Chapter 5

Endon was imposing but most of all frightening, I decided when the humming, buzzing, squawking and shrieking of its denizens compelled me to open my eyes. Anna remained asleep, unconcerned by the appalling noise. We had been sleeping under a dandelion more than fifty feet high, and the long palm-like leaves beneath us belonged to a species of moss. There were monstrous buttercups, several times taller than me, and towering above everything were the long shadows of daffodils extending in the morning sun.

If the flora was of a scale completely beyond my previous experience, so too was the fauna. When I was warned that the borough of Endon was inhabited by giant arthropods, I had not been prepared to see two-foot long ants and termites, wasps half my size flying overhead, butterflies as large as hand-gliders, centipedes whose legs and body stretched on and on, and snails the size of small cars. Fortunately, none of them were particularly interested in our presence, as we lay wrapped in our recently obtained gowns: now so thoroughly soaked by dew they were best forsaken.

This was Anna's opinion when she eventually awoke, throwing her gown off disdainfully and exposing a pair of tight white shorts and a singlet that bared all her midriff. She wore rubber-soled boots at the end of long bare legs which were altogether reasonable for long walks such as we'd had the previous night. She raked her fingers through her beaded hair and viewed the landscape with some amazement.

"It's jolly astounding! I just didn't believe there was so much disproportion in such a small borough. It's a mystery these insects are content to remain here and not take over the world! At least not everyone here's an outsize creepy crawlie..." she pointed to a tiger chatting to a merman under the shadow of a toadstool, " ... but there are still too blooming many of them for my taste."

We abandoned the cloaks on top of some smaller mushrooms and followed the path as it wound past clumps of enormous daisies and knee-high moss, and crumbled under the strain of cabbage-sized algae. The path had lost all its rectilinearity and now wandered hither and thither, past interminable columns of termites, beneath colossal spider-webs and past the capsized body of a tank-like beetle whose companions were trying to righten. Anna chatted as we walked along, now much more cheerful. She intended to go into the Subterranean City of Endon, which she was sure was somewhere round here, and catch a train back to Lambdeth. She'd had enough of travelling for the moment, and would be glad just to return to her friends and relax.

The entrance to the City resembled the doorway to an underground railway station and was heralded by immense neon-lights. Outside were long lines of ants and other small insects hanging around and seemingly without very much to do. There was a general buzz of excitement, but no sense of actual achievement. Gadflies were selling newspapers, ladybirds were selling snacks and soft drinks, and a tiny stall attended by a woodlouse was selling lottery tickets. A tiger reading a newspaper sat nonchalantly by a family of mayflies. The tract was paved by tiny haphazard paving stones. It was very peculiar to find such a portal, mostly enveloped in vines and grass leaves, resting otherwise alone in the middle of such dense jungle.

A mermaid sat decorously and unclothed on a bench, just by an advertisement hoarding for underarm deodorant. Beside her were several ants, one of which was particularly agitated and was arguing with a six-foot high green grasshopper in a green top hat and frock coat, who was gesticulating his four gloved forearms, while supporting his body on long spindly hind legs. His antennae were waving as excitedly as his several mandibles. The grasshopper appeared to be in dispute about something, but whatever it was he settled by cuffing the ant curtly across the face and strode away leaving the smaller insect in humiliation and pain. He had a newspaper under one forearm and a cane in another, leaving two buried in the pockets of his waistcoat. He saw us and deliberately strode towards us.

"Did you see that Damned ant?" he exclaimed. "The fellow had absolutely no Damned respect for his betters. He was trying to tell me - Sir George Greenback! - that I had no more Damned rights than he. He was trying to extort more farthings for the services he supplied in carrying my Damned bags. These ants: they claim to work hard, but in truth they're nothing but lazy idle sluggards! I don't know how anyone can stand their Damnable impudence. What do you think, my lad?"

I wasn't sure what to say, but Anna had no such problem. "It takes all sorts make a world."

"It does indeed! Too many Damned sorts, if you want my opinion!" He viewed us through the countless lenses of his green eyes, his antennae twitching restlessly. As he spoke his mandibles moved sideways as well as up and down. "You're not from these parts are you?"

"Not at all," I replied. "It's the first time I've visited the borough."

"Ah! An exotic stranger!" chuckled the grasshopper. "And you, young lady, I'd fain believe that you too are new here." Anna admitted so. "In that case, may I have the honour of showing you around the City of Endon?"

"That's jolly kind of you!" Anna remarked.

"It is that," Sir George admitted, "but I consider it my duty to extend such hospitality to mammalian visitors such as you. Furthermore, I deign that I can protect you from the unwanted attention of the Damnable ants, termites and other scum who would offer to guide you through the labyrinthine roads of Endon for nothing more than pecuniary advantage. I heartily despise such opportunist trade."

