Over the next couple of years occasional sorties into the city by residents to see for themselves what had become of the relaxed and carefree topical city they loved, proved their wisdom in having no part of a society in which queues of unemployed men grew longer, soup kitchens appeared on every second corner, ragged boys begged, and chain gangs of emaciated slaves with picks and shovels were whipped into repairing and building new commercial infrastructure.
With the demise of the two coalition partners, the Lord Cardinal, ensconced in his palace in Brisbane proclaimed a return to traditional Christian values, whatever that meant. Public executions and floggings continued, but for slightly different ‘crimes’ and on a much reduced scale. The reasons were political rather than humane. The Christian Kingdom needed to distance itself from their erstwhile collaborators to regain the support of the middle classes. Booming poverty and the enslavement of potential troublemakers had rendered severe public chastisement no longer popular; from now on it would be mainly an in-house affair. And so it came to pass that torture, flaying, castration, rape and similar methods of demonstrating god’s love and mercy, were now conducted before select audiences behind the secretive walls of army garrisons, Protector barracks, seminaries, religious schools and cloisters. However, anyone who thought the messengers of god were going soft on dissent, were disabused by notices displayed on the doors of all houses of worship, warning that opposing the will of god as interpreted by the Lord Cardinal would be punished by death.
Every school became the means by which the Christian Kingdom spread the word of god and not much else. Girls were again permitted to attend school, but in strictly segregated establishments.
The children of wealthy families supportive of the Lord Cardinal and his Cardinal-Dukes and Bishop-Barons, had access to single sex schools that taught all subjects to the highest standards, training the future scientists and innovators; the administrators apparently unaware that most new ideas come from those who've had to struggle a bit, not from fat cats who have no need to excel.
Under JECHIS, the forward-thinking, secular, pluralistic school that the children of Oasis attended, had been spared the fate of other educational establishments because many parents had influence. But that no longer was the case and all godless staff members were to be replaced by god-fearing evangelicals. Perses was furious that Alfred, his lover and physics teacher would be one of the banned teachers, so he objected forcefully and publicly. Despite a warning from the other Oasis students, he jumped onto the stage during assembly to denounce the new system. A cheer erupted, only to be stifled when a Protector leaped onto the stage and punched Perses with all his force three times in quick succession, head, kidneys and stomach. Perses swayed, eyes popping, dazed, then crumpled in a writhing heap. The entire school froze in shock as the Protector took one foot and dragged the limp body off the stage, the head banging audibly on the steps. Then without apparent effort he slung Perses over his shoulder, carried him downstairs, and locked him in one of a row of basement storerooms.
Watching in horror from the back of the hall, Alfred followed discreetly, noted which storeroom it was, and then taking great care not to be seen, made his way outside to the rear of the building where small, barred windows at ground level gave light to each basement room. Using the cover of a hydrangea hedge, he slithered on his belly to the window and peered in. Perses was sprawled, unconscious on the concrete floor, two metres below the windowsill. Boxes of textbooks lined one wall; the rest of the room was bare. He jiggled the bars. Steel as thick as his little finger, well embedded. A careful inspection revealed a thin wire checked into the centre bar and camouflaged with paint. The window was ajar so Alfred picked up a small stone and tossed it to land on Perses’ cheek. The youth stirred, groaned, opened an eye and whimpered.
‘Perses,’ Alfred whispered. ‘Perses. Can you move?’
Perses tried, and groaned again. Peered blindly up. ‘Alfred?’
‘Yes. Can you climb up to this window? I’m going for tools.’ Without waiting for an answer he slithered back, checked he was unseen, then walked briskly to the groundsman’s shed as if on an important errand. It was empty of humans but lined with well-organised tools. Thirty seconds later he was strolling uncomfortably back to the main building with bolt cutters stuffed down the front of his trousers. Back at the cellar window, he tapped on the glass. Perses looked up and smiled groggily. Alfred showed the bolt cutters and mouthed, ‘get ready’. While he was removing the five bars, leaving the central one till last, Perses was slowly and painfully dragging boxes under the window. When the fifth bar was pulled away security hooters sounded all over the school. Perses struggled manfully, but had to be dragged through the narrow gap, leaving a trail of blood where the end of the bars scraped his legs and arms.
Thinking it was a fire alarm or bomb scare, the school was emptying rapidly, students hurrying anxiously to prescribed areas to be counted by their teachers, which is probably why they didn’t take any notice of the hobbling student supported by his teacher. By cutting around the end of a building they bypassed the assembly areas and approached the car park from the playing fields. After a fifty-metre crawl to Alfred’s car, Perses curled up behind the driver’s seat, dragged a blanket over himself, and Alfred drove to the gate where a security guard stopped him.
‘Why aren't you checking your class?’
‘Because I’ve been fired,’ Alfred replied, ‘and there’s no chance of another job.’
‘Poor bugger,’ the guard shook his head in commiseration. ‘Off you go and good luck.’
But where could they go? Alfred’s address was known. Perses was registered as living in one of the fake houses nearby.
‘You'll have to come home with me.’
‘Your parents made it clear visitors weren't allowed.’
Perses groaned, tried to smile, then lifted his shirt to show a giant bruise. One eye was closed and a large contusion was growing on his forehead. ‘I think something’s really wrong with me…and with my back.’
‘Alfred panicked. ‘Oh fuck! Perses. Tell me where to go!’
Minutes later they had driven through the garage of the safety house and Alfred was opening the gate into the forest. He drove through, closed it at Perses’ insistence, then sounding his horn wildly, arrived in front of the theatre.
