Evolution (12 page)

Before you ask, yes, Heracles is aware of the situation. He just shrugged, grinned and said, ‘They'll get over it' and walked off. Maybe he's right. A good night's sleep and they may be back together again. I'll see what tomorrow brings.

Oh, I forgot to tell you. Dali's “crime” was sleeping with Sati. Apparently he's besotted with her and Lucretia is wild with jealousy.

I'm sorry to say that another problem has cropped up concerning Sati. She has decided she wants to be an actress. I told her she'd have to have some training first and she just laughed in my face. She's got her eye on a particular part – Juliet.

‘I'm much prettier than that female,' she said. ‘Actually I'm twice as pretty. I have two heads.'

You can imagine what our Juliet, Phaedra, had to say about that.

Heracles said, ‘Oh let her have a go. It can't hurt. If she makes a mess of it at least she will have tried and then Phaedra can take over again.'

What a fiasco. Phaedra stalked out. Sati tripped up to
Romeo, ran her hands all over his body, bent him backwards and covered his face with kisses, with her two sets of lips, before thrusting her two tongues….

Well, I'm sure you don't want to hear the gruesome details.

The other actors huddled in little groups, whispering, deciding what to do.

Finally they attacked Sati, pulling her away from Romeo by her two heads of hair, all the while taunting her with mocking comments and laughter until she'd had enough and ran out.

Phaedra was brought back in and, after a bit, the rehearsal continued. Panic over.

A new notice appeared yesterday in various places all over the compound. It informed us that there would be an extraordinary general meeting at 8.0 pm. this evening. Attendance compulsory.

Naturally I asked Heracles what it was all about. He touched his nose and said, ‘you'll have to wait and see. Just like everyone else.'

What a cheek! I thought of staying away to show him what I thought of his appalling manners, but of course I couldn't do that. I had to know what was going on.

First a group of male humanoids ambled on to the stage. About twenty or thirty of them, dressed in work fatigues similar to the way Heracles was dressed when he arrived. Then Heracles strolled on.

I can't remember if I told you but he has become a bit of a peacock lately. Everyday he dresses himself in a different costume. One day he's a Roman, another an Elizabethan, the next a sleek twentieth century businessman. He details some of the wardrobe mistresses to adjust the costumes to fit his broad physique and three muscular legs. The costumes are always brightly coloured. You certainly can't miss him.

For this extraordinary general meeting his costume was even more garish than usual: trousers and top in red and
yellow stripes. He could have been one of Shakespeare's fools. Or anybody's fool for that matter.

He then proceeded to drop his bombshell. I still can't believe what he told us. The main point being that, from tomorrow, rehearsals will not start until 2.0 p.m. The mornings will be spent building.

Yes, Kat, building.

The fool has the crazy idea that we're going to build a city and that when the city is completed we will move out of the compound and live there.

He doesn't understand that communal living helps us to work as a team and produce creative work of a high standard.

You can imagine the stunned silence that met this announcement.

Heracles did concede that such a change would take some getting used to, but that now Earth is no longer contaminated we will have to leave the compounds and learn to live like true humans again. Unbelievable. Is he suggesting that we are not true humans now? Is he blind to all the work we've produced while living in a compound?

He told us that the males behind him – yes, they were all males, not a female in sight – were from C99, the top architects, designers, engineers and overseers on Earth. If this is really the case, why did Athene send for you to design and build the stadium? I can only suppose that Athene does not have the same high opinion of their talents.

I'm sure they can't be as skilled as you, my dear Kata-Mbula. I have doubts that these thuggish looking men have the ability to design a cave, let alone a city.

Heracles took pleasure in telling us that every member of this sectoid will take part in the necessary physical labour, males and females alike.

‘That will ensure that the city will be your city, the buildings your buildings and this project, your project.'

That was his effort at inspiring the workforce. Pathetic.

‘The humanoid in charge of the entire project is to be my good friend, Thor,' was his next announcement.

From the wings appeared the most ugly humanoid I have ever seen, grinning at us out of two mouths one above the other in the middle of a brutish face.

