The God Game. Jeffrey Round
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understand,” spluttered a white-haired senior who had earlier declared himself a visitor from New York. “Why is the war considered an act of American aggression?”
The guide answered calmly. “Because the U.S. declared war on Canada.”
“But that was because the British burned Washington!” the man huffed.
“It’s true the British burned Washington, sir,” the guide said. “But that was in retaliation after the Americans burned our parliament buildings.” She smiled, gleeful at her small rebellion. In her mind, it was tit for tat. Aggression made easy.
“That’s not what I was taught in school!” the man protested, stupefied by this seditious refutation of sacred truths.
And that, Dan thought, is the nature of politics.
Mindful of the pitfalls of history, the guide shepherded her flock down the hall. Dan lingered to admire the portrait of the daring Secord, waiting till the guide’s voice passed out of hearing. Alone, he glanced over to the assembly chambers. The door was unguarded. He slipped into the gallery during a pause in the proceedings and took a seat.
Pillars reached up grandly, forming arches on all sides. From below they resembled oversized molars whose roots extended down to form a giant mouth. Which, in essence, was what the assembly was, Dan thought. A giant mouth that never stopped talking.
The gallery’s partitions had been decorated by a gifted carver. Bats, wolves, and foxes gambolled about, a sly nod to the true nature of the political animal. While unwary visitors expecting an air of decorum might have been surprised by the gruff voices emanating from the floor, Dan was well aware that political discussions were not infrequently conducted like hockey games, one of the nation’s favoured pastimes after drinking beer and complaining about the weather. Violence and vitriol were common, the participants treating each other like the bitterest of enemies until the need for compromise arose and something like détente occurred. It was as hypocritical and dishonourable an occupation as any to be found among human affairs, so who could resist?
Dan kept his eye on the House Speaker, the same one whose antecedents had been historically prone to execution. Forced to give up party interests, he came dressed for the part in a black-and-white harlequinesque veneer of neutrality. A fitting ensemble for the house dealer. Look at me, ladies and gentlemen of the assembly: nothing in my hands, nothing up my sleeves. Nothing but impartiality here! The symbolic mace was always at his side. No House business could occur without it. Perhaps the Americans had thought they’d successfully stalled the government for the hundred and twenty-two years it was absent. Fortunately, there was a spare.
The Speaker recognized Alec Henderson, minister of educational reforms, Peter Hansen’s boss. The minister waited for the room to settle before introducing his bill: the new proposed sex-education curriculum, a subject cutting right to the heart of the bigoted and intolerant. In its initial stages, with the potential for controversy spread across its pages, the bill’s contents were as likely to offend one group as another, while the minorities it was designed to protect — progressive folk, women, and that subversive LGBT crowd fomenting change and rocking the foundations of civilization in their pursuit of equality — had been cast as villains in the drama. Nothing new in the annals of politics.
Demurely attired, Henderson stepped up to give the galley a view of the Sensible Moderate Advocating Change. Am I not a reasonable man? he seemed to ask, clutching his vest at the arm pits, the very vision of normality despite the load of treason he carried in his folder.
He addressed the room in his real voice, his true voice, its inflections ringing with virtue and justice. Though perhaps it was just one of the many voices he was said to possess — who could tell? Meanwhile, he was still that same politician who never stopped ticking off the potential votes of everyone he met, like a real estate agent who can’t help evaluating the worth of every house he enters. Naturally, there was always the next election to consider. Sell your soul for a good price, but always include a buy-back clause. You can screw the voters today, but never forget they still need to love you tomorrow.
A basso-continuo murmuring could be heard from the galleries, where a sour and unpleasant lot had gathered to hear him speak, pushing their own interests in the guise of public concern.
“What if we don’t want this filth foisted on our children?” demanded a woman who looked as though she’d given up a round of afternoon cosmos to be there.
Henderson’s smile was gracious, expressing his sincerest sympathy and understanding. It should have been — he’d practised it enough. “No one will be forced to take this course. Your child can simply opt out of the scheduled period.”
“And then they’ll be picked on and bullied by the other kids for not taking it!” someone else shouted.
The Speaker clacked his gavel, eyeing the insurrection. “The minister of educational reforms has the floor,” he reminded them, though they were all well aware of the fact.
“Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” Henderson said, managing to sound as though he had never at any time transgressed those very same rules of conduct himself.
Dan was impressed as the minister stared his critics down. His shrug could have been an apology or a dismissal. “Although I understand your concerns, the fact is you can’t have it both ways. If you don’t want your child to take the course, it shouldn’t prevent someone else’s child from having the option to attend.”
Cries of assent came from his side of the scrum. While he had the room’s attention, he would ride the wave of public opinion. He was the man with the silver tongue and the populist views. A man of the people. That night, his party would parade him through the streets, held aloft on their shoulders. In another age, dissenters might have carried him straight to the gallows. Views that made you a reformer a century ago might have been those of today’s knee-jerk reactionary. Meanwhile the crowd railed, their voices pressing in from all quarters, replete with the echoes of history: Free the slaves? Unheard of! Women’s suffrage? Madness! Same-sex marriage? The end of civilization! What further lawlessness and insanity will be thrust upon us tomorrow by this reckless government?
“Yes,” Henderson assured a questioner, “the bill is intended to be fair and unbiased. It’s based on an in-depth survey of more than four thousand parents whose children are in the current school system.”
“And just who,” someone demanded, “were these four thousand parents and how were they chosen?”
Another shrug. “They were chosen at random with a lottery-style method of selection,” came the minister’s long-suffering reply.
It was a reply evincing fairness enough to satisfy the harshest critic. But the voices of dissent were everywhere. A funereal-looking man with a cravat spoke up. “My constituents expect me to stand up against this sort of immorality. I need to give them the representation they asked for with their vote. Why else do we elect officials but to speak in our name?”
Henderson turned to the robed harlequin. “Exactly my point, Mr. Speaker. The people have elected us to speak for them and that is precisely what we are doing!”
The crowd was in an uproar: This is against our religious teachings! … We don’t want these things discussed in our schools … Yeah, well, my taxes pay for your kid to go to school and I don’t want them learning hatred and prejudice … Then why don’t you start your own school? It was a textbook lesson on intolerance brought over lock, stock, and barrel from the Old Country. Never mind that they’d all been killing each other for centuries in the Old Country. If they had their way, that tradition would continue, too.
“I will have order in the House!” the Speaker cried at last, glaring out over the room even if deep down he didn’t give a damn if they tore each other’s eyes out, bored as he was with this farce of decorum and manners flouted by contrary schoolchildren.
Dan checked his watch. It was time for his meeting with an old friend.
Five