One day he was lucky enough to overbalance while sitting on the edge of his balcony and feeling dreadful about all the unchecked violence in the world and also dizzy with hunger.
Fortunately, he had occupied a fifteenth floor apartment.
His Excellency, Mikhail V. Strogov, Ambassador Extraordinary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to the Court of St. James, was recalled to Moscow and then exiled to Siberia, where his brutal treatment by two notorious women guards occasioned further dissemination of P 939.
Comrade Strogov lost his diplomatic status and was recalled to Russia to face charges of temporary insanity, crimes against the Russian people, conspiracy to overthrow the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and of being an agent of Western Imperialist Policy.
These charges were occasioned by unauthorized activities in London. During his brief but spectacular career as Ambassador Extraordinary, Comrade Strogov had offered His Majesty’s Government a one-thousand year non-aggression pact, six rocket-launching submarines (since the United Kingdom nuclear deterrent was sadly below par) and the Red Army Choir. He had also voted for Miss China in the Miss World Contest, led a protest march on the Indian Embassy for the rehabilitation of the sacred cow and had broken down and wept when interviewed by the venerable Lord David Frost on his NaTel Late Grill Show about the expulsion of two guitar-playing drug addicts from the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
Dame Ariadne Cymbeline-Smith, actress of distinction, retreated into incurable schizophrenia when she discovered that she was no longer able to play Lady Macbeth, Joan of Arc, Lucrezia Borgia and Jocasta in the dramas by William Shakespeare, G. B. Shaw, Edmond de Ritz and Euripides respectively. But what chiefly unhinged her, perhaps, was the knowledge that Peter Pan — the title role of which had rocketed her to fame — was nothing more than a drama of violence, racism and infant depravity.
Dame Ariadne retired voluntarily to the Royal Festival Home for Disturbed Professionals and hardly noticed when, after gentle sedation, she yielded P 939 to the occasional male nurse or doctor in their good-hearted attempts to help her re-establish contact with the real world.
For many years, the Right Honourable Theodore Flower, O.B.E., M.P., Minister of International Security and Race Harmony, and the only English Jewish Negro in the Cabinet, had been accustomed to compel his high-born Scottish wife to massage his neck, scratch his back and kiss his feet before going to bed to submit to the mild marital buffetings it was his pleasure to bestow on her.
Unfortunately, the Minister of Insect Race collected his dose from a mere chit of a girl he had met in a strip-it-’n’-slip-it joint in Soho, while entertaining the vice-president of the U.S.A.
Eventually, the girl had taken them both to some bizarre little apartment full of odd bits of paper sculpture. But in the end, it had turned out surprisingly jolly, with each of them taking turns to hold down the other.
Eventually, the vice-president continued on his good-will tour of the world, taking his ration of P 939 with him and giving it a splendidly inter-continental spread.
The Minister of Insect Race stayed in London, discovered after a few weeks that he no longer wanted to have anything at all to do with his high-born Scottish wife, became depressed and applied for the Chiltern Hundreds.
On leaving politics, he started a soup kitchen in Regent’s Park for homeless prepubes and was most horribly drowned late one night in his own tomato soup by a bunch of ten year olds high on methylated spirits.
Sir James Fytte-Morris, surgeon to the king, could not bring himself to make the incision necessary to deal with the Marquis of Middlehampton’s sudden and acute peritonitis. The Marquis died, the king cancelled polo for two days, and Sir James Fytte-Morris, who had blamelessly collected P 939 from the wife to whom he had been faithful for thirty-seven years, died of a heart attack when rebuked by the British Medical Association.
Time passed. And Professor Eustace Greylaw began to make his posthumous mark upon the world.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Uncle Dan was feeling happy. Life had been good to him. Even on this desolate, windswept Yorkshire hillside with NaTel crews scurrying about and poking hand-vids up everybody’s bottom, Uncle Dan was happy. Ever since he had left MicroWar and joined Beauties of Mother Nature, he had been happy. Beauties of Mother Nature was the big time, and ecstasy was a Top T-rating. The Lesbian Witches of Cornwall had restored ecstasy; and now it looked as if the Mad Rabbits of Yorkshire would extend it.
The mad rabbits of Yorkshire were an enigma. Nobody knew where they had come from or what had caused them. There were the usual mutation theories, and it had even been claimed that MicroWar had developed a breed of killer rabbits (for possible sabotage of collective farming in Commieland) and that one had somehow escaped. But, even without checking, Uncle Dan knew that MicroWar were not that good. Strange. Perhaps the little beasties had been dining on carrots drenched with a pesticide which induced unnatural aggression.
Whatever the explanation, the fact remained that the mad rabbits were quite a sensation.
They had already killed several sheep, dogs and foxes. And it had been reported only yesterday that they had forced one local farmer to climb up a tree to escape their attention.
So far NaTel Research had not come up with any reasonable explanation. Three or four months ago, a nature boy — one of Uncle Dan’s millions of admirers — had written to the programme about a rabbit attacking and destroying a viper. And since then the number of odd happenings had multiplied. Perhaps the mad rabbits had also multiplied. Perhaps there had been only one killer rabbit — some kind of freak — to begin with.
Research, though being unable to shed light on the origins of mad rabbits, had discovered a further unusual happening, also in Yorkshire. Apparently, some time before the first mad rabbit was sighted, a tiger had been killed by a spaniel not very far away. Uncle Dan had been mildly tempted to work the tiger story into his programme, perhaps hinting at some kind of unnatural upheaval in the animal kingdom, but then he decided against it. Bad vid. You couldn’t show a non-existent tiger.
But you could show mad rabbits. Uncle Dan was happy.
There they were, the dear little things, at least a hundred of them, gambolling on the hillside about two hundred metres away. Presently, the NaTel beaters would drive them towards Uncle Dan and the vid crews. Uncle Dan hoped the rabbits would be co-operative.
NaTel had supplied a number of small dogs — guaranteed rabbit chasers all — in the hopes that the rabbits would be persuaded to destroy them.
The plan was to drive the rabbits, turn the dogs loose among them, and get as much of the result on tape as possible. Uncle Dan would speak a small piece with the rabbits approaching in the background. Then, depending how it all went, he could be cut in again at various points.
The day was cold, but Uncle Dan’s electrically heated Norfolk jacket kept him wonderfully warm, as also did the three or four triple whiskies he had taken the preceaution of consuming.
He stroked his bright red beard lovingly. Yes, he reflected, he really was happy. Since leaving MicroWar he had acquired wealth, reputation and twenty million half-witted fans. Life had been good to him. Almost too good.
As he thought briefly of MicroWar, a name floated up from the deeps of memory. Greylaw.
Uncle Dan scratched his head. He was puzzled. Why should he think of Greylaw?
Ah, yes, it all came back now. A month or two ago, or was it a year or two — not that it mattered — he had met this MicroWar type in the NaTel bar. Chatted about old times. Greylaw and that damn silly Tranquillity project. Then the MicroWar type fell flat on his face.