Stand on Zanzibar (72 page)
Authors: John Brunner
* * *
So was the next.
Philip Peterson had been at home all evening on his own, brooding. His mother had been invited to a party of the sort that … well, in her view that sort of party was unsuitable for her son because he wasn’t yet blasé and hardened like his old mother. Instead he held a small private party of his own, starting with three whistlers and going on to the reefer-box. It took a while for the lift of the pot to work through the bringdown of the alcohol, but the two fighting together gave him rather a pleasant feeling, as though he too were about to fight, or make love, or something of equal importance.
At about eleven poppa-momma he called a girl he knew but she wasn’t in. After that he played some of his favourite zock recordings, the kind Sasha preferred not to hear while she was in the apt, and danced by himself around the room.
He began to feel lethargic, and he didn’t want that, so he took one of Sasha’s Wakup pills from the store she kept in the drawer at the head of her bed which she fondly believed he didn’t know about, but all the pill did was prevent him from going to sleep, not make him feel lively. He put the lights out and sat down in a chair and played over the zock recordings again. They showed up much better in the dark and he could practically feel himself being drawn into them. His clothes began to get in his way so he took them off and strewed them around, walking a repetitious ellipse on the carpet. Eventually he grew hungry and went to see what there was that he could dial for and chose one of his favourites, cold roast ribs of real beef with salad, which he mainly selected when Sasha was out.
(Later they drew attention to the “very underdone” code he had dialled and said learned things about masculinity symbols.)
He was sitting by himself slicing the meat and spearing the salad at about five past three anti-matter when the main entrance tell-tale showed that someone had used the Watch-&-Ward Inc. key coded to this apt. He got up and turned off the recording he was watching and went and stood over by the door.
The light from the corridor outside, when the door was opened, showed him Sasha giggly with her dress down around her waist and those fine plump curved rounded breasts exposed to the eager mouth of the stranger with her to whom she was saying
sssh
and
wait a minute
and
do be quiet we don’t want to wake my son.
He reached out as the door was closed but before the light was turned on and used the knife he had been cutting his meat with to slash away the rest of Sasha’s clothes. The material divided with a soft cry and the skin down her back from below her right shoulder-blade to her buttocks divided with a scream. Light. The stranger, still straightening from the adoring obeisance he was performing at the altar of her ripe mature womanhood, said something about holding it, what the—?
Philip said, “What are you doing to my
mother
my
mother
my
mother?
” and at each repetition gestured with his right hand, which happened to be holding the very sharp steak-knife. On the third repetition the stranger turned his eyes up in their sockets and bubbled and lay down on the floor with both arms folded over the stab-wounds in his belly.
A high, shrill voice was ringing from wall to ceiling to wall. Philip turned off his ears and used his eyes now they were becoming adjusted to the light again. Standing near the door there was a rather beautiful woman, not quite as young as she once was, but almost naked except for some rags she was clutching to her. Irresistibly attracted, he approached her, letting fall the thing his hand happened to be grasping at the time, and when she dodged his lips and insisted on keeping her own mouth wide in that ugly expression he forced it shut with his fingers. After a little while she stopped resisting and let him do what he wanted, which he did with a great deal of enthusiasm because somebody somewhere else a long time ago had kept on stopping him from doing it on some wholly ridiculous grounds about being too young darling. Of course I’m not too young. Here I am doing it aren’t I?
But she wasn’t very exciting after the first time so he went and looked for a partner with a bit more energy and he got a coloured shiggy who happened to be in the elevator car and didn’t scream quite loudly enough and he was trying to persuade her white roomie whose apt she had been carrying the key for when someone who happened to be passing spotted him shoving her in through the door and the fuzzy-wuzzies fused him when he came out to look for the next one but that was too late.
TO MYSELF ON THE OCCASION OF MY TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
I made me in a sterile hospital.
I’m sure the act, like me, was neat and clean.
Blood, pain, or mess? I frankly don’t recall.
