Stand on Zanzibar (18 page)
Authors: John Brunner
What do I know any longer about my fellow human beings?
He sensed a recurrence of his panic at lunchtime, and a desperate need to talk to someone to prove that there really were other people in the world, not just puppets on intangible strings. He approached the phone. But that wouldn’t do—just conversing with an image on a screen. He wanted to see and hear strangers, to be reassured of their independence from himself.
Breathing hard, he made for the apartment door. At the threshold he checked and returned to his bedroom, to tug open a drawer at the bottom of the built-in closet. Under a pile of disposable paper shirts he found what he was looking for: a Jettigun, the cartridge-charged gas-pistol marketed by GT under licence from Japanese Industries of Tokyo, and a Karatand.
He debated whether to put it on, turning it over and examining it curiously while reaching his decision because he had never really looked at it since the day he bought it. It was in effect a palmless glove made of impact-sensitive plastic about a quarter-inch thick. Pressed, pinched, drawn on or off the hand, it remained flexible and nearly as soft as good leather. Struck against a resistant surface, its behaviour changed magically, and while the interior stayed soft to act as a cushion against bruising, its outer layer became as rigid as metal.
He thrust his fingers into it and spun around, slamming his fist at the wall. There was a solid thud, and the muscles of his upper arm and shoulder complained, but the Karatand reacted as designed. It was several seconds before he could straighten his fingers against the resistance of the relaxing plastic.
In the box in which he had bought and stored it, there was a leaflet showing with diagrams the various standard ways of employing it: crudely, as he had just done, by balling a fist, or, more delicately, using the side of the palm and the tips of the bunched fingers. He read through the whole text with anxious attention until it suddenly occurred to him that he was behaving precisely as he did not wish to—on the assumption that he was leaving for a mission into enemy territory. He peeled the Karatand off and stuffed it into his pocket along with the Jettigun.
If that phone were to ring, and the Colonel were on the screen activating me, telling me to report for duty at once—this is how I would feel.
And that can’t be true. Because if the mere prospect of going out at night caves me in like this, being activated would break me into little pieces.
He shut the door with conscious care and headed for the elevators.
“I can’t see heaven but I credit hell—
I live in New York so I know it well.
When they shut out heaven with the Fuller Dome
God gave it up and He went home.”
ONE WAY NORTHBOUND
“Gotta go dump my passenger—pulled a bolt-gun and I had to doze the bleeder. Dicty, of course. Spotted him right away, but dreck, if I turned down every dicty who wants a ride I’d never get a fare after seven poppa-momma … So anyhow: I’ll be off call until I’ve sworn out the complaint.”
UNDERPASS
Rooms by the hour $3.
“Heard the new one about Teresa?”
ONE WAY WESTBOUND
Licensed panhandler, City of Greater New York. Muldoon Bernard A. No. PH2 428 226.
PEDESTRIANS ONLY
“So I said to him look block I said I’ve celebrated my twenty-first even if you haven’t. I said I didn’t treat your daughter like a whore because I never met a freaking whore because they’re as obsolete as your idea of a shotgun wedding. I said come to that isn’t it better my way than what she’s getting up to with that freaking lizzie of a stepmother of hers. He didn’t know about that. Took the fuel out of his jets, I do depose!”
ONE WAY SOUTHBOUND
Menu $8.50, $12.50, $17.50.
“Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere hit Times Square yesterday—it’ll be crowded.”
KEEP TO THE RIGHT
Show nitely—and do we mean SHOW!
ONE WAY EASTBOUND
“Say, I—uh—know my way around the block better than most people. Care I should do you a small favour? Now I have at present just a trifle more Yaginol than I can personally use, and…”
WAIT
Public lectures daily, demonstrations Wednesday and Friday. Auparishtaka, Sanghataka, Gauyuthika, etc. Coaching by experts. Enrol here any time. Mrs. Grundy Memorial Foundation (may dogs grub up her bones).
