Stand on Zanzibar

context (26)

TO MYSELF ON THE OCCASION OF MY TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

I made me in a sterile hospital.

I’m sure the act, like me, was neat and clean.

Blood, pain, or mess? I frankly don’t recall.

I anyhow preferred to shift the scene

And went to school to learn what I approve.

Later I got a job and earned some cash

And found a girl. Together we make love.

One day, I guess, I’ll turn myself to ash

But that’s a thought on which I don’t much dwell.

To make quite certain I shall like me, I

Strictly observe injunctions that I read:

I scrub my skin to take away its smell,

Put talcs and lotions on it when it’s dry …

But scratch it and—God damn, I hurt, I bleed!

continuity (38)

NOT FOR SALE BUT CAN BE HAD ON APPLICATION

“Thanks,” Chad said.

Norman could hardly believe his ears. He said, “Whatinole are you thanking me for? Prophet’s beard, I should be down on hands and knees to you. I owe you—”

He stopped suddenly. There were too many people in earshot for him to speak the truth: that it wasn’t the rescue of the GT investment planned for Beninia, but the salvation of the project itself along with everything he had personally committed to the idea, for which he wanted to express his gratitude. But the presidential floor of the GT tower was swarming with distinguished guests, including the team from State who behind their spokesman Raphael Corning had been supervising the venture. He was beset with them and fellow staffers and acquaintances until he had started to feel like the quarry of hounds. He had not even had the satisfaction of telling Elihu the good news; Waterford had immediately sent messengers in search of him and Ram Ibusa on the specially mounted tour they were making of the building.

Chad sensed his mood and divined the reason behind it. He said with a wry smile, “It’s a drecky way to run a man’s life, isn’t it? You’re the crown of creation, codder, and you can’t stand it. But I guess one must learn to put up with it.”

“I’ve started noticing the things wrong with it all over again since I came home,” Norman admitted.

“I’ve never experienced them before. I spent a lot of my youth in the secluded groves of Academe—maybe that was what deluded me into thinking people would listen if I shouted at them loud enough, because my old students did at least pretend to be paying attention even if they never acted on what they were told … But I’ll have to get used, I suppose.”

“What?”

“You said you were going to hire me.”

“But—” Norman stumble-tongued. “But you’ve done what I was going to hire you for! You put Shalmaneser back on the orbit we wanted him to fly, and—”

“Norman, you’re contaminated,” Chad cut in. “You’re a nice guy and you’ve done me favours and the rest, but you’re contaminated. Look, spare-wheel!”

Without turning his head he put the empty glass he was holding on a passing trolley and snatched another.

“What did everyone say who was hanging around Shal while I had my little chat with him?”

Suddenly irritated beyond endurance, Norman snapped, “You ought to drop the modesty act. It’s pseudo. It doesn’t suit you and you’re not good at it.”

“You mean calling it a little chat? The hole!” Chad swigged his new drink down. “Get it into your skull, will you? That’s the plain truth! I never make with the modesty act—I’m congenitally conceited and I long ago gave up trying to cure myself. But it’s not that I’m so damned good at anything. I just haven’t been conditioned into thinking that the right answer can’t be a simple one. When I told you you’d been contaminated I meant by that attitude, which is wider-spread than the common cold and just as undermining. Did nobody ever point out to you that the only liberty implied by free will is the opportunity to be wrong? In words of one syllable more or less: what Shal has done is exercise his built-in faculties—the ones everybody on the design team expected, hoped for, advertised as a colossal breakthrough in cybernetics and then refused to recognise when they saw them happening! Shal did exactly what you’re doing at this moment, and he was just as wrong as you are. He—”

Inserted into the middle of the flow of words as neatly as a monofilament wire, the voice of Prosper Rankin: suave, ingratiating, and to Norman horrible.

“Mr. Mulligan—or I believe I should say Doctor, should I not?”

“Sure, I have more doctorates than a dog has fleas these days.” Chad turned, blinking, and Norman felt a stir of apprehension. “What other ailments may I cure for you besides the minor complaint I saw to already?”

Rankin gave an insincere grin: was that a joke? “I’d hardly call it minor, though naturally we wouldn’t care for people to know just how worried Shalmaneser had us there for a while. We’re tremendously indebted for your insight and assistance—and on that subject, it occurred to me to wonder whether anyone had formally asked you to join our company at the banquet we’re having to mark the successful outcome of the Beninian negotiations. Norman has presumably told you about it.”

“No, nobody’s invited me to come along to anything except this bierfest that’s going on now. And this I don’t mind because whoever does your catering appreciates good liquor.”

Fasten it, you fool. Norman frowned the thought at Rankin and wished he could utter it aloud. What I want to do is sneak out with Chad and go to a bar with him. Drunk or sober I’d rather hear what he has to say than …

“Thank you,” Rankin was saying. “Our food, I assure you, is of equally high standard. But what I was going to ask you was whether you’d care to say a few words afterwards, along with Dr. Ibusa and Dr. Masters and Dr. Corning.”

I think you ought to tell him what he can do with his speechifying.

But Norman’s momentary wild hope died. With a light in his eye that Norman had begun to recognise for a danger signal, Chad was nodding vigorously.

“By all means. I should love to say a few words to these people. I should love to.”

If there had been any chance of Norman enjoying the banquet through the euphoria of sheer relief, it vanished at that instant. All through the meal he sat moodily between a woman from State and Rex’s wife—someone else’s scheduled place, but he had offered to trade with Chad so the latter could be seated with Rankin and Waterford without upsetting the entire layout. He picked at his food, vaguely hoping that some blazing row would develop during private conversation, or that Chad would become incapably drunk and have to be taken away under the pretense of illness.

Bit by bit, however, his mood lightened. So what if Chad did do as he feared and behave in a monstrously offensive manner? There were a lot of people in the audience who would benefit from a tongue-lashing. And if it so happened that Chad chose to include the effectual head of the Beninia project, one Norman Niblock House, among his main targets—

The hole. I deserve it. I sheeting well deserve it.

As soon as he politely could, he thrust away the last of his food and lit a Bay Gold to cushion the anticipated impact. In accordance with ancient formula, Rankin, who was acting chairman, waved at Rex Foster-Stern, who had been delegated toastmaster, and the suffering began.

