His thoughts of Chloe were half-pleasant and half-uneasy. The longer Grim thought about her, the less he liked the ideas that occurred to him. And he soon sank into absolutely genuine despondency.

  ‘What is in store for me with Chloe?’ – He typed in the question and pressed the ‘tell fortune’ button.

  Strangely enough, the manitou took a long time to think about it. Then a squirrel-skin stretched out on nails appeared on the screen, with the reply crookedly written on it.

  Thirty-Six. On Life with a Young Beauty.

  In truth, it is the very same as living under the same roof with a goat. And why so?

  A beautiful girl torments the heart while she is unattainable. Looking at her, one thinks that to merge with her in love is supreme happiness. For the sake of this, one accepts a compromise with destiny and one’s conscience, and there she is – yours. Rejoice, Ork … However, pleasure is fleeting by its very nature. On the first day you can experience it four times. On the second day – three times. On the third – once or twice. And on the fourth you will not desire it at all, and after that it will bore you for a week.

  And where is her beauty? It transpires that now she is a beauty only for the neighbours. And there is nothing to talk to her about, for she is stupid beyond measure. And do not hope that in a few days’ time you will desire her anew, as before. You will not manage this – there are no barriers now, and there is no time for temptation to grow. Henceforth to you she is merely a young animal who feeds and eats like all cattle.

  But it is with you that she lives! Every day she eats and passes stool, and spreads disorder all around so that it is impossible to forget her for a moment, no matter which way you look.

  But if you lose her, you will weep.

  Grim’s eyes skipped down nervously to the bottom of the squirrel skin.

  Yes, it was there.

  At an army divination, add: I will not make comparisons with a queerast, for I have never cohabited with one.

  CHAPTER 15

  When Alena-Libertina told me how much they were going to pay me for helping the young Orkish couple, I was pleasantly surprised. It looked like in CINEWS expenses the payments had been classified under ‘secret military activities’.

  But after only five minutes of conversation I realised what she was really paying for. She was very keen that no one in GULAG should learn about the circumstances of Bernard-Henri’s death. And especially that he died in his own house.

  I explained that I needed to know exactly what to keep quiet about and why – otherwise I could let something slip by accident. This argument convinced her, and she came clean about everything. I won’t say that I was shaken by what I heard – I had a hunch it was something of the kind. But afterwards life became just slightly more obnoxious.

  That pupo Trig was behind it.

  I promised a long time ago to say a few words about GULAG – and now I’ll have to do it, otherwise my story will be impossible to understand from here on.

  Everybody knows the role played in a free society by informal public associations. Especially in a free hedonistic society. In Big Byz, people of a non-traditional orientation are united in the movement known as GULAG.

  Ever letter here has a meaning: it’s an acronym from the Church English words ‘Gay’, ‘Lesbian’, ‘Animalist’ (in ancient times that was what they called people who fought for animal rights, but political correctness has its own caprices) and ‘Gloomy’ (that’s us, the pupos).

  All the other non-traditionals have been put in under the letter ‘U’, which signifies ‘Unspecified’, ‘Unclassified’ or ‘Undesignated’ – whichever you prefer. These are the so-called ‘coverts’ (not to be confused with the Orkish police meaning – I realise that I could confuse the reader completely, but the fact that the Orks sometimes call their ‘coverts’, particularly Ganjaberserks in plain clothes, fags, has nothing to do with the matter). Hiding away under the letter ‘U’ are all sorts of coprophages and fetishists who don’t dare to come all the way out of their poo-smeared closets even in these supremely liberal of times. That’s why a special undeclared status was invented for them; it allows them to participate in the group’s creative community work without publicising their little eccentricities.

  The somewhat illogical sequence of letters in the word ‘GULAG’ does not signify in any way that we think the coverts are more important than the pupos. The point here is that this beautiful, sonorous word wasn’t invented by us. We merely borrowed it from an ancient civilisation that once existed in the same part of Siberia where our offglobe is suspended.

