buildings and narrow streets as they became gradually more distinct. "Get off! Ow! Leave me alone!" The calls were soon identifiable as coming from a woman. Beta broke into a run and I picked up my pace to stay within sight of her. We turned a corner past large black plastic rubbish bags and decrepit cardboard boxes, and were confronted by the sight of a young woman struggling in the grip of a large pig wearing a uniform and a conical hat. "Leave her alone!" Commanded Beta with authority. The pig turned round, holding the woman's arm in one of his trotters, revealing that he was a police officer. He contemplated us standing there. "Just leave her be! She doesn't like being held like that!" I couldn't help marvelling at Beta's steadfastness of purpose in confronting someone who if he so chose could probably make our lives very unpleasant. The police officer was also rather impressed, and simply released his grip so that the woman slumped sloppily onto the pavement. She was sobbing and weeping forlornly. I noticed for the first time that she was quite severely pregnant: a large round belly whose distended navel swelled out from beneath her stretched tee-shirt and hung over her ragged knee-length skirt. "The City has a policy of discouraging vagrancy," the police officer said in his defence. "I'm sure the girl is quite discouraged now!" Beta replied, bravely conciliatorily. "If you leave her with us, we'll ensure she's looked after." "Very well!" Remarked the police officer, clearly quite embarrassed as he fastened his belt together round his rotund waist. He looked down at the pregnant girl who was huddled in a piteous state, her shoulder-length hair over her face and her hands supported on her bare knees. "Don't let me find you begging again," he ordered her unconvincingly, "or the full weight of the law will descend on you!" He then pocketed his truncheon, turned around and strode off down the narrow streets, leaving us behind. Beta raced over to the girl, bent down to her and drew her sobbing face to her bare breasts. I stood helplessly by, feeling somewhat redundant and removed from all the drama. The girl raised her thin, high cheekboned face and stared at us through tears and their silver reflection on her cheeks. "Thank you! Thank you!" She repeated between sobs. She was in a very sorry state, and not just as a result of her recent assault. Her hair was matted and unwashed; her clothes were smudged and torn; her feet were bare and black with the muck of the pavement; and her skin was discoloured by a mixture of dirt and bruises. Her face was the very image of suffering. "He was horrid! Horrid!" Beta looked up at me with a sad smile. "We'd better get her out of here." She turned back to the girl. "What's your name? Where do you come from?" "Una. My name's Una," the girl sobbed. "I don't come from anywhere. At least not lately. I used to live in Unity. Beyond the Country. But I don't live anywhere now. Thank you! Thank you! That horrid pig! Just because I'm so poor. I've not lost my humanity, even if I have lost my dignity. It was horrible! Horrible!" Wordlessly, Beta lifted Una to her feet and gestured to me to help carry her. She was not too badly harmed by the encounter, although some of the bruises on her arm were quite fresh and tender, and she hugged her bare stomach with anxiety. She was very light, despite the extra weight she carried inside her, and would normally be very thin. Her wrists were nearly half the thickness of Beta's and her legs were of almost childlike proportions. She was also slightly shorter than Beta. Her hair was very pale despite the patches of dirt that darkened it. As we supported her and walked slowly along the back streets in the hope of finding somewhere to rest she continued sobbing: ruing her luck and reflecting on her recent assault. "It's because I look such a rag doll! It's because I'm so filthy! Even the police think I'm fair game! Just a victim to be victimised again and again!" "I'm sure that's not true, Una," remarked Beta comfortingly. "Nobody's meant to be a victim. No one has to be abused." "Yes they do. Yes they are. And I'm one," Una sobbed with understandable self-pity. "And here I am with the child of a rapist in my womb wandering the desolate City streets; sleeping in dark alley-ways under newspapers and cardboard; drinking soup at soup kitchens and eating the rubbish left in waste-paper bins. I'm just as low as you can get! Any lower and I'd be dead!" "Don't be silly," Beta said reassuringly but without conviction. "There's always worse than the worst you'll ever know." We emerged into the relative brightness of an open street in which there were the comforting arcades of shops and the hustle and bustle of people. The streets here were nonetheless quieter than most we'd seen up to now and the shops were correspondingly more mundane, but still more spectacular than any that would be seen in Suburban shopping centres. "There's an empty bench," I said indicating one facing across the road at the stream of traffic roaring by. "Let's sit down." "Good idea," agreed Beta. We sat on a hard plastic bench between a waste-paper bin and a signpost, much defaced by pen-knives and decorated with arcane