Stand on Zanzibar (26 page)

“On this basis, it’s fairly certain that Christianity won’t last out the twenty-first century. To take but a couple of prime instances: the hiving off from Rome of the so-called Right Catholics, and the appearance of the Divine Daughters as an influential pressure-group. The former exhibits a remarkable deviation from the traditional attitude of the Catholic Church as an institution that above all concerned itself with the family, Western style; the Right Catholics have become so obsessed with the simple act of fucking that they appear to have no time left for other aspects of human relationships, although they issue pronunciamenti galore on them. None of these bears even the slight relevance to contemporary reality which a sympathetic eye (not mine) can detect in similar statements originating from the Vatican. And the latter, who professedly model themselves on the mediaeval orders of nuns but who actually have borrowed the majority of their tenets—antimechanisation, distrust of bodily pleasure and so on—from respectable, well-integrated groups like the Amish and then soured them by a judicious admixture of the vinegar of hatred, are capitalising on about
the
most self-defeating of modern trends, our reluctance to further overburden our resources by having large families. They exploit our vicarious appreciation of people, especially women, who decline to have any progeny whatever, thus relieving us of a sense of personal responsibility for the whole damned mess.

“They won’t last.

“I can’t say I see much better times ahead for Muslims, either; though Islam has become a sizeable minority religion in the Western West in the past half-century, the spearhead of its advance has been the descendant of a schism, like the Right Catholics. I mean, naturally, the Children of X, who have constructed nothing more than an analogue of Christianity using their murdered patron as their Osiris-Attis-Jesus figure. They’ll go the way of the mystery religions of ancient times, and for the same reason: they’re exclusionist, and you aren’t allowed in unless you fulfil certain conditions of birth, primarily that you should be recognisably coloured. (I feel a lot less strongly, by the way, about racial discrimination in organisations I don’t want to join. It’s an indication that they’ll die out eventually.)

“Regrettably, however, this leper-mark of extremism isn’t confined to such expendable traits as religion. Look at sex, for example. More and more people are spending more time at it, and resorting to ever more devious ways of keeping up their enthusiasm, like commercially available aphrodisiacs and parties that are considered to be failures unless they evolve into orgies. A hundred different shiggies a year, which is something a young man can achieve without doing more than taking off his clothes, fulfils neither of the essential biological requirements of the sexual urge: it doesn’t lead to a stable environment for the cubs of the next generation, nor does it establish the kind of
rapport
between couples (or multiples—marriage works on all kinds of bases, not invariably monogamous) which serves to avert crisis over the possession of other members of the species. On the contrary, it leads rather to a kind of frenzy, because instead of the partners enjoying a continual and reciprocal reassurance about their respective masculinity/femininity they are driven to seek that reassurance anew every few days.

“In effect, applying the yardstick of extremism leads one to conclude that the human species itself is unlikely to last very long.”

—
You’re an Ignorant Idiot
by Chad C. Mulligan

continuity (12)

IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE AUTOMATIC BUT ACTUALLY YOU HAVE TO PRESS THIS BUTTON

A shrill ringing gaffed Donald through the ears and dragged him struggling out of the deep water of sleep. Cursing, he managed to focus his eyes on the wall-clock and saw it was only nine-thirty anti-matter. He tried for a while to convince himself that what had disturbed him was nothing more than Norman leaving for work a quarter-hour later than usual. But the ringing repeated.

He almost fell off the edge of the bed and forced his arms into the sleeves of a robe. A good few people didn’t own such garments any longer; if they had callers before they were dressed they went to the door as they were and if the callers were shocked that was their problem. At least half the shiggies off the circuit who had briefly stayed in this apartment owned nothing but street-clothes, and those exiguous enough to pack in a single bag. But he was a little old-fashioned.

He made it to the door still less than normally alert, and when he checked through the spy-port to see who was outside all that registered on his mind apart from the number—four of them—was that his callers were from out of town. This was demonstrated by their carrying coats slung over their arms.

Stifling a yawn, he opened the door.