I anyhow preferred to shift the scene
And went to school to learn what I approve.
Later I got a job and earned some cash
And found a girl. Together we make love.
One day, I guess, I’ll turn myself to ash
But that’s a thought on which I don’t much dwell.
To make quite certain I shall like me, I
Strictly observe injunctions that I read:
I scrub my skin to take away its smell,
Put talcs and lotions on it when it’s dry …
But scratch it and—God
damn
, I hurt, I bleed!
NOT FOR SALE BUT CAN BE HAD ON APPLICATION
“Thanks,” Chad said.
Norman could hardly believe his ears. He said, “Whatinole are you
thanking
me for? Prophet’s beard, I should be down on hands and knees to you. I owe you—”
He stopped suddenly. There were too many people in earshot for him to speak the truth: that it wasn’t the rescue of the GT investment planned for Beninia, but the salvation of the project itself along with everything he had personally committed to the idea, for which he wanted to express his gratitude. But the presidential floor of the GT tower was swarming with distinguished guests, including the team from State who behind their spokesman Raphael Corning had been supervising the venture. He was beset with them and fellow staffers and acquaintances until he had started to feel like the quarry of hounds. He had not even had the satisfaction of telling Elihu the good news; Waterford had immediately sent messengers in search of him and Ram Ibusa on the specially mounted tour they were making of the building.
Chad sensed his mood and divined the reason behind it. He said with a wry smile, “It’s a drecky way to run a man’s life, isn’t it? You’re the crown of creation, codder, and you can’t stand it. But I guess one must learn to put up with it.”
“I’ve started noticing the things wrong with it all over again since I came home,” Norman admitted.
“I’ve never experienced them before. I spent a lot of my youth in the secluded groves of Academe—maybe that was what deluded me into thinking people would listen if I shouted at them loud enough, because my old students did at least pretend to be paying attention even if they never acted on what they were told … But I’ll have to get used, I suppose.”
“What?”
“You said you were going to hire me.”
“But—” Norman stumble-tongued. “But you’ve done what I was going to hire you for! You put Shalmaneser back on the orbit we wanted him to fly, and—”
“Norman, you’re contaminated,” Chad cut in. “You’re a nice guy and you’ve done me favours and the rest, but you’re contaminated. Look, spare-wheel!”
Without turning his head he put the empty glass he was holding on a passing trolley and snatched another.
“What did everyone say who was hanging around Shal while I had my little chat with him?”
Suddenly irritated beyond endurance, Norman snapped, “You ought to drop the modesty act. It’s pseudo. It doesn’t suit you and you’re not good at it.”
“You mean calling it a little chat? The hole!” Chad swigged his new drink down. “Get it into your skull, will you? That’s the plain truth! I never make with the modesty act—I’m congenitally conceited and I long ago gave up trying to cure myself. But it’s not that I’m so damned good at anything. I just haven’t been conditioned into thinking that the right answer can’t be a simple one. When I told you you’d been contaminated I meant by that attitude, which is wider-spread than the common cold and just as undermining. Did nobody ever point out to you that the only liberty implied by free will is the opportunity to be wrong? In words of one syllable more or less: what Shal has done is exercise his built-in faculties—the ones everybody on the design team expected, hoped for, advertised as a colossal breakthrough in cybernetics and then refused to recognise when they saw them happening! Shal did exactly what you’re doing at this moment, and he was just as wrong as you are. He—”
Inserted into the middle of the flow of words as neatly as a monofilament wire, the voice of Prosper Rankin: suave, ingratiating, and to Norman horrible.
“Mr. Mulligan—or I believe I should say Doctor, should I not?”
“Sure, I have more doctorates than a dog has fleas these days.” Chad turned, blinking, and Norman felt a stir of apprehension. “What other ailments may I cure for you besides the minor complaint I saw to already?”
Rankin gave an insincere grin:
was that a joke?
