White Teeth

the enemy and all that). Joshua was sent away, while FATE had a two-day summit meeting along the lines of: But he’s the very thing we’re… Ah, but we could use.. .

It was a protracted process with votes and subclauses and objections and provisos, but in the end it couldn’t really come down to anything more sophisticated than: Whose side are you on? Joshua said yours, and Joely welcomed him with open arms, pressing his head to her exquisite bosom. He was paraded at meetings, given the role of secretary and was generally the jewel in their crown: the convert from the other side.

Since then and for six months, Joshua had indulged his growing contempt for his father, seen plenty of his great love and set about a long-term plan of insinuating himself between the famous couple (he needed somewhere to stay anyway; the Joneses’ hospitality was growing thin). He ingratiated himself with Crispin, deliberately ignoring Crispin’s suspicion of him. Joshua acted like his best mate, did all the shit jobs for him (photocopying, postering, leafleting), kipped on his floor, celebrated his seventh wedding anniversary and presented him with a hand-made guitar plectrum for his birthday; while all the time hating him intensely, coveting his wife as no man’s wife has ever been coveted before, and dreaming up plots for his downfall with a green-eyed jealousy that would make Iago blush.

All this had distracted Joshua from the fact that FATE were busy plotting his own father’s downfall. He had approved it in principle when Magid returned, when his rage was hottest and the idea itself seemed hazy – just some big talk to impress new members. Now the 31st was three weeks away, and Joshua had so far failed to question himself in any coherent way, in any Chalfenist fashion, regarding the consequences of what was about to happen. He wasn’t even clear precisely what was going to happen – there had been no final decision; and now as they argued it, the core members of FATE cross-legged and spaced out around the great hole in the floor, now as he should have been listening to these fundamental decisions, he had lost the thread of his attention down Joely’s t-shirt, down along the athletic dip and curve of her torso, down further to her tie-dyed pants, down-

‘Josh, mate, could you just read me the minutes for a couple of minutes ago, if you get my drift?’

‘Huh?’

Crispin sighed and tutted. Joely reached down from her table-top and kissed Crispin on the ear. Cunt.

‘The minutes, Josh. After the stuff Joely was saying about protest strategy. We’d moved on to the hard part. I want to hear what Paddy was saying a few minutes ago about Punishment versus Release.’

Joshua looked at his blank clipboard and placed it over his detumescent erection.

‘Umm… I guess I missed that.’

‘Er, well that was actually really fucking important, Josh. You’ve got to keep up. I mean, what’s the point of doing all this talking-’

Cunt, cunt, cunt.

‘He’s doing his best,’ Joely interceded, reaching down from her table-top once more, this time to ruffle Joshua’s Jewfro. ‘This is probably quite hard for Joshi, you know? I mean this is quite personal to him.’ She always called him Joshi like that. Joshi and Joely. Joely and Joshi.

Crispin frowned. ‘Well, you know, I’ve said many times if Joshua doesn’t want to be personally involved in this job, because of personal sympathies, if he wants out, then-’

‘I’m in,’ snapped Josh, barely restraining the aggression. ‘I’ve no intention of wimping out.’

‘That’s why Joshi’s our hero,’ said Joely, with an enormous, supportive smile. ‘Mark my words, he’ll be the last man standing.’

Ah, Joely!

‘All right, well, let’s get on. Try to keep minutes from now on, all right? OK. Paddy, can you just repeat what you were saying, so everyone can take it in, because I think what you said perfectly sums up the key decision we have to make now.’

Paddy’s head shot up and he fumbled through his notes. ‘Umm, well basically… basically, it’s a question of… of what our real aims are. If it’s to punish the perpetrators and educate the public… then, well, that involves one sort of approach – an attack directly on, umm, the person in question,’ said Paddy, flashing a nervous glance at Joshua. ‘But if our interest is the animal itself, as I think it should be, then it’s a question of an anti-campaign, and if that doesn’t succeed, then the forceful release of the animal.’

‘Right,’ said Crispin hesitantly, unsure where the Crispin-role-of-glory would fit into freeing one mouse. ‘But surely the mouse in this case is a symbol, i.e., this guy’s got a lot more of them in his lab – so we have to deal with the bigger picture. We need someone to bust in there-’

‘Well, basically… basically, I think that’s the mistake that OHNO make for example. Because, they take the animal itself as simply a symbol… and to me that’s absolutely the opposite of what FATE is about. If this were a man trapped in a little glass box for six years, he wouldn’t be a symbol, you know? And I don’t know about you, but there’s no difference between mice and men, you know, in my opinion.’

The gathered members of FATE murmured their assent, because this was the kind of sentiment to which they routinely murmured assent.

Crispin was miffed. ‘Right, well, obviously I didn’t mean that, Paddy. I just meant there is a bigger picture here, just like choosing between one man’s life and many men’s lives, right?’

‘Point of order!’ said Josh, putting his hand in the air for a chance to make Crispin look stupid. Crispin glared.

‘Yes, Joshi,’ said Joely sweetly. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s just there aren’t any more mice. I mean, yeah, there are lots of mice, but he hasn’t got any exactly like this one. It’s an incredibly expensive process. He couldn’t afford loads. Plus, the press goaded him that if the FutureMouse died while on display he could just secretly replace it with another – so he got cocky. He wants to prove that his calculations are correct in front of the world. He’s only going to do one and barcode it. There are no others.’

Joely beamed and reached down to massage Josh’s shoulders.

‘Right, yes, well, I guess that makes sense. So Paddy, I see what you’re saying – it is a question of whether we’re going to devote our attentions to Marcus Chalfen or to releasing the actual mouse from its captivity in front of the world’s press.’

‘Point of order!’

‘Yes, Josh, what?’

‘Well, Crispin, this isn’t like the other animals you bust out. It won’t make any difference. The damage is done. The mouse carries around its own torture in its genes. Like a time-bomb. If you release it, it’ll just die in terrible pain somewhere else.’

‘Point of order!’

‘Yes, Paddy, go on.’

‘Well, basically… would you not help a political prisoner to escape from jail just because he had a terminal disease?’

The multiple heads of FATE nodded vigorously.

‘Yes, Paddy, yes, that’s right. I think Joshua’s wrong there and I think Paddy has presented to us the choice we have to make. It’s one we’ve come up against many times before and we’ve made different choices in different circumstances. We have, in the past, as you know, gone for the perpetrators. Lists have been made and punishments dealt out. Now, I know in recent years we have been moving away from some of our previous tactics, but I think even Joely would agree this is really our biggest, most fundamental test of that. We are dealing with seriously disturbed individuals. Now, on the other side of things, we have also staged large-scale