All the visitors were youthful in appearance, though at closer sight the one standing closest to the entrance might have been older than Donald. All wore rather formal clothing: sweaterettes and slax in shades of grey, green, dark blue and beige. The effect was that they were wearing uniforms, one apiece. All seemed to have natural hair, neither dyed nor coiffed. It struck Donald, much too late, that if a group of yonderboys wanted to gain access to someone’s home this was exactly how they would have disguised themselves, discarding their gaudy shirjacks with the built-in fake musculature and their skin-tight codpieced slax.

The one who headed the rest said, “Morning, Mr. Hogan. You don’t have any shiggies here at the moment, do you?”

“I—uh—what’s it got to do with you? Who are you?”

“One moment please.” The man gestured to his companions and advanced with them at his heels; Donald, even yet incompletely awake, fell back, feeling very vulnerable with nothing on except his flimsy thigh-length robe.

“Didn’t expect to be back here so soon,” the spokesman said affably, closing the door. “All right, check it out fast!”

The three sparewheels tossed their coats on handy pieces of furniture. Each proved to have been concealing something in his covered hand. Two of them had small instruments which they proceeded to point at the walls, ceiling and floor, watching them intently. The third had a bolt-gun, and he strode rapidly from room to room of the apartment peering around suspiciously.

Donald’s heart began to feel very heavy inside his chest, as though it were pressing on his intestines and threatening to squeeze up vomit from him like toothpaste from a tube. He said weakly, “Back so soon…? But I’ve never seen you before!”

“I get only our own stuff,” one of the sparewheels said, lowering his incomprehensible instrument. The second nodded. The third returned from his tour of inspection putting his gun away in a concealed pocket beneath his left arm.

“Thank you,” the spokesman said mildly. “Ah—shagreen, Mr. Hogan. I think that should explain our visit adequately…?”

There was no menace in the gentle questioning note on which he uttered the words, but abruptly the heaviness of Donald’s heart became so great it seemed to have stopped altogether, and he could imagine the ponderous burden dragging him down to the floor.

Shagreen. Oh my God. No!

He hadn’t heard the word, to his knowledge, since a day ten years before when the colonel, in that office in Washington, warned him how he would be activated if the need arose. And the reference to “coming back”, and to “our own stuff”—!

I told Norman. Last night I was sick and stupefied and couldn’t control myself. I told him the truth. I’m a traitor. Not just a spy, not just a fool who can start a riot without trying. I’m a traitor too!

He licked his lips, absolutely unable to react even to reveal his dismay. The spokesman was going on, and certainly he did not have the air of an official sent to arrest a traitor.

But all the things he could do would be equally bad.

“I’m Major Delahanty. We haven’t met before, but I feel I know you better than most of your friends do. I took you over from Colonel Braddock when he retired last year. These are my assistants, by the way—Sergeant French, Sergeant Awden, Sergeant Schritt.” The sparewheels nodded but Donald was much too confused to think anything except that he now, finally, knew the name of the colonel who had administered his oath was Braddock.

He said, “You’ve come to activate me, hm?”

Delahanty looked quite sympathetic. “Didn’t pick the best time, did we? What with that shiggy turning out to be an indesper and then you getting fouled up in the riot last night … Schritty, why don’t you fix some coffee for the lieutenant here and maybe for all of us?”

That fixed it firmly in Donald’s mind: “the lieutenant here”. Probably the choice of phrase was calculated. It bit home on his brain like a steel claw.

“I—I have to go to the bathroom,” he whispered. “Sit down and make yourselves at home.”

*   *   *

When he had emptied his bladder he tugged open the medicine cabinet and stared first at his own reflection, bleary-eyed, unshaven, then at the bottles, packets and phials ranged on the shelves. He stretched out his hand for some Wakup tablets, and his fingers brushed a neighbouring jar. Out of habit he read the label. It said: POISON. NOT TO BE TAKEN.

All of a sudden he was as frightened in reality as he had imagined in his long-ago nightmares. He clung to the side of the washbasin to stop himself keeling over, teeth chattering, vision tunnelled down to a single bright white patch, which was the label bearing the burning words.

