Desolation Road (33 page)

imaal Mandella had come with wife, children and fixings to boot to Desolation Road to escape from the plague of people, but such was his fame that he spent most of his first year a virtual prisoner in his own home.

"I am not the Greatest Snooker Player the Universe Has Ever Known!" he shouted in frustration to the crowds of admirers who gathered every morning outside the Mandella house. "Not anymore. Go away! Go and give yourselves to the ROTECH Anagnosta Gabriel, I don't want you!"

Finally Rael Mandella Sr. made daily patrols with his shotgun to keep the chaff away, and Eva Mandella, who in the summer wove out of doors beneath the great umbrella tree in front of the house, performed magnificently as receptionist and vetter of visitors. Then, just as Limaal Mandella was settling into the first period of peace he had known since he walked into Glenn Miller's Jazz Bar, cue under arm, the plague of surveyors descended upon Desolation Road.

And the plague of surveyors begat the plague of plastic grid squares, the plague of plastic grid squares begat the plague of planners, the plague of planners begat the plague of construction workers, and the plague of construction workers drove Limaal Mandella back into isolation. Just as he had gotten used to the pilgrims and entrepreneurs, and they to him, the town was suddenly filled up with successive waves of surveyors, planners, and construction workers until the hotels, hostelries, taverns, inns and bunkhouses bulge with them. He could no longer walk to Pentecost's General Merchandise Stores to buy the
Meridian Herald
without a dozen voices calling out, "Hey, look, Sanchi, it's Limaal Mandella," "It is him, I tell you, the Greatest Snooker Player the Universe Has Ever Known," "Is that ... yes it
is
... Limaal Mandella," and dozens of hands reaching out scraps of paper, bills, wage slips, betting forms, for him to autograph and dozens of invitations for him to play exhibition matches in some hotel, bar, workers' social.

"Just what the hell is going on!" he fumed to Santa Ekatrina. "First of all the whole damn desert's carved up like a dartboard into squares with plastic tape, now there's enough heavy construction gear flying in night and day to build an extra continent. And just as the folks here learn that I've retired and that I don't want to talk about snooker or beating the Devil or the competition to be the Greatest Snooker Player the Universe Has Ever Known; just when I can go down to the bar again, or the shop, I have to go into hiding again. Just what the hell are they doing out there, building an extra space elevator or something?"

Kaan Mandella, four years old, bright, cheeky and stuffed full of lamb pilaf, piped up, "Iron, Pa. Whole desert's full of iron. Virtually pure rust, says teacher, and she should know, she used to be a geolly ... a geoggy ..."

"Geologist. Iron! Sweet Lady, what next? So that's the Bethlehem Ares Corporation out there. I don't know ... what's to become of Desolation Road?"

Enough had become of Desolation Road in his Belladonna years for it to be virtually unrecognizable to Limaal Mandella. Saints, prophets, basilicas, men with metal arms, hotels, inns, flophouses all aglow, with gaudy neon, prayer kites, gongs and windharps, belfries full of clamour, vanished grandparents, walled gardens, mystery relations who vanished as rapidly as they had appeared, putty-featured aliens astonished on street corners, five trains a day, and a er port too, shops, bars, shanties and slums, people sleeping in the alley at night, people standing in line all day by the door marked "Supplicants"; theft, rape, abduction: police! Constables with shock staves, courts, and Louie Gallacelli draped in attorney robes, real-estate, property, and leases. Pastry vendors on every street corner; barrow boys, costermongers, hawkers of religious curios: streets! Poured concrete and corrugated tin, glass, steel and plastic; beer that tasted like piss: imported food! Lines at water pumps, acres of solar generators, the all-pervasive smell of ordure from overloaded methane digesters. Bicycles, rikshas, trikes: trucks! People shouting during the siesta, people entering without knocking, people, strangers, staring staring staring, talking, opening mouths, making noises. Even his sister was a stranger to him, shut up inside the ugly concrete carbuncle that called itself the Basilica of the Grey Lady; admission only to pious supplicants, penitents and those with the heart of a pilgrim. Limaal Mandella still possessed enough worldly pride to refuse to join the line by the door marked "Supplicants."

"This house, this town, this world, what is it coming to?" he shouted, and banged out of the house across the courtyard to his parents' house. In the twenty seconds it took him to cross the llama-dunged yard, two flash photographs were taken of him and a darkness-hidden female behind a potted bay tree begged for him to sexually abuse her.

"Mother, this town has me driven to distraction!"

At work upon her tapestry frame, Eva Mandella smiled and said, "Limaal! How nice to see you!"

"Mother, I have no privacy! Just thirty seconds ago some woman implored me to tie her up, gag her, wrap her in plastic film, and piss all over her! It can't go on! I must have privacy!"

"You have a famous face, Limaal."

"That part of my life is over, Mother."

"While you are alive, no part of your life is over. That is what this is for. Tell me, Limaal, what do you think of it?" She showed him the tapestry upon which she had been at work.

"Very nice," said Limaal Mandella, still trembling with rage.