graffiti. Jim ©Julie read the graffiti between my knees. We set Una between us, but she leaned heavily on Beta's shoulder and stroked her arm idly while talking not so much to us, or to anyone, but for the sake of talking. "I've lost all my pride. You do, you know, when you're at the bottom of the heap. I've done almost anything to survive. Begged, borrowed and even stolen. You have to. You've got to eat. You just want food or something to drink all the time. It fills your thoughts. I never thought eating would be so important before, but now that and sleep are the two most significant things in my life. If it's not where to get food, it's where to lay my head at night. You can't believe! I envy the wealth of all the people who pass by as I sit begging on the street with a cup or empty sweet box. I just see them as sources of income. I hate them when they don't put even the smallest guinea or crown in my box. Why can't they help more? I say. And when they give me money I'm grateful, sure, but I think why don't they give me more? What can a guinea buy you in the City? What can even a hundred guineas buy you?" "Not very much by the look of it," I remarked, looking at the prices of three or four guineas marked on discarded sweet papers on the ground beneath my feet. "The money I get in a day's begging in the City would be plenty in Unity, but then it's all gone. A cup of coffee in a café, if they'll even let me in, a few rolls, perhaps some clothes. When there's only food and sleep to look forward to, you particularly cherish sleep. It's cheap and readily available, even if it's taken me a long time to get used to sleeping rough. At first I couldn't sleep at all. I ached all day long from the pressure of the pavement beneath me. And I'm so vulnerable too. A lone girl with no friends in the midst of an enormous unfamiliar city. Men always try to take advantage of me. Despite me being pregnant! But I'm a nice girl. I'm not like that! But that's just not sufficient for them all, as you saw with that disgusting pig! God! I hate him! Why me? Why do even law enforcers think that I can be treated with such brutal disrespect? I hate him! I hate the City! I hate everything and everyone!" She paused and then suddenly burst into a flood of tears. Beta put her arm around her, and then looked up at me. "Isn't there somewhere better than here to sit? It's not very comfortable or private." I looked up at the signpost. The image of a striding man marching in the direction of the City Park looked quite promising. I mentioned this to Beta. "Parks are very relaxing places in the Suburbs. It's much better than sitting here with all these people jostling by." Beta readily agreed, so we persuaded Una to stand up and we walked slowly along the street in the direction indicated by the signpost. As we proceeded, we passed more shops and a few department stores, but what I thought particularly odd was the number of large television screens lining the exterior of the buildings. They all featured different stations, but all showed similar images of suited people talking to other individuals down padded microphones. I pointed this out to Beta. "Is television all you can think of?" Beta upbraided me harshly, but she raised her head and looked up at the images. "Oh! It's the Election results!" "The Election?" I remarked. I'd totally forgotten the big event of the day. "Is it now?" "Well, it's already taken place you know. I didn't vote of course - I wasn't registered in Lambdeth - but I'd have voted Green. Did you vote?" "No. I wasn't anywhere near the Suburbs. Who do you think has won?" "Well, let's find out. You don't mind, do you Una, if we watch the Election Results?" "No, of course not. Of course not. Though it won't make any difference to me who's elected. All those different parties. They're all the same, aren't they?" Beta looked as if she would like to disagree, but she restrained the urge and instead stood by a tree with Una leaning heavily on her shoulder and me standing beside her. Many pedestrians also stopped in their tracks and gazed at the television screens, where on all of them different newscasters of different species in similar attire faced the camera with faces admixed with the excitement and solemnity of the event. The television screen we were nearest showed two characters, one a cobra with glasses and the other human. "We are now authorised to announce the results of the General Election," the cobra spoke slowly and reverently. Behind him was an inset picture of several flags of different colours and the images of significant politicians, one of whom I recognised as President Chairman Rupert. "They said they'd give the results at midday," whispered Beta excitedly. "It's been an exciting and hectic Election," the newscaster continued. "The most important there has probably ever been. An Election which has seen opinion polls swing widely from side to side, up and down, and topsy-turvy. An Election which has seen the active campaigns of the Red Party and the Blue Party overshadowed by the controversies surrounding the Illicit Party and, more usually for General Elections, the Black Party. An Election which has seen the White Party cornered again and again for