Rex mouthed regret about the absence of Old GT, whose sad fate cast a shadow over us all, and called on Rankin, who juggled sorrow at GT’s loss with insistence that her death would result in no harm to the Beninia project, managing with skill GT herself might have approved to prevent one assertion from contradicting the other.

After which Ram Ibusa acknowledged on behalf of the Beninian government the promised revolution in domestic affairs which his country looked forward to, and Dr. Corning gave an official blessing to the contracts which had been signed, and Elihu—mercifully brief—assured everyone that there was a great future for Beninia.

Finally, Rex returned to the podium and Norman wondered why in this allegedly streamlined modern age it always took hours to get through a commemorative or celebratory function. Why couldn’t someone programme Shal to work out a condensed version, equally formalised but completed in five minutes?

“And now I have the pleasure—the genuine honour—of introducing the guest who on this occasion—or any other—needs perhaps less introduction than practically anybody. With all due respect to Mr. Rankin, or even to Dr. Masters, whose distinction is incontestable, I feel that his name is better known to you than anyone else’s who is here. His thinking has helped to shape our society, through his books, his articles, interviews—”

“You’re not going to put the blame for our society on my back!” Chad said very audibly, and Rex flushed.

“Well—hr’m!—without going into detail I must say that his specialist assistance in the realisation of the Beninia project has been invaluable, which is another reason apart from his great personal cachet why we’ve invited him to address us today—ah—Dr. Chad C. Mulligan.”

He sat down, barely in time to save himself from being shoved out of the way. Chad, as Norman had noticed, had spent most of his time drinking and not eating his meal, and he was a trifle unsteady on his feet as he reached the podium. Liquor had done nothing to affect his voice, however; the moment he started to speak, technicians recording the speeches for SCANALYZER and the company’s own archives winced and made haste to cut back the gain on their microphones.

“Shalmaneser, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ambassador, you lot out there and anybody else who may have snuck in on the astral plane! It is not for nothing that I begin by naming Shalmaneser rather than—there is a line taking all this through to Shal, I suppose? Yes? Good. I made his acquaintance a few hours ago and I completely revised my opinion of him, which was that like other computers I’ve had dealings with he was a moron, magnified, but nonetheless a moron who had to be told everything to be done in little itsy-bitsy steps. I was mistaken.

“My compliments to the design team who said they were going to develop a machine that could exercise conscious volition. My felicitations to Dr. Ibusa, who’s going to enjoy the benefits of that—and who probably doesn’t realise it yet. As far as I know this is the first public announcement of the achievement and that’s because I seem to be the first person who’s realised.”

There was a definite stir among the staffers, mostly people in Rex’s department. Norman, a little relieved that Chad was actually delivering a coherent address and not shouting insults or farting into the mikes, sat up straighter on his chair.

“It’s just as well you have Shal running the Beninia project, by the way,” Chad continued. “Unless there was somebody looking after it who knew what he was getting mixed up in, it would be a grand recipe for sending the country to hell in a handbasket. Even my friend Norman House, who hasn’t had the praise he deserves for thinking more about the people living over there than about what the project can do to line the shareholders’ bank accounts, overlooked the little thing I just referred to—Shal’s acquisition of the faculty possessed only by intelligent creatures which is known as orneriness, or over the water in England as ‘bloody-mindedness’, which seems to me to be the ideal term.”

By now the members of the board were looking rather nervous. Norman saw Waterford lean towards Rankin and whisper. For himself, he thought he might be going to enjoy Chad’s tirade after all. He took another drag on his Bay Gold.

“What do you do with somebody who tells you you’re out of your skull? It’s an annoying and deflating experience, isn’t it? It’s like trying to get a machine to do what it was designed for and finding it won’t.

“But a machine you can send off for repair, or trade in for a more reliable model. You can’t trade in people who bug you; you can only dodge out of their way, and sometimes this isn’t possible either. Sitting over there in Asia are a holovalot of people who disagree with us violently enough to make us boil our brains, so for as much of the time as we can we pretend they don’t exist. Until they kill our sons, or sink our ships, or do something else we can’t ignore.

“Right. Shal was told about Beninia, and what he replied amounted to this—‘I don’t believe you!’ And he was sheeting well justified. I’ll tell you why!

“This is a fine fat wealthy country and we’re scared. We think any moment we may walk around a corner and meet a mucker. We think we may dial California and find a slit-eye answering the phone out there. Without anybody warning us we may find ourselves mixed up in a riot and tossed in jail for no legal reason except we were there. This happened to Norman House just a short time ago, by the way.

“Beninia is a poky, poverty-stricken, broken-down little country which oughtn’t on the face of it to exist. But if they don’t have any wars there, and they haven’t had a murder in fifteen years, and there isn’t a word in the language to say ‘angry’—only a way to say ‘insane’—well, who’d believe that if someone came along and said it in conversation?

“I wouldn’t. I’d say the same thing I say to a little red brother when he tells me how lovely the garden is in China.

“This, in case you haven’t heard, is why I came to make Shalmaneser’s acquaintance. I’m not handing out compliments now—I’ve moved on to the brickbat stage, and believe me there are some people out there who deserve to be snowed under with barrels of dreck for abdicating their responsibilities as thinking individuals. Did you think, the same as Shal did, that the people who fed data about Beninia back to GT were all liars, out to deceive and con you?

“Communism doesn’t make a country a paradise on earth, but it has made an overcrowded underendowed country like China into a problem the world’s really rich countries can’t ignore. Something’s working there, and it’s probably not what its own citizens think it is—never mind. The evidence exists.

“If the evidence says you’re wrong, you don’t have the right theory. You change the theory, not the evidence. Codders and shiggies, didn’t anyone tell you that while you were in school?

“Even now—Norman, are you listening or have you gone to sleep?” Chad turned around and peered past the edge of the podium. “Ah yes, there you are. Easy to spot you—you have built-in advantages. Even now, like I was saying, a person as nominally intelligent as Norman hasn’t drawn the inevitable conclusion from what it took to persuade Shalmaneser the reports about Beninia were true. There’s something going on there, something working among the people, which you and I don’t know about. Norman! You asked to hire me and I said the hole with that, and then you changed your mind—well, so did I. Hired or not hired, I want to know what it is!”