Maybe I'm being unkind, but the very appearance of this Thor made me shudder.

Kat, this is a bullyboy, a whip-master. I'm sure of it.

The idea of him being in charge of our sensitive actors and dancers, forcing them to do manual work appals me.

Heracles is not unaware of the fear he is creating. He seems to relish it.

Yours, very, very worried,
Bathsheba.

Kata-Mbula, beloved leader,

Another week has passed since the construction began and I have no better news for you. I do wish you would contact me and give me some indication what I should be doing about this.

The new schedule is not going well. The members of our sectoid are working so hard in the mornings under bullyboy, Thor, that they are often too exhausted to do more than go through the motions of rehearsing in the afternoons and evenings.

Heracles says they will get used to the new routine in time. Two days running he congratulated them on working hard on the building project and cancelled the afternoon rehearsals.

‘You deserve a rest,' he said and they were only too pleased to comply.

He's got his priorities wrong. If rehearsals are cancelled we shall never reach the standard necessary for the performances in The Big Event. But he's determined that Compound Creative should be the first sectoid to build and live in houses outside the compound.

In spite of Heracles saying that everyone has to help with the building project, one or two more mature humanoids, including myself, are exempt from physical labour; but this doesn't stop us going outside to watch progress, which, I grudgingly admit, is quite impressive.

Some of the workers seem quite keen on the project too. Several of the couples are looking forward to moving in to their own house. They've never shown any interest in doing such a thing before, but I guess times change and as they see the city taking shape, they visualise a different sort of life. I suspect living outside does have its attractions, but not for an oldie like me. I'm used to communal living and have no desire for change.

Today I noted a strange phenomenon. One of the buildings is very high. A tower. I asked Heracles what it was for.

‘For?' he said. ‘It's for me, Bathsheba. My house. The Heracles Tower. A big phallic symbol. Appropriate don't you think?'

He seems to enjoy winding me up. Is he flirting with me? I do hope he doesn't fancy me.

An update on Lucretia and Dali. She seems to have forgiven him and they are at least talking now. I hear that they are thinking of moving into one of the houses when it's completed. Maybe she thinks he'll be faithful to her if she keeps him away from temptation.

By the way, Sati is exempt from physical labour. She seems to spend most of her time in her own dormo-cube, lying on her bed, reading magazines or daydreaming. A lull
in the storm. I suspect she's keeping well out of the way in case Heracles changes his mind and asks her to lift a brick or two. Ha!

No more for now. I'll keep in touch. I do wish you'd find a moment to contact me.

Ever faithful,
Bathsheba

My dearest Kata-Mbula,

Great news. Lucretia is pregnant. And so are Hera and Phaedra. I say it's great news because it speaks well for the future of our planet. It makes the building project seem more sensible too. If there are to be children, the idea of living in family units appears to be a viable option.

The distaff side is that there will come a time when our pregnant dancers and actors won't be able to perform. At the moment Heracles is willing to let them off any heavy construction work. He too sees the advantage of making sure that the women are looked after and that their babies are born safely.

There was even some talk of asking Athene to intervene and ask if the births could take place in Hos-sat, as arranged for Isis from C98. When Isis returns perhaps we could pay her a visit and see the baby. Oh dear, I'm getting quite broody. Fat lot of good that is. My childbearing days are over.

Another good thing. Now Heracles has his city project to interest him he is interfering less with rehearsals. Consequently they are going fairly smoothly. I actually think that the city project has given the troupes a new interest and they're not so intense about their theatrical work. You may
not like the sound of that, but to hear them chat and laugh and generally behave in a more relaxed way is, I believe, a bonus.

I have hopes that everything is improving at last. It's not the same without you, but it's not all bad. I suppose we've accepted the difference in leadership styles and are going with the flow.

