I gripped the sides of the seat as we went round another bend.  I looked down. 'What are these buttons for?'

Yolanda glanced over. 'Seat adjustment.  Electric.'

I nodded, impressed that disabled people were so well catered for in ordinary automobiles.  I grabbed the sides of the seat again for the next bend, and duly found myself rising and tipping back in my seat.  I giggled, then gasped as we just missed an oncoming car.

'Ah; this bit isn't dual carriageway, Grandma.'

'I know that!… Why are these people flashing their lights at me?'

'Well, I don't think it's because they know you.'

'Wimps!'

The big, dark blue car swept into the drive of Clissold's Health Farm and Country Club.  We had encountered a few police vehicles, and passed a lay-by where they were checking an old, decrepit-looking coach, but we hadn't been stopped.

The Health Farm and Country Club proved to be a mansion with what looked like a giant conservatory tacked onto the back.  I suppose I had been expecting something more farm-like.  The mansion's grounds looked old, neat and manicured, just like the receptionist.

'I'm afraid Miss Whit checked out this morning.'

'Oh drat.'

'Shit!'

'Did she say where she was going?' I asked.

'Well, I wouldn't be able to tell you if she had, but-'

'Oh for God's sakes; this is her cousin; and she's my-' Yolanda broke off and looked at me, frowning. 'Hell, what is Morag to me?'

I shrugged. 'Great-niece?  Grand-niece?'

Yolanda turned back to the receptionist. 'Yeah, whatever,' she said, with convincing decisiveness.

'Well, she didn't, anyway.  Sorry.' The receptionist smiled.  She didn't look very sorry.

'Was she due to check out today?' I asked, trying to look sweet and reasonable and in need of help.

'Let me see,' the receptionist said, lifting a pair of glasses from round her neck and placing them on her nose.  She keyed something into her computer, then consulted the screen. 'No; she was due to stay until the end of the week.'

'Damn!'

'Hmm,' I said.

'Oh, I remember,' the lady said, replacing her glasses on her cardigan. 'I do believe she said she'd changed her plans because of something she'd seen on the local news last night.'

Yolanda and I looked at each other.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

'I know you think I'm just a complaining old woman, Isis-'

'Not at-'

'-and I know you don't drive, but you must see what I mean.'

'Well-'

'I mean, it stands to reason; you go into a gas station and you get gas.  You get served; somebody fills your tank, maybe gets their hands dirty, checks your oil, washes the bugs off your windshield, kicks the tyres, whatever; you pay the bill, and that's all very fine… but you pull into a gas station, you serve yourself, you get your own hands dirty, maybe break a nail, for God's sakes; no oil check, no windshield wash unless you do it yourself; and you pay the same amount of money!  Now, really, I mean, come on; does that seem reasonable to you? Do you think that's right?'

'Put like that-'

'I'm only asking you because maybe you can be objective because you don't drive and maybe you haven't ever thought about all this, maybe you've never noticed all this.  I mean, you've never bin to the States, have you?'

'No.'

'No; exactly.  So you don't expect service pumps and self-serve pumps, and because you're a good little Orderite you've never even seen movies about the States either, right?'

'Right.'

'Right; unusual in this day and age, believe you me.  So you-'

'Grandma?'

'What, honey?'

I laughed. 'Is all this important?  I mean to say, does it really matter?'

'Well hell yes!  Service matters.  This country used to be cute and quaint and kinda socialist; it's got a bit better now since your Mrs Thatcher; people are more polite, they know their jobs are on the line and there are other people who'll do them, they know there are other corporations who'll do the same thing for less money or just plain better, so you're sort of on the way, you know?  But you still got a long way to go.  And you lost a lot of the cuteness along the way, believe me.  You abandon cuteness, you better make damn sure you're pretty goddamn efficient or you're down the tubes, baby.  And all this ye olde fuckin' heritage shit ain't gonna fool people forever.'

'… Is that a blue flashing light behind us?'

'Say what?  Ah, shee-it…'

'… Now, you see?  That was a case in point; if you had on-the-spot fines those traffic cops could have taken me for a couple of hundred bucks; help pay for that fancy bear-mobile there.  Instead, what do I get?  A ticking-off.  I mean, that's sad.'

'I think being American helped,' I said, watching the needle swing back up across the speedometer. 'Are American miles really shorter than British ones?'

'I think so, aren't they?  Same with gallons, I think…' Yolanda waved one hand dismissively. 'What the hell; it worked.  They let us go; probably thought of all the paperwork involved.'

'Hmm.  Anyway…' (I'd been thinking.) '… is efficiency really the best way to measure this sort of thing?'

'What?'

'Well, if you can do a job more efficiently with fewer people, that's all very well for that one particular company, but if you all still have to live in the same society, does it matter?  We could probably do a lot of things more efficiently with fewer people at the Community, but that would just leave the people put out of work hanging around feeling useless.  What's the point in that?  You can't throw people off the farm or lock them up or kill them, so why not let them all have a job, even if that's less efficient?'

Yolanda was shaking her head. 'Honey, that's what the communists used to do, and look what happened to them.'

'Well, perhaps that happened for other reasons.  What I'm saying is that efficiency is a strange way to evaluate how a society is doing.  After all, the most efficient thing to do might be to kill everybody as soon as they grow old, so they won't be a burden, but you can't do that either because-'

'The Eskimos; the goddamn Inuit; they used to do exactly that,' Yolanda said. 'But it wasn't when you got to a certain numerical age, it was once you couldn't pull your weight.  If you looked after yourself you could go on a long time.'

'Maybe they had no choice.  But my point is that morality outranks efficiency.  And, anyway, extreme efficiency would dictate less choice in the end; the most efficient thing would be for everybody to drive the same sort of car due to the economies of scale.  Or for there not to be any private cars at all.  You wouldn't like that, would you?'

Yolanda grinned and shook her head. 'You don't really understand Capitalism, do you, Isis?'

'From what I've heard, the best economists in the world don't understand Capitalism either, or do they all agree nowadays, and there are no more booms and slumps, just a steadily rising growth rate?'

'Child, no system is perfect, but this one's the best we got, that's the point.'

'Well, I think our system works better,' I said, settling myself primly in my seat with my hands clasped in my lap. 'The High Easter Offerance estate is a model of archaic working practices, inefficiency, over-manning and job-duplication, and everybody is extremely happy.'

Yolanda laughed. 'Well, good for you guys, Isis, but I don't know that would scale up too successfully.'

'Perhaps not, but it is my belief that contentment speaks for itself and has no need to worship at the altar of monetary efficiency's false and brazen idol.'

'Whoa,' Yolanda said, glancing over at me with narrowed eyes. 'You speaking ex-cathedra there, oh Elect one?'