Faust felt like this. The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, the devil will come and Faustus must be damned … How long did he buy with the currency of his soul—ten years?

What are they going to make me do? At least I have one hope denied to Faust … Might not be quick, but provided they assume I’m favouring my bowels not my bladder they’ll give me five or ten minutes. The lot at one go should be enough.

He snatched up the jar and flipped off the lid. At the bottom of the opaque container a dusting of whitish powder lay, mocking him.

He was abruptly very cold, but the shaking from terror was at least driven away by the honest shivers that now racked him. He dropped the jar, and the lid after, in the disposall, and gulped down the Wakup pills he had at first intended to take.

After another couple of minutes he turned and left the bathroom with careful, unhurried strides.

*   *   *

It was a fresh shock to discover that, instead of dialling for coffee from the block kitchen as a stranger might be expected to do, Sergeant Schritt had used Donald’s own maker, kept in his bedroom along with a can of his favourite blend.

Christ, how much do these people know about me? Earlier, when I talked so dangerously to Norman …

His voice, though, remained reasonably steady when he said, “I didn’t realise you’d been watching me so thoroughly.”

“Routine, I’m afraid.” Delahanty shrugged. “We much prefer our operatives to live alone, as you know, but that in itself, these days, is pretty much of a suspicious circumstance, what with there not being enough accommodation to go around. Mr. House is as clean as they come, of course, a good respectable mosque-goer and holding down a very responsible position, but the fact that you were both working the shiggy circuit has given us some uncomfortable moments, I must confess. Especially last night when we detected that ingenious gadget in the polyorgan. I haven’t run across that one before, and it’s the next best thing to foolproof, blast it.”

Holding his cup of coffee very carefully so as not to spill a drop over the rim, Donald sat down. He said, “Ah—how did you find out about that?”

“We had the activation notice yesterday afternoon, but one doesn’t simply rush in to turn the operative on. One does a preliminary sweep to make sure nothing has changed since the last time we investigated, and—well, something most definitely had changed. We chimed in on the very moment when the shiggy was doing her eavesdropping.”

“You have the place bugged.”

“There are more bugs in here than a slum apartment has roaches,” Delahanty said with a faint smile. “Not all of them ours, of course. Schritty?”

Sergeant Schritt bent down to the side of Norman’s Hille chair and did something with one finger that Donald could not follow. When he removed his hand it held, between finger and thumb, a little glittering spike.

“I think that one is a Frigidaire plant,” Delahanty said. “Or rather, the body of it is. The tip
is
ours. Like they say, little bugs have smaller bugs. Nothing went out of here that wasn’t edited; we didn’t want Mr. House fouled up by successful acts of indesping. Someone might have turned his attention to you and put two and two together. We came within an ace of falling down yesterday evening, though—it was sheer luck we caught up with the girl.”

“It was you who took her away?”

“Oh yes. By the skin of our teeth. I had to pull everybody off watch and go hunt for her, but we did track her down before she’d sold the goods.”

“Are you telling me that someone’s been monitoring everything I did and said for ten solid years?” Donald demanded.

“Oh no. We have to rely on random sampling with inactive agents. Everything gets recorded, half of it gets computer-scanned for certain key words—a vocabulary of about a thousand are listed for you, I think—and we follow up the appearance of any of them in conversation. But actually we haven’t paid serious attention to more than twenty or twenty-five hours of your activities in the past year.” He hesitated. “You seem disturbed,” he added. “Very natural—in this overcrowded world of ours privacy is our most precious defence. Be assured, please, we’ve intruded to the least possible degree.”

“You’ve been watching me continuously since you had the—the activation notice, though?”

Delahanty’s eyebrows rose. “No, I just told you. I had to pull everyone off your back to go look for the shiggy.”

Don’t push it. With luck they won’t bother to examine the tape from the small hours of this morning; I may get away with it. And the worst of all the horrible things I’m faced with is the risk of being court-martialled for breach of my cover. They may only want me for something very minor; they may need me to help analyse intelligence reports, say
 …