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Chapters 
18
monkey's cage. At first she jumped around in discomfort, then squealed a lot, then took to standing on alternate legs, all the 
while holding her infant in her arms. The floor was made hotter, the monkey's pain more evident. At a certain point the heat 
from the floor became unbearable, and she was faced with a choice, as the experimenters put it, between altruism and self-
interest. She either had to suffer extreme pain and perhaps death in order to protect her offspring, or else place her infant on the 
floor and stand on it to keep herself from harm. 
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In every case, sooner or later self-interest had triumphed over altruism. 
Franklin had been sickened by the experiment, and glad the TV series hadn't got beyond the pilot, if that was what he 
would have had to present. Now he felt a bit like that monkey. He was being asked to choose between two equally repellent 
ideas: that of abandoning his girlfriend while retaining his integrity, or rescuing his girlfriend by justifying to a group of 
innocent people why it was right that they should be killed. And would that rescue Trish? Franklin hadn't even been promised 
his own safety; perhaps the pair of them, reclassified as Irish, would merely be moved to the bottom of the killing list, but still 
remain on it. Who would they start with? The Americans, the British? If they started with the Americans, how long would that 
delay the killing of the British? Fourteen, sixteen Americans - he translated that brutally into seven or eight hours. If they 
started at four, and the governments stood firm, by midnight they would start killing the British. What order would they do it 
in? Men first? Random? Alphabetical? Trish's surname was Maitland. Right in the middle of the alphabet. Would she see the 
dawn? 
He imagined himself standing on Tricia's body to protect his own burning feet and shuddered. He would have to do the 
lecture. That was the difference between a monkey and a human being. In the last analysis, humans were capable of altruism. 
This was why he was not a monkey. Of course, it was more than probable that when he gave the lecture his audience would 
conclude the exact opposite - that Franklin was operating out of self-interest, saving his own skin by a foul piece of 
subservience. But this was the thing about altruism, it was always liable to be misunderstood. And he could explain everything 
to them all afterwards. If there was an afterwards. If there was a them all. 
When the second-in-command arrived, Franklin asked to see the leader again. He intended demanding safe-conduct for 
Tricia and himself in exchange for the lecture. However, the second-in-command had only come for a reply, not for renewed 
[p. 54]
conversation. Dully, Franklin nodded his head. He'd never been much good at negotiating anyway. 
At two forty-five Franklin was taken to his cabin and allowed to wash. At three o'clock he entered the lecture hall to find 
the most attentive audience he had ever faced. He filled a glass from the carafe of stale water that nobody had bothered to 
change. He sensed below him the swell of exhaustion, a rip-tide of panic. After only a day the men seemed almost bearded, the 
women crumpled. They had already begun not to look like themselves, or the selves that Franklin had spent ten days with. 
Perhaps this made them easier to kill. 
Before he got his own writing credit Franklin had become expert at presenting the ideas of others as plausibly as possible. 
But never had he felt such apprehension at a script; never had a director imposed such conditions; never had his fee been so 
bizarre. When first agreeing to the task he had persuaded himself that he could surely find a way of tipping off his audience 
that he was acting under duress. He would think up some ploy like that of the false Minoan inscriptions; or he would make his 
lecture so exaggerated, pretend such enthusiasm for the cause thrust upon him, that nobody could possible miss the irony. No, 
that wouldn't work. 'Irony', an ancient TV producer had once confided to him, 'may be defined as what people miss.' And the 
passengers certainly wouldn't be on the lookout for it in their present circumstances. The briefing had made things yet harder: 
the second-in-command had given precise instructions, and added that any deviation from them would result not just in Miss 
Maitland remaining British, but in Franklin's Irish passport no longer being recognized. They certainly knew how to negotiate, 
these bastards. 
`I had been hoping,' he began, 'that the next time I addressed you I would be taking up again the story of Knossos. 
Unfortunately, as you are aware, the circumstances have changed. We have visitors amongst us.' He paused and looked down 
the aisle at the leader who stood before the double doors with a guard on each side. `Things are different. We are in the hands 
of others. Our ... destiny is no longer our own.' Franklin coughed. This 
[p. 55] 
wasn't very good. Already he was straying into euphemism. The one duty, the one intellectual duty he had, was to speak as 
directly as he could. Franklin would freely admit he was a showman and would stand on his head in a bucket of herrings if that 
would raise viewing figures a few thousand; but there was a residual feeling in him - a mixture of admiration and shame - 
which made him hold in special regard those communicators who were deeply unlike him: the ones who spoke quietly, in their 
own simple words, and whose stillness gave them authority. Franklin, who knew he could never be like them, tried to 
acknowledge their example as he spoke. 
`I have been asked to explain things to you. To explain how you - we - find ourselves in the position we are now in. I am 
not an expert on the politics of the Middle East, but I shall try to make things as clear as I can. We should perhaps begin by 
going back to the nineteenth century, long before the establishment of the state of Israel ...' Franklin found himself back in an 
easy rhythm, a bowler pitching on a length. He felt his audience begin to relax. The circumstances were unusual, but they were 
being told a story, and they were offering themselves to the story-teller in the manner of audiences down the ages, wanting to 
see how things turned out, wanting to have the world explained to them. Hughes sketched in an idyllic nineteenth century, all 
nomads and goat-farming and traditional hospitality which allowed you to stay in someone else's tent for three days before 
being asked what the purpose of your visit might be. He talked of early Zionist settlers and Western concepts of land-

---

J
ULIAN 
B
ARNES
: A History of the World in 10 ½