Stand on Zanzibar

context (18)

ZOCK

Aud

Vid

Trackin hiss

White-out screen

Pick up 7-beat bass below

Face of group leader nega-

aud threshold

tived white-for-black green-

Synch in five-beat

for-red BCU

WAH YAH WAH YAH

Lips move

WAH

Sitar picks up 5

BCU sitar PU

7 beats express takeoff

White-out, shade to pink

Octave up bass

Blur to grey on beat

Bass up 2nd octave

Star-out purple, gold, orange

Bring in at 4-beat intervals

MLS full group with spots

tympani, Lasry-Bachet organ,

blue shading yellow then pink

pre-cut speech tape

MANCH / total recall /

XLBCU leader’s uvula,

SHIFT / man that’s really

negged

someth / WHIP / ah whoinole

cares anyway / GARKER /

Super sitar on Las-Bach

garker / GARKER / garker

organ

(ad lib)

Snatch of Hallelujah chorus

BCU pigeon’s wing, white

Leader talks over gp:

feathers

YOU GOT THE OFFYOUR-

ASS FOR BOTH OF US MY

Shiggy fondles own breasts,

SPAREWHEEL AND ME

green over shading blue

AND SHIGGY MAKES

THREE

Las-Bach FFF waltz-time

BCU shiggy’s hands as each

taken by male right hand and

Acceleratube passes by

pulled apart

Resume speech tape

Interior tunnel

I GOING BUST MY

Hold

SKULL

Green bars shift on black

Kiss loudens synch with

VLS zooms in to BCU kiss

Resume bass, sitar

Track thru head of shiggy to

face of gp leader XLBCU

Rpt with leader over:

LEAVE this WORLD to

Shiggy walks along front of

ROT

Las-Bach org watching player

GONE to BUST my SKULL

stroke glass columns and

SHIFT this SCENE on POT

produce sound, then bends

TRIP on TINE and PULL

over and begins to suck long-

HEAVen ON my HEAD

est (bass) column

MIGHT as WELL be DEAD

MAGine ALL we COULD

DO if WE was FREE

BCU tympani beater

SHEETing HOLE we’re

Street scene negged w shiggy

NOT

arm-in-arm w leader and

YAGinOL is GOOD

sparewheel

ALL i CAN is BE!

White-out

(etc.)

(etc.)

$ *

$ *

* Total in both columns: another planetary-collision-size smash hit for the Em Thirty-Ones, not permitted to be broadcast over any channel serving the Pacific Conflict Zone.

continuity (22)

THE PRICE OF ADMISSION

It occurred to the seething Donald after a while that he had foreseen the indignity due to be inflicted on him. The idea was irrational, but that didn’t concern him; he was content to feel that his curious state of mind on the express, when he had thought those wild thoughts about Odinzeus, stemmed from a prevision of this gesture to deprive him of manhood.

Phrasing it that way was absolutely stupid, of course. He had not infrequently considered a reversible sterilisation operation, but the need had never arisen; all the shiggies he had to do with were fitted with their tiny subcutaneous progestin capsules, secreting a year’s supply without risk of pregnancy. But he was away from home and familiar things, and what he had deemed familiar had turned and rent him, and in any case his subconscious was not amenable to persuasion. It clung with animal obstinacy to the reassurance that in the ultimate resort a man could make a man.

He was, however, in Yatakang. He had passed through the expressport building, crouched low under its protective roof of concrete capped with thick earth and trees, and here he was outside and being assailed by scores, hundreds, of Yatakangis, some of them addressing him in pidgin that included Dutch and English words. A porter with a wheeled electric barrow had brought his belongings out, too, and was standing by awaiting payment for the service.

I forgot to change some money. Did they give me any along with my papers?

There had been an envelope with credit-cards in, he remembered that, but was there any cash? Looking, he discovered half a dozen crisp ten-tala bills, worth about—hmmm—sixty cents each. He gave them to the porter and stood by his bags for a while, occasionally scowling at the youths and girls who clustered around offering to find him a cab, tote the bags, sell him souvenirs and sticky-sickly sweetmeats, or merely staring because he was a round-eye. All the youths were in off-white—sometimes dirty—jackets and breeches, mostly barefoot, and the girls in sharengs of twenty different colours from black to gold.

Across the parking lot paralleling the expressport building, where stood a number of electric and many more human-powered cabs—rixas—along with two or three modern Chinese-built buses, there was a whole rank of gaudily-decked booths made of light waterproof fabric on frames that were either natural bamboo or plastic imitations. A policeman was marching up and down in front of them, frowning at their keepers and receiving bland smiles in response. Donald struggled to put them in perspective. The Solukarta régime discouraged superstition, he knew that, but according to the signs over these little booths they were places where one might make a propitiatory sacrifice to whatever god one favoured before leaving on a journey, or to acknowledge a safe return home from abroad. They were doing good business, too—he saw five or six people approach them in the short time he stood watching. Each took a cone-shaped lump of incense and set it burning with much touching of hands to forehead and heart, or lit a streamer of paper printed with a prayer and watched until it had fizzled smokily into nothing.

Glancing sidelong at Grandfather Loa’s looming bulk, more clearly visible because the rain was lightening, he found he could hardly blame the Yatakangis for keeping up their old customs.

“Ah, my American friend,” a soft voice said alongside him. “Thank you again, Mr.—?”

He turned, speaking his name mechanically, to greet the Indian girl. In her flowing full-length sari she looked even more graceful and delicate than before, though it was clear from the way she kept adjusting its hang she was unused to anything that so encumbered her legs.

