"But you must have some idea, mustn't you, of the basic principle of Ideative Manipulation."

"Some. It's a kind of mind control, right?"

"Put extremely crudely, yes. In this day and age, the military is looking for ways of disabling enemy nations swiftly and harmlessly, keeping damage to infrastructure and human life to a minimum, possibly to zero. Of course we can knock out electronic communications using EMP bombs, computer viruses, and the like. But what about communication? What about people? That's what I've been working on. If we can render people within a nation incapable of interacting with one another at the basic verbal level, then that nation will be helpless, all but paralyzed."

"I don't see how not being able to swear could leave a nation all but paralyzed. @^ annoyed, yes, but not paralyzed." Nutter gave a despairing gasp. "I can't even say '@^.'"

"Any word or phrase delivered with invective intent is off-limits. You can say 'sod' if you mean a piece of turf but not '$' if you mean something, as it were, earthier. That's the Bowdler Strain's specific effect, the negation of profanity. All swearing comes out as garbled nonsense. As such, Bowdler represents an important step on our way to the creation of a kind of universal language-negation logovirus. We're not there yet, but the process of development has, as we see, turned up some interesting side-products."

"Just tell me, professor," Nutter said, "how did it get loose? And how do we contain it?"

"We're working on the containment part, colonel. As for how it got loose... Why don't you come with me?"

THE IDEATIVE MANIPULATION lab was cla.s.sified as a Biosafety Level 1 environment. Strictly speaking, protective biohazard suits were unnecessary. They were worn anyway, largely so that everyone who worked here would always bear in mind that they were dealing with materials potentially as dangerous as any neurotoxin or necrotizing bacillus.

The lab comprised two rooms, a research area, and a specimen chamber. In the former, Bantling's five-strong team were milling around like ghosts in white plastic, agitatedly discussing various options for combating the escaped logovirus. They fell silent when the professor and Colonel Nutter entered.

"Roxanne," said Bantling, "I need to show the colonel the specimen chamber."

"Of course, professor." Dr. Quest produced her security clearance card. Bantling did the same, and together, one on either side of the door to the specimen chamber, they inserted the cards into electronic locks and tapped out key codes on the number pads. The door undamped itself and slid heavily open.

The chamber housed a dozen soundproofed cells in twin rows of six. Everything was white here, and silent, like the morning after a deep snowfall. Bantling led Nutter along to the second door on the right and invited him to look in through a triple-glazed spy hole.

Inside a cube that an average-sized dog might have considered cramped quarters sat a man-a hunched, hunkered, sad-sack man, who was muttering to himself and every so often would succ.u.mb to a violent twitching spasm, his hands thrusting forth and dancing spider-like over the floor, the wall, or a part of his body. Other than the hospital-style gown he was wearing, the man looked like the archetypal tramp. His hair was stringy and unkempt, his beard likewise; his skin was flaked and reddened from years spent outdoors in all weathers; his face showed the weight and defeat of hard living.

"This," said Bantling to the colonel, "is Gerry. Gerry is a Tourette's sufferer. His compulsion to swear is uncontrollable. Or rather, it was till we got our hands on him. He still swears now, but none of it comes out intelligibly. I suspect he finds this a little distressing, although he may have adjusted, I'm not sure."

"Where did you get him from?" said Nutter. "Or should I not ask?"

"Perhaps you'd best not ask. Suffice to say that our test subjects are chosen very carefully. Each is the kind of person whose disappearance from society will not be noticed."

Nutter glanced sidelong at the Professor and saw the same eerie placidity in his face that he heard in his voice. Nutter wasn't squeamish, G.o.d no. He had in his time had to make hard decisions involving men's lives, and indeed their deaths, and he knew that there were no moral absolutes in this world. Nonetheless, he found it a little disconcerting, the way Bantling could talk so clinically about Gerry, as if this human lab rat was of no more consequence than an actual, rodent-style lab rat. Nutter was in no doubt that Gerry's "disappearance from society" had been anything but voluntary. He was sure too, that there would be no return to society for Gerry once he had outlived his usefulness at Chilton Mead.

But it was not a matter he could permit to trouble him. His concern, right now, was the rogue logovirus.

"So the cell is soundproofed," he said. "And you presumably take every conceivable precaution when entering it."

