Chapter 21

Physically, Beta and I were much more refreshed after our good night sleep in a bed, but the benefits of that slowly dissipated as we stood for over an hour at the slip road to the busy motorway junction not far from the embassies. Our thumbs hopefully gestured at the cars and lorries as they sped by, but none showed us any sympathy.

"How much longer must we wait?" sighed Beta plaintively. "Surely one of these hundreds of cars must stop!"

A car trundled by slowly, looking likely to stop, but it drove by loaded down by the luggage piled high on its roof. A van covered with Illicit Party slogans shot by, its occupants sticking their heads out of the window to jeer and gesture rudely at us. Beyond the slip road was a vast junction of roads where cars and trucks hurtled along totally oblivious to our presence.

Then, just as hope was diminishing to its lowest ebb, an extremely long stretch limousine, which had just sped by, suddenly stopped and parked on the hard shoulder a furlong ahead of us. It was driven by an alsatian with a peaked cap and uniform. The door opened slowly and the monstrous form of Hubert emerged rearwards, still in his enormous overcoat. He urgently beckoned us, and we obediently ran towards him.

"I thought it might have been you!" he remarked. "I had just about time to tell the chauffeur to stop. Where are you heading?"

"The Suburbs!" I said breathlessly.

"Back home again. And with your young ladyfriend. So you've been persuaded by that Rupert chap that that's where you'll find the Truth! My friends aren't quite going that far, but I think we'll be able to take you some of the way. Get in the car!"

We needed little prompting, and followed Hubert into the limousine. However large it had appeared from the outside, it seemed even larger inside. Large enough indeed to accommodate a rhinoceros, a hippopotamus and a rather fat man in addition to Hubert and ourselves. The chauffeur turned his muzzle round to look at us, and seeing that the door was closed, he manoeuvred back on to the slip road.

"These are friends of mine I met in the City," Hubert announced to the company. "They're both good friends of Tudor, the chap I told you about."

The hippopotamus wore a tee-shirt that just about managed to cover most of her belly sporting the cryptic message The Balance of Justice, and a pair of floral shorts. The rhinoceros wore an open denim shirt, studded with buttons, and checked trousers. The City was written above the crown of the broad brimmed hat he wore. The man rested a camcorder on his bare hairy knees, and wore a striped shirt, shorts and a very similar hat sporting the words I © Her Maphrodite. He examined me steadily.

"Hey, don't I know you!" he announced. "The Suburbs ain't it? You gave me directions to the Centaur Hotel? Just a few days ago. You remember?"

I nodded, although it was difficult to recognise someone I'd met so briefly in the dark. "Yes, that was me."

The fat man grinned triumphantly: "This is the guy who gave us that map. We never stayed in the Centaur after all. A real tacky dive it was. We stayed in the Horse and Hounds, a real traditional place. My name's White and these are my pals Wayne and Wilma." The two pachyderms nodded their heads.

"The Suburbs?" Wayne, the rhinoceros, asked. "A real dead joint, that. We ain't never going there again. But you're heading there, ain't you?"

"That's right," Beta replied. "We're hoping to get there before this evening."

"You look real weird for a gal from the Suburbs, honey," Wilma, the hippopotamus, remarked. "The gals there dressed real dull. I mean, real dull! But you gotta come from somewhere, ain't you!"

The limousine was now accelerating smoothly into the rush of motorway traffic. Lorries rumbled by, and we were overtaken by fast cars driven by sales representatives in shirt sleeves with their jackets hung ostentatiously from a coat-hanger by the rear passenger door. Beta and I were squeezed next to each other against the rhinoceros and opposite the others. Our companions truly dwarfed us.

"My friends are from Phaedra. They're on holiday here," Hubert explained. "They're all great enthusiasts for the works of the Great Poet."

"Well, not just him, Hubert hon!" the hippopotamus elaborated. "We're real enthusiastic about all the history and tradition in this land of yours. There ain't none of that in Phaedra. Very nearly doodly squat. We ain't been around for as long as you guys. You got everything here. I've gotten real impressed by it. How can there be so much history in one country? That's what I'd like to know!"

"Not everything's so goddamn fine here, though!" the rhinoceros interjected. "I ain't seen so many peasants and proles in my entire life! Ain't you guys got any civic pride? Your City's a goddamn cess pit in some places. Every few metres you stumble over a beggar or tramp. There ain't nothing like that back home."

"Your country doesn't have the social problems we have here," Hubert remarked. "You're all much better off."

"You're goddamn right!" agreed White. "Wayne's right, too. You should clear those bums right off the street, so's decent people ain't pestered. And what a shambles your General Election was. I ain't ever seen such an amateurish affair. Those riots and demonstrations! That ain't democracy. That ain't what I'd call democracy anyhows. We had a real bad time in all that hoohah."

"Yeah, honey," agreed Wilma. "There was this pack of dogs campaigning for your Red Party..."

"I thought they were Black..." White interjected.