The grasshopper's eyes scanned the gathered mass of insects. "Endon's a Damnably complex city for those who have never visited it before. A newcomer could easily get lost in its tunnels, and the unwary is easy prey to predatory wasps or mantises. But if you know your place, you shouldn't be afraid."

"And you know your place, I believe," guessed Anna.

"That I well do. I'm no proletarian or peasant like these Damned ants. Grasshoppers are of the highest order: cultured, sophisticated and courteous. Only butterflies compare with us in exaltation. Below are all sorts from dragonflies to slugs, from locusts to worms. And in this great city you encounter people of all orders and genera. There are the industrious bees, who keep themselves apart from everyone else in their own suburbs, and worms with which nobody would wish to associate themselves. But when we enter Endon, you'll see for yourselves what the city has to offer. Follow me."

Sir George strode ahead on his incredibly long hindlegs, while Anna and I hurried to keep pace with him. The door led to a precipitous escalator that descended down through the earth to a small square of light at the bottom. Alongside the escalator were posters advertising perfumes, films and financial services. The whole was lit by the soft glow of neon tubes which extended along the roof of this tunnel and every tunnel through which we subsequently passed.

"You need to know your place in Endon, for sure," Sir George commented as we descended. "People from outside, I've noticed, have scant regard to social position. Here everyone has his own status and standing, and woe betide those, like that Damned surly Ant, who treat those such as I with less respect than we deserve. But even though the mores and standards of strangers such as yourself are totally alien to the good citizens of Endon, we respect you and only require you to reciprocate in kind."

At the bottom of the escalator, the city of Endon opened up to reveal a vast neon-lit cavern spreading out in all directions to form a broad plaza scattered with huge statues and tall monumental buildings. The statues featured insects, spiders and snails in full splendour and regalia, brandishing swords, seated on giant beetles or standing in pride of their municipal glory. All about were small groups of insects with their heads bent back to admire the monuments. I was particularly taken by the statue of a tiger with its lower half composed of a large fish's tail.

Anna gasped. "You just wouldn't believe there'd be so much blinking Art beneath a flipping forest!"

"It is Damnably impressive," proudly admitted Sir George, raising his top hat dramatically. "The citizens of Endon have always prided themselves on their æstheticism. You mammals never suspect that arthropods can produce so much splendour." He pointed towards a grand building in the near distance. "That is the Municipal Art Gallery, and if we had the time I would take great pleasure in showing you round. There is so much to see of Endon Art: its paintings, sculpture and architecture. You have nothing in the City to compare with this!"

"I wouldn't be so jolly certain!" laughed Anna.

"Pah! You mammals always think that you have the best of everything! But, God's Wounds! most of it is just foolishness. So much of what your chordate Art Critics call Art has no essential value at all. There are travesties of Art in your Art Galleries which could be produced by children or imbeciles. And that which is not merely amateurish and incompetent is Hellishly obscene."

"So what is it that defines Art then?" challenged Anna.

Sir George strode purposefully towards a grand statue of a heroic millipede raised on its hinder legs clutching a large cross in several of its limbs and a mitre perched on its head. We scurried behind him.

"Here, for instance, is Art serving its primary function which is to instil virtue in its beholders. Art - Good Art, that is - should inculcate good Christian values, respect for authority and order, a good life and a ceaseless striving towards new greatness. What can Art be if the viewer isn't uplifted by it? Simon Peter Wept! Art should galvanise the spirit, fill one with aspirations of greatness and instruct the proletarian and peasantry in proper awe of the society they also serve."

"Surely, that's not jolly well all that Art's about."

"It most assuredly is! It certainly is not for preaching amorality and disharmony; as do the disgusting pruriences that masquerade as Art in vertebrate culture which so unsettle the aesthete. Why should I choose to rub my face in the excrescences of the world? There is already quite enough filth and scum!"

"I'm sure there's more to Art than that," Anna disputed. "Surely all this stuff - impressive though it is - shows just a small part of what there is in the world. Shouldn't Art do more than simply show the higher and more refined things in life?"

"Perhaps Art should show excretion, poverty and disease," scoffed Sir George. "I think not! Art should elevate the Soul. Not oppress it. Art is to instruct not revulse. And to do this, it venerates the more splendid things in the world. Art should be of recognisable things. Objects that one can grasp, that reflect the physical reality of Animal existence. I know that in the City and elsewhere, there are Artists - as they mockingly entitle themselves - who produce misshapen paintings, who eschew form and structure altogether to cover canvasses in wild, random doodlings. Charlatans who abandon the noble materials of canvas, paint and stone, to flaunt their insanity with the most unimaginably gross materials. These people do nothing more than decorate the walls of Hell, and I imagine damnation is precisely what is waiting for them."