  All that is left of the GULAG culture now are the traces of ancient settlements – the camps of the so-called ‘Barbed-Wire Age’, which can only be made out from the air. I have seen them many times myself. They are simply stripes and rectangular patches: only an archaeologist can explain where the barracks huts were, where the towers were, and where the posts with the barbed wire were.

  In reality, we know practically nothing about the tribes that lived here before Siberia was overwhelmed by waves of migration. But the cult of extinct indigenous peoples is a standard fashion in post-technological societies.

  We trace our genealogy back to them in an attempt, as it were, to subconsciously convince ourselves that the right of primogeniture belongs to us and not the Orks.

  In our society, GULAG is the most important force after the cinemafia. Or perhaps even the most important. That’s what many people think these days – especially those who have seen our latest memoclip. The one featuring a blood-stained note hanging on rainbow-coloured barbed wire:

  Don’t FUCK

  With GULAG!

  No one dares to – no one’s that stupid. Although, if you think about it, it’s a completely illogical message. What else do we fancy should be done to us, loathsome as we are? Except perhaps drown all our exuberant diversity in the dark hollow of the letter ‘U’. But I, for instance, don’t want to go there.

  The sexual minorities won their struggle for equality long ago – and let’s be frank, they won it by an absolute landslide. The paradox, however, is that the various sexual minorities are still not entirely equal among themselves – and that, as the discoursemongers explain, is something that should concern every decent individual today. Only for some reason it doesn’t bother me, and I don’t go to gloomy pride meetings either.

  It’s not really clear to me at all what those words mean nowadays – ‘minority’, ‘majority’. As the late Bernard-Henri wrote in Dead Leaves, if there are ten sheep and two wolves in an Orkish barn, where’s the majority and where’s the minority? And what do you do with forty convicts and three machine-gunners?

  What Bernard-Henri meant was that all this fuss about minorities is in fact an attempt to raise protective camouflage around the only minority that truly matters – the power elite. But then, he was smart enough to write this in Old French only – and in a book that no living soul would ever care to read. I only remember his words because every now and then he would quote his oeuvre to me during our long raids. Especially when he was high on M-vitamins.

  But this is a slippery and politically charged subject and a pilot would be wise not to meddle in it.

  The inequality stems from the fact that every sexual minority has its own problems. The animalist straights probably have the hardest time of it – this is a sport for the very rich, since the taxes mean that only some lucky devil from the very pinnacle of the social pyramid can afford to keep a live camel or sheep on Big Byz. For those rather less well-off, there are rubber sheep and even sheep suras – but those consumers are already classed in the gloomy category, although, just between you and me, I find that rather amusing. As for the stubborn but poor zoological straights, there are several brothels in the Green Zone – they’re called ‘stalls’. That’s where they also make the organic milk and cheese for the Human Touch brand, but I’ve never managed to bring myself to try their products.

  It’s interesting, by the way, that, unlike the fluffy animals, Orkish sex workers aren’t allowed beyond the Yellow Zone – Bernard-Henri always had to adopt his bimbos in order to pass the time with them in the Green Zone. This, of course, is not the result of national or racist prejudice, we don’t have either of those, it’s because in the Green Zone the Orkish youngsters come under our law on the age of consent. And it’s not always easy to follow the rule ‘don’t look – don’t see’ there, because there are so many security cameras.

  By the way, once, a long time ago, there used to be another orientation – transgender. But then the doctors learned how to change a person’s sex using cerebral induction, growing the necessary organs and glands in a natural manner, and the caste of surgical transsexuals disappeared. Modern trannies are ordinary men and women, and in most cases they’re as straight as a rail. Some don’t even remember that they used to belong to the other sex – nowadays you can have your memory updated too, as long as you have the manitou. So the trannies aren’t in GULAG.