"Isn't It? It's the history of this town. Everything that has ever happened I am putting into this tapestry so that when I am long gone your children and their children will be able to look at it and know they have a proud history. It's very important to know where you are coming from, and where you are going to. That is your problem, Limaal, you have come from, but as yet you have nowhere to go. You must have a purpose."

Limaal Mandella said nothing but stood twisting his foot on the dusty flagstones. Then he kissed his mother a brief smack on the cheek, spun on his heel, and ran out of the house, past the frustrated woman and the pirate photographers in the branches of the mulberry trees, through his kitchen, past his startled wife and sons, out into a night roaring with heavy construction machinery. He pressed on with grim determination, ignoring the workers' cries of recognition and praise, and entered the overgrown garden sur rounding Dr. Alimantando's cave house. The door had been forced, the vestibule was dusty and rank. Bats fled from their ceiling roosts as the light panels came to life.

Somewhere in this place must be the key to the dissatisfaction, the irritability, the bad temper, the restlessness. As a child he had believed that Dr. Alimantando had all human wit and wisdom inscribed upon his walls, now all he needed was some target at which to aim his rationalism. Limaal Mandella stood before the wailfuls of chronodynamic hieroglyphics and a smile grew. A light was lit in him. He might no longer be the Greatest Snooker Player the Universe Had Ever Known, but before him lay the key to becoming Master of Space and Time. Here was a lifetime of mystery, achievement, failure and triumph.

"Pa?" The voice startled him. "Pa, you all right?" It was Rael Jr., five and already cursed with the family curse. Limaal Mandella rested a hand on his son's head.

"I'm all right. It's just that since we came here I've not known what I wanted to do with myself."

"I know. You were like a paper glider in the wind."

Had be been that inept at concealing his frustration?

"Well, that's all over now. Rael, your father is going to be a Gentleman of Science and Learning, like Dr. Alimantando in the stories I told you about this place. See here ..." Father and son knelt to examine the faded scribblings. "This is where it all begins." He traced the line of reasoning along the wall and up and around, Rael Jr. following him, and embarked upon the years of line-following that were to lead him to the centre of the ceiling in Dr. Alimantando's weatherroom.

'ehold!" cried Inspiration Cadillac, surgical lamps glinting off his steel cranium. "The first total mortification!" Surgeons, nurses, prostheticians went down on their knees, arms uplifted in adoration. Taasmin Mandella backed away from the metal thing on the operating table. It horrified her.

Beneath a plastic dome the brain pulsed, studded with electromechanical transducers. A neuron fired, a transducer twitched, a metal arm raised itself, metal fingers opened to grip the air.

"Glory glory glory!" shrieked the surgeons nurses prostheticians.

"Get it away from me," muttered Taasmin Mandella. "It sickens me." Inspiration Cadillac was at her side in an instant, whispering suave persuasions. "Consider the achievement, Lady, the first total mortification! Flesh made metal. This is indeed a hallowed moment!" The undisguised envy in his voice made Taasmin Mandella flinch. The thing opened a metal eyeshutter and rotated a steel eyeball at her. The smooth steel orb was pierced by three black slits. The mouth opened and a stream of gurgled gibberish vomited forth. It tried to sit up, embrace her.

"Kill it, kill the filthy thing, get it away from me!" the Lady Taasmin screamed. The Total Mortification sat up. A spasm shook it. The cybernetic gibberish rose to a shriek of metal on metal. Oil trickled from the trembling mouth; Surgeons nurses prostheticians leaped from their knees to the operating table. The Total Mortification spasmed, shuddered and collapsed with a crashing of grinding gears. In the confusion Taasmin Mandella slipped out of the operating theatre and fled down empty antiseptic corridors and sunbaked cloisters in a rustle of circuit-printed fabric.

She was meditating in the sand garden at twilight when she heard the chanting. The machine mantras of the Poor Children co-mingled with the coarser cries of the populace touched the edge of her perceptions with a silver chime and drew her back into the world of men again. Troubles never end. She stretched, arching her back against the strictures of the form-fit meditation stool. In one minute Inspiration Cadillac would come knocking on the door, calling her back to responsibilities. She rose from the stool, went to her room, and pulled on a pair of grey bib & braces. Inspiration Cadillac found her nudity unspiritual and disturbing.

She was ready for the knock.

"What is it?"

"A problem, Lady. The Poor Children ..."

"I heard them."

"I think it best if you see for yourself." Inspiration Cadillac led her along sunbaked cloisters returning their daytime heat to the sky.

"How was your ... experiment?" Taasmin could not conceal the shudder in her voice and Inspiration Cadillac evidently heard it, for he replied, "With respect, you should not denigrate the labour of the scientists, they are trying to perfect the new humanity, the future man. Alas, in this instance, the patient's system terminated but his courage and faith have surely earned him immediate passage into the presence of the Great Engineer."

Inspiration Cadillac pushed open a heavily ornate door that led onto the street. The sound of chanting and cheering swelled.

"What is going on?"

"Please to follow me, Lady." Chamberlain and prophetess rounded a corner and came face-to-back with a dense throng of people.