"Correct. Ear plugs and ear defenders are mandatory for anyone coming into direct contact with the test subjects. The only time we ever hear their voices is when listening to recordings we've made of them. Which is what I was doing this evening. I was running through today's recordings, checking for any anomalies in the verbal symptom patterns. They fluctuate, you see. It's a phenomenon we haven't quite pinned down yet, although we think it has something to do with the brain trying to counteract the logovirus by reorganizing synaptic pathways, as the brains of stroke victims sometimes do in order to compensate for the neurological damage. Or perhaps the mind has its own antibodies, just as the body does. Psychic antibodies. One for the metaphysicians there. Either way-"

"You're saying," Nutter interrupted, "that someone listens to these people's voices every day?"

Bantling nodded.

"Then, probably a stupid question, but why hasn't anyone been infected before?"

"Because until today none of the logoviruses has been transmittable via recording or any other artificial means. They only work interpersonally. Direct from mouth to ear, as it were."

"Then what changed?"

Bantling stroked his thumb tip up and down the groove of his philtrum. "My guess is, the logovirus mutated."

"What?"

"Gerry's brain was attacking it, trying to expunge it. Like any good virus, the Bowdler Strain adapted, and kept adapting, and now it's achieved a form in which it can be transmitted non-interpersonally. In other words, electronically."

" me."

"Well, quite," the professor said, with the thinnest of smiles.

THE BOWDLER STRAIN proliferated throughout the night, like a bad rumor. Person talked to person talked to person, innocently spreading the contagion. In the small hours, doctors and hospitals began to receive calls from worried individuals who thought they might be afflicted with an aneurysm or a brain tumor or even cancer of the tongue. They just couldn't get their words out right. Friends woke friends, relatives relatives, spouses spouses, to ask if their voices sounded funny. Most often the reply was no, since not all of those infected had made the connection between the incomprehensibly misshapen syllables that emerged from their mouths and the expletives which generated them, and they weren't swearing while expressing their befuddlement to their loved ones. Those who did perceive that a certain segment of their vocabulary was translating itself, of its own volition, into what appeared to be Serbo-Croat or Mongolian or Tagalog, or some other equally unfamiliar lingo, swore all the more vehemently as they attempted to vent their anger and bewilderment by verbal means. They only found themselves, of course, emitting further streams of gibberish, which angered and bewildered them even more, so that they swore even more, and on and on in a vicious circle, until all that was left to them was to lapse, livid-faced, into silence and mutely fume and fret, denied the cathartic satisfaction of even the mildest of blue language or the most moderate of blasphemies-or else they hit things. There were some, not necessarily of a religious bent, who believed they had acquired the ability to speak in tongues. There were some, usually of a religious bent, who through habitual abstinence from profanity had no idea they had been infected at all. The Bowdler Strain twisted and turned its way through the mazes of human interaction, and would have done so a great deal more rapidly had the outbreak occurred during daytime. As it was, by dawn the next morning a significant percentage of Gloucestershire was affected, and there were many more cl.u.s.ters elsewhere in the country, courtesy of the national telephone network.

And as the sun rose and people rose, the logovirus's exponential growth accelerated.

PROFESSOR BANTLING'S TEAM and Colonel Nutter had brainstormed through the night and made little progress toward a solution. It was given that the Bowdler Strain was wildfire, inextinguishable, unstoppable. At best estimate, it would blanket the country within two days. Total population saturation would be achieved in under a week. There was no question of isolating each and every outbreak, setting up perimeters, creating hot zones, issuing denials. Standard operational procedure for all kinds of similar emergencies was inapplicable in this instance. There was no alternative but to devise a means of neutralizing the logovirus. An anti-logovirus vaccine would have to be developed, and if it could be created and implemented swiftly enough, then maybe, just maybe, Bowdler could be eradicated, and the outbreak downplayed and dismissed as a bout of public hysteria.

Nutter expressed the view, several times in several different ways, that it was not a little astounding that a vaccine had not already been prepared for just such a contingency as this. For the most part, the scientists ignored him when he made the observation, acting as experts tend to when a layman draws attention to a glaring oversight in their methods-with disdain. On one occasion, Bantling did acknowledge the colonel's point, but all he said was, "It's not that simple."

Otherwise, it was proposal and counterproposal, thesis and ant.i.thesis, theory and refutation, and lots of strong coffee. And in the end, the only conclusion the group could reach was that there was no quick and easy fix. Cultivating and implanting a logovirus took weeks, so even if they were able to design one that specifically remedied Bowdler symptoms-and logoviral engineering was not an exact science- then it wouldn't be available for use until long after the whole of the UK was infected.

"Is that really so bad?" said the youngest person in the room, Edwin Chao. After a night of futile debate, he was trying to look on the bright side. "I mean, no one can swear properly-so what? It's not as if it's fatal, right? No one's really going to suffer on account of Bowdler."