“You’re waiting for a cab—? No, I see there are plenty. What, then?”

“Taking stock. I’ve never been here before.” He uttered the words with mere forced politeness, though he was intellectually aware she was both pretty and emancipated; the impact of what the Yatakangi doctor had just done to him seemed to have numbed his male reactions for the moment.

“Yet you speak Yatakangi, and apparently very well,” the girl said.

“I wanted to learn a non-Indo-European language, and it came handy because not many people were studying it … Are you going into Gongilung?”

“Yes, I have rooms booked at a hotel. I think it’s called the Dedication Hotel.”

“So have I.”

“Will you share a cab with me, then?”

No surprise at the coincidence. Why should there be? The Dedication Hotel was the only hotel in Gongilung catering for a Westernised clientele, an automatic choice if rooms were available.

“Or would you rather ride in a rickshaw? I don’t believe you have them in America, do you?”

Rickshaw—of course: the root from which the modern Yatakangi word “rixa” must derive. Donald said, “Have we not too much baggage?”

“Of course not. These drivers look just as strong as the ones we have at home. Yes? Hey, you there!”

She waved energetically at the first rixa-man on the line, and he pedalled his curious five-wheeled conveyance over to them. He made no objection about the amount of baggage, as she had promised, but loaded it up on the rear platform until the springs sagged, then held the low doors for them to get in.

The seat was narrow and pressed them together, but if his companion didn’t mind Donald didn’t. He was beginning to regain his normal mood.

“I’m Bronwen Ghose, by the way,” the girl said as the driver hoisted himself up on one leg to exert maximum pressure on his pedal and get his heavy load moving.

“Bronwen? That’s an Indian name?”

“No, Welsh. There’s a complicated story behind it involving my grandfather going to sea as what they used to call a Lascar and having his heart broken in Cardiff by a Welsh girl.” She laughed. “It puzzles everyone until I explain. What are you doing in Gongilung, Donald, or am I being inquisitive?”

“Not at all.” Donald scanned the stream of traffic into which they were now merging; most of it consisted of pedal-driven miniature trucks, interspersed with electric gadabouts carrying either passengers—in incredible numbers, five or six to a vehicle no larger than this rixa—or bags and bales and boxes of indeterminate goods. Over the roadway bright streamers hung, a little faded from the rain, some of which praised Marshal Solukarta and some of which exhorted the Yatakangis to free themselves of European preconceptions.

“I—ah—I’m covering the genetic optimisation story for Engrelay Satelserv,” he added.

“Really? How interesting! Are you a specialist in that area?”

“To some extent. I have a degree in biology, that is.”

“I see what you mean—‘to some extent’. What Sugaiguntung has done isn’t, obviously, something one would cover in a college course, is it?”

“You know something about genetics yourself?”

Bronwen gave a wan smile. “Believe me, Donald, in a country like mine you can’t be a woman of child-breeding age and not know something about it—unless you’re illiterate and stupid, that is.”

“I suppose not.” Donald hesitated. “What brings you here, by the way? Business or pleasure?”

The answer was a long time delayed. Eventually she said, “Illness, to be frank.”

“Illness?” he echoed in astonishment, and looked her over as best he could, crowded into the rixa’s narrow seat.

“Nothing contagious, I promise. I wouldn’t repay your kindness with such a nasty trick.” She forced a laugh which made the rixa-man turn his head and narrowly miss a gadabout crossing his front wheel.

“No, it’s something you’ll perhaps know about if you’re a geneticist. I have— Ah, the English word escapes me!” She snapped her fingers, and he caught at her hand.

“Don’t do that in Yatakang!” he said, showing an apologetic face to their driver as he again turned around, this time looking suspicious. “It’s bad luck except on certain specified days of the year. It’s supposed to be a signal to call back the ghosts of your ancestors!”

“Goodness!” She put the knuckles of her other hand to her fine white teeth, pantomiming dismay. Belatedly Donald realised he was still holding the hand he had caught at, and let it go.

“It’s a complicated country,” he said. “You were just going to tell me—?”

“Oh yes. When the bones make too many of the blood-cells that kill germs, what is that called?”

“Leukaemia.”

“Leukaemia, that’s the word I wanted.”

“But that’s terrible,” Donald said, genuinely concerned. In this day and age one thought of any kind of cancer including cancer of the blood as being a disease of old age, when the regulating mechanisms of the body began to break down. In youth, there were cures, and a whole body of legislation governed the production and use of carcinogenic substances.

“In America, I believe, it’s now rare, but there is a lot of it in my country,” Bronwen said. “I am lucky—my husband died, as you know, and I inherited enough money to come here and take a treatment which cannot be had in India.”

“What kind of treatment?”

“One which that same Dr. Sugaiguntung invented. I don’t know very much about it.”

They had reached the top of a long incline diving towards the heart of Gongilung, and the road was flanked with low-cost warren-like tenements, several of them decorated with the ubiquitous political slogan-streamers. Their driver, alarmingly, removed his bare feet from the pedals and crossed them on the handlebar, using both hands to extract and shield a cigarette which the rain threatened to damp out. But Donald saw that all the other drivers were doing the same, so he resigned himself.

“I remember reading about this,” he said, frowning. “If I recall rightly, what has to be done is in two stages. First, you infect the bone-marrow with a tailored virus that substitutes for the uncontrolled natural genetic material. Then, when it’s brought leucocyte production back to normal, you have to displace the tailored material in its turn and complete the job with a facsimile nucleus—”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Bronwen said, shrugging. “I know two things about it: it’s expensive, and it’s painful. But I am glad to be here.”