“They programmed Shalmaneser with the formula for this stiffener, see, and…”
WALK
Colossal unbelievable impossible bargains! Store of a million miracles! Cruisers welcome subject to evidence of cash or credit.
DO NOT LOITER
“Attention attention—we have reports of a pseudo cab working the lower East Side, dozing and rolling passengers. Stop and check all cabs vicinity Sixth Street Avenue B.”
NO SPITTING
Office space for rent, or would convert to dwelling at client’s expense.
“This new homimage attachment is the best I’ve ever seen.”
DOGS FOULING SIDEWALK WILL BE DESTROYED
Psychometrist, clairvoyante, offers guidance to the insecure.
BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS
“It’s like the universe was a hole, catch me? And I’m all spread out thin around the sides, catch me? And then sometimes it’s like the room turns inside out and I’m the spots on the six sides of the dice. Or else—ah, why should I bother talking to a block like you?”
RAPID TRANSIT
Municipal ordinance no. 1214/2001. Persons of no fixed abode to register at nearest police station and obtain permits before sleeping rough.
“It trips you further and faster than the Everywheres can manage!”
SANITARY CONVENIENCES
Joe’s Joints—N.Y. brands $3 for 10, out-of-state brands $5, $6.
STOMP THAT ROACH! BEWARE OF FIRE!
“Hey codders! Shade and fade—there’s a prowlie on the next block!”
DO NOT PLACE NOXIOUS REFUSE IN UNLIDDED RECEPTACLES
“What shall we do with our fair city.
Dirty and dangerous, smelly and shitty?
If you’re a friend of New York town
You’ll find you a hammer and smash it down.”
If I’d guessed it was going to lead to this
, Gerry Lindt told himself furiously,
I think I’d have dodged!
The atmopshere in the apt was like a funeral parlour’s, all hushed voices and tiptoeing, as though the stiffly-worded official form propped beside his bed were the symptom of an incurable disease.
It was only a draft notice. Thousands of them must be issued every day, which meant it was a rather ordinary thing. Not, naturally, inevitable—it could be dodged in a great many ways, some legitimate, some dishonest. None of the legitimate ways was open to Gerry: nineteen years old, rather handsome with his fair curly hair and blue eyes, and in perfect physical health. And although he knew all about the alternative methods—one could hardly be nineteen and male and
not
know them—they scared him marginally more than the idea of facing the little red brothers.
Friends of his, whom he had known since he could talk, had cheerfully adopted them: doused themselves in perfume and sat petting with each other in public places to establish homosexuality (though this was a chancy device and might lead to being drafted anyway, with a violent course of aversion therapy as soon as they were under military law); gone out on mugging expeditions and been deliberately clumsy to obtain criminal convictions with the coveted annotation “Anti-social”; left pro-Chinese pamphlets where school or college authorities would be sure to come across them; maimed themselves; or even—and this was what terrified Gerry worst—caught themselves a heavy habit, preferring the risk of being institutionalised to that of being inducted.
So, tomorrow, enter Private Lindt.
He looked around his room. Because it had been his almost all his life, he had grown accustomed to its narrow dimensions; it was half one of the original rooms of the apt, divided when his sister was born. Now he was over six feet tall, though, he could span it on the short axis, and he could foresee that when he came back on furlough he would be dismayed at its tininess.
At the moment it was more cramped than ever, because he had been sorting things from the closet in careful compliance with the instructions on the draft notice:
recruits are required to bring …
But the sorting and packing was all done, and it was still early evening. He listened to the surrounding noises. He could hear the three distinct footfalls of his father, his mother and his sister, moving around, clearing away the supper things, restoring the furniture to its former positions.
I can’t stand the idea of spending the whole of this evening in their company. Is that bad? Does it make me an unnatural son? But Sis staring at me with goggling eyes as though measuring me for a coffin because she thinks that block Jamie is God this week and he says only people with suicidal tendencies refuse to dodge the draft—and Mom bravely keeping back the tears so that I feel any moment I’ll bust out snivelling too—and Pa … Well, if he says to me once more, “Son, I’m proud of you!” I think I’ll break his neck.