Bantling said, "I agree that of all the things that could have escaped from Chilton Mead, a logovirus is far from being the worst. One of the race-specific killers from the Applied Genetics lab, for instance, or that lethal self-replicating graffito the chaps in Visual Memetics have been working on..." He mimed a shudder that was not entirely ungenuine. "But the fact remains that we're looking at potential countrywide panic. We're looking at a frightened population, unaware what's happened to them, knowing only that something very strange is going on. We're looking, maybe, at civil unrest, rioting, a breakdown in the rule of law."

"That's very much worst-case," said Dr. Quest, wanting to rea.s.sure everyone, including herself. "I doubt it'll get that bad."

"Bad?" said Nutter. "Civil unrest and rioting isn't bad. I'll tell you what bad is. Bad is if the Bowdler Strain is somehow traced back to here. Bad is the public finding out the sort of thing you lot get up to in these laboratories of yours."

"Then, colonel," said Professor Bantling firmly, "as Chief of Operations you'd best do all you can to ensure that that eventuality never comes to pa.s.s."

THE FIRST NEWS report about the outbreak was a short piece in a local current-affairs TV program, aired on the evening of Friday, July 19th. The item came at the end of the program and was pitched at the same level as a funny-animal or bizarre-charity-stunt story, with the reporter adopting a jocular, ironic tone as he described the peculiar condition that pensioner Ron Squires had come down with, apparently overnight. Ron, a resident of High Leversham, had, it seemed, lost the power to swear.

"I'm not a big one for cursing, never have been," said Ron, with a nervous flash of his dentures. "But you know, every once in a while you just can't help a naughty word slipping out, can you? Only, last night I dropped my bag on the way home from the off-license and broke a bottle of stout, and what came out of my mouth then didn't sound like no swearing I ever heard before."

"And what did you say, Ron?" asked the reporter. "Bearing in mind that this will be going out before the watershed."

"Well, I'll tell you exactly what I said, because I'm pretty certain none of your viewers will be able to understand it. '!^ #' is what I said. See? What does that sound like? And all my other swear words-it's the same. @^. @$. ^."

The opinion of Ron's GP was sought, and she p.r.o.nounced herself mystified. "I've never seen anything like it before in my career," said Dr. Annette Murray. "Ron has always been in very good health. I can only a.s.sume that the shock of the beer bottle breaking triggered some sort of psychosomatic stress-response that has affected his speech patterns. It's all very strange, and I have referred him to a specialist."

"You don't think Ron is putting this on somehow?" said the reporter.

"Oh no. Why would someone put on a condition like this?"

The reporter delivered his concluding remarks to camera. "So there you have it. A mystery ailment that has left one man's life blighted. Ron Squires is lost for words. You could say he's been sworn to silence."

Within minutes, the TV station was inundated with phone calls from viewers who had watched the item and were suffering from the same problem as Ron. Some of them had had the problem before the item aired, others claimed the problem had started immediately afterward. Telephone operators at the TV station were treated to examples of the choicest epithets that the English language has to offer, all rendered meaningless by the Bowdler Strain. Eventually the switchboard was overloaded by the vast numbers of people ringing in, and it packed up. By then, the telephone operators were themselves swearing hard. Unintelligibly, of course.

The story made the main news later that night, coming second in the running order to the failure of the latest Middle East peace initiative. Incidences of "swearing disorder" were being reported all over the country. Hospital A and E departments were swamped by people demanding to know what was wrong with them. The emergency services were receiving twenty calls a minute, only one of which was from someone in genuine need of the police, an ambulance, or the fire brigade, the rest coming from alarmed citizens who had contracted the strange and perturbing speech impediment. A chief constable implored members of the public not to dial 999 unless it really was an emergency. Meanwhile, a government spokesman, interviewed outside the Commons, had the following statement to make: "The Prime Minister has been apprised of the situation and is monitoring it closely. At the present time, there is no clear explanation for the difficulties that a very few people, and I stress a very few, seem to be experiencing with their voices. The matter is being looked into with the utmost urgency, but there is no cause for concern. None at all. We expect that whatever is happening will run its course in a couple of days or so. That's all I have to say for now. No questions. Thank you very much."

All of Sat.u.r.day's papers carried the story on their front pages. The broadsheets talked of "an extraordinary phenomenon reminiscent of the 'sleeping sickness' outbreak during the First World War" and claimed that experts in neurolinguistics were "baffled." The tabloids took a predictably more b.u.mptious approach. "F*** ME! WHERE ARE MY SWEAR WORDS?" was the headline run by one red-top, while another contained a feature article ent.i.tled "Expletives Deleted-Your Cut-Out-And-Keep Guide To The Best Of British Bad Language," which offered lists of "clean" alternatives to the most popular modern-day profanities.

