Omega (51) Beta was rather surprised by this response. What about Sir George? she asked. Were they not going to assist him? The gowned figure simply repeated that she should leave soon, for it was all that they could do to resist temptation and lust while she affronted their vision. Beta frowned, but politely did as she was told. She ran over to me and held my hand, positioning herself such that she was out of their sight. "... Are you going to ... aaghh! ... Are you ...?" Asked Sir George pitifully. The figure told Sir George that he was damned and damned a million times. Not only was he a soulless animal - themselves tolerated by God only insofar as they could be seen to serve man, the only creature God had blessed with a soul and the hope of redemption - but he was also an insect, a vain foppish insect of proportions contradictory to those decreed by the Creator and manners which aped those of the worst excesses of humankind. He was therefore damned and deserving only of death. Beta squeezed my hand when she heard this judgment, and Sir George looked askance at the gowned figures surrounding him, their submachine guns in their hands and no faces visible under the darkness of the hoods. "Are you? ... Ugghh! ... Can you? ... Please ..." There was suddenly a furious burst of submachine gun fire that tore into Sir George's prone form, blasting his ruined thorax and abdomen apart, ripped his clothes to shreds and transported fragments of his internal organs to the sides of the tomb. This was followed by silence during which the hooded figures crossed themselves. "You killed him! You killed him!" Shouted Beta. "Why did you do that? Why did you kill him?" The hooded figures all knelt down to pray with the exception of the first figure who turned to address us. He explained that he and his companions had merely exercised their Christian duty, a calling which the damnable blasphemy of the quest for the Truth had brought them to the Suburbs to execute. We had only been spared because we were human. Had we been another species, especially a pig or centaur, we would have joined our late friend in his preordained transportation to Hell. However, he added, were we to continue to sully the consecrated grounds of God's house with our naked flesh then they might feel obliged to execute the exact word of their creed. "We had better get going!" I said to Beta, who was staring at the bloody mess which had once been Sir George. She stared at me with wide disbelieving eyes, but nodded. "I think we should!" She agreed, turning round, still holding my hand and leading me out of the cemetery, over the shattered remnants of the low wall enclosing it and back into the dark forbidding, but still less frightening, streets of the Suburbs. The dark hooded figures were all bent down in prayer as we left, soon becoming invisible in the shadows cast by the ruined church. Beta was very still very distressed by Sir George's murder, but she held on to my hand tightly and said nothing. The Suburbs were dark and deserted, the orange glow in the distance being the only sign of life. Many of the houses were in a very poor state, their roofs caved in and the brickwork surrounding their windows blackened by the results of fierce fires. The only sounds we could hear were the blustering wind, and fluttering paper pressing against ruined hedges and walls. This silence was momentarily shattered by several large military helicopters thundering overhead, beams of light scanning the Suburban streets below. "Let's hope they bring some order to the Suburbs," I commented to Beta. "Perhaps they can flush out all the monsters and rioters who've caused all this!" Beta glanced up at me, but made no comment. The helicopters disappeared out of sight, and the Suburbs returned to its earlier quiet. We walked along what had once been the main road, but the larger detached homes aligning it had not escaped from vandalism any more than the occasional shops, telephone boxes and bus shelters. In one place, a telegraph had been uprooted and bestraddled the deeply dented bonnet of a large car and reached half way across the road. We trod over this, and saw another figure in the darkness ahead of us, and one which somehow emitted a golden aura from his very presence. It was the Unicorn, who was walking steadily and unhurriedly along the centre of the road with no apparent fear at all. He saw us approach, and greeted us with a whinny and a gesture of his long tasselled tail. "Why, hello young man," he said when he was level with us, "and you, too, young lady. I see your pursuit of the Truth has brought you here. I take it that you haven't found it yet?" "We haven't really been looking for it," Beta confessed. "There've been so many other things to worry ourselves with." The Unicorn nodded his head. "Indeed there have been. What bedlam! But don't give up your quest. You must not be dissuaded this from the object of your wanderings. You are surely more likely to find the Truth than these others who have congregated here motivated by nothing more than curiosity or malice." "I didn't believe that so much injury could be done in the pursuit of something as good and honourable as the Truth!" Beta exclaimed. "Isn't that always the way! Throughout history, the worst violence is always wrought in the name of what is best and most universally desirable. I have seen it happen so many times before and in so many places. If it is any consolation to you, this night will soon be forgotten as have so many similar nights." "Are you saying that you've seen destruction and chaos like this before?" I