He thumped the podium with his clenched fist and the microphones jumped.

“Sheeting hole, when’s the next express for Beninia? Dr. Ibusa, do I have to have a visa or can I just go? I like the idea of a country where there aren’t any riots and there aren’t any muckers and there aren’t any wars and there aren’t any lots of other things which make me despair for the human race! Until I was told about Beninia I thought they were all wiped out like Samoa and the Bushmen by Christianity and firewater and downright greed.

“I hate long speeches. Also I’ve drunk too much. I’d better sit down.”

* * *

There was a long silence. Eventually a spattering of applause went around the hall and died. The woman from State sitting next to Norman turned to him and said, “Well, he said a few nice things about you, Mr. House, and I’m sure you deserve them.”

“I deserve to have my head shrunk,” Norman answered curtly, getting to his feet.

“What?”

“I’m a fool!” Norman snapped, and walked away.

the happening world (15)

EQUAL AND OPPOSITE

Dear Friend—I write to you as one who has already supported some of my ventures dedicated to Justice, Right and the Natural Law of White Supremacy. You have no doubt heard how those pro-communist Devils in Washington have sold out more of our irreplaceable natural resources to a gang of lousy black beggars in Beninia. I propose to …

“And speaking of foreign aid: I think we may justly cite the recently announced Beninia project as an undertaking which combines to the highest degree enlightened self-interest with the support of the deserving. I only regret that our present Administration preferred to operate through intermediaries instead of…”

CHAIRMAN YUNG SLAMS U S

DUBS BENINIA PROJECT ‘NAKED ECONOMIC AGGRESSION’

Your board is pleased to report that after certain minor initial difficulties the Beninia project is well under way. The fullest assistance has been forthcoming from the Beninian government, and the latest evaluation from Shalmaneser …

“The hole! I saw where it said on SCANALYZER that they haven’t fought any wars for themselves—not ever. If they don’t have the spunk to stand up for themselves they must be a pretty gutless bunch, and I don’t think we ought to give away…”

GT HOLDINGS BLAST OFF

2005 PRICE CEILING SHATTERED

Just because they put a few of their darker-skinned lackeys out front, don’t think this isn’t a white operation. In Beninia they are spitting on the bodies of our ancestors who died at Sharpeville and Bloemfontein, at Durban and Witwatersrand …

“My parents met in the Peace Corps. Dad says Beninia looks like another of the same sort of thing as what they did. Suppose I volunteered; would you…?”

CAIRO ATTACKS BEN PROJ AS ‘JEWISH PLOT’

GOVT SPONSORS BOYCOTT OF GT MERCHANDISE

Dear President Obomi—I saw on TV where it said your country doesn’t have any muckers. Well my boy Andy was killed by one and I have two other sweet prodgies I don’t want the same to happen to so please tell me how I can …

“What business we have meddling in affairs on another continent I don’t know. When there’s so much amiss over here you’d think we ought to…”

BRITISH PREMIER PRAISES BENINIA PROJECT

OTHER EUROPEAN REACTION GUARDED, HOSTILE

(LOGIC The principle governing human intellection. Its nature may be deduced from examining the two following propositions, both of which are held by human beings to be true and often by the same people: “I can’t so you mustn’t,” and “I can but you mustn’t.”

—The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)

tracking with closeups (28)

THE SLOW WAY TO DIE

Eric Ellerman had expected them at least to tell him when they ran out of patience, give him some kind of a warning.

But they didn’t.

After the first encounter, Stal Lucas and his sparewheels allowed three days. They found him on the rapitrans again, predictable as sunrise, heard his excuses, and told him to do better.

How? Industrial security had kept pace with advances in espionage; literally, they counted every leaf of the Too Much strain, by running an automatic camera connected to a computer along the huge hydroponic tanks. He thought of stealing part of a leaf and trying to make it take as a cutting; he dropped the fragment inside his shoe and tried to get past the gate sniffers with it. But they detected the aroma given off by the uncured leaf and although they accepted his excuse that it must have fallen into his shoe by accident it just so happened that on the same day one of the water technicians was fool enough to try and get out with a whole stem of the plant, apparently for his own use. After that, security was unbelievable for a while.

He told Stal and the yonderboy wasn’t interested. He said this time next week, or …

Copy the genetic structure from a cured leaf? Couldn’t be done without the kind of equipment he employed in the lab, and he couldn’t afford to keep a Jeans-Whitman molecular analyser in his kitchen. In any case, every pack of Too Much that left the premises was bombarded with radiation designed to blur the key genes. One would have to buy a thousand joints before one could be sure of establishing the correct pattern.

He quarrelled with Ariadne worse than ever and once he hit Penelope so hard he was frightened of himself. She did not cry over the bruise, but went away in a corner and nursed it. When he came after her to try and apologise and comfort her she fled from him.

He thought of asking a friend for advice, but there wasn’t anyone. People at the plant had never been close to him, and since the word got around that Ariadne was pregnant again they had been keeping their distance—so far away, he could not even nail the lie.

The day before Stal had promised to waylay him again he decided firmly that he must report what had happened to the authorities and ask for help. He put in an application to see the director responsible for the tectogenetic section. The director listened to the story in the morning and nodded thoughtfully over it. In the afternoon he called Eric back and had him sit in on a telephone conversation with a police lieutenant who appeared to be convinced that Eric was marketing his story to attract attention.

“No, of course I didn’t see what kind of shoes they were wearing! They cornered me in a crowded rapitrans car! No, I don’t have any way of getting in touch with them—they said they’d find me again, they know where I live.”

Probably the director had mentioned things like his not getting the expected raise awarded to everyone else after the success of the Too Much strain; probably he’d said something about having three prodgies, and all girls at that—anti-social, work falling off, incipient paranoia …

The police lieutenant told him to string Stal along and see what else he could find out and then maybe there would be some action. Meantime he was busy and couldn’t spare a man to keep watch over an adult citizen.

The next morning’s conversation consisted in two sentences and a quadruple shrug.

“You have what we asked for, darling?”

