Omega (5) "What's true of the Cat Kingdom needn't be true for Cats as individuals!" Beta contested. Bacon ignored her. "It's essentially to do with the Feline notion of Divine Right. Cats believe that they have a Divine Right to occupy their territories just as their King seems to believe he has to rule that territory. There's no democracy for the Cats - not like in our country, however inefficient. What the King commands is what the Cats obey. Whatever nonsense he comes out with." Bacon leaned forward towards me. "You wouldn't believe the stupid decrees the King of the Cats issues on occasion. In a Kingdom where the population is absurdly out of control, there is no contraception or abortion. In a Kingdom where meat is in short supply for a species which is necessarily carnivorous there are ridiculous rules about what can and cannot be eaten. Rats, for instance, are classified as unclean and therefore not to be eaten in a Kingdom totally infested by them. All sorts of things are forbidden to the Cat. They have to stay at home one day a week and are forbidden to do anything but sleep. How can the Cats deserve to be part of the Modern World if they follow such idiotic decrees?" "I agree that some of the ways in the Kingdom of Cats are a bit odd," Beta retorted. "I've heard of how female Cats have to wear dresses which cover all their legs and ankles and have to attend different schools to Tom Cats. But what's true of Cats in their Kingdom isn't true of Cats everywhere." "Yes it is, Beta. It's what distinguishes Cats from other species. It's their religious and cultural views which say that they are different from everyone else. You might respect the Cats' rights and freedoms, but I don't think they'd respect yours or anyone else's. If they are so wonderful, why is it that they're constantly at war with their neighbours." "You mean the various Canine Republics? I don't really know a lot about them, but they don't appear to be blameless themselves!" "They may not be blameless, but the Canine Republics have every reason to be aggrieved about the Cat Kingdom and the appalling way in which Dogs are treated there. Cats show no respect for the puritanical and literary traditions of Dogs in the land they've acquired. They even deny Dogs the right to read books written in anything but the Feline language. They don't even allow dogs to bark in their own tongue. And do you think the Dogs relish the way that soldiers from the Kingdom intrude into their sovereign territories for what they call security reasons." "Whatever you say about the Cat Kingdom," Beta asserted, "does not change my view at all that Cats are individuals who shouldn't be discriminated against on the basis of some characteristic that their species might have." Bacon was just about to counter Beta's view, but decided instead to change the subject. "Anyway, I'm sure our travelling companion must be getting tired of all this talk about Cats." "No, not at all!" I said politely. "So, why are you going to Gotesdene? It's quite an odd place for someone from the Suburbs to be going to, isn't it?" Beta asked, leaning forward towards me so that her curtains of green hair cascaded onto her bare legs. "Do you know anyone there?" "No, I don't!" I admitted. "In fact I don't know anything about it at all. I'm actually going there to search for the Truth." Bacon laughed out loud. "The Truth! You expect to find the Truth in a primitive backwater like Gotesdene?" "Well, I have to start somewhere," I feebly defended myself. "I was convinced that I wouldn't find the Truth in the Suburbs so I thought I might find it in a place so absolutely different." "Quite so!" agreed Beta. "And why not Gotesdene, indeed." She tossed a lock of hair back off her face revealing her bare bosom. "A search for the Truth is an excellent idea! Think what a better place the world would be if only we had possession of the Truth. There'd be no wars. Everyone would be at peace because no one would be able to claim to be right and someone else wrong, when everyone knew who was right or not. With the Truth everyone everywhere would be rich - or as rich as they could be. Everyone would know all that they would need to know to be as wealthy as they desired. And with the Truth, there would be no more disease, no more pollution, no more injustice and everyone would be happy! It wouldn't be possible to argue like my brother and I do about issues like Cats because everyone would know the answer. And so would the Cats themselves. And there wouldn't be a need to have General Elections because government wouldn't be determined by the whims of the people but rather according to the dictates of the Truth!" "I don't see how the Truth would necessarily achieve all that!" sniffed Bacon. "And even if we had the Truth, would everyone necessarily agree on how to use it? And would it really be used for the best?" "I'm sure it would!" Beta continued enthusing. "With the Truth, there'd be no cause for argument because everyone would agree about everything and I'm sure everyone would work towards the best for everyone else. Why should anyone ever do differently?" "I'm just not so sure," Bacon countered. "I don't believe people's nature necessarily works like that. Knowledge of the Truth could easily be used for quite different purposes to those you imagine. It could well be that peace and prosperity are not determined by knowledge of the Truth anyway. Why should the Truth have to be concerned with the greater good of anyone?" "It wouldn't be the Truth if it wasn't!" Beta replied idealistically. "That's making an assumption about the Truth that simply cannot be made before knowing what it is. And anyhow, I don't believe the Truth is a thing that you just find like a crock of gold or a holy grail. It must be an abstract entity beyond material dimensions, and you can't just expect to find it lying around. Do you expect to find it hidden underneath someone's bed? Or stored in a casket? Or buried in the ground? That makes nonsense of the whole concept of the Truth. No. The Truth is what will be found eventually as a result of scientific research - which is what I shall be pursuing in Lambdeth - and I am more likely to discover it in a test-tube than you will hanging around in archaic villages like Gotesdene. I