Garth Dutton

A cold wind from due south blew in off the Southern Ocean. Smyth felt the autumn and
approaching winter in the wind. Mentally, he thanked the ocean for keeping the ice away
from Australia’s shores.
He looked at the sea. Day by day, month by month, year by year, little by little,
the tide is going out, he thought to himself. In perhaps a thousand years it would be far
from here, right out at the edge of the continental shelf. It had happened many times
before. Now it was happening again.
Smyth considered the tragedy of the Pendulum Effect. Faced with an almost
exhausted supply of oil, the world had got its act together, and taken the action necessary
to stop the enhanced Greenhouse Effect. Temperatures had been rising faster than
expected, but once the action was taken, fell at a similar rate. Only the fall didn’t stop at
the benchmark level of normal. It was now expected that they would ‘bottom out’ as far
below normal as the Greenhouse Effect had taken them above. The Northern Hemisphere
didn’t have that margin of safety, and an Ice Age was clearly setting in. The cruelty of
fate had been a cultural wipe-out for many people. Bizarre religions began to appear.
The former Fascist regime had heavily censored the Internet, and the democratic
government that replaced it had not lifted the controls one iota. Authoritarian rulers all
over the world sought to rigidly control the flow of public information. The ‘Golden Age
of the Internet’ now seemed but a dream. The ‘Daily Informer’ did not believe in
publishing bad news. That might cause even more deterioration in people’s morale. The
‘Information Channel‘, the only official television news, had a similar attitude. Successes
against the onset of the new Ice Age were newsworthy. Failures and disasters were totally
censored. A brave battle was being fought, that’s all the news said. But people knew in
their hearts that, imperceptibly, the tide crept further and further out, as ice stayed on
northern lands.
Smyth envisaged the huge storms and great snowfalls of winter in the Northern
Hemisphere; the bitterly cold late spring; the sun of summer hidden behind great banks of
clouds, as the still-warm sea poured moisture into the atmosphere at an almost unchanged
rate… Over land, he saw showers of freezing rain, even in summer.
With effort he switched off the vision, picked up a handful of sand, and walked to
the water’s edge. He let it fall onto the wet sand. The next wave swept it away. A sort of
homage to the Southern Ocean for keeping the ice away from these shores.
Smyth suddenly felt chilled to the bone, and wondered why he’d come to this
nearly empty seaside resort after the end of the summer tourist season. The loneliness of
living in a one bedroom flat by himself, and the social isolation in which he lived, came
back to him. Besides, he hadn’t been to Victor Harbor in years. He had intended to cross
the causeway and go for a walk around Granite Island, but even here in the lee the wind
was freezing. He left that walk for another day.
He decided he needed a drink, so walked through the Norfolk Island pines, then
across the park to one of the resort town’s hotels. Four people sat at tables eating counter
lunches. He felt like a drink first, so sat alone at the bar and ordered a light beer from the
bald overweight barman. Lost in thought, he was sipping it when a soft feminine voice
said, “Hi! Down here for the day, or making a long weekend of it?”
He looked around at a woman in her mid-twenties who had sat on the bar stool
next to him. He thought her quite pretty. She had a friendly relaxed air about her, and
dark hair hung down to her shoulder blades. She wore a form-fitting blouse and
pleasantly patterned skirt.
“Felt like getting out of Adelaide for a few days,” he replied, and sipped his beer.
“Hadn’t been here in years. Just came on the spur of the moment.”
“A bit late in the season,” she said. “The town’s going back to sleep after the
summer. Except of course when whales are in the bay. Then sightseers come here in
droves.”
She undid the pocket on her blouse, took out a card and handed it to him. It was
her identity card. His heart sank when he read her occupation, ‘Sex worker – Self
employed’. Her name was Pauline Jones. It was obvious to him that she was the resident
prostitute in the hotel. He wondered what on earth she did in winter, for she was facing
an off-season almost without customers. “Interested?” she asked.
“Perhaps,” he replied, then smiled. “The question is, are you interested?” He
produced his own identity card and handed it to her. She scanned the card.  Her eyes
stopped when they reached his occupation. It read ‘Special Pensioner’.
“Oh…” she said softly. His name was Roland John Smyth.
“A casualty of the fall of Fascism,” Smyth said bitterly, and drank some more
beer. “Would even you want anything to do with a former member of the former State
Security Police? No-one in their right mind would employ us. That’s why the ‘special
pension’ was created. We’re still ‘marked’ by being on it…”
She frowned at him, and said, “I don’t like the ‘even you’, thank you very
much… I work in what is now a quite legal and legitimate occupation.”
“I’m sorry,” he replied. “Would you like a drink? I’m Smyth, by the way.”
She considered… “Yes. A brandy and lime with a touch of ice would be nice.” He
ordered another beer for himself at the same time. After the drinks were served, she said,
“To call you Smyth makes it sound like you still are a member of the Security Police.
Would you mind if I called you Roland instead?”
He shrugged. “I suppose you can if you really want to,” he replied. “I’ve been
walking on the beach for a while. Nice day, but the wind was freezing. Thankfully, the
ocean out there is wide enough to keep the ice well away from South Australia.”
“You’re not a member of the ‘Church of the Natural Balance’, are you?” asked
Pauline, and frowned.
Smyth shook his head. “That mob who believe in there being an element ‘Cold‘,
as well as an element ‘Heat’, and that there is a constant struggle between them, like
between good and evil in ordinary religion. No! Not me… No way!”
“Just wondered,” Pauline said. “They’ve set up a church in this town recently.