“Look, if you’d only let me explain you’d see why it’s so difficult!”

Shrug.

* * *

It was so long coming—days on days, and the hints and clues subtle as the dropping temperature before a storm. A resident in their block usually friendly, becoming curt. Penelope coming back from school in tears and refusing to be comforted. Ariadne being deliberately short-changed at the block store and losing the argument because people in the line behind shoved her until she had to grab the groceries and run. Someone unknown spitting in a culture he was working on at the labs. A red cross smeared in lipstick on the door of the apt.

He told Ariadne eventually that he was going to apply to GT for a post in Beninia because it said they wanted people in every possible discipline and that must include competent geneticists. She said she didn’t want her children growing up in some filthy foreign country. He lost the first stage of the argument. It was won for him when she caught the Gadsden boy and some of his sparewheels tormenting Penelope, telling her they were going to make her have lots of babies and she’d die but she would go to heaven because that was what all Right Catholics were supposed to do. They had got as far as taking off her panties.

In his innocence he had assumed that once his letter of application was in the mail it was safe; the slot in the wall of the apt was supposed to feed directly to a mail-canister collected by the Post Office twice a day. He’d forgotten that the address itself told a long, long story.

Saturday evening he went for some liquor and joints to help ease the passage of time. In the store someone jostled him and said loudly, “Crowded around here! And some people I could name don’t help!”

Another voice said, “Don’t worry, he’s leaving us, and not before time.”

“Ah-hah? Where’s he going?”

“Africa. That’s far enough away.”

I didn’t tell anyone—I didn’t even tell Penelope for fear she might …

He paid up and left carrying his purchases. Drunk, the two men followed him. He didn’t know their names. They began calling out to everyone they passed, saying, “Hey look! Don’t you know who he is? He’s Pope Eglantine’s special representative, the daddy of them all!”

It being Saturday there were a lot of people about.

“Someone came and asked me about him the other day. Something about a woman with two prodgies he deserted down in Ellay.”

“What?”

“Helen something, he said. Helen—Jones?”

All looking, listening, curious.

“But he has three right here in the block. That makes five.”

“Five?”

“Five!”

At a drinks dispenser someone emptied his plastic cup and threw it. It tapped lightly on Eric’s arms folded over the cans and packs he had brought from the store.

“Hey, big man making five prodgies! And left the one with two, did you? Whassamatter, wouldn’t she breed any more Right Catholics for you?”

Not recognised, a figure out of nightmare, someone in his way, compelling him to stop.

“Going to have a nice cosy evening all by yourselves giving the next one a good start in life? Plenty of liquor, plenty of joints to get you in the mood? Maybe you need the lift to lay that fat cow. I know I would!”

“So fix that!”

Hands tugging at the things he carried. Weakly he tried to struggle free. They pulled it all away from him.

“Whassamatter, codder? Want it back?”

“Give it here—it’s mine, I paid for it!”

“Not so fast, darling, not so fast! Hey, Shirley, want a pack of joints? Plenty here! Doug, how about some beer?”

“No, stop it, stop it—”

“Harry, catch the pack, he’s getting wild.”

Going from hand to hand, shiggies’ as well as men’s, always marginally faster than he could react to intercept it. His breath was lacerating now and his eyes were blurred.

“Why don’t you complain to Pope Eglantine, darling? Get him to call down the wrath of heaven on us! You’re a good boy, aren’t you—always breeding like you’re told to!”

“You heard about his first wife down in Ellay with the two kids before he moved up here?”

“Dirty bleeder—”

“Trying to run away now he’s been found out, wants to go to Africa they told me—”

“Just because he’s got a clean genotype—”

“Shows off the Populimit Bulletin all the time and then it turns out—”

“Probably burns it on the altar secretly and apologises for buying it—”

“Always screaming and crying, two of them at once, can’t hardly sleep for the racket—”

“My boy says his daughter wanted to know why we don’t have girl twins like they do—”

“Dirty bleeder—”

The next thing thrown was one of the cans of beer. It hit Eric’s forehead and left a cut; he was suddenly blinking away blood.

“On the orbit, darling! Square on the orbit! Hey, let me—”

Crash.

“Don’t let him get away, he’s trying to get away—”

“Say, if he likes to breed so much why don’t we—?”

“Got him again! Donna, you want to have a shot? Here—”

“Catch him, Doug! Right, sparewheels, let’s—”

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

“Lookitim lookitim look!”

“Have to wash before he goes to see the Pope again—”

“No wonder she threw him out, two children looking like that—”

“Five—”

“Right Catholic—”

“Stop him!”

“Ouch! Christ, the bleeder’s—”

“See what you did to my sparewheel? I’m going to—”

And they did.

When it was over and they got scared they took him down to the rapitrans and when nobody except the people who already knew were watching they pushed him over the edge of the platform in front of an incoming car and said he fainted suddenly or committed suicide—versions differed but of course with the word having leaked out about the poor shiggy called Helen he abandoned in Ellay and the five prodgies and the secret Right Catholic beliefs and all the rest of it nobody inquired too closely.

* * *

When Stal saw news about it on the TV he was pretty well satisfied but by then Zink had found someone who thought he could get the stuff ready-cured out of the packing station and would split the profits sixty-forty.

continuity (39)

BETTER TO BE A VOLCANO

As he had done on the days previous, Donald spent the daylight hours wandering around the clearing, brooding, or sitting on one of the tree-stump seats trying not to have to think. His isolation was self-aggravated. There was news to be had; despite the postponement of their intended uprising, Jogajong’s organisation was active, with many spies and agents—at least one in every town of Yatakang, delivering frequent reports. Jogajong made a great show of openness towards Donald, introducing and praising him to anyone of importance who made his way to the camp, but the pretence rang hollow. Whenever there was business to discuss someone was assigned to make sure Donald did not approach the speakers too closely.

Not that he was concerned about that. Human affairs, even on the scale of revolution in a country of over two hundred million, had begun to dwindle in his mind during the interminable hours of waiting. He stared into the trees and saw the luxuriance of their leaves and blossoms fed by the cycle of putrefaction; on that spot, ten thousand years ago, there was conceivably such another tree … but where was man? Fat, somehow obscene fungi clung here and there to tree-trunks, attended by insects. Lower, there were snakes, bugs, scorpions against which he had been counselled never to put his shoes on without shaking them, nor lie down without examining his bedding. Higher, there were birds of species he could not name except for the brightest parakeets which chattered to one another in shrill, grating voices. There were many other creatures in the jungle, but most of them were afraid of the smell of man and kept their distance.

