Omega (44) "There seem to be rather a lot of Illicit Party supporters heading towards the Suburbs," Beta remarked. "We saw thousands of them marching through the Country." The Artist looked more than a little frightened. "Did you say that there are thousands of these hooligans marching on the Suburbs? Goodness! They could march on the Art Gallery. They could destroy it." "Surely, they wouldn't do anything like that," I remarked, a little uncertainly. "They're coming to search for the Truth, not destroy buildings." "It wouldn't be untypical of what we've seen of them," Beta disagreed. "Every time we come across them they pick fights and destroy things. If they could start that fire in the forest, why couldn't they do the same here?" "It just doesn't seem very likely." I argued. "It doesn't seem possible that ..." My sentence was abruptly truncated by a loud crashing noise from elsewhere in the Art Gallery. Beta, the Artist and I hushed to determine what the noise could be. The Artist took up a tense pose, his paintbrush held frozen in mid-air and his face a deathly white. Beta's pose was actually more relaxed than it had been for more than twenty minutes, but her expression was no less tense than the Artist's. I tried to imagine what the noise might have been, its echoes still reverberating down the corridors. It sounded too close to be an aeroplane, and the sky was far too clear for it to be thunder. "I didn't like the sound of that at all!" Beta remarked. "What was it?" The Artist asked. "Perhaps it was ..." I started, but Beta abruptly shushed me, placing a finger over her lips and a cupped hand over her ear to gesture that we listen. I did so, and heard the distant noise of people running about and shouts that sounded inappropriately loud for a place associated with quiet contemplation. "I think we should get out of here!" Beta remarked. "I think you're right!" agreed the Artist cautiously, putting his palette down and placing his paint brush into a glass bowl by the side. "Whatever it was I don't know, and I don't want to find out. There's no ..." As if echoing the Artist's fears there was another catastrophic crashing sound, louder than the first, accompanied by the distinct sound of smashing glass. There came a series of self-congratulatory shouts and yelps. "Let's move!" Beta said, running towards me. The Artist nodded, gazing mournfully at his canvass. Beta and I briefly examined his painting, which really resembled Beta no more than his previous painting resembled flowers. It seemed nothing more than random brush strokes over a series of pencil lines, in which it was just about possible to make out what were either Beta's eyes or her nipples. The Artist sighed: "It would have been a great work of art. One of my very best. It would have redefined beauty, and captured the very quintessence of rural innocence." "It can't be helped," Beta said, unimpressed by the Artist's portrayal of her. "How do we get out?" "There's only one way, and that's the way you came in," the Artist answered. "Well, let's get going!" I said, grasping Beta's hand. We dashed out of the gallery we were in, with the Artist in tow, past canvasses and sculptures, towards the source of the commotion. We soon came across evidence of the cause of the noise. An abstract statue of what may have been a large pig was lying in several broken chunks on the ground, part of it projecting outwards through a smashed skylight. All the paintings in this gallery were slashed by knives, several almost to ribbons, and a pile of tyres which had previously been mounted in the shape of a submarine were scattered widely about. "The vandals! The vandals!" cried the Artist in genuine distress. "What have they done to Paella's classic sculpture? And they haven't spared even the finest Plunkett. And that torn canvass is the famous Tropic of Scorpio by the great Spam! How can this have happened? Have they no soul?" "Come on!" Cried Beta urgently. "We've got to get out!" She ran on, with the Artist dawdling behind, in shocked disbelief at the damage strewn ahead. A pile of bricks had been dismantled and its constituent parts used as missiles to crack glass cabinets, punch holes in paintings, smash the faces of sculpted children and to lie in a heap at the foot of a chipped and nearly unrecognisable statue of a naked woman. "It is the Illicit Party!" Exclaimed Beta. "Look at that!" She pointed at some coarsely sprayed graffiti across a series of sketches of country scenes. Rupert Rules OK! read one. The Truth! read another. "They can't even spell!" Remarked the Artist bitterly, pointing at the words sprayed along the length of a toppled statue: Death To The Avent Guard!" All this Art! All this Culture! Priceless! Immeasurable! Uninsurable! Destroyed forever! I hate the bastards who did this! I hate, detest and loath them!" We ran down corridors, passing only one figure: a capybara sprawled apparently drunk by a frame that had been pulled to the floor and its canvass torn out and ripped into shreds scattered across the gallery. In another near encounter, we heard the sound of shouting, chanting and destruction coming from a gallery to one side as we dashed past without being seen. The Artist bent his head back and grimaced as a painting came crashing to the ground, and the glass protecting the surface shattered into jagged fragments. Our good fortune in avoiding any encounter with the perpetrators eventually came to an end, and this was when we entered the main hall where we at last came face to face with those responsible for the vandalism. The enormous space which had before seemed cathedral-like in its solemn majesty and timelessness, now resembled the aftermath of a hurricane or earthquake. Enormous statues, including one of a scorpion, lay shattered in fragments on the gallery floor. A statue of Superman stood beheaded over the shattered glass cabinets in which his head was now resting. A mediĉval triptych representing the temptation of Christ was covered with mud and had the javelin from one of the Spartan sportsmen embedded into its wooden surface. In amongst all this destruction more devastation was being