  In olden times there was one more closely related term – ‘bisexual’ – but today it can only be applied to the ultimate divine androgyne, Manitou the Singular. Otherwise, it’s a sacrilege. We can crack all kinds of jokes on the subject of the idiocy of political correctness, of course, but it is highly advisable to follow its prescriptions as close as you can. I’m sure you already know this.

  As for the gays and lesbians, these days they have absolutely no need to fight for their rights – either here or down below among the Orks, despite their culture’s ostensible homophobia. In fact, every battle pilot knows that cunning Orks who don’t want to fight fair often pretend to be engaging in single-sex love on the front line (while they’re at it, they even write in big letters in the soil: ‘Thank you, Big Byz!’). With their animal instincts, they realise that none of our people will want to photograph, on temple celluloid, a grateful sexual minority being shot up. But they also have real gays and lesbos too, and as for animalists, you can bet your life on it – every second man in any village is one.

  But what the Orks don’t have is gloomies. I think it’s not hard to explain why. They don’t have any love dolls, since the necessary technology doesn’t exist. Even the Kagan can only treat himself to an average quality rubber dummy – and not because he’s short of funds, but because nobody will officially sell him a sura of Kaya’s class. And anyway, everyone knows that the Urkagan doesn’t need a sura in order to satisfy the promptings of his heart, but to wheedle himself into GULAG’s good books and lend his dictocracy a veneer of civilisation.

  That’s why it used to be impossible to fight for the rights of Orkish gloomies. Although any fool can see what a rich subject this is: the viewers got bored with wars for the rights of Orkish gays and lesbians two hundred years ago, and even the animalists have been done and done and done to death; little lambs hacked to pieces by Ganjaberserks (white and red on a green hillside – that’s where I got my own start) don’t touch the viewer’s heart any more. But gloomy Orks – there’s never been anything like that before.

  And so when the pupo Trig appeared online, it was a real sensation. The Orks don’t have video blogs, so Trig shared his problems exclusively in written form. And soon his cheerful chirping from the land underneath became so popular that he became one of GULAG’s leading icons. Voices were even raised to suggest in all seriousness that his bust should be set up in the GULAG Avenue of Glory – between Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Elton John.

  I realised immediately that there was a serious dark side to this whole business. Firstly, even a text blog can only be run on our net by an Ork with access to the Yellow Zone, where the A-list orktivists and other creative intellectuals live. And the regime doesn’t particularly oppress them, because it’s mostly them that the regime is made up of – Bernard-Henri hit the nail right on the head there (I’ll quote him a little bit later). Secondly – and far more importantly – this Trig was too much in phase with the agenda of our media, for all his blog entries concerned either the joys of deviant sex, or the atrocities of tyranny, or the joys of deviant sex under the oppressive yoke of tyranny and in defiance of it. I’m a military pilot after all, and very familiar with tactical matters, so it was clear to me that if Trig didn’t exist, he would have had to be invented.

  But many people believed in him.

  And they believed in him so much that they started inquiring into the details of his love life – after all, it’s interesting to know how it all happens for progressive Orks at those moments when they’re not busy with social protest. And Trig held nothing back.

  It turned out that the object which served him as a simulacrum of the female body was a sack of potatoes, to which he had attached the head of an alabaster girl (to avoid being taken for a vandal, he made special mention of the fact that he didn’t smash the head off a statue, but picked it up in a park after a bombing raid). According to his own words, for the intimate opening Trig used a can of stewed pork, after making a hole in the lid with his serrated Orkish sabre.

  I didn’t believe this either – firstly because of the technical and anatomical inconsistencies that are obvious to any gloomo, and secondly, because an Ork who is loyal to us can quite easily hire an animated-type rubber bimbo with a standard battery in the Yellow Zone. Of course, he wouldn’t be able to take her home with him – because of the secret technology, they’re anchored to the bed with handcuffs – but a couple of hours in a gloomy brothel would still be better than what Trig was describing.