don't believe it will be found in my lifetime; and probably not for many generations yet. But eventually it will be found as a result of empirical and scientific research coupled with the genius of individual scientists." "You think that Science and Progress provide all the answers," Beta riposted. "I just can't believe that something like the Truth could possibly be found by something as dry and abstract as a mathematical equation or the formal proof of a theorem. If I could, I would join our companion here and search for the Truth with him. I don't know where it is any more than he does, but I doubt that the pursuit of Science and Progress is at all the same thing as the search for the Truth." I was about to thank Beta for her support in my quest, when the train made another of its periodic hoots and drew noisily into another station. I took my eyes off Beta and focused on the platform where the platform name of GOTESDENE was displayed. "This is it!" I announced. "So this is where we part," smiled Beta. "What a funny little place!" She was right. The station at Gotesdene was nothing more than a raised wooden platform and a platform name painted quite crudely on an old wooden board. On the platform were several goats and rats, and around the station were open fields dotted by the occasional copse and windmill. I proffered my farewells to Beta and Bacon, and clambered down onto the platform. I waved to Beta as the train shunted off as she leaned out the window, waving at me, her long hair lifted up by the rush of wind. The train puffed away into the distance, the funnel trailing black and white clouds as it departed. I suddenly felt alone. I was at a place I'd never heard of before, quite clearly dissimilar in almost every way from the Suburbs. Instead of neat and tidy borders and hedges, pavements and roads, lampposts and television aerials, I was confronted by a neighbourhood of nothing but fields stretching away in all directions, bisected by the railway line from one horizon to another. Perpendicular to that and proceeding only towards one horizon was a long and winding brick road, barely wide enough for a small car to drive along. The platform was populated mostly by goats who were simply sitting about and not waiting for anything. Most of them had barely stirred when the train had arrived and paid no attention to its departure. A few watched me lethargically while chewing at hay or thistles, their tails occasionally flicking aside the insects around. I jumped off the platform - there were no steps provided - and strolled to the brick road that didn't quite reach the station and terminated in a patch of dusty worn ground. Just by the road was a signpost which pointed along the length of the brick road to only one destination. As this read Gotes Dene, I decided to follow this dusty brick road to start my quest for the ultimate enigma. 3 Gotesdene and its surrounding environs were very different to the Suburbs I decided as I walked along the long and winding road. There was none of the obsessive order and neatness that characterises the Suburbs. Rather, the fields on either side were a quilted hodgepodge of different crops with goats, oxen and other animals working on the land: pulling ploughs, walking around in circles to grind grain in primitive mills, gathering crops in their teeth and throwing the produce into the back of carts. On several occasions, I had to step off the brick road into dried mud to allow an oxen-pulled wagon to ponderously lumber by. The midday sun was beating down on me but there was no shelter to be seen: there were few trees in sight and most of these were far off the road with many branches torn off, and their trunks ravished by the gnawing goats. Swallows occasionally dove down past me chasing after the insects buzzing around the corpses of animals by the roadside. After two or three miles of walking through this rural scenery with my feet getting increasingly sore, I at last arrived at a village. There was no doubt that this was the village of Gotesdene, as just outside the fence barricading it was a painted board supported by two wooden posts which welcomed me to the village and requested me to drive carefully. Large ornate metal gates broke the monotony of the fencing, featuring the crest of a rampant goat and ox, and supported by two pillars crowned by identical statues of rampant elephants bearing arms. Initially I thought there might be some kind of toll required to enter the village as in front of the gates was a family of goats kneeling down by a wooden platter. They bleated at me piteously in a dialect I couldn't understand at all, but I soon inferred that they were begging for alms: a practice that had long been discontinued in the Suburbs. I pulled out a groat from my trouser pocket which I threw into the platter, believing this to be the absolute minimum that I could decently give. I wasn't at all prepared for the effusiveness with which the goat incomprehensibly expressed his gratitude. Although I could distinguish the occasional English word, I speculated that he was speaking a totally different language altogether. I pushed open the gate, which creaked noisily as it resisted me, and ventured in. The village comprised a wide space of open land around which there were numerous wood and mud hovels, and was traversed by a dirt track from which the slightest breeze blew up clouds of dust. Goats, oxen and others wandered listlessly amongst the scattered waste and detritus. In the centre of the patch of common land there were a stocks, a gallows and a tall gaily coloured pole from which dangled multicoloured strands. There were also some tall oak trees and a tall stone cross. A collection of market stalls was gathered at one end of the common. As I hadn't eaten since breakfast, I decided to look for a stall selling convenience food, such as a hamburger or a pizza. As I approached, I saw that there was little likelihood of buying a microwaved pizza, a deep-fried chicken or even chips. The stalls mostly sold such things as agricultural implements, live chickens and vegetables. Many of these products flowed off the stalls and onto the ground, where decaying wicker baskets protected them from the dust and dirt. One stall was conducting a profitable trade in