Alecto (4) Spencer, who had a photographic memory for hacker-speak, could always come up with a turn of phrase that no-one had ever heard before and even fewer understood in its full splendour. Dave liked that one. He half-laughed, half-scoffed into his beer. This was known in Enmarian, the vernacular of the locals, as scaffing, or if the situation was funny enough to have people bent double, scaffolding. “That’s better that last week’s, what was it?” ”Like trying to nail jelly to a tree,” said Spencer, “that’s what the Americans call jam, you know. Jelly.” ”Jelly today, jelly tomorrow,” said Ron. “”Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it, does it?” “You know, that phrase about nailing jelly to a tree, it was first uttered by President Theodore Roosevelt when he was trying to negotiate the Panama canal concession with the Colombian government? He got so frustrated by their dragging of feet that he launched the anti-Colombian insurgency that led to the creation of the state of Panama. And the rest is history. Or bunk, depending on where you sit.” ”Or sleep,” said Dave, “if we’re talking bunks.” Spencer glanced at his pint of beer, with a kind of far away look in his eye, suggesting that he wished it was really a bourbon. He wanted to pick up the glass, twirling it in the flickering light from the gas lamps, pretending not to notice in the mirror behind the bar that Black Jack Finnegan had just entered the saloon, burning for revenge. As the outlaw marched up to the bar brandishing his six shooter, Spencer the gunslinger would place his glass of bourbon on the bar without spilling a drop, and in one fluid movement, executed in what seemed to be slow motion, he would draw with his left hand and shoot Finnegan dead. After a few grumbles went round the room in hushed tones, everyone would go back to playing poker. But all this was quite impossible with a full pint of Bass, Spencer knew, for he had tried it once, with disastrous consequences. "What would you say," he said, turning to Dave with the beginnings of a smile on his lips, "if I can prove to you that somewhere in your pint, there is something that once went through Napoleon?" Dave looked at his pint, expecting to see an ancient bullet or even a cannonball lying at the bottom of the glass. Then he twigged and leaned over towards Spencer and said under his breath, out of earshot of Derek the landlord, "I'd say, that's what I've always said, the beer in this place is Nap's piss!" "You are much nearer the truth than you suspect," said Spencer. 31. Dave had learnt from bitter experience to be wary of Spencer's outlandish assertions. He had lost too much money in bets against what had seemed, at the time, to be outrageous statements, only to find that Spencer could actually prove them to be true. Prove, that is, on the basis of twisted reasoning ably supported by scientific smoke and mirrors backed by simple majority voting amongst the locals in the Enmari. Dave suspected gerrymandering on a scale that would make ice skating judges shrivel with shame. But he had never managed to assemble anything more than circumstantial evidence. Dave was reassured that on this occasion, Spencer had not prefaced his remarks with the deadly phrase, "how much would you bet me that...." "Go on then," said Dave. "Blow me away." Spencer felt his fingers twitch over his Smith and Wessons, but he thought better of it. "Right, are you ready? Concentrate, because this is going to be over before you know it." Dave nodded. "There are more molecules of water in your pint of beer than there are pints of water on Earth," said Spencer, beaming. Dave looked bewildered. "So? We all know Derek waters his beer, but what's that got to do with Napoleon?" If there was one thing he hated more than losing money to Spencer on a long shot that turned out to be point blank, it was not understanding why he was already dead in the water. "Don't you see?" said Spencer. "Chemically-speaking, your pint is ninety-nine per cent water. Agreed?" Dave said, "at the very least!" "Now water molecules are pretty stable. Apart from an occasional splitting into hydrogen and oxygen after the chance impact of a cosmic ray, the only thing that breaks down water molecules is the biological processes carried out by living things. But compared to the vast amount of water contained by all the oceans, these biological processes involve only a tiny fraction of the water on the planet at any one time. So the average water molecule has been a water molecule for several thousands of years. You see now?" "No," said Dave, his face a blank. "I'm still groping for the Eureka factor." "During his lifetime, Napoleon must have consumed many, many pints of liquid, mostly water," Spencer continued, "and on average you will find, for each pint of water Napoleon drank, one of the water molecules from each pint will be in your pint pot too. Its an iron law of probability and there’s no getting round it.” 32. Dave had a look on his face that could best be described as incredulous disgust. He could not really follow Spencer’s argument but he did feel that what had been a perfectly decent pint of beer only a few moments before, even though it may have been watered down by Derek, had now become tainted by its probabilistic brush with Napoleon’s waterworks. ”You do realise Dave,” said Ron, not looking up from his paper, “that what Spencer has so articulately described for Napoleon, applies to every other human being, living or dead, famous or not?” ”What? Aaaw no, ” screeched Dave, not realising that ‘screeched’ was the longest single syllable word in the English language, thought Spencer. “Give it a rest will you. Is there anyone that hasn’t been wringing his sock out in my pint?” ”Or her sock,” added Ron. ”And we shouldn’t forget the broader animal kingdom, either,” said Spencer. ”Just give me a packet of pork scratchings, Sylvie, will you, darling. At least then I know I don’t know what I’m eating,” said Dave. Ron now looked up from his paper. “It says here that American special forces, flown in from Samoa, parachuted onto the Antarctic ice cap not far from the south pole. They picked up two Australian explorers who had set out to cross Antarctica on foot from coast to coast and forcibly removed them from the vicinity of Lake Vostock. Curious, don’t you think.” ”Smells fishy to me,” said Spencer. “I expect it has something to do with oil. All American imperialism has something to do with oil.” ”You’re not far off,” said Ron. “An American State Department official,” he went on, “explained that the US military had intervened to secure the safety of the two explorers. There had been plans to allow a sterilised probe with a heated tip to melt its way through the last few metres of ice into the dome above Lake Vostock. It would then have fallen into the lake and relayed information back to the surface by radio. However, there had been some indication that the space above the lake might be filled with an explosive mixture of methane and air that could ignite at any instant.” 33. ”Methane and air! Oil more like. Everyone knows that Antarctica is rich in oil and minerals. Problem is it doesn’t belong to anyone,” said Spencer. ”The problem is that, thankfully, the environmental movement has been vigilant. We have been pressing for decades to have Antarctica declared a national park, protected from all industrial development.” The comment came from Earnest, a fresh-faced ecologist with a ruddy complexion and a Peruvian stripy pullover. He had walked up to the group at the bar and now ordered a pint of Guinness from Sylvie. ”How can you be pressing to make Antarctica a national park if it doesn’t belong to anyone?” said Dave, greeting Earnest with a handshake and his best inane smile. ”When I say national park, it would, of course, have to be a multinational park under the auspices of the United Nations,” said Earnest. Dave replied, “I thought you greens were against the multinationals.” ”Oh, we are. But we are not against the idea of multinational ideas,” said Earnest, earnestly, with the beginnings of a confused look on his face. Charles, for this was his real name, was not, as you have probably guessed already, really called Earnest. But all the regulars down at the Enmari called him Earnest because, as Ron had once said, ‘you really are earnest’. ”That reminds me,” said Spencer, turning to Earnest, “I wondered if you could substantiate a bit of news I was sent by email recently. A story about the urgent need they have in New Zealand to find a new kind of grass.” ”What’s wrong with the grass they’ve got already,” asked Dave, “it’s not green enough?” ”Well, apparently,” continued Spencer, “in New Zealand, the bulk of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions don’t come from cars or power stations but from animal flatulence. In order to meet its obligations under the Kyoto Treaty, the New Zealand government has to find ways of reducing the amount of methane coming out of the sphincters of millions of farm animals, thus the search for other strains of grass that create less methane when digested.”
Copyright © 2002 Nick Beck |