"Well, whatever! Goddamn bunch of extremists. Real nasty they were. This goddamn aggressive collie looked like it'd really go for me, didn't it? There ain't nothing civilized in them people. Not in any one of them. There ain't no extremists in Phaedra. There ain't no place for them. And that's 'cause we got a real democracy. A democracy based on a bedrock constitution of justice and fairness for all."

"I really can't agree with you, Wilma," remarked Hubert diplomatically. "We have a true democracy here. Our problems are not with the electoral system alone. It's because central government is so undecided it has lost control, and everything is governed locally. That's why the Coition government dissolved itself in favour of whichever party gained the most votes in the General Election..."

"And what do you get!" snorted the rhinoceros. "The goddamn Reds! You've gotten yourselves a Commie government now, ain't you! It'd be better for you guys if your Blue Party took over. Even them Blacks would be a better bunch."

"You've gotten the worst you could get!" agreed White. "I liked the bunch that run your Suburbs. There mayn't be no life there at all, but at least things run well. That's what you guys need. A good sensible practical government. Not a bunch of Commies. You guys are gonna be digging for salt in gulags before you know it. It's gonna be one perpetual revolution after another as the different Commie factions fight each other. It ain't gonna be no goddamn picnic. You'd never get Commies in power in Phaedra. We got it better sussed. The longer I've been here the more I'm glad we live in Phaedra however much history and tradition you guys got."

"Your constitution is quite different," Hubert argued. "In this country, institutions and practices have evolved over time. There's never been a master plan. It's just changed gradually from a feudal to a modern society. Phaedra's never been anything but modern. Your constitution was consciously and meticulously planned. It has so many checks and balances it could never fall into the chaos that's happened here."

"You're goddamn right!" agreed the rhinoceros. "There ain't no chance of that. Our constitution is Phaedra's pride and joy. Like a pair of scales, it is. Balancing all the possible extremes and gravitating towards the centre. We got two political parties, not like your six or twenty or whatever it is. Two parties is all you need. After all, you don't want more than one lot in power at any one time. And the way our constitution is set up, one lot can't expect to be in power for very long before the other guys come in. And when the Fat party hold the presidency, you can be goddamn sure the Thins have got the Senate or Congress. There ain't no way that one lot can have it all their way."

"They do say," argued Hubert, "that there really isn't much difference between your two main parties. That they hold pretty much the same opinions and the real difference is which businesses pay money into which party funds. In fact, people from one party cross over to the other bewilderingly often."

The rhinoceros snorted, while White smiled superciliously. "There ain't no goddamn truth in that, Hubert, old chap. There ain't no truth at all. We been Thins all our lives. We wouldn't dream of giving the other guys any support at all..."

"Though we did support President Elvis in the last Presidential election, didn't we, honey?" objected Wilma.

"That's different. Elvis is a Thin at heart, even though he did stand as a Fat. No, Hubert. We welcome disillusioned Fats into our fold with open arms. The more the better. And we ain't gonna close our door for nobody. If any of those Fat guys see the light, then that's okay by me. And just as there are Fats who go one way, there's the odd renegade Thin who goes the other. I was real disgusted when Senator John-boy defected to the Fats. And mid-office too. We ain't had no chance to elect him out, when we'd just gotten him elected. That was real goddamn sneaky!"

"What are the differences between the two political parties?" wondered Beta.

"All the difference in the goddamn world..." snorted Wayne.

" ... Except when there's bipartisan support." elaborated White. "But there's a heck of a lot of policy differences. The Fats put taxes up and increase government spending, while the Thins cut taxes and reduce government spending, except on defence which the Fats increase and the Thins cut, and adjust revenue collection accordingly..."

" ... So it all amounts to much the same thing," said Wilma. "Which demonstrates how well our system of checks and balances works. That's why the symbol of Phaedra is a pair of scales held by the Hound of Liberty. As long as everything is balanced and nothing extreme get the upper hand, then you've got stability, progress and prosperity."

"It could be said," Hubert continued to argue, "that it's because of your prosperity that you have such a stable and balanced system of government."

"Yeah, sure!" Wayne agreed. "But it takes a good strong system of government to keep that prosperity. Okay, in Phaedra we got more of everything than you got in your country. We got more oil, uranium, steel, silicon, chemicals and all than you got, and we got the businesses that make up for anything we're short in operating in other countries. There's a heck of a lot of Phaedran businesses trading in the financial sector of the City, for instance. And when I look at the guys here who can't get nothing for thousands of guineas in the City, but are as rich as heck in the Country, and all your beggars ... Well, there ain't no comparison. You need a strong currency like the Phaedran riyal, not a mickey mouse currency like you got."

The car abruptly slowed, and the hippopotamus and Hubert very nearly fell on top of us, which would have been severely injurious. Wilma and Wayne must have each weighed at least a ton. The rhinoceros peered out of the window: we were no longer on a wide motorway, but on a single hedge-lined carriageway.