"That's a bit jolly harsh!" Anna replied good-humouredly. "I'm sure the Artists who dedicate their lives to producing the sort of Art you don't like aren't doing it just to tempt damnation."

"You may laugh, but I'm most Damnably serious. I am convinced that one reason why mammalian culture is so decadent and reprobate is precisely because of the tolerance it shows towards Art that subverts the Social Order. I have heard that there are boroughs that even finance these unholy execrations with taxpayer money. I would greatly object to know that what little of my income my accountant permits the tax man to collect should be squandered on something that serves only to spread revolt in the lower orders and dissent in the middle classes. Art is not, or should not, be seen as nothing more than an excuse for the indulgences of a self-appointed élite who want me and my kind deprived of their justly earned wealth and position. God's Wounds! Do you envisage Sir George, knighted for his Services to Industry and the Social Order, would for one moment condone the very rubbishing of all that he stands for?"

Anna must have concluded that this argument was becoming too impassioned, so she pointed at a group of troubadour ladybirds performing at the foot of the statue of a large butterfly in a suit of armour. "Shall we listen to them? They sound jolly good!"

Sir George turned his head in the direction of the music, but made no attempt to move towards them nor indeed to change his subject of conversation. "Performing Arts, whether theatre, film or music, serves the same function as Visual Art. It must enlighten. It must enhance the Social Order. And it must tell a story. However, I'm not a prude. I enjoy music hall and comic opera just as much as the next man. I like to go to the theatre with my companions, to sit in the box and watch the Thespian entertain. But significantly seating arrangements of the theatre reinforces the Social Order and affords the lower classes the opportunity to reflect on the inherent superiority of those who by virtue of birth and effort (in both of which I am a sterling success) are necessarily of a more elevated position."

Anna was biting her lower lip, to restrain herself from criticism, so I politely remarked that Sir George was evidently very passionate about Art.

"And Art is not all I am passionate about, young man. I have studied the Sciences as well, for which I have the greatest regard. And is it not curious that the Sciences have again and again reinforced my views concerning natural order and the probity of honest effort? Is this not proved by the Theory of Evolution which has shown how advanced Animals such as Grasshoppers and Butterflies have ascended over lower orders by virtue of the Survival of the Fittest? I keep myself very fit, I can assure you. Has it not demonstrated that the pivots of the Universe are the larger, brighter spheres, which resemble Her Maphrodite and the Aristocracy who shine from the centre of the Social Universe? And even now the Science of Economics is resolving those great eternal questions relating to the generation of crowns, shillings and groats: the very oil which drives the wheels of Commerce and Industry and ensures the generation of Wealth! If Art always aspired to the expression of virtue as Science does to describing and explaining it, then I would never have cause to complain about the abominations pretending to such an elevated station."

We left the main plaza, past more municipal buildings, to where a number of tunnels were radiating away in all directions. Some of the tunnels were quite high and wide, sufficiently so to contain rows of houses and apartment blocks. Some were only wide enough for a single car to drive along. All were lit by the same neon glow that permeated the plaza.

"And what would you like to see? Where would you like to go? Endon has everything you should wish to see; all that a body might wish."

"I wouldn't mind finding a railway station," volunteered Anna. "I'd like to catch a train to Lambdeth."

"That should be no problem. Endon has a very impressive station, as befits a city of its population and industrial significance. And you, young man? Do you also wish to catch a train?"

"I've got no particular destination," I admitted. "I'm quite happy to see more of Endon."

"And that you will! God's Wounds! He who tires of Endon, tires of life itself! There is more to see than you could ever hope to find in Lambdeth." He strode along one of the medium-sized tunnels which had shop windows glazing its walls, with clothes, white goods, computer software and locally manufactured honey tastefully displayed inside. The clothes shops had the models of some very various arthropods accommodated by an astonishing variety of fashions and styles. Clothes that flattered the thorax, the abdomen and carapace of any insect or arachnid. Anna was evidently less impressed by the shops than I, but her eye was caught by a very prominent poster almost completely obscuring an empty shop window.

As my attention was distracted from the sight of insects, tigers, spiders and other shoppers, I noticed many other posters plastered about, and most were connected with the General Election. The one that had attracted Anna's eye featured simply the face of a koala wearing a broad-rimmed hat looking benignly out at the world. Underneath was the single word Illicit, which I recalled was the name of one of the political parties contesting the Election.

"Who's the koala?" I asked naïvely.

