SWNOVELS Chapter Chapter Ten
Smithson sat crossed-legged like a Sultan, propped up with a fluff of pillows in the great four-poster bed; all he needed was a hookah and a turban. Mitzi lay beside him passions spent, Together they calmly evaluated the previous day’s meetings.
‘Well yes,’ said the pasha Smitty, ‘seems a good time was had by all, nice to meet up with old friends. Did your lot come up with anything interesting?’
‘And old enemies. Naaa, nothing.’ She pulled the sheet onto her head, sheik style, ‘Our best bet was the Arabs. What about your group?’
‘Likewise: Arabs… also the Chinese, and even the good old, bad old egotistical Germans; a Fourth Reich, but since they absorbed East Germany’s National Debt, they haven’t had two spare deutschmarks to rub together.’
‘Euro-deutschmarks.’
‘Whatever… could be that’s their gripe, old girl. Anyway, nothing credible–’
The faint sound of Wagner’s ‘Flight of the Valkyrie’ interrupted, growing louder. Mitzi leaned over him and picked up her neck chip from the bedside table. ‘Yep!’ she rasped into the black tablet. Manning’s face appeared.
‘Don’t say my name… don’t even speak, just listen. It’s not the Arabs. It’s a riddle – Don’t ask who? Ask who could? That’s it. I’m out of here. I’ve changed my mind. I’m going for my third lifetime. You’ll have to blow the whistle yourself––you do know how to whistle? Just put your lips together and blow.’ His smiling face dissolved away.
Mitzi sat bolt upright and shouted into the chip, ‘Manning… MANNING!’ But Manning was gone. She considered for a moment then turned to Smithson. ‘Hey, Smitty, something Sakamoto said, “conglomerate sabotage” – I think we’re being screwed with our own dicks!’ Smithson winced with distaste at her vulgarity and gave a chastising frown. She looked back at him in puzzlement. ‘What? What the fuck have I said now?’
He exhaled an exasperated breath, ‘Never mind. Do you think you could put it into acceptable language?’
She gave her viper stare and continued. ‘Maybe it’s not for power, and not for money or covet territory, religion, racial creed or world domination... nor even survival. So, what else is there?’
Smithson considered a moment. ‘Okay, I give in.’
’Ego! ‘Don’t ask who, ask who could?’ Ask who could jamb every computer program, who owns every goddam computer program? – “There is only one Highlander”.’
‘You don’t mean… You can’t mean…’
‘Come on, I want to make sure I’m not going crazy?’
‘All I can think of is Ron…’
‘… fucking Bates,’ she finished the sentence, ‘King Ronnie!’
‘You’re crazy. Ron Bates is an old man!’
‘Ron Bates isn’t a man. Ron Bates is the original demigod, and demigods don’t like being screwed up the ar… sorry,’ she gave an apologetic shrug and continued. ‘They tried it with him in 2000, and again in 2016 when they wanted to stop his vaccine program. Right from the horse’s mouth, as a Ron Bates spokesman stated, “Vaccines decrease population growth, and negatively impact fertility. The Bates Foundation will be only too willing to oblige future generations with free vaccines.” – He’d offered all that, and they still stopped him.’
‘Yes, but you can’t imagine that he’d do this?’
‘Look, Smitty, the Bates Organization committed billions of dollars to underwrite the most aggressive decade ever to roll out new vaccines to poor nations around the world. They took his money and then shafted him – this could be his revenge!’
‘That’s bordering on insanity!’
’Oh! … Only ‘bordering’? Thank God for that. And I bet I’m not the only one… Crazy people think alike. Hey, listen! I think I can hear Manning’s whistle blowing.’
Smithson gave an enduring stare. ‘You’re crazy… Bates is an old man, a recluse, virtually locked away in his castle!’
The Ron Bates’ mansion, a 66,000-square-foot castle, the foundations dating back to the Romans, was noted for its interior design and neuro-communication technology it incorporated. It was dubbed The Pleasure Dome in the worldwide media; after Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s delirious poem, Kubla Khan, and after the title character’s castle mansion, in the film Citizen Kane, which reflected the infamous newspaper mogul, Wilhelm Ehrhardt.
But now the ageing owner, Ronald Stalwart Bates––normally a jovial man––was slowly approaching fury. He sat wide-eyed at his enormous PC littered desk, staring past a group of shocked aids, to an assemblage of flack-jacketed weapons-drawn US troopers. He spoke a last furious word into his neck chip medallion, held with trembling fury in his hand. Then, on letting it fall back inside his shirt, he slowly refocused his eyes and beheld the bizarre scene for a few pregnant moments, before erupting into acrid verbal assault.