its worst will? One day the electorate chooses a government to exterminate the Jews: the next day decides on one to take it down the Marxist-Leninist road: the next that all it wants is dishwashers and CD players. Who wants the people’s will to prevail? Not the people. They’ve too much sense. Democracy is a dicey business: it must be seen to work, but not actually to apply, or else we’re all in the soup.
Q: The readers of Aura might find that rather hypocritical. Dangerously so.
A: Better a government that pays lip service to democracy than one which doesn’t even do that. Political parties have somehow got it into their heads that voters want to agree with them, so put up policies with which voters will agree. But voters merely want to elect representatives who have the time and wit to run the country so they can get on with their lives in peace. ‘Democracy’, rule by the people, did not always have the good press it enjoys today. It was seen as something to be avoided at all costs. It was the demagogues of Ancient Rome who first made proper government impossible. Citizens, whipped up into a fervour of indignation, simply stopped doing as they were told: started bringing horses noisily in by night for deliveries, not washing the sidewalks and so forth, just for the hell of it. Just to show they could. How the senators, the patricians, fumed!
Pure democracy has never worked: it works in a moderated form where there is a literacy qualification, or a property-owning qualification—which usually amounts to the same thing—and the voter is capable of making an informed judgement. But life has got too complicated to understand: the vote is no longer sufficient protection for the working man. In Darcy’s Utopia there will be elections, but people will be expected merely to vote for people they personally like. It will be a popularity contest. An annual ‘boy or girl most likely to run the country’ jamboree. And annual; by the time they’ve got themselves together it will be practically time for them to disperse. The civil service, again composed of volunteers on Community Tax Service, will spend time un-making regulations and shortening forms. Most legal documents will merely state, ‘common sense will prevail’.
Q: So all the work in Darcy’s Utopia will, as it were, be a tax paid to the community. An ability tax, not an income tax?
A: Exactly. Good for you! Though workaholics will be free to work as long as they please, if they can find something to do machines can’t. You’re a workaholic; you’ll have a brilliant time.
Q: Thank you. Now a question our readers always want to ask. Is it possible to love two men at once?
A: Why do you ask? Is it you who are interested, or your readers? Shall we go inside? The wasps are beginning to annoy me, and I see they quite frighten you. And it’s such a busy day for trains. All those people, off to work, off shopping, off somewhere. Do you think we have a group soul? A group identity, the way they say black beetles do? You seem quite tired and nervy; not at all the way you were last time: very trim and self-contained. I hope nothing bad has happened? As I said before—was it to Hugo, or to you, Mrs Jones?—curses have a peculiar knock-on effect. I was never the focus of an actual focused ill-wishing, merely a bit part player in Bernard’s drama, but look what happened to me!
They were inside, in the kitchen. Brenda washed up mugs at the sink. Eleanor Darcy made coffee, using a frugal quantity of powder and low-fat milk, too late for Valerie to murmur that she took hers black. She took the opportunity to check the tape was running. It was not. She would have to rely upon her notes.
Q: How could you tell if a misfortune was the result of a curse, or just ordinary bad luck? A simple matter of cause and effect?
A: Ah. Your wife leaves you, you lose your job, your friends quarrel with you. In themselves these are not misfortunes. It is in your reaction to them that misfortune lies. You are humiliated by your wife leaving you. You hate being on social benefits. You are lonely without your friends. Indeed, the expectation of such misfortunes quickly brings them about. You may indeed deserve to lose your wife, your job, your friends—naturally it is easier to accept