Stand on Zanzibar (25 page)
Authors: John Brunner
They must have rehearsed him very well … No, of course: he’s done it before, and for real. He’s going back the way they got him out. Him, and lord knows how many others.
“Any time you like now,” the navigator called. “Don’t stretch our luck, will you?”
The intelligence officer swallowed hard. He checked over the security of the suit as Jogajong silently turned around for inspection. Everything was in order. He picked up the final item, the helmet, and set it in place on the neck-seal, wondering what was going on behind that so-calm face.
If they wanted me to do what he’s going to do—pop out in midocean, risk the coastal patrols on my way to the shore—could I?… I don’t know. But he seems so relaxed.
He thrust out his hand to grasp Jogajong’s in a final good-luck gesture, and realised too late that the pressure-sensitisation of the plastic instantly turned the gauntlet into an inflexible, chilly lump. He saw Jogajong’s lips form a smile at his discomfiture, and was all of a sudden angry with him too.
Doesn’t the bleeder realise—?
No, probably not. The computers gave this man better than a forty per cent chance of being the next Leader of Yatakang, provided the intelligence assessments of his contacts and influence were to be relied on. The intelligence officer could cope with that kind of power only as an abstract; he could not feel in his bones what it would be like to give orders to two hundred million people.
“Move it along there!” the navigator shouted. “Blast off, for pity’s sake!”
Jogajong drew back to await the flooding of his compartment. The intelligence officer scrambled feet-first into the tunnel again, dogged the door shut and listened to the noise of water beyond it.
You have to envy a man like that. What makes you jealous is the confidence he feels. Forty per cent chance of making out … I wouldn’t have come on this free-falling stroll, as the navigator terms it, if I’d been told the odds against my return. Wonder if I should ask when I get back? Better not, I guess. I prefer to think of success as a foregone conclusion.
The whole sub shook gently with the discharge of Jogajong from the flooding compartment. “Hah!” the navigator said. “Not before time. I have a slit-eye patrol-boat at the extreme edge of the detectors.”
“You mean they’ll notice him swimming ashore?”
“Him? No—his suit won’t give a blip at this range, not on their equipment. But we might. We’ll have to sit here and wait them out.”
The intelligence officer nodded and rubbed his sweating palms on his thighs, mechanically continuing the motion until long after the fabric of his pants had absorbed the moisture.
How did Lenin feel about the driver of his sealed train after he’d become unchallenged boss of the Russians? Did he even remember there had been a driver?
When he grew desperate to relieve the tension, he essayed a joke. He said, “How does it feel to have just changed the course of history?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the navigator. “To my way of thinking, by the time history happens I’m going to be dead.”
Donald had not thought to wonder what the time was. Out on the street, under the Fuller Dome, the cycle of night and day seemed suspended. It was somewhere around dawn by now, apparently; there had been too many other demands on their time for the police to process the rioters as soon as they were brought in. The city was dead and drained, its roads like veins bled dry, garbage and cleansing vehicles inching along them like a few stranded leucocytes struggling against hopeless odds to defeat an invading disease.
Norman slumped beside him in the rear of the cab, eyes opening every now and then, but for the most part too preoccupied with the sickness and lethargy bequeathed to him by the gas to be able to pay attention to his surroundings. When they reached their apartment block, Donald had to half-carry him first to the elevators, then into the living-room.
In the middle of the carpet he trod on something hard and went back to look at it when he had deposited Norman in his favourite old Hille chair. It was a Watch-&-Ward Inc. key. He compared it with his own and found it apparently identical. Then a change in his surroundings registered. The polyorgan was missing. The door to Norman’s bedroom, which had been closed when he went out, was now standing ajar, and a glance through it showed that Victoria’s section of the closet was empty.
Gone. Coincidence? Or tipped off? That was a problem he had no energy left to wrestle with. He helped himself to one of Norman’s Bay Golds from the humidor. Though he almost never smoked pot, he needed some kind of a lift very badly, and to take alcohol on top of the police’s sleepy-gas would entail renewed nausea.