  They asked if it wasn’t boring to make love to a sack of potatoes, but he answered that just before every time he took a pack of the Orkish tablets – Dumedrol – and then for two hours his Tanya seemed to be talking to him. After that many hotheads decided that Trig really was one of us.

  As soon as this information got out and about, some GULAG enthusiasts decided to repeat the freedom-loving Ork’s heroic feat out of a sense of solidarity, and at one time it was possible to buy what they called a full ‘Trig Set’ in the gloomy shops – a can of Orkish meat, a sack of potatoes, an alabaster head and a couple of packs of Dumedrol.

  Trig hadn’t explained exactly how to make the hole in the can. So people started getting injured. And Orkish canned goods are poisonous and insanitary. In addition, those tablets impaired spatial orientation and the ability to assess a situation adequately. As a result several people died of blood poisoning and a number lost their procreative organ. Afterwards the poor wretches had to grow new ones from stem cells – and that’s no cheap treat. Anyway, everyone forgot about political correctness and gloomy solidarity, and GULAG had to open its own inquiry.

  Of course, for us, finding an Ork is a piece of cake. They traced his manitou in the Yellow Zone. It turned out that this guy had remote access to the net directly from Slava, which is a genuine rarity. So the lads from GULAG got his address.

  You’ve probably already guessed that it was the same house, overgrown with bushes, where Bernard-Henri had woven his little nest in Slava.

  Trig didn’t really exist.

  This project was handled in person by Bernard-Henri, but it was overseen by Alena-Libertina. They could have carried on puffing hot air into Trig through the media straw, if only the late Bernard-Henri hadn’t been so overconfident. If he had just taken the trouble to check certain physiological details of our way of life with me, he would never have found himself in such an ignominious situation.

  No one in GULAG knew about Bernard-Henri yet, but they already suspected that Trig was a CINEWS project. That’s why they didn’t bother to inform the structures that deal with security matters – everyone knows that these days they’re just offshoots of the cinemafia.

  GULAG is the kind of force that can easily afford to run its own foreign policy (and sometimes even appoints Kagans, as it did, according to the rumours, in the case of Torn Durex). People from GULAG contacted the new Kagan in secret, gave him an address and demanded that he clarify who this Trig was. I saw the rest with my own eyes. And even played a certain part in events.

  Alena-Libertina was obliged to purge ‘Trig’ and shuffle the blame off onto the Orks – so that she could bring it up just before the next war. The house was annihilated, along with all the clues. According to the official story, the first Orkish pupo had been traced and blown up by the Orkish secret services, who killed Bernard-Henri in the process – when he tried to act as the pupo’s living shield.

  The GULAG information service sent CINEWS an inquiry about what the battle camera, which many people had seen at the site of the discoursemonger’s death, was doing there. CINEWS replied that the camera had been sent to protect Bernard-Henri, but it was too late, since someone had leaked the address to the Orkish Department of Public Security and Order. A subsequent press release stated that in supporting progressive Orkish elements, GULAG ought to co-ordinate rigorously with CINEWS, and then many tragic occurrences could be avoided. The smoking ruins of the house were shown in the news, and then a GULAG trailer dumped half a tonne of roses on it, and a chapter of history that reeked of canned pork could be regarded as closed.

  In a word, they managed to wriggle out of it. But there could have been a scandal in which many heads rolled, and Alena-Libertina would have been the first to catch it in the neck. For certain sure – a serious political crisis would have erupted.

  Don’t fuck with GULAG!

  Of course, this whole business filled me with horror and reminded me yet again what a cynical word we live in. I have always been opposed to the politicisation of sexual minorities. It only distracts attention from the real problems that gloomy people face. And we certainly do have problems, and very serious ones – but of a kind that society is not yet ready to discuss. For instance, no one knows about dopamine resonance.

  I think that now you will understand how I felt when it turned out that the young Orkish couple’s next outing would be timed to coincide with the opening of …