Chapter 2 : The Work Ethic

He decided to walk in to work. It wasn't much of a decision; it was that or go without something to eat at lunch. Besides the men-only buses were getting fewer and further between.

It was a grey morning. He hunched his shoulders up against the cut of the east wind as it sliced around the edge of the buildings. His coat was threadbare, he hadn't been able to afford a new one for a couple of years and it was the only one he had. There were a few other men, shuffling along as he was, this was one of the main commute-routes from the dormitories on the edge of town, even some of those with sponsors had to make the trip out from the centre, unless they were lucky enough to have a live-in job. Or unlucky enough, James thought.

A black and white police car slowed as he stopped at the road junction. There were always plenty of black and whites around. He'd see four or five of them most mornings. He watched the pedestrian crossing light change to green. He didn't want to give the police any excuse for stopping him. The last thing he needed was to be late. He crossed the road. The police car turned up the street alongside him and slowed to a walking pace. It kept alongside him for maybe a hundred yards or so before the officer driving wound down her window. James tried to keep looking straight ahead, pretending that the police car wasn't there.

"You off to work, boy?" James turned to see the woman looking at him through mirrored sun glasses. She was peering out from beneath the shiny peak of her uniform cap. She lounged back in her seat, one arm on the window sill, the other laying loosely on the steering wheel.

"Yes, Ma'am," James replied not breaking his stride. He knew if she had any real reason to stop him she would have done so by now.

"Got your locality permit, boy?"

She was going to stop him. It would be half an hour or more while she sat him in the back of the black and white and "ran checks"; until she'd finished or decided it was time for a coffee and doughnut somewhere. "Yes, Ma'am," he said as emphatically as he could, waiting for the next call to stop.

The call didn't come. The radio in the black and white crackled. He didn't hear what was said; just the officer replying, "I'm on it." - That and the roar of the car's engine as she sped away.

He breathed a sigh of relief. He had experienced plenty of this casual harassment and now it seemed to be getting worse.

Then he was out of the worst areas; he was in to the business district. The street started to get more crowded as others converged with him on their places of work. The cars weren't just the black and white's now, There were more of the two-seater sports cars that the girls favoured for their commute and a few of the comfortable women-only buses. The Venus symbol beside each passenger door made it plain who they were for; even if you didn't notice the smaller Mars symbol in a red circle with a red diagonal line through it.

The office block was up ahead; white marble frontage, broad steps, great glass doors. Of course that wasn't the way he went in. He turned down the side of the building into the alley that led to his entrance, a small chipped, wooden, door propped open by an old beer crate.

He passed the peeling election poster from eight years before. "New Order : New Opportunities," it said. Though of course it hadn't made it clear for who. The poster carried the New Order symbol, the Venus sign but inverted, the cross at the top. James remembered someone explaining it on the radio. The circle represented the womb, the productive power of women, they'd said; the inverted cross — the outstretched arms of inclusion; the nurturing nature of women. Now it was hard to see it as anything other than triumphal. It hadn't been long before the corresponding male symbol had appeared on graffiti. A Mars symbol but with the arrow pointing down like a flaccid penis. There was one here alongside the poster, in chipped white paint on the soot stained brick.

James punched his personnel number into the clock-in pad and scanned his ident card as he went inside. The corridor was gloomy, lit by only one naked bulb. At least the room beyond was warm and, by comparison, bright. Four of his colleagues were already there, enjoying a mug of tea before the day began. "Jim," one of them acknowledged as James came in.

"Norm," James responded with a nod, hanging his threadbare coat with the others.

"Zak won't be in," Norm said. "Picked up by a black and white last night — Pete saw it."

Pete, the balding, senior one of the team, grunted. "Detained for questioning, the word from upstairs is. They'll be after any of us without a sponsor. This latest dissident scare's just an excuse."

"I had a narrow escape this morning," James started, "down at the junction of..."

"You got time to chat Leonard; you can come chat with me." The words were almost snarled. It was Angie, the office supervisor, the one that gave them their work, that kept them scuttling around the building; cleaning up, delivering files, fixing things. She wasn't too hard on them most of the time; not like the girls on the fifth and sixth floors — you'd be lucky to get by them without a kick. Mind you she didn't have the figure and looks that they did, either. That was probably why she'd been sent down there to keep an eye on the men. James looked at her scowling at him. She had on a pale, shapeless sweater and a dark brown corduroy skirt that hung around her like a sack. She pushed a strand of greasy black hair back from her face. "That was, like, now," she said.

James followed Angie out of the room and along the corridor. She carried on up the back stairs to the second floor; out from the peeling paint and chipped plaster of the service areas and into the main part of the office with its bright lighting, potted plants and air conditioning.

He hated coming up to the main areas of the office. There were two types of women here, those that looked at him as if he'd crawled out from under a stone and those that delighted in prick teasing. Either way he had the discomfort of watching toned, tanned and well dressed women wandering by, while knowing that he wasn't of the least concern to them. New Order had delivered to women the independence, wealth and self confidence that enabled them to look good. The only problem was that there wasn't a man in the country that benefitted. But, James guessed, that hadn't been the idea.