Perses had fainted. Penelope arrived, he was carried to the first aid room where she kept all her tools of the trade, checked him, became alarmed, did all she could for the head wound and broken rib, but the kick in the back was looking very serious. The skin was turning blue-black and swelling. His urine was more blood than piss. He was in agony. Morphine helped. Alfred, weeping silently, helped as much as possible, not daring to ask Penelope for a prognosis. After an hour Perses became calm. His breathing slowed, he gazed up at Alfred and managed a weak smile. Alfred leaned down and kissed him gently.
‘I love you,’ Perses whispered, then seemed to slowly shrink back into the mattress.
‘I love you too,’ Alfred whispered. But Perses didn’t hear. His heart had stopped beating.
Penelope turned to Alfred, wrapped her arms around him and they hugged desperately.
‘My son…my beautiful crazy son. I couldn’t save him! What use am I if I can’t save my son.’ She sobbed inconsolably and clung to Alfred in total misery.
Hercules and the five residents who had been with them, left the room quietly. Perses father, Aristo, arrived minutes later and knelt in wretched distress beside his son, as broken by the news as mother and lover.
Hercules and Hylas made tea and sandwiches and informed the residents as they returned. There would be a meeting that evening in the theatre for the residents to work through the tragedy. The savages would not be there, but whatever the residents decided, they would assist with.
After a dinner that no one could eat, everyone assembled in the theatre. Alfred sat with Perses’ parents and gave a detailed account of what had happened. The two pupils who had witnessed the atrocity, tearfully confirmed it.
‘There must be something we can do!’ someone said hopelessly.
‘Surely a Protector isn't allowed to kick a boy to death just because he opposed sacking all non religious teachers?’
‘Perses opposed it publicly. We all knew the punishment for opposing the fucking Lord Cardinal’s edicts was death.’
‘Yes…but not a beautiful young man.’ The speaker subsided into quiet tears of grief, unable to be consoled. Soon every person in the theatre was slumped in hopeless silence, contemplating the world they’d somehow allowed to come into being.
Everyone agreed it was now too dangerous for Oasis boys to go to school; they'd been brought up to be independent thinkers so it was too easy for them to make a fatal mistake, like Perses.
Aristo frowned in an attempt to stop his tears, and asked if Alfred would be permitted to remain in Oasis. ‘They’ll have looked at security videos by now and know Alfred rescued Perses, so he can’t go home.’
‘Of course he must stay! What are you thinking Aristo? Alfred, how can we help you?’
Alfred buried his head in his hands. ‘I loved Perses so much. So much. We were going to...’
‘You have us, Alfred,’ Aristo stated firmly. ‘Tonight and for as long as you like you can sleep in Perses’ bed, and live with us. There'll be plenty of time later to discuss your future.’
Ever practical, Penelope asked quietly what was to be done with the body. The question shocked everyone to silence. He really was dead. The first Oasis resident to die at the brutal hands of the new dictators.
‘The authorities can’t know he is dead,’ someone said thoughtfully. ‘And they don’t know Perses lived here. Alfred’s car has disappeared, so they’ll imagine they’ve gone south, or west, or north…’ he lapsed into silence.
‘Is there any benefit in keeping Perses above ground?’ The elderly man looked around nervously. ‘It might sound callous, but we don’t have cooling facilities, it’s going to be twenty-eight degrees tonight and in the high thirties tomorrow, we…’ He sat down, red faced.
‘Thanks, Alphonse,’ Penelope said softly. ‘You are right. Our son is dead. He is not going to come to life again. I would like to sit with him, Aristo and Alfred for a while, and then we must bury him. Will someone ask Zadig to choose a suitable place in the forest and prepare a grave?’
No one felt like doing anything when the three left them to sit with their son, so they remained on their cushions, fighting against the reality of the situation that had been forced upon them. Their little bubble of sanity was not inviolate. Flesh crawled as they understood, for what seemed the first time, what was happening all over Queensland, and no doubt the rest of Australia.
Empathy, not one of the things humans are good at, swelled in hearts unused to caring much about others. And involuntary sobs escaped the chests of most men when they pictured the horrors, the pain, shame and misery of thousands of innocent people whose lives had been destroyed by these messengers of a loving God. The women appeared to have more control over their feelings than the men, so after sitting a short time with everyone else, they stood and, as if embarrassed by their inadequacy, patted the heads and shoulders of their menfolk, and left them to grieve.
An hour later, Mort and Hercules, followed by mother, father and lover, carried the young corpse on a bier to a quiet part of the forest where the other six savages had used a mechanical digger to prepare a very deep pit that would not be disturbed by any normal activity. Perses was passed gently down to Hylas, who laid him out, naked as the day he was born, in the earth that had sustained him. Hercules pulled Hylas out and handed shovels to the three weeping mourners who covered the body in earth, pleased to be able to perform this last act of love. Zadig then completed the task and they strewed the grave with leaves, twigs and other natural debris until it became part of the forest floor again.
‘Perses is at one with the nature he loved,’ Aristo whispered taking the hands of his wife and Alfred.
No one spoke on the way back.
Meanwhile, in the Hercules room, Perses’ bed and furniture had been moved next to Aristo’s, by men who understood that the two mourning men needed each other. After fifteen minutes of sleepless tossing Alfred was drawn into Aristo’s bed, where they comforted each other. Morning found them deep asleep in each other’s arms, to the relief of their friends. Now both men would recover completely.