wrought. A group of gorillas in black leather costumes were gleefully tossing antique pottery to each other. Three or four small dragons were tearing up the fabric of an enormous still life portrait of some flowers. Others were bludgeoning sculptures and paintings with the fragments of others. A stone club originally brandished by a stone Samson to demolish sinners was now being used to knock out chips from a monstrous statue of Snow White, whose face was now abused to an extent no human could possibly withstand. An array of video screens were smashed in by a large weasel brandishing the stone arm of a wart hog. The Artist stood transfixed in horror. "That was a priceless Grillade! That was Peccadillo's finest painting! That was the most important spiritual painting of the Parmesan School. And that mass of paper, wood and cardboard is all that remains of Eponymous Borscht's greatest masterpiece!" "What shall we do?" I asked in more practical concern. It seemed unlikely we could get across the main hall unnoticed. "I suppose we'll just have to hope they're too preoccupied to concern themselves with us!" Beta answered optimistically. "But I don't really want to risk it." We stood petrified in the shadows of the Art Gallery's columns, unable to go forward and equally unable to turn back. However, our indecision was resolved after not too long, less by choice than circumstance. A group of eurypterids, some seven or eight feet long, were throwing broken chunks of sculpture at an enormous abstract painting just above an arch, and although their aim was not generally very good, some of their missiles hit the canvass, causing fragments of heavily layered oil paint to crack off and fall as polychromatic stalactites to the floor. The Artist mumbled to himself with abhorrence: "Don't they know it's a priceless Schwarzstein!" Then driven mad with Artistic rage, he burst out from where he hid and ran towards them. "Stop it! Stop it! This is madness! Stop it!" The eurypterids stopped just as he had bid, but not out of respect. They turned round and jeered at him. He also attracted the attention of a group of hyenas who had been chewing up a wooden Madonna and a velociraptor whose vicious claw had been shredding a painting of some naked women having dinner in a pigsty. They surrounded him, laughing and jeering. "Just stop it! Do you hear!" The Artist shouted bravely. "Don't ruin masterpieces which have survived hundreds and thousands of years. I beg of you! Leave them alone!" "It's a flipping Artist!" Laughed a hyena. "A flipping avant-garde Artist, I bet!" Sneered the velociraptor. "He's probably painted some of this stuff! What would the great Rupert think of that?" The dinosaur clouted the Artist on the face causing him to collapse to the floor and out of our sight underneath the jeering predators. Beta looked at me in horror. "What are they going to do to him?" "I don't think we should stay to find out!" I replied, running full pelt across the main hall, jumping over broken statues and glass. Beta ran behind me, and very soon overtook me, demonstrating again her better ability to run over and around obstacles. Our spurt took us through the main entrance, past the shattered glass where the shop had been: its books, postcards and posters spread torn all around the hallway. We darted down the steps, past the blood-stained body of the pig who had been guarding the entrance. His snout was a bloody mess and his coat was badly ripped. He snorted mournfully as we tripped down the steps, a pool of blood in front of him in which could be seen the image of a bearded figure in a halo reflected from the mural above the arch. There were more Illicit Party supporters and others scattered about the Art Gallery's gardens, but they were milling about with rather less purpose, and even seemed to be in cheerful holiday mood. Some were idly sitting around a statue of a large bear which they showed no interest in vandalising, and rather more in eating their sandwiches. Beta and I ran along the pathway leading out of the Art Gallery, past the sleeping figure of the first guard we had met, still unaware of the malicious damage being perpetrated inside. Once out of the Art Gallery grounds, Beta and I stood by a tall lamp-post beside an ornamental hedge, panting and hawking in the late afternoon sunshine. "That was horrible! Horrible! All that destruction! And who's to know what they'd have done to us if they'd caught us!" Beta said through short gasps. "I hope that's the last time I get a fright like that!" I nodded sympathetically and sincerely. "So do I!" 24 Only a furlong from the Art Gallery, Beta and I were at last indisputably in the Suburbs. It seemed so much the peaceful haven I remembered it in the early evening sun, sheltered by the weight of its very presence from the disorder and chaos that had pursued us ever since the Election. The avenues and streets were lined by a comforting array of lamp-posts and mature trees; the neatly trimmed hedges and lawns guarded by plastic garden gnomes keeping a decent distance from the pavement; and television aerials and satellite dishes decorated every roof. "I can't believe the Truth is here!" Beta exclaimed. "I can't imagine anywhere less likely." This was difficult to dispute. It was, after all, this very assumption which had originally persuaded me to leave the Suburbs and seek the Truth elsewhere. "It is where the Truth is supposed to be though!" "Where do you suppose we ought to start looking?" Beta wondered, regarding a cat dozing idly on the doorstep of a semi-detached house. "Should we knock on people's doors and ask?" I shrugged my shoulders. There was no obvious modus operandi. Song birds tweeted in the tall trees above our heads, and swallows glid on the air, breezing above our heads. Then we heard a rumbling thundering noise which gradually became louder and louder, heralding a centaur in a jacket, suit and tie, galloping along the road and right past us without pausing to glance. Beta watched him disappear down a road behind us distinguished by a red post box at the corner. "What was that?"
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