Chapter 2

Before the train had travelled very far, I knew for sure that I had left the Suburbs behind. The ragged hedges no longer enclosed well tended lawns and flower-beds, but rather rectangles of crops, occasionally enlivened by a clump of trees. Goats roamed freely about, sometimes raising their heads to watch the train going by.

The transition from the Suburbs to the Countryside was apparent not only outside the train but also inside. The presence of Suburbanites reading newspapers or staring blankly through the carriage window was steadily replaced by a broader mix, representing the people who live in the Country. The composition of passengers changed as the train stopped, paused and then moved on again from rustic Country station platforms. At one station, several rats in precisely made and appropriately tiny clothes clambered into a nearby compartment by steps provided for the smaller railway customer.

At each station, a loudspeaker trailed off a list of destinations and, just as the train was beginning to leave, recommenced the list from the beginning. By this means I was aware that the train was approaching the station where I would change trains for Gotesdene. The train shook, shuddered and clanked as it steadied to a halt. I reluctantly sacrificed the warmth of my seat and disembarked onto the busy platform.

Barley Junction was quite a different station from the one I had left in the Suburbs. Goats jostled freely about the platform place, some entering the train I'd just left and some trotting out of it. One goat with a station porter's cap and an official uniform was bleating more loudly and insistently than the others, and I soon became aware that it was he who was broadcasting the platform announcements. It took a few moments to adapt my ear to his rustic bleat, but presently I managed to couple the name Gotesdene with an appropriate platform number and with this information I headed over the station bridge, sidestepping the family of rats I had seen before, and descended to where a Steam Train was waiting.

Being completely unfamiliar with the customs of the area - so different from the Suburbs - I looked for an indicator board that might confirm to me that this train, emitting large clouds of black smoke from its funnel, was the one I wanted, but there was no digital display unit to be found anywhere. There was only a wooden sign protruding from a post, with a list of names including that of Gotesdene. So this was it! I searched for an empty compartment, opened the door and sat on a hard upholstered seat by the window and watched the bustle of activity outside.

There were the bleats of goats to one other: some advertising tea and newspapers. Above all this, was the more resonant voice of the station master listing where the train was due to stop. To lessen the platform din, and avoid the unpleasant smell of smoking coal, I pulled up the carriage window which promptly cocooned me from the world outside. I was alone in the company of two facing rows of upholstery, two opposing mirrors and advertisements for dental chewing gum, rat-killer, the Green Party and the Times.

I was not alone for long. The carriage door opened and in poked the head of a young woman about my age. "Is this compartment free?" she asked.

"Why certainly," I said in a slightly panicked voice. This was not merely because her presence had perturbed my composure, but also by her physical appearance. Partly this was due to the strangeness of her long straight green hair which cascaded down beyond her shoulders and to her waist. Mostly however this was due to the fact that she wore no clothes whatsoever. This was not a sight often seen in the Suburbs. Her pale but warm and friendly face was illuminated by sparkling bright green eyes.

"Then you won't mind us joining you," she continued, climbing into the compartment. Her bare feet walked obliviously over the varnished floorboards and she sat on the seat immediately opposite me. I was uncomfortably conscious of her bare apple-round breasts and the green bush of hair between her crossed thighs. She was followed by a boy of about fifteen also with green hair, but in his case styled into a neat short back and sides, and wearing an outfit that would not look out of place in the Suburbs. Indeed only the colour of his hair might ever attract any comment. His face was also pale, but the eyes failed to illuminate it at all. He sat next to the girl and I felt sure I could see a family resemblance.

"My name's Beta and this is my brother," continued the girl with an unselfconscious openness very rare in the Suburbs. "We're off to the City of Lambdeth. Do you know it?"

"I've heard of it."

"I've never been there myself, but Bacon has. He's going to college there and I'm escorting him."

"Not that I need escorting!" the boy sniffed unenthusiastically. "I'm just pleased to get away from the Country. It's about time I moved into the Modern Age. I'm had enough of the ignorance and backwardness of the Village."

"Oh, Bacon!" Beta responded. "You don't have to be so harsh on the Village. It's where we've lived all our lives."

"Progress has just passed us by," Bacon continued. "The years go by and the Village and the Country just remain the same." He looked at me with a sardonic smile. "You just wouldn't believe how primitive the Village is. If you went there you'd think you'd been through a time warp."

"It's the way it is because its way of life has been so successful over the years," defended Beta. "Why change a place where people are quite happy with things as they are?" She leaned forward towards me, her hair falling off her shoulders and breasts to drop in curtains of green in front of her. "What do you think?"

As I had no wish to offend either the attractive naked girl or her brother I decided to be diplomatic. "I don't know your village, so I really can't comment."