He listened to the wind soughing in the upper branches. When it rained, he hated the irregularity of the splashing and dripping it induced. Patternless, it mocked at pattern, hence at reason. The air was never free of an oppressive smell, either from rotting vegetation or from the volcanic vent, and like a man condemned to slake his thirst from muddy ponds he began to imagine that there was a special taste to air, like the taste of pure water, and sniffed the breeze hopefully when it blew from the seaward side, expecting some delirious miracle of inhalation.

But the idea of the sea also troubled him: enormous, massive, patient, capable of wrath, a hostile beast encircling the hostile giant of the jungle and equally ready to wash away the memory of man. He struggled to picture the hundred islands of Yatakang, a flourishing nation with science, technology, an advanced civilisation, and beyond it China, India, Europe, America. Fabled names, read from maps. This was no tidy arrangement of blue and green and brown on a flat sheet with neat square corners. This was a chaos. It belonged to Grandfather Loa, the Chronos of today who might choose at will to eat his children.

More than at anything else, he stared at the volcano, shrouded much of the time in mist, but occasionally appearing to his view as though the slumbering deity was fitfully aware of the mite whom he awed and remembered to make himself manifest.

Remembered: Bronwen, her sleek brown body and her statement so calmly uttered that he had known he was going to be needed to save Sugaiguntung. Brushing contact, ships that pass in the night. It seemed vaguely desirable that her leukaemia should overcome her. She carried more of him in her mind than he cared to part with to so casual an acquaintance.

Also Deirdre Kwa-Loop: how would Engrelay Satelserv explain the sudden fading from their programmes of the dispatches they had advertised so loudly? Ah, there would be a new sensation and they would ghost stories under his name to cover the gap until the fickle awareness of the public overlooked it altogether. As well try to recall the identity of each hair shed to the comb, each paring lost to the nail-scissors. Today, tomorrow, sub specie aeternitatis, small things to distract half-empty minds. Heedless, the presence of Grandfather Loa.

When a messenger came to report a radio contact with the patrols between here and Isola, and said something about a lull in aquabandit activity which made it possible to sneak in a submarine tonight, he barely paid attention. He had decided it was better to be a volcano than a man; at least one set no store by what one’s acts destroyed.

* * *

The medicine had brought Sugaiguntung out of his fever but he was left very weak. Nausea had prevented him from keeping down any food for almost three days, and although he had recovered sufficiently to take a little broth and a spoonful or two of savoury rice, the nurse said she had had to compel him to swallow it. Donald abandoned his apathy for long enough to wonder about the advisability of taking him out to the submarine tonight. According to Jogajong the process had to be a complex one, involving a boat, radar-evasive protective suits, and floating alone on the water for anything up to hours before sonar showed it was safe for the submarine to surface and take them aboard. That it had been done successfully a great many times, including the occasion when Jogajong was taken away for training in insurgency, was no reassurance; there were also times on record where it had ended in blood and fire.

He had hardly spoken to the scientist since he fell ill. His delirious ravings had had a certain fascination, like a white-noise concert, but last night when Donald returned to the cave he had only been snoring, and today he had lain quietly on his mattress, answering questions with nods or grunts. Once satisfied that the fever was abating, Donald had preferred to avoid him.

Now, with the question of their departure on his mind, he entered the cave and found the scientist sitting up crosslegged, wrapped in a blanket. He seemed to be lost in thought. When Donald asked if he felt well enough to endure the trip out to the submarine, his answer at first was a counterquestion.

“Can you get me pen and paper?”

“Never mind that,” Donald said roughly. “Do you feel all right now? They’ve arranged to take us away tonight.”

“I don’t want to be taken away,” Sugaiguntung said.

Was the fever still active in his wasted body? Donald asked again, “Do you feel better now?”

“Yes, much better, and I said I wanted paper. Is there any to be had?”

Donald hesitated and bit his lip. After a moment he uttered a promise to get some which he did not believe he could keep, and backed out of the cave. He went in search of Jogajong and found him talking with the nurse.

“Mr. Hogan,” he nodded politely. “I hear Dr. Sugaiguntung is recovering well and may be taken to the submarine as planned.”

“He’s just told me he doesn’t want to go,” Donald said. On hearing the words in his own voice, their impact came home to him. To have done this, to have suffered this, and then to have nothing to show for it…?

His eyes met Jogajong’s, and for an instant he knew he was on the same plane as the rebel leader: he had, in this fragment of eternity, a cause in whose way nothing must be allowed to stand.

“What does he want to do, then?”

“I didn’t ask him.”

“He can’t stay here. The government has good computers. Soon they will notice the pattern of comings and goings centred on this island and draw a conclusion. We shall have to go to a base on another island where people are more sympathetic to the cause. It will be a long, hard trek through jungle and swamp and there will be many dangerous boat-crossings—not good for a sick and aging man.”

“Also he can’t go back,” Donald said, and added to himself: if he could, I wouldn’t let him.

“In some ways,” Jogajong said after a little thought, “it is easier to transport an unconscious man.”

“So I would imagine.”

“It is presumably a last trace of the delirium due to the fever, isn’t it?”

“Of course.” They understood one another perfectly.

The nurse said, “But I gave him enough of the drugs to make sure he—”

Jogajong interrupted her. “You have had no trouble from him when you gave him medicine?”

She shook her head.

“Tonight then, a short while before we are due to send you on your way, Mr. Hogan…”

Donald, however, was scarcely listening. The problem settled, he had gone back to thinking of Grandfather Loa.

tracking with closeups (29)

WHILE THE BALANCE OF HIS MIND WAS DISTURBED

“Mary!”

Standing by the window, staring with a bitter expression at the advancing tide of repetitive suburbs cresting the far side of the pleasant English valley, Mary Whatmough heard her husband’s voice calling her excitedly. She swallowed half the gin that was in the glass she held—she felt somehow guilty about pouring herself large drinks—and turned just as he entered the room, holding up a letter like a flag of triumph.