The mood of the nation was febrile that day. Torn between fear and a sense of wild absurdity, people tried to go about their weekend business as normal, but shops and streets were nowhere near as full as they might have been, roads and motorways carried considerably less traffic than usual, and the beautiful sunny weather was enticing very few visitors to zoos, amus.e.m.e.nt parks, seaside resorts, and the great outdoors. Football fixtures were cancelled. Airports reported a sharp decline in pa.s.senger numbers. With well over half the population stricken with Bowdler, there was an almost instinctive desire among the affected and unaffected alike to minimize contact with others. It wasn't public knowledge that the swearing disorder could be pa.s.sed on like the flu, or for that matter that television, radio, and telephones were playing a part in its dissemination. It simply seemed sensible, to a broad cross-section of the Great British public, to stay at home.

Children found it irresistibly amusing that they could utter forbidden words in front of their parents and not get told off for it. They learned to insert the words into strings of made-up nonsense. Their parents knew they were swearing, but where was the proof?

Disgruntled employees who had their bosses' private phone numbers rang them and denounced them vehemently, knowing that as long as they restricted themselves to certain ribald terms and coinages their voices would be almost impossible to identify.

The presenter of a kids' morning TV show, having ingested more than his fair share of cocaine in the dressing room beforehand, went a little mad and started calling his co-presenters, the program's producer, and even the Director General of the network all sorts of foul names, thinking that because of swearing disorder he would be safe to do so. Unfortunately for him, he hadn't actually contracted Bowdler yet. The live transmission was interrupted with a test card and the presenter was summarily sacked.

Performances of a David Mamet play in the West End had to be cancelled until further notice.

The same fate befell a one-man show from Steven Berkoff.

That evening, a broadcast of the movie Scarface, starring Al Pacino, garnered extraordinary ratings. Viewers tuned in simply to hear the kind of verbiage they themselves could no longer employ. Tony Montana's prolific cursing brought a tear to many a wistful eye.

Meanwhile, at Chilton Mead, someone had come up with an idea.

"WINDBAG," SAID EDWIN Chao.

"Are you mad?" said Adrian Gold, the Ideative Manipulation team's semantics guru.

"Set a logovirus to catch a logovirus. Release Windbag."

"That's the stupidest !^ idea I ever heard."

Chao's confidence crumbled. Blushing, he fumbled with his spectacles and murmured that it had only been a suggestion.

Professor Bantling was thumb-stroking his philtrum. "As a matter of fact, Edwin..."

IT TOOK A while to convince Nutter. With one logovirus already on the loose, unleashing another seemed to him, at the very least, rash. Yet eventually Bantling's arguments began to make sense.

"I'll run it past the PM," Nutter said, and picked up the phone. "A moment's privacy?"

Bantling had to wait outside Nutter's office for a quarter of an hour, during which time several of his colleagues pa.s.sed by. All of them subjected him to frosty stares, and one even congratulated him sarcastically on putting everyone's jobs on the line. When he was at last invited back in by Nutter, Bantling found the colonel looking markedly more haggard than when he had left him.

"The PM has such a saintly image, doesn't he?" Nutter said. "But I tell you, get him away from the cameras and in a bad mood, and he could give a Glaswegian navvy a run for his money. If it wasn't for Bowdler, the receiver would probably have melted in my hand. Anyhow... the good news is, he bought it. We can give the Windbag Strain a shot."

"The bad news? I a.s.sume there is some."

"Leave me to worry about that. What do you need? A company? A regiment?"

"How big is a regiment?"

"Three companies, three hundred men. With ancillary staff, say a thousand in toto."

"Do you think that would be enough?"

"I think that's about the most we can reasonably commandeer."

"Then a regiment will be fine."

AT MIDDAY ON Sunday 21st, a blue Transit van with blacked-out windows drove onto the parade ground of Her Majesty's 11th Bayoneteers. a.s.sembled to meet the van, in neat ranks and full uniform, was the entire complement of the regiment.

The van halted, and from its pa.s.senger-side door out stepped Colonel Nutter. He was greeted with a salute by Colonel Atkins of the Bayoneteers, and he returned the salute with a vigor and crispness undiminished by his eight years behind a desk at Chilton Mead.

"Thank you for the use of your men, Atkins."

"Not at all, Nutter. Believe me, we want to help as much as we can. Have you heard about our RSM?"