asked. "Unfortunately, yes. It happens periodically. The stresses and strains of all societies soon give way to disorder. I've seen worse. Much worse. Hundreds of thousands slaughtered by machete. People hunted down by helicopter gunships. Missiles and rockets pounding from distances, sometimes as far as a continent away. Mothers killing their own daughters. Sons killing their fathers. Decapitated heads on skewers, rivers of blood, corpses flowing down rivers, all that and more. I'm not saying that some, if not all, of these things are not happening tonight somewhere in this land, but, generally, these moments of destruction are mercifully brief." "Are you saying we should accept this as just something which happens?" Beta asked, clearly upset by such detachment. "My view of events is necessarily on a much longer scale than yours, and I have learnt to see them as part of the cycles of change and evolution. Every wave comes to a crest and collapses in on itself. Only great care and attention can prevent such a crisis from taking on the murderous proportions we have here. But my hope is that as the strands of society become so much enmeshed with each other they will prevent the worst from happening..." "And what is the worst?" I wondered. "Oh! The total destruction of everything. But enough of these musings. I'm pleased to see that you are both still alive and in such apparently good mettle. So much has changed has it not, young man, since I met you nearly a week ago in Gotesdene." "Yes, it has! And how is Gotesdene? Has it escaped from this tumult?" "Alas, no! There are few places untouched, but fortunately none in this country as severely affected as the Suburbs. It was a touch of genius of that absurd marsupial to direct the worst of the crisis into an area utterly incapable of coping with it. There has been a revolt by the peasants of Gotesdene against the Lord Mayor which has left many dead and not a few corpses dangling from nooses in trees. The White Elephant has fled, his business concerns ravaged as a result of his unwise investments, many of which have been in the failed affairs of the late Lord Arthur. His castle has been sacked and his retainers raped, tortured and slaughtered. I imagine, however, that the Lord Mayor will recover from all this rather better than many of those who have perpetrated this violence. I doubt that he wasn't well-insured. But the number of dead is significantly less than that here in the Suburbs." "Have you seen much of what has been happening?" I wondered. "Enough. Quite enough to know! Whole avenues and cul-de-sacs are in flames. You can see the aura of the fires which have been started all over the Suburbs." He nodded at the orange glow that had so recently appeared relatively comforting. "People have been hacked to death, gunned down, raped, disembowelled, impaled. Many, themselves, perpetrators of the violence. Blacks slaughtered by Illicitists. Religious sects destroyed by opposing sects. One species or race set against another. Others have been methodically slaughtered merely for what they are. I saw some goats from near Gotesdene being rounded up by some pigs with guns, to be mowed down by firing squads against the walls of a supermarket warehouse. I saw centaurs lying dead on the ground: their upper torsos methodically sliced off from the lower equine parts: presumably by those who disapprove of such miscellaneous beings. Duckbill platypuses, chimæras and, of course, beings such as myself are considered worthy of slaughter simply because we don't conform to some fairly rigid convictions as to what an animal should be!" "What do you think the result of all this will be?" Beta asked. "Who knows? Who can say? Crises like this usually benefit those who have been most aggressive, which I suppose, in this case, would suggest the Illicit Party. All that can be said is that the recovery will not be easy. There will be more death and destruction long after the last fires of the Suburbs are extinguished as the many disparate elements of your country do battle against each other for their own perceived interests. City against Country. Pig against goat. Black against Red. Dog against Cat. Peasant against landlord. There is a great deal of pent-up frustration and hatred still to be released, and much of which will be fatally exacerbated tonight." "And all this for the Truth!" I exclaimed sorrowfully. The Unicorn shook his head. "Not for the Truth at all! The Truth has nothing to do with all this! The quest for the Truth may, for all I know, originally have been pursued for good and laudable reason, but it has become nothing more than an excuse. Don't confuse the apparent and real cause of an event! The Truth is no less the Truth now than it was yesterday. I doubt very much that the Truth is in any way a green light for this kind of destruction, but I suspect that very many more atrocities will continue to be met in its name. The bastardisation of the Truth is no different to that which has happened to other causes throughout history when fanaticism meets prejudice and political ambition meets warfare. Socialism, Islam, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Democracy, Justice and Fairness have all been used as rallying cries for the most gross abuses and the most atrocious violence that I have witnessed. It is rare indeed that a creed of destruction is phrased without hypocrisy." The Unicorn looked up at the dark brooding sky, as a particularly dark cloud passed overhead. A brief flash of lightening appeared in the distance followed by a low rumble of thunder. He pawed the pavement with a cloven hoof