Burton frowned. “Our mission is supposed to be secret.”
“Oh yeah, man!” Jason Griffith interjected. “Still is. We’re in on it, and Mick and the Deviants know the game, but the rest are like, kicking against the straights without knowing the full story, if you dig what I’m saying.”
Trounce shifted in his seat and looked at his companions in utter bafflement.
“Deviants?” Swinburne asked. “Straights? Dig?”
“We should start at the beginning,” Miranda Kingsland put in.
“And in English,” Trounce muttered.
“Yeah, but when was that?” Griffith asked her.
“1950s,” Karl von Lessing said decisively.
“Sir,” the king’s agent said to him, “perhaps we have too many speaking at once. With due deference to your friends, may I suggest you take centre stage and recount to us what has occurred during the course of the past fifty-four years, who Mick is, what these ‘deviants’ and ‘straights’ are, and why you and your colleagues felt the Orpheus should be summoned to 1968?”
Von Lessing looked at the others. They each gave words of consent:
“Sweet.”
“Sure thing.”
“Fine with me.”
“I can dig it.”
“Okay, so here’s the scene,” von Lessing said. “First, secrecy. Your brother was a genius. He created an investments company that, for years, has been like, thriving, man. The Bendyshe family runs it—” He broke off as Burton laughed.
“Sir Richard?”
“Good old Bendyshe! I’d never have predicted his line to be so responsible!”
“The original, the Thomas you knew, gave really—what’s the word?”
“Prescient,” Mark Packard put in.
“Yeah—prescient advice to the old minister of chronological affairs. This yacht and our Concorde are privately owned by the Bendyshe Foundation, which has offices in Bombay and is currently headed by Joseph and James Bendyshe. So, you see, the Cannibal Club is well financed and, as I said, thriving, but still completely hidden.”
“We’ll keep it that way,” Jason Griffith added. “You can be sure.”
Burton gave a grunt of approval.
“So,” von Lessing continued, “on to the history lesson. I guess things started to get a bit flaky back in the 1930s. Real bad famines had been weakening Russia since Rasputin’s death, and China was winning the war. Then, from 1935 to ’40, led by Poland, the Eastern European countries—Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and the Baltic states—ousted their occupying governments and declared independence. Russia was on the brink of total collapse until, in 1940, assistance came from an unexpected quarter.”
Burton raised an eyebrow enquiringly.
“China,” von Lessing said. “It declared a complete ceasefire, handed back captured territory, and flooded the country with aid. It then rebuilt its former enemy’s industrial infrastructure and established exclusive trade relations. In 1949, they merged and became the United Republics of Eurasia.”
“That’s rather a startling turnaround,” Swinburne observed.
“Too right. For sure, it caught us—and the Yanks—on the hop. So now the world had three superpowers: the A.S.E., the U.S.A., and the U.R.E.”
“My hat! What a badly curtailed vocabulary you have.”
“Yeah. Maybe the abbreviations reflect our politicians’ tiny minds. Anyway, the Anglo-Saxon Empire and the United Republics are separated by a belt comprised of Slavic Eastern Europe, the Middle East, British India—which is the A.S.E.’s only direct border with the U.R.E.—and the South East Asian countries of Burma, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.”
“Thailand?” Burton asked.
“You knew it as Siam. The belt countries are stable and at peace except for South East Asia, which is currently the scene of a bloody conflict between the U.R.E. and U.S.A.”
“America? Why America?”
“Ideology. East Eurasia has adopted socialist principles. America is concerned that if these are imposed on South East Asia, which China lays claim to, they’ll easily spread through India and into the Anglo-Saxon Empire, which actually isn’t as crazy as it sounds, since many of the kids—particularly in France—are already socialists.”
“Or, at least, say they are,” Patricia Honesty murmured.
“Bravo!” Herbert Wells said quietly. “I’m convinced that socialism has the potential to lead us to a more humane system than capitalism allows. Through it, we can destroy false ideas of property and self, eliminate unjust laws and poisonous and hateful suggestions and prejudices, create a system of social right-dealing and a tradition of right-feeling and action. I believe it to be the schoolroom of true and noble Anarchism, wherein by training and restraint we shall make free men.”
“And women, Mr. Wells,” Honesty put in.
“Of course! Of course! Forgive me my antiquated methods of reference.”
“Forgiven. You’re obviously ahead of your time.”
Wells laughed. “I most certainly am!” He slapped his thigh. “Corporeally!”
“But why is America doing the fighting and not us—not the A.S.E.?” Swinburne asked.
Von Lessing answered, “Firstly, because America’s prosperity has come about largely through its alliance with us; an alliance it suspects might crumble if we lose our enthusiasm for the frenzied capitalism it so fervently preaches. Secondly, because there’s a strong independence movement in India, and if we made that country the front line in a war, for sure it would leave the A.S.E., taking our strongest manufacturing regions with it and depriving America of its principal source of trade. And thirdly, because with the U.S.A. doing the fighting, the conflict has a better chance of being contained. If we participated, the hostilities would undoubtedly spread. China detests us, and has done since your time.”
“Thanks to Lord Elgin,” Burton said. “But surely your politicians have tried to make amends for his ill-judged actions? His vandalism occurred over a century ago.”
“Squares don’t apologise. They just make excuses.”
“Squares?”
“The straights.”
Swinburne squealed and flapped his arms. “What in blue blazes are you talking about? Straight squares? Have you ever heard of bent ones?”
“Yeah, man. There are plenty.”
“What? What? What?”
Sadhvi Raghavendra said, “Perhaps you could endeavour to employ rather more traditional language, Mr. von Lessing?”
“Yes, please,” William Trounce grumbled.
“I must confess,” Wells added, “I’m a bit lost.”
Von Lessing held up a hand. “Sure. Sure. I’m trying. Um. So, like, remember how, back in your day, the politicians either came through Oxford or Cambridge universities or were, at least, aristocrats, yeah?”
“Yes,” Burton and Wells chorused.
“That never changed, and those people have increasingly bungled it on the political scene. They’re stuck in their ways, man. Completely out of touch. Following outdated traditions. They don’t know how to work with East Eurasia, whose people they regard as savages.”
“Ah,” Wells said. “You mean the Anglo-Saxon genius for parliamentary government continues to assert itself; there is a great deal of talk and no decisive action?”
“Right on! Exactly that! And it’s like, the middle classes respected these people, ’cos that’s the traditional way of things, so there’s been no challenge to ’em.”
Patricia Honesty added, “The people we refer to as straights or squares, Mr. Swinburne, are the ones who blindly stick with the status quo even if it’s plainly festering and useless; the ones who’re incapable of changing course; who haven’t the guts or imagination to do so. They have no ability to adapt and evolve.”
“And the deviants?” Burton asked.
“Rock ‘n’ roll, man!” von Lessing enthused.
“Good Lord!” Wells exclaimed. “What is rocking role?”