"No."

"Hospitalized." Colonel Atkins twirled a forefinger beside his temple. "That sort of hospitalized. Can't swear, and it's driven him bonkers. A sergeant major lives by his bad language, doesn't he?"

"Awful. My sympathies."

"Well, quite. It means, at any rate, that the men have a vested interest. They're mad keen to get their own back on this... this thing."

The van's rear doors opened, and Professor Bantling climbed out, followed by Edwin Chao. Both were carrying ear defenders, as was Nutter. The professor turned and beckoned, and from within the van's darkened interior a man ventured forth hesitantly. He was dressed in the same type of hospital-style gown worn by all the test subjects at Chilton Mead, and the lower half of his face was encased in an elaborate-looking surgical gag.

The daylight dazzled him. As Bantling and Chao helped him down from the van, he held a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun's glare. Barefoot, he stood on the parade ground tarmac, swaying tremulously, blinking hard, apparently unsure where he was or what he was doing there.

"That's him, eh?" said Atkins.

"That's him," said Nutter. "Now listen. Do you want a set of these?" He held up his ear defenders. "For when he speaks? There are spares in the van."

"Not me, old chap. What's good enough for the men is good enough for me."

Nutter gave a respectful nod. "Very well. Then shall we get on with it?"

At an order from a sergeant, the regiment was brought from at-ease to attention. "All right, you lot," the sergeant yelled. "You know what you're here for, but in case any of you haven't been paying attention, which wouldn't surprise me, I'll go through it again. It's really very simple. When required, you will be asked to listen. That's all. Just listen. In my experience not all of you are very good at listening, but never mind. I'm sure you'll manage. If anyone does not hear that fellow over there with the gag when he speaks, say so immediately. I suspect the gentleman will be addressing you somewhat more quietly than me, which I know is hard to believe, seeing how dulcet my tones are. However, there is a chance his voice may not reach those of you at the back. I repeat, if this is the case, say so immediately. It is imperative that every one of you hears him talking. Have you got that? All right."

The sergeant stamped over to Colonel Atkins, saluted, and said, "Regiment ready to listen, sah."

"Very good. Colonel Nutter?"

Nutter turned to Bantling and indicated that he should proceed. Bantling and Chao lodged their ear defenders firmly on their heads, and Nutter did the same. As Bantling moved behind his test subject to undo the gag, Nutter pressed the ear defenders hard against his skull to make the soundproof seal tight and absolute.

For a long time the test subject said nothing. His mouth, freed from the gag, hung open in a bleary gape. His name was Alan Lloyd-Jacobs, he was fifty-two, and until three years ago he had been a cla.s.sics teacher at a top public school, until an unfortunate incident-a misunderstanding, really-had brought about a spectacular fall from grace. Lloyd-Jacobs was still not quite sure how it had happened. The boy had been willing, hadn't he? That was the distinct impression he had got. Willing, if a tad nervous. Perhaps it was the language he had used in his overtures toward the lad, all that talk of concupiscent sodality and the h.e.l.lenic tradition. Lloyd-Jacobs had always prided himself on his elaborate and often abstruse turn of phrase. Pupils used to tease him about it, but it made him different, individual, memorably eccentric, and that was what being a schoolteacher was all about, wasn't it? Making an impression on impressionable minds? He could not help thinking, however, that had he not been such a confirmed sesquipedalian, the boy might have apprehended his intentions sooner and thus things would not have traveled as far down the fatal road of no return as they did. In the event, Lloyd-Jacobs had been hounded out of his job, out of his home, out of his life, and had ended up broke, haunting a rancid bedsit somewhere in Plaistow and drinking far too much cheap alcohol-had become human detritus, the jetsam of an uncomprehending and unforgiving world. And then some men had grabbed him one night and he had been taken off to a white cube, where he had been subjected to all manner of strangeness and indignity. And now this.

"Say something," Professor Bantling urged him, speaking too loudly on account of the ear defenders.

Lloyd-Jacobs gazed around at the soldiers, row upon row of them, all sharp creases and strong chests and smooth chins. What could he say? What did everyone expect of him here?

"Come on," said Bantling.

After several failed attempts, Lloyd-Jacobs finally found his voice. "In the Spartan army," he said, "s.e.xual affiliation between soldiers was deemed acceptable, nay positively encouraged. It cemented comradeship. It fostered loyalty. A man was far more likely to lay down his life for a brother-in-arms if he had first lain down with that brother-in-arms. Indeed-"

At this point, Bantling hurriedly reapplied the gag, and Lloyd-Jacobs was bundled back into the van.