“Want one?” he said to Norman, seeing the Afram had stirred. Norman shook his head.
“What the hole happened? What were you doing out there?”
Donald waited till he ran out of stored breath before answering through a thin mist of smoke. He said, “I—owe you a big apology. I was out of my mind. We all were. Maybe the gas had something to do with it.”
Overlaying the familiar environment, remembered visions of the street, the churning bodies, Norman’s face appearing unrecognised before him. He shuddered.
“What were
you
doing there?” he added.
“Sentimental journey,” Norman said. “I saw Elihu Masters at the UN Hostel, and when I left him I thought, well, here I am further east on the island than I’ve been in months, I’ll walk down to where my parents used to live.”
“Are they still alive?” Donald said.
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” Norman passed a limp hand over his forehead and briefly closed his eyes. “They separated when I was a kid. I’ve been on my own since I was eighteen. I think my mother’s in the Bahamas, but I don’t know. I thought I didn’t care. Oh, the hole!”
He paused long enough to lick his lips.
“Then suddenly having this riot burst out all around me—it was a nightmare. One moment I was walking along looking for the places I remembered and the next all the people were moving and forcing me along with them and the sweep-truck came around the corner and we were all jammed together like trapped rats. I wasn’t really frightened, though, until I recognised you and tried to make towards you and when I got close you started swinging both fists and you wouldn’t stop even though I kept shouting your name.”
Is he talking about me? It feels like a different person.
Donald drew and drew on the reefer, overloading the automatic dilution effect of the tip so that the smoke was hot and harsh in his throat, like a punishment. He said when he had finished storing the latest lungful, “I was frightened. I was scared out of my mind. You see, I started it.”
“You must be crazy.”
“No—no, literally I did start it. And this is what’s so terrifying.” Donald clenched his empty hand so that the nails bit deep into his palm. Another shudder tremoloed down his spine and set up a resonance that became whole-body shivering within seconds. He felt the unreal chilliness of shock reaction now, his hands and feet growing numb.
“What sort of a person am I? I don’t know what sort of a person I am. I didn’t think I was the sort of person who could fail to recognise one of his closest friends and try to hit him with both fists. I didn’t think I wasn’t safe to be allowed out on the streets.”
Norman had apparently forgotten his own physical condition and was sitting up staring with an expression of disbelief.
“Did you see them bring down the police helicopter?”
“No.”
“They did. Somebody shot it down with a sporting gun. And when it crashed they beat the pilot to death with clubs. Honest to God, Norman”—his voice cracked—“I don’t remember clearly enough to be sure I wasn’t in there with them!”
I’m going to cave in.
Some part of his mind retained enough detachment to realise, sensing an aura like that of a gathering storm.
I mustn’t drop the roach on the carpet.
He aimed it at an ashtray and the controlled gesture blended smashingly into something that must be done this instant, this very quantum of time, so that his hand began to move normally and ended up making a blind jab and letting the roach go and jerking back up with its mate to cover his face as he leaned forward and broke down sobbing.
Norman, uncertain, got up, took half a pace forward, changed his mind, changed it again and came near. He said, “Donald, some of this is from pot and some of it’s from the police gas and some of it’s tiredness…”
The facile excuses faded away. He stood gazing down at Donald.
Started it? Did he? What did he—what could he—do? He’s a colourless sort of codder, inoffensive, never blew up even when I snapped at him about bringing home nothing but Afram girls. Mild. Underneath: temper?
The admission came as a dismaying shock:
I don’t know. For years we’ve shared a home, traded shiggies, talked small talk for politeness’s sake—and I literally don’t know.
And Elihu Masters seems to think I’m fit to take charge of a helpless little country and make it over like Guinevere making over one of her clients, slicking it into the latest modern style.
One of us is genuinely crazy. Me?
He tapped Donald’s shoulder awkwardly. “Here!” he said. “Let me help you to bed. There’s time for a couple of hours’ rest before I leave for work. And I don’t have to disturb you.”
Passive, Donald allowed himself to be led to his bedroom. He threw himself down across the coverlet.