a firm statement of policy and ideology, and has marked the increasing significance of the Green Party." Beta slightly squeezed my arm at that brief mention. "However, it is official. The results have come in and we are able to announce them. So, Gilbert, what are they?" The other newscaster raised his head from the piece of paper he had in front of him. "Thank you, George. Yes the results are in. Results which signify the final disunification of the Coition Government. The full details will be given later as it is complicated to explain the method of calculation in the Single Transferable Vote system. The main outcome is as follows. In the first round the Blue Party gained 30% of the vote and in the previous electoral system would have been the dominant party of the Coition government. The Red Party gained 26%. On vote reallocation, however, the Red Party gained votes predominantly from the second preferences of the Green and Illicit Parties, whilst the Blue Party gained votes chiefly from the Black and White Parties. The final result is that the Red Party has triumphed in the Election with an overall reallocated total of 53% of the vote, against the Blue Party's 47%. I repeat. The Election has been won by the Red Party!" 13 Other television station announcers had been less circumlocutory in declaring the result, and choruses of cheers and moans broke out all along the main street before we had any idea whose victory had prompted the response. On the whole, it seemed that those who favoured the victory marginally outnumbered those opposed: a figure perhaps reflected by the curious scaled down percentages. "This has not quite been the decisive victory the Red Party may have hoped for. It is still in a weak position, although it now has a mandate which will enable it to succeed the Coition Government. Our cameras now take you to the Central Polling Office to hear from the Prime Minister designate." The image on the television screen echoed, in curious uniformity, the same picture as all the others on the main street, where successful candidates were stood on a platform surrounded by computer screens and a crowd of hostile and enthusiastic observers. It was clear that some disruption in the crowd was holding up the proceedings, in which fruit and flour was being thrown onto the platform. "A Red Party victory!" Beta exclaimed. "Who'd've thought! I suppose they'd've been my second preference as well. I wonder what difference that will make." "None whatsoever!" opined Una sceptically. "Whichever party is in power. Whatever government. Everything will remain the same!" "I can't see how that can be!" Beta countered automatically, but reminded of Una's plight, decided not to pursue her argument. "However, less of politics. Shall we continue to the Park? I don't want Una to get caught up in all the revelry!" Indeed quite a lot of celebration accompanied us as we walked along the street. Those who favoured the result were evidently making the most of their joy, in a chorus of screams, yells, hooting cars, raised clenched fists and a snowfall of ticker-tape and confetti which showered on our heads from the windows of the tall buildings high above. Horses charged by through nearly stationary traffic neighing praise to the Red Party, sometimes carrying flag-waving carousers on their backs. Red flags were waved in triumph. Blue flags, Green flags and Black flags were waved in defiance. We dodged around a particular nasty fight between some velociraptors in black shirts and a pair of horses. An elderly elephant wearing a blue rosette stood transfixed by the side of the road, seemingly unable to comprehend the results. A pair of hedgehogs wearing bobble hats and green wellington boots looked rather embarrassed by the side of a banner optimistically proclaiming the success of the Green Party. "I don't think many people in the Suburbs will be pleased with the success of the Red Party," I commented to Beta. "Most people there would've voted for the White Party or the Blue Party. In fact, I don't think a single person would ever confess to voting Red. How is it that they managed to win?" "It's obvious, isn't it!" replied Una, taking more interest in the Election than her apparent cynicism would suggest. "The Red Party are the party which more than any other claims to represent the interests of the poor, the dispossessed, the hungry, the disenfranchised, the put upon and the discriminated against. Since there are rather more people like that in this country than anyone else, the real mystery is why the other parties have done so well. There aren't that many people who'd be classified as rich enough for representation by the Blue Party." "So you believe that people are voting entirely for self-interest," Beta said. "The poor vote for the party of the poor. The rich for the party of the rich..." "The racists for the party of the racists. The apathetic for the party of the apathetic. Of course! People only ever do anything if they see something in it for themselves." "But don't people vote for what they think is best for the country? Don't they support the causes which they believe are going to be best for everyone?"
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