There was silence except for the hushing of the wheels on the roadway and occasional angry shouts from drivers who thought their right of way had been infringed. Donald could find nothing to say; he could only look at Bronwen’s pretty face and read the unhappiness there.

“I am only twenty-one years old,” Bronwen said finally. “I could live for a long time. I want to live for a long time.”

“And you’re a widow already?”

“My husband was a doctor,” she said stonily. “He was killed by a mob who found out he was using vaccines made from pig-serum. He was thirty-three.”

The distant thunder of an express roaring down towards the port drowned out any attempt at an answer Donald might have made.

* * *

At the Dedication Hotel one of the staff spoke both English and a little Hindi, so Donald could relinquish his job as interpreter. Frowning over the elaborate computer-form he had to punch to describe himself, he hardly listened to what Bronwen was saying to the reception clerk. At the back of his mind he was reviewing what he had to do for “professional” reasons: call at the International Press Club, to which he had been given a temporary admission card, and rendezvous with the Engrelay Satelserv stringer; check in at the government information office and make sure of receiving their official releases; and grease as many palms as he had to in order to secure a personal interview with Sugaiguntung. That was going to be a long, expensive and quite possibly fruitless task. Since the news broke, no foreign journalist had managed to see the Professor Doctor alone, only at press-conferences masterminded by government spokesmen.

Despite being round-eyed, Indians were comparatively acceptable in Yatakang at the moment; they were regarded as fellow sufferers from the legacy of colonialism. Europeans were liable to encounter the dislike engendered by the former governors, the Dutch, and some of it was bound to rub off on Americans owing to the continuing strain in diplomatic relations; Bronwen had already vanished to an upper floor before Donald’s bags were collected and he was led to his own room. It was a typically Yatakangi assembly of paradoxes—fine old hand-woven silks in glass frames filled with helium to prevent decay, a low tray full of cushions to serve as a bed, a shower compartment panelled in mock-marble alongside a bidet, a toilet, and a large plastic basket full of smooth round stones for the benefit of orthodox Muslim visitors who declined to do otherwise than the Prophet ordered when cleaning themselves after having their bowels open.

A bellgirl in a blue shareng silently and efficiently put away his clothes, showed him how to operate the paper clothing dispenser and the shoe-weaver, and apologised for the fact that the TV was out of order, “but it will be fixed very soon.” There was dust on the knobs; that promise had probably been made to the last twenty guests.

At least, though, the phone was working. When he was alone he sat down at it, feeling vaguely uncomfortable about not having a screen so that he could see his correspondent and looking at the wall-mounted mirror instead.

In that mirror, just after he had punched his first number, he saw a door—not the one he had come in by, the one leading to the adjacent room—and it was creeping open.

He rose to his feet with as little sound as possible and darted across the narrow room, taking his stand where the door would shield him. A glance at the mirror showed that whoever was entering could not see him by reflection—nor, by the same token, could he see the intruder. But a dusky hand came around the corner of the door, and a foot, and—

He pounced, his newly acquired eptification in combat making his movements sure and economical. In the next second he had the intruder by wrist and neck, ready to lift into the air and drop across his knee in a disabling blow to the base of the spine.

Also in that second he said with horror, “Bronwen!”

“Let go, you’re hurting!” she panted past the grip he had taken on her slim throat.

“I’m terribly sorry!” Frantic, he helped her to regain her balance, steadied her with a hand on her arm as she swayed. “But you shouldn’t have come in like that—one never knows what’s liable to happen nowadays!”

“I certainly wasn’t expecting that,” she said wryly. “I thought I heard your voice and realised you’d been put in the room next to mine. I’m sorry. I only wanted to surprise you.”

“That you managed,” he said grimly. “Oh—that must be my call. Sit down. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

He darted back to the phone, which was making ill-defined grunting sounds in Yatakangi. The speaker was not, as he had hoped, the local stringer he was to visit, but the stringer’s partner, who didn’t know when his colleague would be back and declined to do more than take a message.

Donald told him where he was staying and cut the circuit.

Swivelling his chair, he looked at Bronwen and gave a wry grin.

“Know something? For a sick girl, you’re strong.”

“It’s only in the preliminary stages,” Bronwen muttered, looking at the floor. “My husband diagnosed it immediately before they killed him.”

Now he had a chance to take in her appearance. She must have gone straight to the paper clothing dispenser and fitted herself out with a set of Yatakangi garments; she was in a pale grey shareng and a short stiff yellow coat.

She noticed him looking, and fidgeted, plucking at her waist. “These things are awful,” she said. “Worse than what we get at home, and that’s bad. I was only going to ask you if you could spare a little while to help me buy some cloth dresses instead of paper like this.”

Donald made some quick mental calculations. Coming to Yatakang, he had picked up time; it was local morning, evening back in California. Yatakangi custom decreed a sort of siesta between noon and three poppa-momma; he would not be able to make his appointments for earlier than three, therefore, and that left a couple of hours free.

“Sure I can,” he said. “Just let me make a few calls and I’ll be with you.”

“Thanks very much,” she said, and returned to her own room without closing the door.

In there, the closet swung open instead of sliding as his did. He noticed this almost at once, because on resuming his seat at the phone he could see the reflection of a reflection in the mirror which had shown him the silently opening door. He kept his eyes on the glass absently as he waited for his call to the government information office to go through.