“Want I should put your inducer on?” Norman asked, stretching out one hand towards the cable of the little Russian device concealed in the pillow, which guaranteed rest to the worst insomniac by induction of sleep-rhythms in the medulla.
“No, thanks,” Donald muttered; then, as Norman was about to leave, he called, “By the way! When did I say Guinevere was having her party?”
“Ah—tonight, I guess.”
“Thought so. But I’m so confused … They picked up Victoria pretty quickly, didn’t they?”
“What?”
“I said they picked her up pretty quickly.” Detecting a note of puzzlement in Norman’s voice, Donald raised himself on one elbow. “Didn’t you shop her? When I saw her things were gone, I—”
He broke off. Norman had turned in the doorway to look across the living-room. Without further movement he could see, through the open door of his own bedroom, the closet door standing ajar to reveal vacancy where the current shiggy was allowed to hang her clothes.
“No, I didn’t shop her,” he said at length without a trace of emotion. “She must have decided to shade and fade while her news was still warm. Much good may it do her. But frankly I don’t care. As you saw, I hadn’t even noticed that her gear was gone until you mentioned it.” He hesitated. “I guess I should tell you right away, come to think of it, in case I don’t see you in the morning before I go out. I—ah—I may not be in New York much longer.”
With shocking suddenness Donald remembered the inspiration which had come to him earlier in the evening, and then had been driven instantly to the back of his mind by the irruption of the pseudo cab. Yet weariness overlay even his pride at the insight he had displayed in figuring out the truth. He had to let his head fall back on the soft engulfing mound of the pillows.
“I didn’t imagine you would be,” he said.
“What? Why not?”
“I thought they’d send you to Beninia sooner or later. Sooner, huh?”
“Howinole did you know that?” Norman closed his hand violently on the jamb of the door.
“Worked it out,” Donald said in a muffled voice. “That’s what I’m good at. That’s why they picked me for my job.”
“What job? You don’t have a…” Norman let the word die, listened to silence for a while, and eventually said, “I see. Like Victoria, hm?” The question shook with fury.
“No, not like Victoria. Christ, I shouldn’t have said it but I just couldn’t help it.” Donald forced himself into a sitting position. “No, please, not like Victoria. Nothing to do with you.”
“What, then?”
“Please, I’m not supposed to talk about it. But—oh, Jesus God, it’s been ten mortal years and…” He swallowed convulsively. “State,” he said at last in a tired voice. “Dilettante Dept. If they find out that you know I’ll be activated in my army rank and court-martialled in secret. They warned me. It sort of puts me at your mercy, doesn’t it?” he ended with a wan smile.
“So why did you tell me?” Norman asked after a pause.
“I don’t know. Maybe because if you want a chance to get even with me for what I did tonight I think you deserve one. So go ahead. The way I feel right now, I wouldn’t care if an avalanche fell on me.” He slumped back on the bed and shut his eyes again.
In Norman’s mind there came the grinding sound of rock breaking loose down a mountainside. A pang as sharp as an axe-blow struck across his left wrist from bone-tip to bone-tip; wincing, he caught at the hand to make sure it was still whole.
“I’ve got even with enough people to last me for life,” he said. “And it’s done me no good. No damned good at all. Go to sleep, Donald. You’ll feel better by this evening, I’m sure.”
He closed the door gently, using his left hand and ignoring the pain that was still as violent as if it had been real.
THE SOCIOLOGICAL COUNTERPART OF CHEYNE-STOKES RESPIRATION
“If you want to know what’s shortly due for the guillotine look for the most obvious of all symptoms: extremism. It is an almost infallible sign—a kind of death-rattle—when a human institution is forced by its members into stressing those and
only
those factors which are identificatory, at the expense of others which it necessarily shares with competing institutions because human beings belong to all of them. A sound biological comparison would be the development of the fangs of the sabre-tooth tiger to the point where the beasts can’t close their mouths any more, or the growth of armour that’s indisputably impregnable but which weighs so much the owner can’t support his bulk.