“It’s from the Beninia Consortium! Listen! ‘Dear—etc’—where are we? Yes, this is the important bit. ‘While we cannot hold out the hope of remuneration as generous as we would accord to an applicant with more specialised skills, we do believe that experience such as you described in your letter would prove valuable to our staff in the preliminary stages of the project. Please let us know when it would be convenient for you to call at our London office and discuss the matter personally.’”

Articulating carefully—the draught of gin had hit her rather harder and very much more quickly than she had expected—Mary said, “It sounds as though some of those blacks have finally seen sense, doesn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious? They never were fit to run their own affairs, and now they’ve realised it and asked somebody in to help them who can.”

Victor folded the letter. Then, looking down at it, he began to pleat it into parallel strips. He said without raising his head again, “Ah—I don’t believe that’s exactly the thinking that underlies the project, my dear.”

Across his mind there flashed a brief vision of a pretty girl’s face in a phone screen. In the background, a dark human shape.

Things have changed. It’s no good looking for a rebirth of my world or Mary’s. But I did have a lot of pleasure out of Karen. Perhaps there’s a chance …

“It may not be the thinking,” Mary said. “But it’s the fact, isn’t it?”

“Possibly, of course,” he agreed uncomfortably. “But I hardly think it would be—uh—politic to talk in those terms. It might give offence. Mightn’t it?”

“You’re beginning to sound like my father,” Mary said. That was always—had been for twenty years—the prelude to an argument. “And look where such talk got him! Thrown out on his ear by an ungrateful bunch of upstarts!”

“Well, dear, we wouldn’t be responsible to the Beninians directly, you see—our employers would be an American company working under contract to them.”

“I haven’t any time for Americans. I’ve told you so a thousand times. Trust them to put some snotty brown-nose over you, half your age, who’ll insist on you calling him ‘boss’ and bowing every time he speaks to you! What are you doing?”

Victor had taken the letter and torn it meticulously into four.

“It isn’t any good, is it?” he said. He was addressing the air, not his wife. “She’s bound to get drunk at a party some time and start talking about the prime minister or somebody as a ‘brown-nose’, and then where would I be? Back here, or somewhere worse, so…”

He turned on his heel.

“Where are you going?”

“Oh, shut up, will you?”

She shrugged. Victor was always getting these fits of bad temper. At the Harringhams’ party the other week, for instance. It was a wonder Meg Harringham hadn’t smacked his face. But he’d get over it, same as usual, and probably by this time tomorrow he’d be denying he ever said it. And he only tore the letter into four so it could still be read and it was reassuring after all these years that those stupid Africans had realised which side their bread was—

When she heard the shot, at first she couldn’t believe it had come from inside the house. Even after she had opened the door of Victor’s den and seen his brains splattered all over the zebra-skin rugs she didn’t believe it.

continuity (40)

OF THE GREATEST SIGNIFICANCE

There had appeared to be a problem: where to accommodate the staff supervising the earliest stages of the Beninia project. Short of building a new suburb to Port Mey, delay had seemed inevitable until someone thought of asking Shalmaneser and from his incredible mass of data he sifted out a solution. There was an obsolete aircraft-carrier up for sale.

GT had beaten out a bid from New Zealand, and the fact was currently the subject of violent argument in the Parliament out there. However, if they still wanted it in say a year’s time they could have it and welcome. Meantime it afforded several advantages, besides symbolising the fact that the project would scarcely begin to move inland for another six months. The initial work concerned MAMP and Port Mey’s harbour facilities: expanding the former to supply as much ore as the project would absorb, and dredging out the latter to cope with the largest ocean-going vessels.

Norman’s respect for Shalmaneser had gone up yet another notch as a result of that suggestion. He approved anything which hastened the project; it had become almost a hunger in his mind to see it succeed.

He walked out across the carrier’s flight-deck, busy as usual with copters for both passengers and freight, said hello to Gideon Horsfall descending from one of them in a great hurry, and leaned on the rail facing the land. Just at the moment it wasn’t actually raining, but if anything he detested this condition of saturated air still more. It made his clothes clammy and his scalp itch.

Absently rubbing his head, he stared towards Africa. A coaster was easing past into Port Mey, her reactor-fed jets giving one pulse every two seconds or so, pop … pop … pop … Lining the deck, several dark figures yelled and waved at the carrier. Norman waved back.

It was several minutes past the due time when the copter from Accra came down the ladder of the air. Norman was at its door directly it settled and felt a stir of impatience when the man he was expecting turned to say good-bye to a couple of his fellow passengers.

But at last here he was, jumping to the deck and holding out his hand to be shaken.

“Good to see you here,” Norman said. “Took you long enough!”

“Don’t blame me,” said Chad Mulligan. “Blame GT’s staffers. Everyone from Prosper Rankin down seems to regard me as some kind of a miracle-worker. Though part of it was my fault, to be honest. I decided I could study up the background better in New York than here—library facilities aren’t too good in Africa, they tell me.” Gazing around the deck, he added, “It’s great to see one of these antiquated arks being put to some practical purpose. What’s her name?”

“Hm? Oh, she was formerly the William Mitchell, but they told us to change it right away, and—” Norman chuckled. “Nobody could think of a better name than the Shalmaneser.”

“Both male names, hm? I don’t mind bivving in principle but this is doing it on altogether too grand a scale.” Chad mopped at his forehead, which had begun to glisten with perspiration the moment he emerged from the copter’s conditioned air. “What’s the climate like down below?”

“Better, by a fraction.” Norman turned towards the nearest elevator. “Who were those people you were talking to in the copter, by the way? The man’s face looked familiar.”

“You probably saw a picture of them. They’re a young couple from the States that you’ve hired. Going up-country to get some new school off the ground. Frank and Sheena Potter were the names.”

“Yes, I remember them. Their application was a borderline case which came to me for adjudication—something about an illegal pregnancy. But they seemed satisfactory otherwise, so I said take a chance, we can always pull them out later if we have to.”

“I noticed the pregnancy—by now you can’t help it. But they seem very attached to each other and that’s a good sign. How’s your recruiting going, by the way?”