He took a deep breath and prepared to run the gauntlet.
“Where are you going? Surely you’re not going out on your last evening?”
Last evening. The condemned man ate a hearty supper.
“I’m going to wander around the neighbourhood for a bit, say goodbye to a few people. Won’t be long.”
And made it. Without half as much trouble as I expected.
He was so relieved, it was not until he actually stepped outside the building that he realised he had no clear idea of where he was bound. Stopping in his tracks, he looked about him, savouring the slightly salt freshness of the night breeze which promised to drive away the thin scattering of cloud veiling the sky.
So many things weren’t matching the pattern he’d subconsciously expected. Leaving home to be on his own for the first time, so he’d vaguely gathered from hints in novels and TV plays, he should have felt some kind of reinforced attachment to this his childhood home, sensed half-forgotten details stamping themselves on his mind. But a moment ago he’d been thinking that when he next returned he’d be dismayed at the size of his room, and now, out of doors, he was thinking the same as usual: that someone ought to clear all this litter from the roadway, paper, plastic, foil, cans, packs and packages; that it was more than time they repaired the gashed store-front cattycorner across the intersection, where “partisans” had looted a sporting-goods dealer for a supply of weapons; that in general this home of his left a lot to be desired.
Equally misty at the back of his mind had been the idea of a girl to keep him company on this last night before enlistment. He had seldom needed to go to special trouble since he was fifteen to find a shiggy, but his parents were of the older generation—like any parents—and while they had never objected to his staying away all night he had not yet plucked up courage to have a girl in and sleep with him. He had planned to make his declaration of masculinity tonight, when they would feel ashamed to complain. Yet here he was, on his own. All the girls he liked most had sheered off when they learned he was going to let the draft get his balls, and the shock of their unanimous rejection had so thrown him off his gyros he hadn’t managed to replace them yet.
Of course, there were places enough where he could be reasonably sure of picking up a shiggy, but that didn’t seem appropriate. If what he’d heard was to be relied on, he’d be doing a lot of that during his service, without the option.
No: he needed to call on someone he’d known for a length of time. He thought of his friends one by one, and came to the upsetting conclusion that there was virtually nobody he could trust not to say the same nauseating things as his family.
Except maybe …
He clenched his fists. There was one person he could be sure would not utter fulsome and revolting platitudes, whom he had not been to see since deciding he would accept his draft notice because he was unsure of his own ability to resist his persuasive counter-arguments. But now that it was too late to change his mind, it would be interesting, at least, to hear Arthur Golightly’s reaction.
* * *
Arthur lived, not in a block of apts, but in an early twentieth-century house that had long ago been subdivided to accommodate as many people as it had rooms. It was called “bachelor dwellings” but what it amounted to was a shabby tenement.
Nervously, Gerry pressed the ancient bell and announced himself over the intercom.
“Gerry! Come on up,” said a vaguely mechanical voice, and the door swung open.
He encountered Arthur on the first-story landing: a scruffy coloured man in his late thirties, wearing shorts and a pair of loafers. His beard blended without detectable margin into the mat of hair on his chest. Gerry wished the hair continued further down than his solar plexus; he was developing a wobbly pot-belly that could have done with some concealment. However, his display of it was of a piece with his rejection of conformity, and if you objected to that you objected to his total existence.
He was carrying a dish of something white and powdery with a spoon stuck in it, and had to move it from right to left before he could shake Gerry’s hand.
“Won’t keep you a moment,” he apologised. “But Bennie apparently didn’t eat anything yet today, and I think I ought to get some sugar down him for energy, if nothing else.”
He thrust open one of the doors giving on to the landing, and Gerry had a brief glimpse of a young man, in his middle twenties, stretched out on a chair and wearing even less than Arthur was. He shuddered and walked on to the other end of the landing, to wait outside Arthur’s door and try not to hear the coaxing words that drifted towards him.