empty oceans. It was an extraordinary, exhilarating time; we all knew that we were doing something genuinely good. And in this period I had a glorious sense of what it was to have the nationality Human. We were all bonded together, in a joint enterprise; and day by painful day, our world was saved.
But once the principles of ecostability were more fully understood, the pace of progress increased. Vast floating carbon traps cleared the air of man-made emissions. Plankton swarmed in the oceans. Cod replenished and filled the seas. Frozen helium chilled the poles, and the ice froze again. The equilibrium was restored; the Earth started to heal itself.
And, as the years went by, I felt ambition crept up on me. Once the crisis was over, most of my work became repetitive and clerical and mundane. I knew I had the experience to do more than I was doing – and I yearned to be the leader and not the led.
So I applied myself to that task, with all the focus of a heat-seeking missile. For the first time in my life, I made it my objective to climb the greasy pole. And I applied all my talent and knowledge to that single, soulless task.
I undermined my rivals with psychological gambits. I worked on my skills and my contacts and I ceaselessly, endlessly, flattered those who might be of use to me. I worked long hours, I flirted with my Portuguese boss and even had sex with him a few times. I became a socialite and a gossip. I was promoted from deputy manager to manager; I was transferred to a new project in France; and from there I became a member of the UN hierarchy, on a roaming global brief.
And within seven years, I became Deputy Vice President of the UN during a time of great political upheaval.
In my first year in this new job, I wrote a definitive paper on the new world order, in which I tried to analyse with scientific precision the problems facing mankind – and also the solutions. Energy, I concluded, was the answer to most of these problems. Others agreed. And a year later, a superconductive energy pump was invented which, when placed in close orbit, could convert heat from the sun’s rays into invisible beams of energy that provided near-limitless power to fuel our consumerist technological society.
Four years later, I resigned from the UN and became a British Member of Parliament. I had a constituency in Greenock, and I gave my maiden speech in the house on the subject of urban regeneration. I wrote a column for a newspaper, I campaigned on behalf of consumers and factory workers. I appeared on comic quiz shows and became a cult figure.
And after thirteen years of this relentless hard work, I became Leader of the Opposition.
Five years after that I became Prime Minister. I had my photograph on the staircase next to Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Matthews, Thomas, Jones, Durbridge, Smith, Andrews, and McQuist. I dined with the Queen, I opened factories, I traded insults at Question Time, I feuded with my Chancellor, I put a brave face on economic adversity, I pandered to Middle Britain, I gave approval for a vast underground motor and railway to join Glasgow, Cardiff and London. I did, well, really, all sorts of things. I have a list somewhere. I should be prouder, I suppose, though after this long distance of time, all I can remember is that most British MPs drink formidable quantities of Scotch whisky and pride themselves on being raconteurs, even when they aren’t.
And then, after four years in office, I shocked everyone by resigning in order to launch my campaign to be appointed Ambassador for Humanity. This was a new job created as a token sop to liberals who urged an end to nationalism and factionalism. But in my view, it was a post which offered wider horizons and greater challenges than being the cat’s-paw of the Liberal Democratic Socialist Alliance Party.
I got the job as Ambassador. And I felt like a hawk with a healed wing. After all the petty backbiting of British politics, finally it felt as if I had a proper job. I soared and pounced and soared some more. And after a while, I changed my job title to “President of Humanity”.
Once self-appointed in this way, I went on to run the Council for the Improvement of Humankind. And I became, through force of personality, and sheer weight of groundbreaking ideas, the de facto leader of the human race.
Talk about goal-oriented! All it takes is drive, stamina, shamelessness, a shit-caked tongue, and a modicum of ability.
As the first-ever President of Humanity, I had a new office built for me in Brussels, with 3D wallpaper that could be transformed at the clap of two hands into a map of the solar system. I explored the limits of my new expense account. I learned how to power-dress.
And I studied the art of how to rule the human race. I read every book I could think of – from Machiavelli to Plato. And I adapted the principles of political governance by referring it back to my People Matrix based on the emergence equations I’d created so many years before. Using those equations instead of blind instinct, I forged a new way forward. I devised a computer program that would allow me to map and extrapolate political changes before they happened. I was able, therefore, to foresee and prevent revolutions in France and Louisiana. I forged a pact between China and Japan. I defanged the neo-cons of America, already discredited after their failed policies of the early twenty-first century. And I created an elite corps of aides who acted on my behalf with all the ruthlessness of Tom and Tosh and Michiyo and the others in the old days of the World Police. I never killed my political enemies; I merely discredited, undermined and humiliated them.
Those were the days…!
And it was during this period that we launched the second wave of space colonists. I was forced to say goodbye to my beloved son, who had been (once again) accused of rape. I had to falsify his records to get him aboard, to expunge all evidence of his assorted crimes, but I did it with a clear conscience. He was less dangerous in space, I argued to myself, than back here on Earth.
And when he had left, I became acutely aware that my life’s work had to be finding a way to secure the future of those colonists who had risked so much for an uncertain step forward for mankind.
A few years later, the first wave of colonists achieved landfall, on Hope. The very first Quantum Beacon was built. And Heimdall started to come into being. I was ready for the challenges thrown at me. I was the right person, at the right time, in the right job.
I had a simple philosophy of power, which I called the Pournelle Doctrine, after one of my favourite writers. The doctrine is this: Problems have solutions. Mass starvation in Africa is caused by lack of resources, lack of water, corruption and war. So I helped turn the African nations into self-contained energy-generating commercial entities with fertile fields and vast underground industrial estates. Dictators were punished with loss of trading rights. Greed triumphed; and thus, wars started to vanish. Financial corruption was replaced by dependency on the joys and exhilaration of a twenty-third-century lifestyle.
I created a complex system of virtuous circles where non-malign behaviour was rewarded with greater health, wealth, and longer life. Poverty was eliminated by endless energy resources. The population explosion was – as Pournelle himself prophesied all those years ago – a self-solving problem, because as wealth increases, family size decreases. Even the issue of land was becoming less and less of an issue, as we sent colony ships of Palestinians and Eastern Europeans into the brave new lands of space.
I was, essentially, a passive-aggressive dictator. I controlled every aspect of the behaviour of everyone on Earth; but I presented the facade of being the follower of humanity’s dreams. Like an old-fashioned wife from days gone by, I made all the decisions, but let my sap of a husband believe that he was running things.
And yes, I admit I had my vanities. The name change was one. From Lena to Xabar. I dressed in tight-fitting shimmering plasto-leather suits, I cultivated an image as a woman with a dangerous past. I played a role really – I reinvented myself as an ancient warrior chieftainess in modern times. I was Boudicca, I was a cartoon heroine, I was Xabar. In a world dominated by grey and middle-aged politicians, I was the candle, and I was also the flame.
This was, of course, all calculated. I packaged my essence up into a series of connected myths and sold them all, all at the same time. I sold the myth of the obedient servant of humanity; and I sold the myth of the sexy dominatrix. I sold the myth of the ice maiden warrior princess who could kick male ass; and I sold the myth of the nurturing, gentle, mother/sister/lover. I was alpha, beta, gamma and omega, all rolled into one. I was left-wing, right-wing, conservative, liberal, sluttish, puritanical, dangerous, safe.
It was politics as prestidigitation, sizzle not steak. But there was a steak. There was substance to what I did. I wasn’t, as some argued, a bimbo apparatchik. I was a visionary. But a visionary in a sexy suit, with a weird name, and a knack of being whatever people wanted her to be.
Then, after about twenty years, the look changed. I became more severe, more forbidding. As my policies