In that fashion, he saw her pause and glance down at herself in the drab grey and yellow paper and make a moue.

“Yes?” said the phone.

“Overseas correspondents liaison section, please.”

“Wait one minute.”

She put her hands up to her breast as though to tear off the offending garments, but the paper was too tough, being reinforced with plastic against Yatakang’s frequent rain. Defeated, she slipped off the little coat and balled it up angrily, tossing the crumpled remains on the floor.

“Overseas liaison,” the phone said.

“My name is Donald Hogan and I’m accredited to you by Engrelay Satelserv. You should have had notification of my arrival from my head office.”

“Please repeat the name and I will see if that is so.”

The upper part of the shareng, automatically pre-pleated by the dispenser into a rough approximation for her size and height, unfolded from her with a rustling noise. Donald caught his breath. She was wearing nothing under it, and her breasts were like small brown pears with nipples of bright carnelian.

“Yes, Mr. Hogan, we have been notified about you. When will you wish to come and register with us for official journalistic status in Yatakang?”

“If three this afternoon is not too early—?”

She had unwound the three turns of the shareng from her waist and was bending over to sort out the complicated slots and tags that made up the portion between her legs. Her breasts hardly moved as she doubled over.

“I will consult the appointment schedule for the appropriate official. Hold on, please.”

She must have managed to put the garment on, but it was taking her a great deal of trouble to get it off. She turned, still bending, as though to get a better light on what her hands were doing, and her small shapely buttocks loomed round in the square of the mirror. Light caught the tuft of black hair at their parting.

“Yes, three today will be acceptable. Thank you, Mr. Hogan,” the phone said, and clicked off. Donald rose, his mouth a little dry and his heart hammering, and went through the doorway.

With her back to him, she stepped aside from the ruin of the paper shareng and said, “I knew you were watching, of course.”

He didn’t say anything.

“I think sometimes I’m mad,” Bronwen said, and there was a slight high edge of unborn hysteria on her voice. “And then again sometimes I think I’m not mad, but very sensible. He taught me to love my body—my husband. And there may not be very much time left for me to show that love.”

She turned at last, slowly, pivoting on one delicate foot of which the sole, Donald saw now, was tinted with pinkish dye to match the paint on the nails.

“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly. “It’s no special compliment to you. It’s just … Well, I’ve never had an American, so I’d like to. While I can. That is, if you want to.” The words came out with a strange flatness, like a machine talking. “I’m quite—how does the pun go? I’m quite impregnable, isn’t that it? They sterilised me just in case leukaemia of my sort is hereditary. I’m absolutely and completely sterile.”

“So am I,” Donald said in a tone that shocked him with its gruffness, and tugged loose the comb that held her long black hair, spilling it down her in a tressy waterfall of forgetfulness.

tracking with closeups (19)

SMALL WANTS AND THOSE EASILY SATISFIED

When his TV went wrong and would show nothing but a field of irregularly wavering grey lines interspersed with dots which moved like dust suspended in liquid and examined under a microscope to demonstrate Brownian motion, accompanied by a white-noise hiss from the speaker, Bennie Noakes thought about having it repaired. After an hour or two, however, he discovered that the random patterns and the noise were themselves psychedelic. What was more, reality didn’t intrude those annoying and disgusting bits about people killing people. Digesting himself down to a unit of pure perceptivity, he continued to watch the screen. Occasionally he said, “Christ, what an imagination I’ve got.”

continuity (23)

HE STUCK IN HIS THUMB

The Bight of Benin! The Bight of Benin!

One comes out where forty went in!

There was no direct express service to any point in Beninia. The country could not afford to build one of the huge five-mile concrete pans that the planes required, let alone the ancillary services. From the sleek modern womb of the express Norman was decanted at Accra and put aboard a tiny, ancient, wobble-winged Boeing that ran the local services via Port Mey to up-country Nigeria. It could not have been built more recently than 1980 and it was serviced by trucks carrying not lox and hydrazine but kerosene. Their hoses leaked, as he could smell, and he thought wildly of outbreaks of fire.

The Bight of Benin! The Bight of Benin!

The chiggers burrow beneath your skin!

The pressure-cooker heat of Africa pasted his clothes to his skin with a mixture of sweat and steam.

The Bight of Benin! The Bight of Benin!

Blackwater fever and pounds of quinine!

Arrogant officials in what he did not at first recognise as uniforms—the xenophobia of the end of last century had eliminated European rank-symbols like peaked caps and Sam Browne belts, to replace them with militarised counterparts of tribal dress—welcomed the chance to show their contempt for their black American cousins, children of Africans who hadn’t had the sense or skill to hide from the slavers.

The Bight of Benin! The Bight of Benin!

The rain never stops and it waters the gin!

Passed through alleys of wire-mesh like cattle on the way to the slaughter-house, the party from GT with Norman and Elihu at its head proceeded to join the line waiting for transfer to the Port Mey flight. Five centuries blended into a confused stew of impressions: fat matrons swathed in gaudy cotton with matching turbans, progressive young girls in the pre-European garb of skirtlet, beads and earrings who sometimes looked on Norman with vague approval, businessmen probably from South Africa whose Western clothes contrasted with their negro colouring, a doctor—local style—carrying a vast bundle of ritual objects each with its precisely defined function in remedial psychiatry and most possessing their own distinctive aroma, an imam from Egypt in friendly professional conversation with a dog-collared Episcopalian priest …

The Bight of Benin! The Bight of Benin!