"It's so beautiful and natural! A sweet little brook babbles alongside a wood and open fields, and goats and other animals wander freely in the lanes. Everyone is friendly and helpful - and, excepting my brother, nobody feels the need to wear clothes..."

"So? How primitive can you get!" Bacon snorted. "If dressing like savages was so wonderful, how come it's not more universal? People in the Suburbs wear clothes. And so do people in Lambdeth. Babbling brooks and goats aren't everything! You didn't mention, Beta, that the roads are unmetalled; the electricity is unreliable and intermittent; the water still comes from a well; there are no street-lamps and the only transport we've got is oxen-, goat- or mule-driven. It's only a paradise if you think deprivation's a good thing."

"But you don't need all those things if everything else is fine..."

"How can it be? The Village is barely self-sufficient at the moment. It produces very little surplus product and not many people from elsewhere are enthusiastic about buying our organic vegetables and dairy products. It won't be long until the Village will have to diversify its production or everyone will starve."

"Who says the Village will starve! Everyone has enough to eat now. Nobody's unhappy."

"It'll happen! Nowhere can last forever contented on just enough surplus to afford a single television for the whole Village and hardly any of the other luxuries that people in, for instance, the Suburbs take for granted. One bad harvest and the Village will collapse!"

"There have been people saying that for centuries and it's never happened!" Beta indignantly retorted. "All that's happened is that more people like you predict it to try and get people to change their ways. And it is self-fulfilling prophecy when people like you leave and it becomes more difficult for the Village to get by."

"And what's wrong with me for wanting to do that? If there's a better world beyond, why not go for it!"

At that moment, the train discharged sounds of scraping, puffing and snorting, and then accompanied by a chorus of cries, particularly from the station announcer, the Steam Train slowly puffed out of the station. Bacon and Beta dropped their conversation to watch Barley Junction recede behind and green fields open up ahead.

As the train settled into its rhythm of railway-track breaks and occasional hoots, I continued the halted conversation: "There are certainly a lot of goats around here! Far more than you'd ever meet in the Suburbs!"

"That just demonstrates how much more Progressive the Suburbs are!" agreed Bacon. "You're right. There are far too many goats in the Countryside. There really should be fewer of them."

"Now you're being unfair to goats!" complained Beta with a frown.

"They smell. They eat anything and everything. Left to their own resources they'd just eat the entire Countryside and we'd be left with nothing but desert"

"But they still have rights just like everyone else. You can't dismiss them just like that."

"Yes, you can! The issue is quite straightforward. There are too many goats! What you've got to do is reduce the number. And if it involves deportation or birth control then so be it."

"Or anything else, I suppose?" wondered Beta sadly.

"Exactly so!" Bacon said adamantly. "Goats are a menace, and they've got to be eliminated by one means or another!"

I could see that I hadn't chosen as safe a topic for conversation as I'd thought, but I listened as the two siblings discussed what Bacon termed the Goat Problem. Some of his solutions were quite drastic and not too dissimilar to some I'd occasionally heard in the Suburbs when considering eliminating vermin. "It's entirely a question of Progress!" Bacon insisted. "There should never be obstacles set in its way. We're all better off in the end - Goats too! - if less attention were paid to the finer feelings of the outmoded and obsolete..."

"For no fault of their own!" Beta interrupted.

"It doesn't matter! If there is any purpose to life at all, it must be the pursuit of Progress and Truth!"

I was just about to rejoin the conversation to announce my own interest in the Truth, when the engine released a series of hoots as it noisily came to a halt at another station. This one was extremely small, consisting of a platform, a derelict ticket office and a waiting room. A border of flowers and vegetables brightened the platform and beyond there was nothing but an uninterrupted series of open fields with a few scattered windmills in the distance.

"We'll be here for ages!" complained Bacon. "The train always is."

Beta stood up and pulled down the window. Instantly, the Country air rushed in, carrying the smell of hay and the buzz of little insects. "I don't see why that should be!" she commented as she leaned her shoulders on the top of the pulled-down window, her head and mass of hair outside and her bare bottom sticking out in front of my nose. The sun sparkled on her cheeks and lit up her hair, revealing long thin strands that floated about.

"Last time I was here I had to wait while they were shooing some animals off the tracks. I'm sure they were goats! You wouldn't get such gross inefficiency in Baldam I'm sure!"

Beta ignored her brother. "It's such a nice place here!" she remarked cheerfully. "There's a whitewashed wooden church over there. And a little château. And some donkeys trotting by on their way to the fields." She leaned out even further, her arms straightened, her buttocks tautened and her face soaking in the warm morning Sun. "And there's a large mouse there!"

"A mouse! Are you sure? Not a rat or something like that?" sniffed Bacon.

"I've known enough rats and mice to know the difference!" Beta retorted. "And I do believe this mouse is Tudor!"

"Tudor!" snorted her brother, leaning over to peer through the window himself. "Why should he be catching a train I wonder?"

