In the old days, of course, murderers were often locked away in dungeons while hurricanes and earthquakes went free. And let there be no doubt that they took full advantage of their freedom. They rushed and shook, shattered and toppled whenever it suited them. They had no conscience.
The
first Natural Disaster we arrested was the volcano that erupted on the
outskirts of our City when the President was making his inaugural speech.
Without stopping to retrieve his hat and coat, he raced to the scene with many
attendants and ministers. He did not hesitate to show his concern on camera. The
ash had engulfed one of the richer suburbs, the President’s majority.
There
was a hung Parliament then, an economic crisis followed as share prices fell
sharply. The President took to drink and gambling. Women were a mystery to him.
His nose was too large. Before he had completely destroyed his liver, we
decided to take action.
The
trial was swift. Our Judges proclaimed the volcano guilty with due solemnity
and sentenced it to life imprisonment. They stood on the volcanic glass and
hammered off pieces as souvenirs. We solved the problem or removing the
remainder to a place of security by constructing the prison around it. We used
iron bricks. We threw away the key.
To
be perfectly honest, the idea was not entirely my own. I knew a poet once who
suggested it. She had long hair and a winsome smile. I loved her, but I could
never give her any credit, not even of the financial sort, and thus it was I,
Titian Grundy, Prefect of Police, who became the renowned and much-loved one.
There
followed a period of prosperity then, hope, luxury even. There was a Golden Age
of sorts. We expected a Platinum one to be just around the next corner.
The
blue Tsunami rolled in from the east, towering so (I gesture here with upraised
eyes) that we could not see the noontime sun. It bore an island with it, one of
the outlying Aracknids wrenched free from the Continental Shelf, palm-trees and
huts and village life all still intact upon the rich soil, although the latter
considerably disrupted, and it crashed down on our wharves with the force of
the Cosmic Serpent’s own heartbeat. Our crystal piers became shards, glistening
on the green waters of the harbour, a hazard to shipping for many years to
come. Very pretty they looked too, those shards, more pretty even than the
original structures, though that is missing the point.
We
had greater difficulties with this one. After all, the guilty party had melted
away into the greater ocean again. We had nothing to point the finger at any
more. But we were not foiled so easily. We employed mathematicians to calculate
the probable volume of water involved and we pumped this amount directly out of
the sea. We were not above punishing innocent liquid if necessary, yet we felt
sure that at least some of the molecules we had acquired had been responsible.
We
took longer over this trial. We stored the water in a large outdoor tank and
adjourned often, fishing or boating on the accused, thus forcing some Community
Service out of it while we waited for the verdict. Naturally, the Defence
Lawyer was outraged. He was also frustrated. We cut his wages, handpicked the
Jury ourselves and let them make the correct decision. We tortured our captive
with red-hot pokers.
During
these revolutionary changes in the legal system, I never failed to miss my
poet. I tried to behave like an ordinary man: I visited the President and
played croquet on his lawns. I married a beekeeper and asked my poet to become
my mistress. She turned me down, however, having had enough of such romantic
entanglements. She adopted a cat and took in lodgers instead.
You
know the way I feel about my work. I have had doubts, but they have been few. I
do not believe that I must justify my actions. I have posed nude, grown a fiery
beard and learnt to juggle. I envy the arty set, I suppose. I can no longer
walk into a student pub without being jeered at. I love my poet more than ever.
I have not yet forgotten her name.
I
write this report as a story for good reasons. Last summer, a particularly
vindictive tornado escaped from its reinforced bottle and wrecked my office.
All my papers were shredded. My filing-cabinets were peeled back and my
secretaries stamped through the floorboards. I was left without a single record
of my achievements. That is why I must circulate this one more carefully.
Perhaps it might even find its way into the pages of a fiction magazine.
These
tornadoes, incidentally, were my first real mistake. We collected them in
barrels at first, but these were easily burst. We tried jars before bottles.
Our bottles were made out of stainless steel. We had to wait until the tornado
began to die and shrink to the correct size before pouncing. This did not seem
to deter others: they saw how much damage they could do before they were apprehended.
They began to come in pairs.
The
mistake I made was as follows: I issued instructions to bottle tornadoes before
they had formed. We collected them before they had committed any crimes, and
forged the documentation. The scheme seemed to work quite well. The number of
arrests increased dramatically. I was awarded a bonus.
And
then one day, I received a telegram from the pressure group Amnesty
Interstellar. They had been making the rounds of the prisons. One of the
developing tornadoes I had arrested had turned out not to be a tornado at all,
but a dust-devil. I was disgraced. I had to resign and move into politics.
The
President and I became firm friends. We both complained about the World, about
life, about women mostly. I drank espresso and smoked fat cigars. The President
wrote pamphlets and picked his nose, which were both tasks that could take all
day. My captive tornadoes were released. An independent body was set up to
monitor Police procedures. My statue in the plaza was defaced.
I
am no longer handsome, but my poet is still beautiful. She now works as a
Careers Officer. There is a man who wants to marry her. He takes her to
restaurants in a solar-powered glider. I know: I have seen them. I will follow
them one day in my hot-air balloon. I have kidnapped her cat.
The
President keeps a typhoon in his cellar. A man I know at the prison smuggled it
out to us. In the evenings, the President, the cat and myself, creep down the
winding stairs and peep cautiously at it. We are careful not to open the door
too wide, in case it escapes. We feed it model towns which it devours with
great avidity.
The
World is going soft. We will soon return to the old days, when (as I said
before) murderers were often locked away in dungeons while hurricanes and
earthquakes went free. Sentences are being reduced everywhere.
I
hear that even the volcano on the outskirts of the City is due up for parole
next year.