and whinnied. "More rain, I suspect. That should hopefully dampen the fervour of some of those here tonight, though I doubt that it will alleviate the misery of the tens of thousands of refugees from the Suburbs, or those who have been made homeless." He looked at us again, and tapped Beta gently on the arm with his horn. "I must leave you now. I have duties to perform elsewhere, as a Unicorn must. I wish you both the very best. I'm sure you will be at least partially successful in your quest." With that, he shook his mane and strode off with the same nonchalant tread with which he'd approached, leaving the street somehow much emptier and quieter than it was before. Beta grasped my arm, as another flash of lightening from many leagues away illuminated the sky and the resulting rumble of thunder became more distinct. A gust of wind blew by, lifting Beta's hair high above her head and across her face. She brushed it to one side, and determinedly strode ahead, pulling me along with her. The calm was again shattered by low and ominous thunder, but this time more prolonged and progressively louder. Beta and I dashed off the centre of the road, behind the shattered ruins of the parked cars on the pavement in the dark shadows of hedges and a badly chipped red post box. The sound became a roar, as a cavalcade of armoured cars thundered along the street as fast as any private car. The whole procession took only a few minutes to pass by, but it seemed endless, machine guns on the outside pointed ahead and the occasional dark figure of a soldier sitting on top. Behind came a lower roar of jeeps in which sat groups of soldiers clasping their weapons and staring at the road receding behind them. They were soon gone. Calm once again descended on the Suburban ruins. Another crash of thunder echoed in the sky, and a pornographic magazine was picked up by the wind and blew against Beta's bare leg. She disdainfully kicked it to one side, and guided me back into the street. "We mustn't give up!" Beta hissed. "The Unicorn must be right. Our quest must be worth pursuing!" My heart wasn't really in it anymore, but I nodded. Where else was I to go? I was in my home town and there was no obvious way out of it. We might as well go forward. I squeezed Beta's arm. She looked at me with large limpid eyes. "Are you alright?" She asked, observing my expression. I nodded. "I was just thinking..." "Thinking?" I nodded again. "Thinking about how lucky I've been to meet you. Thinking how very much I've enjoyed being with you these last few days. Thinking that however much we've been through together, and whether we find the Truth or not, and whatever we might go through soon, and whether we even survive, what has been most worthwhile is that ..." I paused. The habits of Suburban reserve were overcoming me, even amongst the Suburbs' death throes. Beta grasped both my hands in her own, and faced me eye to eye. I pressed on. "I think that meeting you. And being with you. Has been the most important. The most worthwhile. The most significant thing of my quest!" There. I'd said it! A great weight took flight and despite the horrors of the world around me a strange levity and elation took hold of me. Beta responded as somehow I knew she would. She pressed her face against mine, her arms gripped the back of my neck, while my arms grasped her around her naked waist, and her tongue and mine battled together in the middle of the dark empty street. Beta's hair brushed against my face and hands, her skin was cool in the evening chill and there was a sudden flash of lightening much closer by. As the air vibrated with the ominous echoes of thunder, my thoughts concentrated on the liquid warmth of Beta's mouth and the contours of her beautiful naked body. We continued along the dark and ominously quiet Suburban streets. The rumbles of thunder continued spasmodically above our heads, and the streets occasionally lit up in a flash of lightening. Sometimes the lightening forked across the sky like a crack in the dark firmament. The streets were ruinous and disconcerting. We passed one street in which dark bundles lay about on the pavement, over car bonnets and across the road. We were about to wander down this road, but without a word, Beta gripped my arm and pulled me backwards. "Wh...?" I asked. Beta closed her eyes and pulled me more urgently. I glanced back to see the cause of her concern, thinking perhaps to see more monsters in the street, but there was nothing. It then became belatedly clear that these bundles were in fact the corpses of men, women and children who had been massacred. Another flash of lightening revealed a distinct red tinge in the puddles and water gathered in the gutters, unable to escape down blocked drains. My horror was deepened when I recognised where we were. Even though the houses were mostly just burnt-out wrecks of recent fires, and most landmarks had been wantonly destroyed, it was still recognisable as the part of the Suburbs where I came from. The names of the streets were the same: Apidistra Avenue, Rose Garden Road and Camomile Crescent. This was home, and my house wasn't too far from here. There was the smashed windows of my local newsagent and post office. There was the dangling telephone receiver and leads lying about on the ground near the smashed glass of the local red telephone box. There were the smashed glass of belisha beacons by the local zebra crossing where a small car was embedded in the side of a larger car, and its boot sliced off by the passage of, perhaps, military vehicles.
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