Beta didn't answer, but instead waved her arms and shouted. "Tudor! Over here! Tudor!"

I peered through the window to see what this mouse might be like, but I didn't expect to see one standing upright nearly five foot tall, wearing a smart blue jerkin, red codpiece and stockings with a ruff round his neck just below the muzzle. He was bareheaded with whiskers proudly displayed, bright eyes prominent in grey-brown fur and large flat ears twitching with a life of their own. He waved a gloved paw at Beta and strode towards us in red boots while his other paw supported a sheathed sword secured to his waist.

"Beta!" he cried. "'Tis thou! How dost? Art alone?"

"No, I'm with Bacon. We're off to Baldam. Come and share the carriage with us!" Beta pulled her head in through the window to enable Tudor to open the compartment door.

"Verily shalt I!" Tudor said resolutely, as he pulled himself in. "'Tis most happy and meet that I should so encounter ye!" He nodded at Bacon and me, and removed his belt and sword which he placed on the luggage rack above my head. He then sat next to me, facing Bacon, his long scaly tail winding around behind him and falling discreetly onto the compartment floor. He crossed his short legs, his boots reaching nearly up to his knee.

"Good morrow, sire," he addressed me. "Art thou also bound for Baldam?"

"No," answered Bacon on my behalf. "He's not one of our party at all."

"I come from the Suburbs," I explained.

"The Suburbs!" mused the mouse flicking his tail slightly. "'Tis a borough to which I have never been. Art many such as I there?"

"No, not at all," I answered honestly. "I've never seen anyone like you in the Suburbs."

"'Tis pity," he sighed. "Thou know'st me not. I am hight Tudor as Beta hath told thee and I abide in mine estate many a league yonder." He looked up at Beta and Bacon. "'Tis rare I should venture so far afield, but I have affairs to attend in Rattesthwaite. Dost thou know't?"

"It's further down the line," remarked the boy.

"'Tis so," Tudor acknowledged. The train shunted forward and back unbalancing the mouse and forcing him to grip my arm with his sharp claws to avoid falling to the floor. The train hooted and a cloud of sooty dust floated past the window. It then puffed off. The mouse clung painfully to my arm as the platform receded. While the train was moving, I observed a large hoarding featuring two hands held together. Better Together! it read ambiguously. I bent my head around to watch it go by and caught a glimpse of green writing at the foot of the poster, featuring a person's name and a green cross in a box.

"It's not long till the General Election, is it?" commented Beta noting the poster.

"General Election?" I wondered. "Is there one due soon?"

"Where have you been?" sneered Bacon. "Of course there is! Perhaps the most important one this country's ever known!"

"I just didn't know about it," I admitted. It can't have seemed so important in the apolitical Suburbs. "Which parties are contesting it?"

"Oh! The usual six," commented Beta putting up one hand of outspread fingers and a thumb. She then withdrew all but her index finger. "There's the Red Party. They're the left wing party."

"Bloody communists!" snorted Bacon. "They'll have us all living like peasants."

Tudor snorted equally disdainfully. "'Sblood! 'Twill be but the rule of the mobus populis. 'Twould be a disaster unpareil an 'twere they to govern."

Beta raised a second finger. "Then there's the Blue Party. They're the right wing party. That's the one Bacon supports, I think."

"Dashed right I will!"

"Then there's the Green Party. They're the ones I quite like. They're the party of the Countryside, tradition and environment." Beta now had three fingers standing, and then before her brother could comment on her choice, she hurried on by raising a fourth finger. "Then the Black Party. I think Bacon's got some sympathy for them, but even he doesn't like the militaristic aspect of the party or their dislike for foreigners." She raised her thumb. "The Illicit Party, which is quite a new one, and I'm not sure what they're about. And finally," she raised the thumb of her other hand, "there's the White Party and I don't know what they represent at all either."

"I don't think even they do!" scoffed Bacon. He smiled at me. "Perhaps you do. I read somewhere that they always do well in the Suburbs."

"Yes they do," I agreed, but I couldn't answer what they represented. They always appeared to win local elections by fighting for such local issues as clearer markings on public highways, more books in the public library and more flower shows. Their candidates seemed frightfully nice and when they spoke it was hard to identify any policy they advocated that one could actively oppose. "But what's so very important about this General Election?"

"I thought this kind of gross ignorance was confined to the Country," said Bacon disparagingly. "It's to break up the Coition Government that's been running this country - badly! - for as long as anyone can remember. They've changed the constitution such that whichever party wins will become the sole government and not have to work with all the other parties."

"How are they doing that?" I wondered.

"It's terribly complicated," Beta continued. "Something to do with how the votes will be transferred. But as a result they hope that it will resolve the mess the government's got into - you know, with never being able to make a decision without it being vetoed by some minority interest in the Coition."