The Watched

VIII

Four more days passed. Although Ordier stayed away from the cell in the folly wall, his curiosity about the Qataari girl continued; at the same time he felt a growing sense of ambiguity, compounded by the unwelcome presence of Parren and his wife. The morning after these two had visited the house. Ordier had been waiting for Jenessa to leave when a distracting thought came to him. It was what Parren had said to him on the ridge, about the unmarked, unidentified scintillas. He had linked them to the Qataari, and interpreted it to mean that someone else was observing them. Ordier, listening to Jenessa in the shower cubicle, suddenly saw the possibility of an altogether different interpretation. It was not that someone else was spying on the Qataari… but that the Qataari themselves were watching . With their obsessive desire for privacy, it would clearly be in their interests to be able to watch the movement of the other people on the island. If they had access to scintilla equipment—or had been able to manufacture it themselves somehow—then it would be a logical way of defending themselves from the outside world. It was not impossible. The Qataari men and women who had visited the northern nations had revealed a brilliant inductive understanding of science and technology, and after only a few moments of hesitation had been completely at home with such devices as elevators, telephones, automobiles… even computers. Parren had said that Qataari science was sophisticated, and if that were so, they might have learned how to duplicate the scintillas that had been poured so indiscriminately over their homeland. If the Qataari were watching the people of Tumo, then they were certainly watching Ordier; he remembered the unmarked scintillas he was always finding in his house. Later that day, when Jenessa had left, Ordier took his detector and scoured every room of the house. He found another half-dozen of the unmarked scintillas, and put them with the others in the quiet-case. But the detector was fallible; he could never be entirely sure that every single scintilla had been found. He spent most of this day in thought, realizing that this conjecture, if it was true, led to the conclusion that the Qataari knew he was spying on them from the folly. If this was so, then it would account for something that he had always found naggingly strange: his unshakable conviction that the ritual was staged for his benefit. He had always maintained the most scrupulous efforts at silence and secrecy, and in ordinary circumstances he had no reason to suppose that the Qataari knew he was there. But the girl had become a central figure in the ritual after he had noticed her in the plantation, and had watched her through his binoculars. The ritual itself invariably started after he went into the cell; he had never once found it in progress. And the ceremony, although staged in a circular arena, was always within his view, the girl was always facing him. Until now Ordier had unconsciously attributed all this to simple good fortune, and had not sought a rational explanation. But if the Qataari were watching him, were waiting for him, were staging it for him… But all this speculation was denied by one fact: the famous dislike the Qataari had of being watched. They would not allow someone to watch them, far less encourage it by mounting an intriguing ritual for his benefit! It was this new understanding, and its attendant enigmas, that kept Ordier away from the folly for four days. In the past he had fantasized that the girl was being prepared for him, that she was a sexual lure, but this had been the stuff of erotic imaginings. To have to confront this as a matter of actual fact was something he was not ready for. To do so would be to accept something else that had once been an element in his fantasies: that the girl knew who he was, that the Qataari had selected him. So the days passed. Jenessa was busy with Parren’s preparations, and she seemed not to notice Ordier’s abstracted state of mind. He prowled the house by day, sorting through his books and trying to concentrate on domestic matters. By night he slept with Jenessa, as usual, but during their lovemaking, especially in those moments just before reaching climax, Ordier’s thoughts were of the Qataari girl. He imagined her sprawling across the bed of scarlet petals; her garment was torn away, her legs were spread, her mouth was reaching to meet his, her eyes stared submissively at him, her body was warm and soft to the touch. She had been offered to him, and Ordier knew that she was his for the taking.