One of them was in here last week handing out literature. How did it go? Everything was
in ‘natural balance’ till somehow humanity did something wrong. Could even have been
something quite trivial. The ‘natural balance’ was upset and Heat gained the upper hand
for a while. Then Heat began to falter and Cold struck back, so now we are falling into an
Ice Age. They say all we have to do is find the right action, or ritual, and both Heat and
Cold will go back to their corners. The Ice Age will simply go away.”
“You’re joking!” he said, incredulous.
“No,” she replied. “Though I added the scenario of the boxing ring. That’s how I
remember the pamphlet. It was a really glossy and expensive one.” She sipped her drink,
then continued. “The problem, as I see it with the Church of the Natural Balance, isn’t so
much what they are saying, as some of the people in it. I’ve heard that some are fanatics
who believe that every minute action people take has immense environmental
repercussions.”
“The ‘Butterfly Wing Syndrome’ from computers,” suggested Smyth. “I heard
that the religion was started by a rich computer freak.”
“A later rumour says it was actually started by an intelligent computer he owns,”
she replied. “On computer environmental models, even now, a butterfly flaps its wings
somewhere and cyclones change course. Followers take the computer models for real,
apparently.”
A thought came to him, and for some reason he voiced it. “To me, an Adolf Hitler
type problem, by the look of it. They are still at the ‘Where did we go wrong?’ stage.”
“Ah, yes,” she added, after another sip of her drink. “Hitler is unexpectedly in
jail instead of being in power in 1922, so starts to write ‘Mein Kampf’. But in writing
the book, he worked his way through to a different question… Who can I blame?”
“Exactly!” Smyth said. “Who will they blame, I wonder.” He looked at
Pauline. Yes, he thought, good conversationalist, not flashily dressed. Definitely the type
who preys on sad lonely men who don’t have a current sexual relationship, and have lost
both the hope and the motivation to go out and get one. He forced the thought out of his
mind. He didn’t want to see himself like that. Too much reality…
She looked lost in thought, then said. “Are they rich, though. There seems to be
heaps of money in religion these days. Always is in difficult times like the present.
Perhaps we should start a religion ourselves. For environmentalist religions it’s almost
still the ‘ground floor’. If ‘Natural Balance’ can do it, so can we.”
Smyth took a sip of his beer, then considered for a moment or two. A sudden
feeling of despair gripped him. He could envisage spending the whole weekend with
Pauline and spending on her all the money he had brought with him. He wondered why
he had even wanted to come here at all. He had no real plans of what to do when he got
here… He fought his way back to the topic.
“A new religion,” he said, and thought up almost a send-up of a religion. He
laughed, then said. “Here’s one… How about a Mother Earth type religion? Fossil fuels
were laid in stock by her for just such a crisis as the present. If it hadn’t been for us
burning fossil fuels, the Ice Age would already be much worse than it is. We have been
acting as a sort of agents for Mother Earth, but up to date haven’t realized we were doing
so. That’s why we overdid it with the enhanced Greenhouse Effect. The purpose of fossil
fuels might be to keep Ice Ages at bay by adjusting the carbon dioxide levels in the
atmosphere.”
Pauline didn’t laugh. She looked at him. It was one of the most penetrating
glances he had ever received. She turned back to her drink. “Let’s see,” she said.
“Women could relate to a Feminine Earth Spirit as solidarity with something feminine.
Men could relate as a man loves a woman.”
Smyth was horrified. “You’ve got to be joking!” he said, with a sinking feeling in
his stomach. “I wasn’t serious.”
She kissed him on the cheek, and put her hand on his. “I believe in windows of
opportunity,” she said. “A chance comes, you take it… Come with me, Roland, I
have to make a couple of phone calls.” She led him over to the red payphone at
the end of the room. She rummaged through the phone book, found a number and rang it.
“Hello! Registration of Businesses. My partner and I would like to register a new
religion, to be called ‘The Church of the Feminine Earth Spirit’. There’s an official
form…Good! We’re in the country, so could you send it to us by post.” She gave their
names and the hotel’s address.
Smyth tried to turn and walk away. She grasped his arm gently and said softly.
“Do you want to be on a ‘special pension’ forever? I don’t want to be a sex worker
forever. You’ve got nothing whatever to lose!” She really put emphasis on this last
sentence.
He realized he really hadn’t got anything to lose, so let her ring the second
number. It was the ‘Weekly Tabloid’, South Australia’s only other newspaper. He felt in
free fall. “Please…”he begged. “I wasn’t serious…”
“Doesn’t matter!” she replied. “I am!”
After she finished the call, she took his hand in hers, and they went back to their
nearly-finished drinks.
“I don’t believe what’s happening!” Smyth said. He had no further interest in
drink, but drank the remainder of his beer anyway. “Oh! I forgot to ask you how much
you charge,” he said, dejectedly.
“Charge!” she replied, then smiled warmly. “That was former occupation.” Then
she confided. “At University, the only subject in which I did really well was Psychology.
Bad luck that was, really, because I’d just graduated when the Fascist government fell.
Soon afterwards, the revelations about how they’d misused Psychology devalued the
subject so much that there are now no jobs left in that field at all. In these post-industrial
times there virtually are only service sector jobs. In desperate times one has to take
desperate action to earn a living.”
“You don’t want me now, then?” he said, even more dejectedly.
“I didn’t say that,” she replied softly. “How about a love affair instead!” As they
went up to her room, she said. “As a little girl, I once had a fantasy that I was a High
Priestess. Perhaps it’s coming true.”