"Don't you know!" exclaimed Anna, raising her eyebrows. "Golly! You Suburban people are so jolly ignorant. It's Chairman Rupert, the leader of the Illicit Party and president of his own country which he's renamed - modestly I'm sure! - as the Illiberal Socialist Republic of Rupert."

"The Damnable imposture of the Marsupial!" Sir George assented. "How can a classless four-thumbed Animal like him claim so much self-importance that he should name an entire country after himself? Even I haven't arrogated my power and influence to the extent of renaming my land the Sir George Estate, but there are those for whom pride knows no bounds!"

"So, what do you think of the General Election?" Anna wondered. "Are you going to vote Illicit? Or have you got better options?"

"Are you an Illicitist, young lady? Are you one of those who want to merge this proud nation with the Illicit Republic and replace Her Maphrodite by a eucalyptus-eating mammal?"

"Goodness, no! As if I jolly well would. But everywhere you go there are more and more people switching their allegiance to the Illicit Party. It's like some sort of fashion."

"Simon Peter Wept! For an antipodean dictator!"

"I think it might be to do with general disenchantment with the established parties. After all, it's the only major party that doesn't name itself after a colour..."

"And what's so Damnably wrong with that! It's the way parties have always been identified, and I see no Godly reason why this proud tradition should not continue. But, you're right, my dear, there is great disenchantment. And can you blame the people when there are candidates such as these standing for election." He gestured a long spindly forelimb at a poster featuring a very sincere looking ant above the slogan The Red Party - Working for the People. "These scum who claim to represent the interests of the poor, downtrodden and the workers. All they wish to do is replace the rule of Law and Order, enshrined by status and tradition, by nothing better than the rule of the mob. They would see this nation run by ants and termites. They would destroy art, enslave the aristocracy in concentration camps and thoroughly ruin the nation's economy. It is not only self-interest which decides my opposition to these peasants, but also concern for the interests of industry. Capital would flee these shores were the Red Party to gain power and it would be an unparalleled disaster for all those who have worked so hard to make this nation great."

"Would you support the Green Party, then?" Anna asked.

"They are little better than the Reds! Perhaps they have some ideas I agree with, preserving many of the traditions of our nation, but all they would do is reverse the thrust of Progress. They would demand unacceptable restrictions on industry. Profits would plummet, economic growth would be stifled, capital would flee, and we would all have to become vegetarians."

"What about this lot, then?" Anna indicated a poster featuring a very heroic figure looking into the far distance carrying a sword with blood dripping from its blade. The poster was mostly composed of bold black lines on a dark blue background, with the slogan The Voice of Reason. "Do you think the Black Party is the one you'd support?"

"They are no more the Voice of Reason than the Red Party. In fact, the two are equally Damned, I believe, because they both wish to subvert the natural Social Order. They are a Party that takes good honourable policies and perverts them with a doctrine of hatred and xenophobia. They would also replace Her Maphrodite by a Damned president and would frighten off capital as assuredly as the Red Party. They have some very strange opinions regarding insects. Their wooing of the arachnid vote is extremely worrying: I wouldn't like a hairy eight-legged individual telling me what to do."

Sir George gestured at two other posters high above the shops on a hoarding. One featured nothing more than a blank space, with the words Vote White - You Know It Makes Sense. The other featured a mixture of apparently contented arthropods over the slogan Continuity, Tradition, Happiness, and by the side was a box with a blue tick in it. "The White Party has never stood for anything I have disagreed with. Nor have they stood for anything I have ever really believed in at all passionately. But as always my vote will go to the Blue Party." He pointed a forelimb at the poster of contented citizens. "It is the Blue Party that most assuredly represents the Voice of Reason, and it is to them I have donated party funds and it is they who, God Willing! will triumph in the General Election and at last this nation will be steered gently and firmly to the betterment of industry, commerce and greater weal."

Anna smiled and made no comment. She addressed me. "So you know nothing about the Illicit Party at all."

I creased my forehead. "I'm afraid so."

"I'm no expert, but I've got friends who are jolly interested in it. Mostly because they oppose it. The name Illicit is a kind of contraction of Illiberal Socialist, I believe."

"Damnable socialists like the Red Party!" snorted Sir George. "How can any right-thinking individual support a party associated with socialism?"

"I don't know that they are any more socialist than the flipping National Socialists, but it's their name and I suppose it explains some of their appeal for the working classes. But the party is one which has grown very popular in a very short time. Five years ago, no one had even heard of the Illicit Party or Chairman Rupert. Now the party is one of the biggest in the country."

"The Damned bounder Rupert has lied his way to power and influence in a way that even Machiavelli would find dishonourable. In his own country, he has made his way from the leader of just one of countless fringe parties to becoming its dictator. The people there must be of the damned to endorse him."