Yours in a slightly more positive frame of mind,
Bathsheba

Stride, hop, leap. Stride, hop, leap. My signature movement. I’ve been practising it, trying to cross the compu-centre in three groups of three to land neatly on my shaper at my workstation. If I can achieve a smooth transition from leap to seat I will feel better about myself. That’s what I’m reduced to: devising little tests to cheer myself up. Not bad this morning. Not dead on, but getting better. I slip on to the shaper and look around. No one else here. That’s not unusual. I like to be here first.

I warm up my multi-screen compu and check the update news-stream from other compounds. Heracles, now head of C97, is building a city. I always thought that young man would go far. I miss him. He was supportive when I was in need of a friend, after losing my chief administrator role here. Another snippet of news. Durga, the sister-wife who helped me regain control of C55, is out of captivity and has taken over from Jaga at C98. Quite right. She’s back where she belongs in charge of the golden warriors. She was also supportive of me and helped me regain my sectoid. No mention of what has happened to Jaga. The next piece of news concerns Odysseus. He’s to be chief adviser to Athene as well as being the curator of the museum and chief chronicler. I’ll send him an auto-mail to congratulate him. All good news this morning.

I only wish I had something good to report too. Unfortunately not. The message I look for everyday has not arrived. No news of Mercury, my little messenger. I don’t understand it. Why doesn’t he keep in touch?

Hugo tightens his hold on my neck as if to comfort me. Some humanoids cringe at the very thought of being touched by snakes. I have no such hang-ups.

I find their touch soothing.

Hugh and Hannah, Henry and Henrietta tighten their grip round my wrists and let out a gentle hiss of affection. Hugo, a scarf at my neck, gives me a reassuring squeeze.

The other workstations are still empty. Where are the members of my sectoid? They should be here by now. They arrive later every morning.

I hear some shouts from outside and leap across the compu-centre and out of the door to investigate.

A group of workers have collected twigs and branches as mock weapons and are marching up and down as if they are warriors. Others are engaged in mock fights. They are reliving the time when they marched to C99. Their co-ordination hasn’t improved a jot. They have no idea how to march in time with each other or with the drum that one of them is banging. The rest of their colleagues stand around cheering, or perhaps jeering.

‘Smarten up!’ ‘Fight the good fight!’ ‘Kill the enemy!’ they shout.

Pitiful. There is no enemy and no fight. What do they think they are doing, this excuse for an army, with their erratic movements, makeshift weapons and ragged clothes? Why are they outside instead of sitting at their workstations?

The answer is – because they can. Ever since the front door of the compound has been open and they’ve known it’s safe outside, that’s where they want to be. Outside, in the fresh air. Problem is, they don’t know what to do there. They
only remember marching to war and they use that memory to play at being soldiers.

I’ll have to think of something profitable for them to do outside. I think of Heracles and his colleagues building a city; but these pathetic creatures with their multiple mutations and lack of brain cells wouldn’t be capable of such a project.

I sigh and am just about to call out to them to come in and start work, when a crash of thunder and a streak of lightening do the job for me.

They squeal and run inside, helter-skelter, arms and legs awry, as the sky opens and down comes the rain.

Like a mother shepherding her children, I hustle them indoors, tell them to take off their wet clothes and change into dry ones. ‘Back to work,’ I chide them. ‘How are you going to meet your targets if you spend all your time playing soldiers?’

They scuttle off to change their clothes. Some of them return to the compu-centre, but not all. Others wander off to the games room to play bar billiards or table tennis, to the bowling alley or the gym. Others lounge in the RR and play pop music. All the leisure facilities that Sati helped design are now in place. They are only supposed to be used in the evenings, but lately slackness has crept in. I seem to have lost control.

Things have never been the same since I was reinstated as Chief Administrator. I read somewhere that it is almost impossible to return to the status quo of the past, whether in personal relationships or at work. It seems to be true. The depression I felt in Headculturedome is in danger of returning big time. I sit, head in hands, at my workstation and try to assess what has gone wrong.

The problem started when Sati seduced my workforce, when the rigour of my well-run sectoid was exchanged for
the pleasure-based agenda favoured by Sati and Jaga. Long hours reaching targets for Worldwideculture were replaced by equally long hours devoted to sex, games and dancing. When I – with Durga’s help – returned, I had no idea it would be so hard to regain control.