Godforsaken since God knows when!

The announcements about arrivals and departures which were uttered at intervals over booming loudspeakers were in English of a sort, but it took Norman several minutes to realise that fact. He had known intellectually that the language left behind by the colonial government was breaking up as Latin had done after the fall of Rome, but he had thought of it as happening more in Asia than Africa, to which despite everything he had certain emotional ties. Between the spoken announcements there was a never-ending susurrus of recorded music. Out of curiosity he counted the beat-pattern of one of the numbers and identified it as being in seventeen-four time, the ancient Dahomeyan rhythm of hun against hunpi, child against mother drum. He mentioned this to Elihu for want of anything else to say.

The Bight of Benin! The Bight of Benin!

You go in fat and you die there thin!

“That’s something we wished on the paleasses, anyhow,” Norman said.

“No,” Elihu contradicted. “Complex rhythms like that were among the things that the Europeans took away from us along with the rest of tribal culture. Jazz rhythms were from military marches and French dances. Modern rhythms are from Europe too—five-four from places like Hungary, seven-four from Greece and the rest of the Balkans. Even the instruments they’ve naturalised in the West are things like the sitar, from India, rather than the cora.”

“Whatinole is a cora?”

“Half a gourd with a skin stretched over it as a resonator, and a frame carrying harp-strings and bits of metal that vibrate in sympathy at the correct frequencies. You will see it around here but it hails from further east; the best players are still Sudanese, as they’ve always been.”

The Bight of Benin! The Bight of Benin!

Made us beasts instead of men!

“Did you check up on the African side of your ancestry?” Elihu inquired. “You said you were going to, I believe.”

“Never had time,” Norman muttered. But he looked at the people around him with sudden interest, thinking: maybe some of these people are my relatives—they took a lot of slaves from here.

“You won’t be able to tell by looking,” Elihu said. “Can you tell an Ibo from a Yoruba, an Ashanti from a Mandingo?”

Norman shook his head. “Can anyone?”

“There are types, the same as there are among people of European extraction. But there are black-haired Swedes and blond Spaniards, and here you don’t even have those nice obvious traits to go by.”

The Bight of Benin! The Bight of Benin!

Godamercy on a child of sin!

“They’re calling our flight,” Elihu said, and moved forward as the gate they faced was dragged open squealing on its hinges.

During the flight to Port Mey, a man carrying a musical instrument made from a stick, an old wooden box and some tongues of scrap metal tuned to a pentatonic scale, struck up a song in a wailing voice. Norman and his companions, except Elihu, found it embarrassing, but everyone else liked the idea of some home-made music and joined in.

“He’s a Shinka,” Elihu said. “From Port Mey. Telling everyone how glad he is to be going home after visiting Accra.”

A fat woman carrying a child of less than a year had taken maximum advantage of the duty concession on liquor and passed a quart bottle of arrack around among her seat-neighbours. Norman refused her offer, trying to smile, saying very slowly and clearly that he was a non-drinking Muslim—whereupon she insisted that he take a piece of majnoun instead, from a box she had tucked into the folded cloth at her bosom. That much he consented to, thinking that the hashish it contained would not be much different from the pot he was accustomed to at home, and before they landed he was in a far more cheerful mood. The man with the musical instrument rose and went from seat to seat inviting improvised contributions of a verse for his song: Elihu, obliging after some thought, did so in good Shinka and the man fell on his neck with joy. Norman was almost disappointed at the loss of a chance to do the same himself, in English, and felt a sudden wave of astonishment at what had happened to him.

Worried, he whispered to Elihu when he had the opportunity, “Elihu, I feel very odd. Would there have been something in that candy apart from—?”

“They’re Shinkas,” Elihu said, as though that explained the entire universe, and went back to the discussion he had started with the musician, in the language of which Norman was totally ignorant.

At a loss, Norman pulled out an advertising leaflet for the airline from the pocket beside his seat, and found he was staring at a conventionalised map of West Africa which made the various countries look like slices of pie wedged into the northern coast of the Bight. Narrowest of all was Beninia, a mere sliver compared with RUNG or Dahomalia.

“Jack Horner,” he murmured, half-aloud, and Elihu cocked an eyebrow at him inquiringly.

“Nothing.”

But the idea seemed very funny, and he giggled without intending to.

Pulled out a plum! Right, too: no one in history ever pulled a plum like this one out of anybody’s pie!

* * *

Bit by bit, he began to develop a curious sense of dual personality. Despite Elihu’s offhand dismissal of the possibility, he concluded that something must have been added to spike the majnoun he had eaten. Nothing in his experience had ever induced in him this bipartisan reaction he was now undergoing.

On the one hand, his intellect remained exactly as it had been before leaving New York earlier today. When the official reception party met them at the miniature Port Mey landing-ground—Embassy staff of assorted colours and an honour guard of the toy Beninian Army in garb ideal for a parade but absolutely ridiculous for warfare—he was able to look about him and formulate corresponding ideas, such as that this was a silly place to pull financial plums out of. This wasn’t mere poverty. This was downright squalor. The road along which the Embassy cars hummed and bumped towards home was maintained, after a fashion, by gangs of labourers with pick and shovel, but it was flanked by hovels, and the only sign of official intervention in the unhampered process of human degradation consisted in a banner saying, in English, that Beninia welcomed foreign investors. He had never expected to see, in this brave new century, naked children playing in mud with squealing piglets; here they were. He had never expected to see a family of father, mother, grandfather and four children on a pedal-driven conveyance made from three antique bicycles and two large plastic crates; they were held up at the airport exit to let one pass ahead. He had never expected to see one of the pioneer Morris trucks, the first fuel-cell design to achieve commercial operating cost, full to the brim of children aged between nine and fifteen waving and grinning over the tailboard; he saw no fewer than six during the journey, decorated with pious signs stating MORE HASTE LESS SPEED and THERE IS NO GOD BUT GOD and DO AS YOU WOULD BE DONE BY AMEN.