“We’re not getting former colonial officials of the quality we expected. Or maybe we are and I’m being too rigid.” Norman ushered Chad into the elevator. “The same day I dealt with the Potters’ case, I remember, I was sent another which I’m still sitting on. Can’t make up my mind.”

“What’s the difficulty?”

The elevator stopped and they emerged into the bowels of the beast. Norman fingered his beard and studied the direction signs, then started left along the corridor.

“It was an application from Paris,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m being too doctrinaire, but—well, they’re a brother and sister whose parents were both pieds-noirs, and the Algerian legacy isn’t what you’d call a good reference.”

“Don’t take them even if they come on bended knees. Also don’t take any Portuguese or Belgians or wooden nickels. Christ, listen to me generalising. Where are you taking me?”

“We got here.” Norman opened a steel door and led the way into a large, well-furnished, air-conditioned lounge, the former wardroom of the officers’ mess. “I thought you’d probably want a drink after your long trip.”

“No thanks,” Chad said curtly.

“What?”

“Oh, maybe a cold beer, then. Nothing stronger. I owe you a lot, you know, including wringing out the alcohol from me.” Chad dropped into the nearest vacant chair. “I couldn’t go on drinking and study up on Beninia at the same time.”

“Well, that’s good news,” Norman said. He hesitated. “Ah—you haven’t reached any conclusions, have you?”

“Conclusions? You mean hypotheses, I hope. I got here five minutes ago and so far I haven’t set foot on Beninian ground. But … Well, speaking of recruitment as we were: did you get me the people I want?”

“You asked for a sheeting lot of them,” Norman grunted. “What was it you said? ‘Psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists and synthesists not hopelessly straitjacketed by adherence to an ism’—is that right?”

“‘Glutinous adherence’, to be exact. But did you get them?”

“I’m still working on the synthesists,” Norman sighed. “That’s a discipline which doesn’t attract as many people as it ought to—seems people have this idea that Shalmaneser is automating them out of a job, too. But I turned in an application to State and Raphael Corning said he’d see who he could find. For the rest—well, I’ve short-listed a dozen possibles for you to interview, all well recommended by their current employers.”

“Sounds discouraging.” Chad scowled. “I prefer people who’ve ruffled their employers’ tempers so many times … But that’s prejudice. Thanks, it sounds fine. Incidentally, I think I will have that beer after all.”

“It’s on the way.”

“Splendid. How’s everything else here—how’s Elihu?”

“He dropped in this morning with Kitty Gbe, the education minister, to talk over the selection programme we’re mounting to choose the first wave of student-teachers. I think he’s at the palace this afternoon.”

“And the president—how’s he?”

“Not good,” Norman said. “We got here too late. He’s a sick man, Chad. Remember that when you meet him. But under the—the veil of senility there’s a rare personality.”

“Who’s going to take over?”

“A caretaker government under Ram Ibusa, I imagine. As a matter of fact Zad signed regency papers yesterday to be used if he does become too ill to continue.”

Chad shrugged. “I don’t suppose it’ll matter much. Shalmaneser is running the country as of now, isn’t he? And from personal acquaintance I think he’ll make a fine job of it.”

“I hope you’re right,” Norman muttered.

A girl arrived with Chad’s beer and placed it on the table between them. Chad followed her appreciatively with his eyes as she moved away.

“Local recruit?”

“What? Oh, the waitress. Yes, I imagine so.”

“Pretty. If they have shiggies of that calibre here I may enjoy my stay even if I don’t find what I’m looking for. But I forgot—you have a fixation on blondes, don’t you?”

“I don’t have any fixations any longer,” Norman said stonily. “Fixations and Beninia don’t co-exist.”

“I noticed,” Chad said. “I’m glad you finally did, too.” He poured half the beer down his throat and set the glass aside with a contented sigh.

“Speaking of what you’re looking for,” Norman said, a trifle over-eager to switch subjects, “I take it from the requirements you sent me that you—”

“That I haven’t the vaguest notion what I’m after,” Chad interrupted. “You’d better be ready for me to ask for something entirely different tomorrow. In fact, on my way over I realised I should have asked for some biochemists and geneticists as well.”

“Are you serious?”

“Not yet. Give me a week or two and I very well may be. Also priests and imams and rabbis and fortune-tellers and clairvoyants and—Norman, howinole should I know? What I asked for just seemed like a reasonable basis to start from!”

“Ask for whatever you want,” Norman said after a pause. “I have a suspicion there’s nothing more important, not even the Beninia project itself.”

“There you go again,” Chad said. “Feeding my ego. Christ, aren’t I vain enough already?”

tracking with closeups (30)

DÉFENSE D’ENTRER

Approaching from the street, Jeannine thought at first the house must be empty, but she soon perceived a glimmer of light from behind the heavy old-fashioned drapes covering the window of the salon and heard the soft sound of the piano. It was one of her brother’s favourite pieces, La Jeune Fille aux Cheveux de Lin.

The front door, curiously, was unlocked. She went inside. By the distant glow of the street-lamps she saw that the hallway was in disorder; bits of a large vase crunched under her shoes and a Moroccan rug had been kicked against the wall in a heap. The air was thick and sweet with the aroma of kief.

The music ended. She opened the door of the salon and saw her brother silhouetted by a swinging lamp. A kief cigarette burned on a brass dish and a half-empty bottle of cognac and a glass stood beside it on the lid of the piano.

He spoke her name in a neutral voice and she came in and closed the door. Moving to one of the low cushioned benches she said, “Where’s Rosalie?”

“We had a row. She walked out.” He began to let his hands wander up and down the keyboard seemingly under their own volition, framing long wailing lines of melody which somehow suggested the Arab songs no piano could imitate.

Jeannine listened for a while. She said at length, “You heard from the American company.”

“Yes. You?”

“Yes. They took you on, I suppose, and that started the row?”

“On the contrary.” He got abruptly to his feet, shut the piano, drained his glass and brought it and the bottle over to a low table in front of his sister. Sitting down beside her, he poured himself another shot and asked with his eyes if she wanted some. He received assent and made to rise and fetch a glass. She stopped him with a touch on the arm.