The first problem I had to overcome was the resentment caused by Jason’s death. He was a casualty of war. One of Durga’s warriors killed him when we attacked C55. Not so unusual for someone to be killed in a battle you might think, but mutant humanoids have no experience of war and even less of sudden death.

It was an accident, a shot fired in the heat of the moment; but the members of C55 would not accept that fact.

Jason was Sati’s favourite and that’s why she took Jason’s body away with her to make sure he had a decent burial. Jason’s colleagues in sectoid C55 had no funeral to help them come to terms with the loss. There was no closure for them. It was left to me to deal with the build-up of bitterness that Jason’s death aroused. There was a craving for blood.

The morning meetings that I set up to listen to their ideas were never completely satisfactory. They became little more than opportunities for grumbling, a chance to air complaints without coming up with any solutions. Day after day the meetings deteriorated into sessions designed to bait me. I was blamed for Jason’s death. In vain I told them his death was unintentional, an accident of war. They wanted revenge. But the captain responsible for killing Jason was in prison in C99 and so was Durga. In any case, in my opinion, this strategy of an eye for an eye never solves problems, only prolongs conflict.

I decided to hold a memorial service for Jason. His colleagues were to make little speeches reminding us of his good qualities. The main problem turned out to be that in life Jason had not been popular. He was arrogant and self-seeking.
He had never been a loyal friend or lover. To top it all he had always been Sati’s favourite. When former friends, colleagues and lovers tried to record his good qualities, they remembered instead the numerous times he had let them down.

One by one the members of the workforce came to me, saying they couldn’t deliver these little eulogies. They didn’t want to be insincere and make up lies, but couldn’t think of anything good to say about him. The truth was Jason was not a very popular humanoid. The result was that Jason didn’t get his memorial service after all.

Somehow, because this matter had not been settled, it caused more bad feeling between them and me.

Another matter that caused trouble in the aftermath of Jason’s demise and Sati’s departure was the conduct of Hermione. She and Jason had been sexual partners on and off for several years before Sati came on the scene, seduced him and made him her favourite. Now they were no longer here, Hermione made her move to take over Sati’s role.

One of Sati’s innovations had been to construct an ornate dormo-cube to entertain her numerous lovers. Some referred to it as the brothel. When I first saw it on my return, I could hardly believe my eyes. It was decorated in the most vulgar – you could say tawdry – manner with swathes of gaudy wall hangings, rose-coloured satin sheets, cushion-covers and crude murals of nude male and female humanoids in sexual poses that left no room for the imagination. I am no prude, but I was quite frankly sickened by this display.

I had so many other things to attend to in order to restore law and order that I delayed having these cubes refurbished. Hermione appropriated them for her own use. She tried to emulate Sati’s promiscuity and invited a series of males to visit her.

Hermione was quite an attractive female, but not as stunning as Sati. For a start, she only had one head to Sati’s
two. Her four eyes and two mouths were crammed on to the same face. The result was a rather crowded jockeying for position of her features, but apparently, the mouths were used to good effect when making “love-sex”.

Hermione’s attempt to take over where Sati left off was a far from popular move with the other females. It was one thing to be obliged to tolerate your partner’s attraction to a charismatic stranger but quite another to accept his infidelity with someone you’d previously considered a friend. Who did Hermione think she was?

Serena suspected that her current squeeze, Apollo, was one of Hermione’s conquests and organised an attack. In the middle of the night a gang of female mutant humanoids burst into the dormo-brothel, saw the naked male on top of Hermione and screeched at him to get out. Seeing the gaggle of ferocious looking females led by Serena, Apollo jumped off the bunku and beat a hasty retreat on his three stumpy legs, not stopping to retrieve his clothes. The females stayed behind to deal with Hermione. They stripped the bunku, tore down the wall hangings, hurled any objects they could find at Hermione and dragged her by the hair off the bunku, out of the cube and out of the compound.