The air was heavy with unspilled moisture even worse than he had experienced during the wait at Accra, which added to his inclination to be cynical.

Yet, at the same time as he was noting all these signs of backwardness and poverty, he was possessed of a sort of exhilaration. The road gang engaged on maintenance were accompanied by a group of four singers and musicians, making a rhythmical worksong out of the monotonous beat of the picks and counterpointing it with drums made from empty cans of different sizes. At the gaping, rag-curtained door of one of the hovels he saw a proud mother showing off her new baby to admiring neighbours, beaming with infectious delight. And standing outside another he saw a truck marked with a red cross, whose driver, dressed in a plastic coverall, was meticulously spraying himself with disinfectant from an aerosol can prior to getting back in the cab—slim proof, but proof, that the twenty-first century had made contact with Beninia.

Elihu was engaged in discussion with the gaunt young negro who had been holding the reins of office during his absence—the Embassy’s First Secretary. He was at least eight years younger than Norman. Watching him, Norman wondered how it felt to be responsible for one country’s relations with another, even on so small a scale as Beninia represented, at that age. He glanced over his shoulder, seeing the two other cars following with the remainder of the GT team—a girl from Rex Foster-Stern’s Projects and Planning Dept, an expert in African linguistics specially recruited for the visit, and two economist-accountants from Hamilcar Waterford’s personal advisory group.

Fishing in recent memory for the First Secretary’s name—Gideon … something? Gideon Horsfall, that was it—Norman leaned forward.

“Excuse me breaking in,” he said. “There’s something I’d like to ask you, Mr. Horsfall.”

“Ask away,” the gaunt man said. “And please call me Gideon. I hate being mistered.” He gave a sudden chuckle that ill-matched his rather skeletal look; he was a sort of parallel to Raphael Corning, though shorter and much darker, which threatened to send Norman’s wandering mind off down a side alley concerned with the involvement of thin nervous types in modern politics.

“I used to save mistering for paleasses,” he added when he recovered from his amusement. “But having been here a while I think I have that problem in perspective for a change. Sorry, you were going to say—?”

“I was going to ask whether you feel the same way about Beninia as Elihu does,” Norman said.

There was a pause. During it, Gideon looked around at the suburbs of Port Mey closing in on either side. Apart from the fact that the ground was not compact enough to carry high buildings—as Norman’s research had informed him, much of Port Mey had been swamp before it was drained by the British and partially reclaimed—it bore a striking resemblance to pictures of slums in Mediterranean Europe a century ago, with narrow alleys across which lines of washing were strung up, debouching onto the adequately wide but badly pot-holed street they were following.

At length Gideon said, not looking at Norman, “I can tell you this much. When they decided to post me here, in spite of the nominal promotion—I’d been Third Secretary at the Embassy in Cairo, you see—I was furious. I thought of this as a hopeless backwater. I’d have done anything to get out of it. But they made it clear that if I didn’t swallow my pride I could look forward to a future at attaché rank, indefinitely.

“So I said yes, at a sheeting awful cost to my mental stability. It was touch and go whether I actually got there or whether I went under care with a shrinker. I was practically living on tranks. You know how it is to be brown-nosed in a paleass society.”

Norman nodded. He tried to swallow, but his mouth was so dry there was nothing under his palate except air.

“I’ve been running things while Elihu was away,” Gideon said. “Not that there’s much to run, I grant you. But—well, two years ago being faced with that much nominal responsibility would have caved me in. I wouldn’t have been able to help it. Nothing else has happened to me apart from coming here, yet somehow”—he gave a shrug—“I’m back in one piece, and nothing fazes me. We could have had a RUNG-Dahomalian war and I’d have kept going through it. I might not have coped very well, but I could have made the effort and not felt I was helpless and useless.”

“That’s right,” Elihu nodded. “I’m pleased with you.”

“Thanks.” Gideon hesitated. “Elihu, I guess you’ll understand this. Time was when I’d have licked the ambassador’s boots for praise like that. Now it’s just—well—nice to have. Catch? This is part of trying to explain things to Norman here, I mean, not personal.”

Elihu nodded, and Norman had a disquieting sense of shared communication between him and Gideon which he, as a New York-bred stranger, could not hope to eavesdrop on.

“Elihu here,” Gideon resumed, turning in his seat to face Norman, “could do anything short of telling me I was a sheeting fool and proving it, and I’d still stand up and back my judgment. If he had proof, I’d say so and start over, but I wouldn’t feel stupid because I’d been wrong. I’d feel there was a reason—I was misinformed, or some back-home preconception undermined me, or something. This is being confident, which is the same as being secure. Catch?”

“I guess,” Norman said dubiously.

“Obviously you don’t. Which means I probably can’t tell you.” Gideon shrugged. “It’s not a thing you can isolate and show off in a jar—here’s the reason why. It’s something you have to experience get through your skin and into your belly. But … Well, some of it is in the fact that there hasn’t been a murder in Beninia in fifteen years.”

