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By Root 2374 0

The small dirigible that had brought me in had continued onto Salisbury; I briefly thought about catching it again when it called on its return the day after tomorrow. I turned on the television just in time to catch Today in Parliament. The Crimean debate had been raging all day and wasn’t over yet. I emptied my pockets of loose change, took my automatic out of its shoulder holster and opened the bedside drawer. It was full. Apart from the Gideon’s Bible there were the teachings of Buddha and an English copy of the Koran. There was also a GSD volume of prayer and a Wesleyian pamphlet, two amulets from the Society for Christian Awareness, the thoughts of St. Zvlkx and the now mandatory Complete Works of William Shakespeare. I removed all the books, stuffed them in the cupboard and placed my automatic in the drawer instead. I unzipped my case and started to organize my room. I hadn’t rented out my apartment in London; I didn’t know if I was staying here or not. Oddly, the town had started to feel very comfortable and I wasn’t sure whether I liked that or not. I laid everything on my bed and then put it all carefully away. I placed a few books on the desk and the life-saving copy of Jane Eyre onto the bedside table. I picked up Landen’s photo and walked over to the bureau, thought for a moment and then placed it upside down in my knicker drawer. With the real thing around I had no need for an image. The TV droned on:

“. . . despite intervention by the French and a Russian guarantee of safe habitation for English settlers, it looks as though the English government will not be resuming its place around the table at Budapest. With England still adamant about an offensive using the new so-called Stonk plasma rifle, peace will not be descending on the Black Sea peninsula . . .”

The anchorman shuffled some papers.

“Home news now, and violence flared again in Chichester as a group of neosurrealists gathered to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the legalization of surrealism. On the spot for Toad News Network is Henry Grubb. Henry, how are things down there?”

A shaky live picture came onto the screen, and I stopped for a moment to watch. Behind Grubb was a car that had been overturned and set on fire, and several officers were in riot gear. Henry Grubb, who was in training for the job of Crimean correspondent and secretly hoped that the war wouldn’t end until he had had a chance to get out there, wore a navy blue flak jacket and spoke with the urgent, halting speech of a correspondent in a war zone.

“Things are a bit hot down here, Brian. I’m a hundred yards from the riot zone and I can see several cars overturned and on fire. The police have been trying to keep the factions apart all day, but the sheer weight of numbers has been against them. This evening several hundred Raphaelites surrounded the N’est pas une pipe public house where a hundred neosurrealists have barricaded themselves in. The demonstrators outside chanted Italian Renaissance slogans and then stones and missiles were thrown. The neosurrealists responded by charging the lines protected by large soft watches and seemed to be winning until the police moved in. Wait, I can just see a man arrested by the police. I’ll try and get an interview.”

I shook my head sadly and put some shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe. There was violence when surrealism was banned and there was violence as the same ban was lifted. Grubb continued his broadcast as he intercepted a policeman marching away a youth dressed in sixteenth-century garb with a faithful reproduction of the “Hand of God” from the Sistine chapel tattooed on his face.

“Excuse me, sir, how would you counter the criticism that you are an intolerant bunch with little respect for the value of change and experimentation in all aspects of art?”

The Renaissancite glanced at the camera with an angry scowl.

“People say we’re just Renaissancites causing trouble, but I’ve seen Baroque kids, Raphaelites, Romantics and Mannerists here tonight. It’s a massive show of classical artistic unity against these frivolous bastards