The first I heard of the incident was a commotion by the compound door: strident, high-pitched voices screaming and shouting. I leapt out of my bunku and strode off to see what was happening. I arrived as the door slammed shut and the key turned in the lock.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

All speaking at once they attempted to enlighten me. ‘Hermione is a slut,’ ‘A slag,’ ‘She thinks she can do what she damn well likes,’ ‘We don’t want her here,’ ‘She’s banished,.’ ‘She can find somewhere else to go….’

I tried to calm them and asked exactly what had happened. They led me to “the brothel” and told me that
that Hermione, had set herself up in here as a second-rate whore and been “having it off” with anyone stupid enough to have her.

‘We’d only just got our partners back when she decided to try her hand at being a Sati clone.’

‘Imagine that. Plain little Hermione thinking she could take over from Sati.’

‘And imagine our males being so susceptible.’

Rather shame-facedly, Serena’s followers showed me the damage they’d done to the dormo-cube. The sheets and wall hangings lay in tatters. China and glass ornaments, powder bowls and perfume bottles lay in pieces on the floor.

‘She’d no right to behave like that,’ Serena said.

‘No right at all,’ said Aphrodite.

‘You are right,’ I agreed. ‘She shouldn’t have behaved in this way, but when you have a problem such as this you should come to me and let me deal with it.’

Serena, Aphrodite and the others looked at me doubtfully. They would need a lot of convincing before they would trust me to solve any problem for them.

‘Where is Hermione now?’ I asked.

‘We’ve locked her out. We don’t want her here,’ said Serena.

‘That is not your decision,’ I told them. ‘I say who leaves and who stays, not you.’

They looked at me as if I were crazy. ‘Yes, but…’

‘You should all go to your bunkus now. I don’t want to hear another word from any of you tonight. Get some sleep. Tomorrow I’ll give you brooms and cleaning materials and you can clear up the mess you’ve made. You can also give the walls a lick of paint while you’re at it. Nothing fancy. Plain white.’

They exchanged looks. ‘What about Hermione?’ Serena asked.

‘I am going outside to get her back. I’ll have a talk with her and I don’t think you’ll find she’ll give you any more trouble.’

They came to the front door with me. I unlocked it. In the distance a female figure lay slumped on the ground. ‘Go to your bunkus, now,’ I told them. ‘Get some sleep. You’ve got a busy day tomorrow.’

They watched me as I strode, hopped and leapt towards the lone figure. I stopped, turned round and glared at them. Serena began to move off slowly, and the others followed.

As I approached Hermione she looked up at me. Her face was badly bruised and covered in blood. She was holding her arm as if in pain.

‘I can’t come back,’ she said. ‘They’ll murder me.’

‘They won’t touch you again,’ I promised her. ‘Besides, where else do you think you’re going?’

She started to sob as if she would never stop. I picked her up in my four strong arms and carried her back to C55, making sure I didn’t hurt her arm. I strode out confidently, even adding a few leaps. My precious pets hissed and spat. Their tongues stuck out like spikes. Hermione looked terrified, but they didn’t mean anything by it. They were only posturing, giving her a bit of a fright. That’s all.

I took her to Sicku-bay and asked Emilia, one of the older females, to look after her. The setting up of Sicku-bay had apparently been Jaga’s idea. She’d partitioned off a section near the gym as a kind of health centre or mini hospital. Jaga thought that with the installation of a gym and games room there might be accidents or at least a need for treatment. After all, she reasoned, the humanoids were exercising muscles that had not been used for years. Sicku-bay was one of Jaga’s good ideas that had counteracted Sati’s zany plans.

Sicku-bay came in useful to isolate Hermione. Luckily her arm was not broken but she had a sprained wrist and
her arm was put in a sling for a while. I visited her every day and, when I felt she was up to it, gave her little pep talks about how she should behave in the future, as a responsible member of the sectoid.

The advice really wasn’t necessary. She was ashamed of her escapade and terrified of seeing the other females again. My main job was to persuade her that she had no need to be afraid, that I would make sure they would not assault her.