“I’d hardly call it minor, though naturally we wouldn’t care for people to know just how worried Shalmaneser had us there for a while. We’re tremendously indebted for your insight and assistance—and on that subject, it occurred to me to wonder whether anyone had formally asked you to join our company at the banquet we’re having to mark the successful outcome of the Beninian negotiations. Norman has presumably told you about it.”
“No, nobody’s invited me to come along to anything except this bierfest that’s going on now. And this I don’t mind because whoever does your catering appreciates good liquor.”
Fasten it, you fool.
Norman frowned the thought at Rankin and wished he could utter it aloud.
What I want to do is sneak out with Chad and go to a bar with him. Drunk or sober I’d rather hear what he has to say than …
“Thank you,” Rankin was saying. “Our food, I assure you, is of equally high standard. But what I was going to ask you was whether you’d care to say a few words afterwards, along with Dr. Ibusa and Dr. Masters and Dr. Corning.”
I think you ought to tell him what he can do with his speechifying.
But Norman’s momentary wild hope died. With a light in his eye that Norman had begun to recognise for a danger signal, Chad was nodding vigorously.
“By all means. I should love to say a few words to these people. I should
love
to.”
If there had been any chance of Norman enjoying the banquet through the euphoria of sheer relief, it vanished at that instant. All through the meal he sat moodily between a woman from State and Rex’s wife—someone else’s scheduled place, but he had offered to trade with Chad so the latter could be seated with Rankin and Waterford without upsetting the entire layout. He picked at his food, vaguely hoping that some blazing row would develop during private conversation, or that Chad would become incapably drunk and have to be taken away under the pretense of illness.
Bit by bit, however, his mood lightened. So what if Chad did do as he feared and behave in a monstrously offensive manner? There were a lot of people in the audience who would benefit from a tongue-lashing. And if it so happened that Chad chose to include the effectual head of the Beninia project, one Norman Niblock House, among his main targets—
The hole. I deserve it. I sheeting well deserve it.
As soon as he politely could, he thrust away the last of his food and lit a Bay Gold to cushion the anticipated impact. In accordance with ancient formula, Rankin, who was acting chairman, waved at Rex Foster-Stern, who had been delegated toastmaster, and the suffering began.
Rex mouthed regret about the absence of Old GT, whose sad fate cast a shadow over us all, and called on Rankin, who juggled sorrow at GT’s loss with insistence that her death would result in no harm to the Beninia project, managing with skill GT herself might have approved to prevent one assertion from contradicting the other.
After which Ram Ibusa acknowledged on behalf of the Beninian government the promised revolution in domestic affairs which his country looked forward to, and Dr. Corning gave an official blessing to the contracts which had been signed, and Elihu—mercifully brief—assured everyone that there was a great future for Beninia.
Finally, Rex returned to the podium and Norman wondered why in this allegedly streamlined modern age it always took hours to get through a commemorative or celebratory function. Why couldn’t someone programme Shal to work out a condensed version, equally formalised but completed in five minutes?
“And now I have the pleasure—the genuine honour—of introducing the guest who on this occasion—or any other—needs perhaps less introduction than practically anybody. With all due respect to Mr. Rankin, or even to Dr. Masters, whose distinction is incontestable, I feel that his name is better known to you than anyone else’s who is here. His thinking has helped to shape our society, through his books, his articles, interviews—”
“You’re not going to put the blame for our society on my back!” Chad said very audibly, and Rex flushed.
“Well—hr’m!—without going into detail I must say that his specialist assistance in the realisation of the Beninia project has been invaluable, which is another reason apart from his great personal cachet why we’ve invited him to address us today—ah—Dr. Chad C.
Mulligan.
”
He sat down, barely in time to save himself from being shoved out of the way. Chad, as Norman had noticed, had spent most of his time drinking and not eating his meal, and he was a trifle unsteady on his feet as he reached the podium. Liquor had done nothing to affect his voice, however; the moment he started to speak, technicians recording the speeches for SCANALYZER and the company’s own archives winced and made haste to cut back the gain on their microphones.