“We can share it. Don’t bother to fetch another.”

“As you like.” He stubbed his cigarette and opened the box to offer her one.

“You said on the contrary. Did they not accept you?”

“No. That was why I lost my temper with Rosalie. You?”

“They turned me down as well.”

For a long time after that there was silence. Eventually Pierre said, “I don’t seem to care very much. I ought to. I remember I hoped very strongly that I would be engaged to go to Africa. Here I am not having secured the post and on top of it having lost my wife—yet I feel numb.”

“There’s no chance of a reconciliation?”

“I detest the idea. Is it worth having if it has to be cobbled together from the broken pieces? Only the most precious objects deserve that treatment.”

“I’m in the same gallery,” Jeannine said after a pause. “Raoul did not realise how much the idea meant to me. We disagreed and for the last time. It’s not worth the trouble.”

“Outsiders don’t understand. They can’t understand.” Pierre emptied the cognac glass and refilled it. His sister took a quick sip at it the moment he let it go.

“What are you thinking of doing now?” he inquired.

“I’ve not decided. Now my mind is made up to go to Africa again, I suppose I shall look around for an alternative. Even yet there’s no hope of going home, but certain other countries are tolerant of Europeans, and perhaps they would be better than a swampy little nation in the equatorial rain-belt.”

“Egypt engages many Europeans,” Pierre agreed. “Mostly Germans and Swiss, but Belgians too.”

“There is something else Raoul told me about: how disturbed the Common Europe Board is becoming over the Americans in Beninia, how they may attempt to counter it with aid to Dahomalia and RUNG.”

“That too will need advisors. And yet—” He swallowed hard. “It was such an effort to rein in one’s pride and make application to go and serve les noirs. To be told after humbling oneself that it was all a waste—it’s insupportable.”

“Mon pauvre. I know how you feel.” She picked up the glass again; over its rim as she drank, she found her eyes locked with Pierre’s.

“Yes, you do, don’t you?” he said. “If there were not in the whole world a single person who sympathised, I believe I would go mad.”

“I too.” With what seemed like a great effort of will she detached her gaze from his and put down the glass. Not looking at him again, she said, “I believe—do you know?—it is there, the reason for my chaotic life of disorder. From one man to another, counting it a triumph to remain together for a year … Looking for someone like you, my heart. Never finding anyone.”

“But at least you had the endurance to continue looking,” Pierre said. “I gave up. Only when it was forced on me, the first time and now the second, did I admit my discouragement.”

The air seemed heavy not only with the fumes of kief, but with something that needed to be spoken and could not. He pushed himself to his feet as though the atmosphere physically dragged on him.

“Let us have music. I feel the emptiness of the house.”

“As empty as my soul,” Jeannine said, and filled her lungs with kief again.

“What shall we hear? Triumphal music? A funeral march?”

“Will you play yourself or put on a recording?”

“A recording. I have no heart for more.” He sorted along the rack and dropped a reel into the player. “Some Berlioz for vigour, hm?” he muttered as he put out the swinging lamp. “It is a clever match, the vision on this one. I don’t believe you’ve seen it.”

The small screen of the player lit with patterns of white and gold; by its glow he found his way back to her side. Stiff, they watched for a while. The volume was shattering, the master’s demand for huge orchestras having found its apotheosis in modern amplification.

“I should get a newer player,” Pierre said. “With this one loses the third dimension unless one sits directly before the screen.”

“Here, come a little this way. But you’re not comfortable. One needs African bones to sit on these accursed things. Will you move to an armchair?”

“No, one cannot fit both the armchairs into the narrow area before the screen … We had some arguments over that too, Rosalie and I.”

“You can see well there? Let me lean on you. No, with your arm around me. Good, that’s comfortable.”

A little time passed. There was scent in her hair. It was soft to put his cheek on. The images and colours matched to the music were of the first order, reaching to him even through his depression and apathy, and he was lulled. He felt, but did not react to, her strong slim fingers twining around his hand, and when she stirred slightly he did no more than adjust his own position economically to correspond. It was natural when her fingertips started to caress the back of his hand and his wrist that he should copy the movement and some while before it registered that he was touching the bare skin of her breast.

The screen of the player went to white and sky-blue. In the sudden brightness he looked at her. On her cheeks he saw that there were tears glistening: two shiny little rivers flowing from two dark pools.

He scarcely heard what she said, for the clamouring music, but her lips framed the words clearly enough.

“There will never be anyone else for either of us, will there, Pierre?”

He could not answer.

“It’s the truth,” she said, a little louder and very wearily. “Shall we stop pretending? I’m sick of everyone, Pierre, except for you. Brother or not, you’ve been my only friend the whole of my life and I’m no longer young. The Parisians want no part of us, the French ignore us, the rest of Europe is a chaos like the vomit of a greedy dog, and now it turns out the sales noirs won’t interest themselves in us. Where else are we to go, tell me that?”

Pierre shook his head and raised one hand in a gesture signifying absence of all hope.

“Ainsi je les emmerde tous,” Jeannine said. So far she had only loosened her bluzette and parted it to expose the breast she had given him to stroke; it was a very beautiful breast, of a fullness that trespassed over the border of voluptuousness. Now she unzipped the garment completely and threw it aside. He made no move to stop her, but equally no move to co-operate.

Having looked at him from the length of an arm away for a few thoughtful moments, she said, “I’ve sometimes wondered whether you lost your women because you were less of a man than I imagined. Is that so, Pierre?”

His face suddenly grew dark with anger. “No question of it!” he snapped.

“No question, either, that I’m an attractive woman. It came to me suddenly today, when I received that letter, what I really want. And what you want, too. A dead world. But there must be some of it left. I thought: we understand each other! We could—we must—go and look for what we want, the sensible way, in company. There are things that would have to be arranged but I can arrange them. There are places where they value a person more than a piece of paper saying what he was when he was born.” She hesitated.

“We could have children together, Pierre.”

“Are you mad?” The words were whispered between pale lips.

“Think for a while,” she said composedly, and leaned back on the cushions to continue watching the record. She put her palms on her breasts in a parody of modesty that she knew could be relied on to inflame most men.

When she felt the first touch of his hand she turned her mouth up hungrily to be kissed.