hay, around which gathered a crowd of acquisitive ungulates. I understood very little of the stall-holders' cries, but I assumed that they were referring to their produce and how much a pound of this or an ounce of that would cost. I soon observed that the cost of living here was substantially lower than that in the Suburbs. Very little cost less than a florin or half crown in the Suburbs, whilst most goods in the Gotesdene market were selling for under a penny. This explained the gratitude the beggar at the gate had shown for a groat. I thought I might have a problem finding a stall furnished with sufficient change for the smallest denomination coin I had on me. I bought a pound of apples for a farthing from a vegetable stall and had to resort to gestures to express what I wanted. I carried the apples loose in my pockets - as like other buyers I was clearly expected to have brought my own basket to the market - together with innumerable ha'pennies and farthings of change. While biting into a small acidic apple, I found myself being addressed by a voice which despite a rustic accent I was at last able to understand. "You don't speak Anglo-Saxon, I presume?" asked a relatively small white elephant standing upright, in very colourful silk clothes swathed by a long red cloak secured by a large brooch beneath the chin. "No, I don't," I admitted through a mouthful of apple. "Is that what's spoken here?" I was surprised to find an elephant addressing me: especially by a white one, who I had heard was very rare. I had never spoken to an elephant, white or otherwise, before. He flapped his large ears using his trunk to pull his cloak together at the front. He had two quite short tusks, which nevertheless looked too dangerous to approach too closely. "Ay, that is what they speak hereabouts," the White Elephant said. "Gotesdene is a very old-fashioned place. You as an outsider must find it extraordinarily undeveloped." "It's very different from the Suburbs." "Very antiquated," the White Elephant continued. "But it is the village for which I have the honour to serve as mayor. And as so, I feel it to be my duty to take this underdeveloped little community however reluctantly into the modern age. You sophisticated Suburbanites probably can't imagine that villages like ours still exist: no running water, no electricity and mains gas, no metalled roads, no supermarket or video rental store. But I shall ensure that Gotesdene will very soon be as modern a village as any other in the realm. The centuries have passed Gotesdene by for far too long. I pledge that every home shall have fibreglass cabling, hot and cold running water and a roof. The roads shall have sensory speed detectors, traffic lights and tar macadam. Gotesdene shall be abreast of the world, with television, videophones and computer networking. You probably find it amazing to discover a place so lacking in the basics of modern life." "I didn't expect to find life in Gotesdene so very different," I admitted. The White Elephant swung his trunk around dramatically, while prudent villagers kept their distance from its range. "Gotesdene has probably not changed in 1500 years. It is a fossil yet to make the transition into the modern era. Almost everyone in the village and the surrounding countryside live off the land, and as they are unable to afford to pay taxes to Her Maphrodite's government, they provide work in kind to me, the Lord of this Manor. This work provides the surplus wealth - agricultural wealth I admit - which I sell to pay taxes. It's an arrangement by which we all work together. But I am resolved that Gotesdene shall diversify. Move into microchip manufacture, network services, aerospace and more. "But great effort is needed to persuade the City to assist. I know that City financiers and banks are reluctant to invest their capital where there is so little infrastructure, where so few people have the necessary technological and management skills and expertise, and where communications are limited to the speed of an ox-drawn carriage. But this is just City prejudice. Understandable, perhaps, given the vast contrast of culture, but I am convinced that the low-wage opportunities here will eventually persuade the City institutions otherwise. "I have my own wealth, inherited from centuries of White Elephants here in Gotesdene, and mostly invested in property throughout the realm. I admit it is at least partly my ancestors' fault that Gotesdene has remained so primitive, by repeatedly opposing any modern developments in or around the village, but the base stupidity of the peasant is to blame as well." He snorted dismissively, which through a trunk as long as his came out almost as a trumpet call. "Look at them!" he said, waving his trunk about at the villagers, many wearing very ragged clothes secured precariously by cord. "You'd never see such a mean crowd of scum in the Suburbs, would you?" I shook my head. It is unlikely that a single one of the villagers could stay for very long in the Suburbs before being arrested on charges of vagrancy. "White Elephants such as I have held the estates here from time immemorial," he continued. "In that time, we have become increasingly sophisticated. Connoisseurs of art, captains of industry, members of parliament. It is people such as I who have selflessly guided and directed the culture in the nation for the good of the peasant, whose rôle is to support our exalted projects. The long and grand tradition of my family has given communities like this the continuity and stability that it needs. It is only now that it is necessary to force the pace. Make of Gotesdene what it has to be." "What plans do you have?" "I have such plans. Such great plans! I will build factories, power stations, mines and motorways. The primitive waste of this land, dedicated only to inefficient and outmoded methods of agriculture, will be transformed into a landscape of concrete and steel. Tower blocks will replace the mud-huts. Airport runways will crisscross the open fields. A giant shopping mall will be built where this market now stands. I have a vision of industrial estates, tower blocks, factories, flyovers and television aerials! All I need is the investment from the City."
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