“What?” Norman jolted forward.

“Truth. I don’t see how it’s possible, but it’s a matter of record. Look at those slums!” Gideon pointed through the car window. “You’d think that was the sort of place designed to breed gang-rumbles and muckers, wouldn’t you? There’s never been a mucker in Beninia. The last murderer wasn’t even one of the majority group, the Shinka—he was an Inoko immigrant aged sixty-some who caught his second wife cheating.”

I’d love to bring Chad Mulligan here and shoot down some of his precious theories, Norman thought. Aloud he said, “There’s no doubt in that case that Beninia does have something.”

“Believe me, codder,” Gideon said. “Another thing, religion-wise. I’m a Catholic myself. You?”

“Muslim.”

“Not a Child of X?”

“No, orthodox.”

“Me too, in my own Church. But did you ever hear of a country where Right Catholics weren’t the target for recriminations?”

Norman shook his head.

“Now myself, I’m fully appreciative of the benefits of contraception; I have two fine prodgies and they’re bright and healthy and the rest of it, and that’s sufficient for me. But I used to rail against the heretics until I started to take in the logic of the Beninian attitude.”

“Which is?”

“Well…” Gideon hesitated. “I don’t, even yet, know if it’s cruel of me, or simply sound sense. But, you see, when the schism happened there was a good strong element of dogmatic fanaticism among the Catholics here, who are only a tiny proportion of the people—most of them are heathen or of your own persuasion. It was inevitable that a lot of them would regard the Bull De Progenitate as repugnant. However, you can’t even get an argument started about Right versus Romish over here! People say well, if they don’t plan their prodgies a high enough proportion will be sickly to make them non-competitive in the long run, and what’s more they’ll tend either to bankrupt themselves with too many children or else they’ll get so many psychological hangups from enforced continence they’ll handicap themselves in later life. And the people here don’t just believe this, they act on it! And to cap the lot—!”

“What?”

“The figures show they’re right,” Elihu said unexpectedly. “There’s not much available here in the way of social analysis apart from what’s run as a commercial venture by the United Africa Company and the Firestone people, who’ve been using their Liberian bridgehead to sound out new markets now automobile rubber is a shrinking outlet. But I don’t need to tell you about that, I guess. Fact remains, though: the percentage of economic influence exerted by Right Catholics has gone down by twenty-odd per cent since the schism and will certainly go further.”

“When both groups were running with the brakes on,” Gideon said, “the competition was loaded their way, thanks to their relative degree of Europeanisation. Now one side has dropped its handicap, and it’s going ahead like an acceleratube entering the vacuum stretch of the tunnel.”

The car swung sharply off the road and along the driveway of the U. S. Embassy building, a somewhat decayed but still handsome relic of the colonial period with tall pseudo-classical porticos on three sides of it.

“What would happen to Beninia if we didn’t intervene?” Norman said as the wheels crunched to a stop on gravel. “I know what Shalmaneser says, but I’d like an on-the-spot answer from you, Gideon.”

About to leave the car, Gideon checked his movement. He said after a pause for thought, “Depends.”

“On what?”

“On how many Shinkas the Dahomalians and the RUNGs left alive when they’d carved up the country.”

“I just don’t catch,” Norman confessed, having turned the statement over in his mind.

“You won’t until you’ve made the acquaintance of a good few Shinkas. It took me a while to realise the truth, but I finally got there.” Gideon paused again. “You’re a Muslim, you say. Have you read the Christian gospels?”

“I’m a convert, raised as a Baptist.”

“I see. In that case, I don’t have to explain the context of the bit about ‘the meek shall inherit the earth.’ The Shinka are the only living proof I know of that promise. Sounds crazy? You wait and you’ll see. They digested the Holaini, who wanted to ship the whole tribe off to the east as slaves. They digested the British so well they were almost the last British colony to be forced into independence. They digested the Inoko and the Kpala when they fled here from the neighbouring countries. Give them a chance and I swear they’d digest the Dahomalians and the RUNGs too. And what’s more—!” A sudden unaccountable fierceness entered Gideon’s tone.

“What’s more,” he concluded, “I think they’re going to digest you. Because they’ve done it to me.”

“And me,” Elihu said lightly. “And I approve. Come on, Norman—I have to take you to see Zad this evening, and we lost a lot of daytime on the flight.”

the happening world (11)

HOW TO

“Hydroxy fuel-cells of the type used to power GM trucks up to 2½-ton capacity and certain foreign imports, notably the Honda series ‘Fuji’ and ‘Kendo’, can be turned into either a flame-gun or a bomb. In the case of the GM version, a file-cut should be made at base of valve A (see diagram) and pipes B and C re-routed to follow the dotted lines. A slow-match attached to a piece of string should be placed at point D, suspending a carborundum whetstone. When this falls into contact with brake-disc E it will spark the leaking gas and …

“The plastic insulation marketed by General Technics as ‘Lo-Hi Sleevolene’ is recognisable by its pink-pearl colour. Macerate each pound weight of the stripped insulation in 1 pt. absolute alcohol. The resultant doughy sludge is heat-stable up to 20° below the average flashpoint of commercial butane but thereafter dissociates with release of approx. 200 times its original volume of gases …

“A large number of recent manufactured products employ honeycomb aluminium sheet bonded with a European adhesive sold here under the name ‘Weldigrip’. This tends to fail when exposed to gamma. Radio Test Sources Inc.’s catalogue item BVZ26 incorporates a cobalt-60 emitter designed for inspecting high-carbon steel castings up to 9" thick. It should be placed close to a critical joint …

