The Watched

X

Ordier marched into his house and slammed the door behind him. He went out to the patio, and sat down on the cushions scattered across the sun-warmed paving stones. A bird fluttered away from where it had been perched on the grapevine, and Ordier glanced up. The verandah, the patio, the rooms of the house… they all had their undetected scintillas, making his home into a stage for an unseen audience. The uncertainties remained, and Luovi’s brief, unwelcome visit had only added to them. He was hot and breathless from running after the woman; so he stripped off his clothes and swam for a few minutes in the pool. Afterwards, he paced to and fro on the patio, trying to marshal his thoughts and replace ambiguity with certainty. He was unsuccessful. The unmarked scintillas: he had almost convinced himself that they were being planted by the Qataari, but the possibility remained that someone else was responsible. Jenessa: according to Luovi she had deceived him, according to his instincts she had not. (Ordier still trusted her, but Luovi had succeeded in placing a doubt in his mind.) The trip to Muriseay: Parren had gone to Muriseay (today? or two days ago?) to charter an aircraft, or to collect the monitoring equipment. But according to Luovi the aircraft had already done its work; would this have been carried out before Parren had his decoding equipment ready? Luovi: where was she now? Was she returning to the town, or was she somewhere along the ridge? Jenessa, again: where was she now? Had she gone to the ferry, was she at her office, or was she returning to his house? The folly: how much did Luovi know about his visits to the hidden cell? And what did she mean about the folly being built for something “in the first place”? Did she know more about it and its past than he did? Why was there an observation cell in the wall, with its clear view across the valley?

All these were the new doubts, the additional ones for which he had Luovi to thank; the others, the major ones, remained. The Qataari: did he watch them, or did they watch him? The Qataari girl: was he a free observer of her, hidden and unsuspected, or was he a chosen participant playing a crucial role in the development of the ritual? In his perplexity of free will and contradiction, Ordier knew that paradoxically it was the Qataari ritual and the girl that provided the only certainty. He was convinced that if he went to the folly and placed his eyes to the crack in the wall, then for whatever reason or combination of reasons, the girl would be there waiting… and the ritual would recommence. And he knew that the choice was his: he need never again climb up to the cell in the wall. Without further thought, Ordier went into the house, found his binoculars, and started to climb up the slope of the ridge toward the folly. He went a short distance, then turned back, pretending to himself that he was exercising his freedom of choice. In fact, he was collecting his scintilla detector, and as soon as he had the instrument under his arm he left the house again and climbed toward the courtyard gate. He reached the bottom of the folly wall in a few minutes, then went quickly up the steps to his hidden cell. Before he went inside he put down the detector and used his binoculars to scan the countryside around his house. The track leading toward town was deserted, and there was not even any drifting dust to show that a car might have driven along it in the last few minutes. He searched along the parts of the ridge visible from here, looking for Luovi, but where he had last spoken to her was an area dotted with high, free-standing boulders, and he could see no sign of her. In the distance, the town lay in the hot, pellucid air, seeming still and abandoned. Ordier stepped back, squeezed between the two projecting slabs, and went through into the cell. At once he was assailed by the sickly pungent fragrance of Qataari roses; it was a smell he associated with the girl, the valley, the ritual, and it seemed subtly illicit, sexually provocative. He put his binoculars on the shelf and opened the scintilla detector. He paused before switching it on, frightened of what he might find. If there were scintillas here, inside the cell, then he would know beyond any doubt that the Qataari had been observing him. He pulled the antenna to its full height and threw the switch… and at once the loudspeaker gave out a deafening electronic howl that faded almost at once to silence. Ordier, whose hand had leaped back reflexively from the device, touched the directional antenna and shook the instrument, but no further sound came from it. He turned off the switch, wondering what was wrong. He took the detector into the sunlight and turned on the switch again. In addition to the audible signal there were several calibrated dials on the side which registered the presence and distance of detected scintillas, but these all stayed at zero. The speaker remained silent. Ordier shook the instrument, but the circuits stayed dead. He let out a noisy breath in exasperation, knowing that the detector had worked the last time he used it. When he checked the batteries, Ordier found that they were dead. He cursed himself for forgetting, and put the detector on the steps. It was useless, and another uncertainty had appeared. Was his cell seeded with scintillas, or wasn’t it? That sudden burst of electronic noise: was it the dying gasp of the batteries, or had the instrument actually been registering the presence of scintillas in the last microsecond of the batteries’ power? He returned to the claustrophobic cell, and picked up his binoculars. Qataari rose petals lay thickly on the slab where he normally stood, and as he stepped forward to the crack in the wall Ordier saw that more petals lay there, piled so thickly that the aperture was all but blocked. Not caring whether they fell back into his cell or out into the valley, Ordier brushed them away and shuffled his feet to kick them from the slab. The fragrance rose around him like pollen, and as he breathed it he felt a heady sensation: arousal, excitement, intoxication. He tried to remember the first time he had found petals here in the cell. There had been a strong, gusting wind; they could have blown in through the slit by chance. But last night? Had there been a wind? He could not remember. Ordier shook his head, trying to think clearly. There had been all the confusions of the morning, then Luovi. The dead batteries. The perfumed petals. It seemed, in the suffocating darkness of the cell, that events were being contrived by greater powers to confuse and disorientate him. If those powers existed, he knew whose they were. As if it were a light seen wanly through a mist, Ordier focused on the knowledge and blundered mentally toward it. The Qataari had been watching him all along. He had been selected, he had been placed in this cell, he had been meant to watch. Every movement in this cell, every indrawn breath and muttered word, every voyeuristic intent and response and thought… they had all been monitored by the Qataari. They were decoded and analyzed, and tested against their actions, and the Qataari behaved according to their interpretations.

He had become a scintilla to the Qataari. Ordier gripped a piece of rock jutting out from the wall, and tried to steady himself. He could feel himself swaying, as if his thoughts were a palpable force that could dislodge him from the cell. It was madness. That first day he had found the cell, the very beginning. He had been concealed , and the Qataari had been unaware of him. He had watched the Qataari, the realization of the nature of his stolen privilege growing in him slowly. He had watched the girl moving through the rosebushes, plucking the flowers and tossing them into the pannier on her back. She had been one among dozens of others. He had said nothing, except with his thoughts, and the Qataari had not noticed. The rest was chance and coincidence… it had to be. Reassured, Ordier leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the slab of rock above the slit. He looked downward, into the circular arena below.