“GT’s catalogue item RRR17 is a heavy-weather sealant applied to the underside of public transport vehicles. A little battery acid held in place with a sac of tackythene will cause it to attack the metal it’s in contact with …

“Minnesota Mining’s new sulphur-reclaiming bacterium, strain UQ-141, can be caused to sporulate simply by with-holding sulphur compounds. The organisms can then be kept in a domestic freezer for up to two months. Suggested uses include …

“GT is currently offering lox in quart flasks at a price 10% below its competitors. Wind the flask with magnesium flash-wire (16 turns/inch) and connect suitable igniter and timer. Applications will be numerous …

“Japind’s LazeeLazer monochrome unit can be modified as shown in the diagram. Depending on what grade of multiplier plug is incorporated in the circuit, voltages of up to 30,000 can be obtained. At full load the unit burns out in 1.5 sec., but careful pre-sighting will …

“A tailored bacterium from the British ICI list, catalogue ref. 5-100-244, is exceptional in that it can be mutated at home. A solution of 1/1000 HCl in distilled water breaks one of the RNA bonds. Application of the modified form leads to rapid plasticisation of virtually all thermo-setting plastics …

“‘Sterulose’, Johnson & Johnson’s new medical wadding, makes an ideal stabiliser for home-brewed nitroglycerine. Wrap each wad in paper soaked and dried in a solution of potassium nitrate or use fulminate caps for detonators …

“The soles of Bally of Switzerland’s new ‘Stridex’ shoes are made of a compound that, ignited, emits dense clouds of choking black smoke. Certain grades of pot burn with a hot enough tip for the roach to start the process, to wit …

“Wrap a piece of flexion (preferably blue, as the dye helps) around 1 carton of 12 compressed-air bulbs of the type used in a General Foods whipped-cream dispenser. Coat with ‘Novent’ plugging compound to make a ball about 7" diam. The covering prevents the detectors at the garbage plant from reclaiming the metal of the bulbs. On a test run at Tacoma the resulting shrapnel put the disposal furnaces out of action for six hours …

“You probably heard the Bay Area Rapitrans was stalled for a full day. The diagram shows what did it. Placed on the track-bed, the device emits signals that tell the line computer a train is permanently stuck in that station …

“A signal injector powered by two dry cells can be left in a public phone-booth and without interferring with normal operation of the phone (thus delaying detection) will cause up to 250 random calls per hour over the area served by the local exchange …

“A parasite emitter light enough to hang under a child’s kite or 2-ft. diam. hot-air balloon will repeat a 10-sec. slogan for up to 1 hour on regular TV sound wavelengths. See schematic …

“Empty one self-heating ‘Camp with Campbell’ soup-can by perforating it at the point shown in the picture, NOT conventionally at the top. Refill with any explosive or flammable compound flashing below 93° C. Close hole with surgical waterproof tape. On puncturing the can will become a grenade with a delay of 7 to 12 sec. according to contents …

“The adhesive used to seal capsules containing GT aluminophage is vulnerable to acetic acid. A delay-timer can thus be made by mixing water and vinegar in suitable ratio …

“United Steel’s monofilament reinforcement yarn V/RP/SU is magnetosensitive. A timer activating an electromagnet could give the stuff applications e.g. on power-lines or in computers, inducing random cross-connections …

“An aerosol suspension of Triptine in peanut oil acquires interesting electrical properties. Try smearing it on a dust-precipitator …

“There are static-dischargers on the metal frame of the bridge at Kennedy Loading Point, Ellay. There should be a use for two or three hundred unwanted volts …

“The missile-bombardment doors on the North Rockies Acceleratube are sensitive to gamma. The sensor is in a large black container at the eastern entry and at the western it’s in a green conical thing. Those doors weigh over a thousand ton apiece …

“Near the junction of Eleazar Freeway with Coton Hudson Drive the computer cables serving the traffic signals over 120 sq. mi. pass within a foot of the surface. There’s a hydrant sign …

“Eastman Kodak is offering an interesting new collapsed-benzene compound. Wherever there are strained bonds there’s energy waiting to be tapped. Pass the word when you find out how to spring the poor captives …

“Don’t scrap your last-year’s model Frigidaire! Units 27-215-900 through 27-360-500 employed a coolant liquid that was quietly withdrawn when they discovered it was capable of being mixed with Vaseline to make a gel—and the gel burns at over 500°. We suggest using it for paint. It turns a nice pale green colour and will sustain its own oxidation in films thinner than .001 inch …

“If you have re-evacuation facilities, note that the electron gun in current Admiral TV sets can be modified to deliver a linear instead of a fanned jet. What it does to a sensitive circuit is nobody’s business, but it ought to be …

“Table salt in GT’s solvent 00013 does very interesting things to copper, aluminium and brass …

“Try cross-connecting leads 12 and 27 on a Wontner electroplating unit. But make sure you’re not in the building when the power goes back on. Cyanide is fierce stuff …

“They’ve precautioned most traffic-carrying tunnels out this way against smoke, aerosol radio-sources, control-circuit jammers and incendiaries. They still haven’t coped with Minnesota Mining’s strain RS-122, which turns concrete into a fine powder, nor GT’s ‘Catalight’, an oxidising catalyst for asphalt and related compounds. Thought you’d like to know…”

—From a selection of duplicated, photocopied, holographed, offset, lithoed and printed leaflets on file at Ellay police HQ