Game Control (27 page)

  Calvin pushed the heavy sound-proof door on to a different world. Though the afternoon was sweltering, the suite was arctically airconditioned, and raised the hair on Eleanor's arms. The room suffered none of the scrawled signs and peeling linoleum of Nyayo proper, its sweeping conference table Tanzanian teak, the thick salmon carpet slashed with recent vacuuming. Sealed by wide doubleglazing from the shanty patchwork of distant hills, the suite was muffled with self-congratulatory creams. Calvin was aware that you could not convincingly debate global annihilation with a handwritten sign on your door or weigh the fate of billions in folding chairs.

  A bank of computer screens covered one wall: 3-D continents revolving in full colour, vectors of increase streaking in alarming diagonals, spread sheets trilling margin to margin. As the displays flickered manically through their paces, the earth revolved with patches of green and grey and then bright red until Eleanor feared for it. On screen the planet seemed small and at their mercy.

  The Corpse was gathered: Bunny, Basengi, Louis, Grant and a handful of others Eleanor couldn't take in from nerves. They turned to her with stony astonishment. Eleanor perched by Calvin, arranging her skirt, trying to keep her teeth from chattering and wishing she'd brought a sweater. Bunny shot her a curdled smile. Eleanor wanted to go home.

  Calvin assumed the head of the table and took out a device like a traffic radar detector. No one spoke as the black box gave off a restless static. After a full minute of white noise, the company relaxed and muttered as if some silent prayer had been offered and answered.

  'Bug free,' he said. 'So far. Most of you know Eleanor Merritt,' he introduced. 'Pathfinder. She has agreed to join QUIETUS. I have hopes she will give us a hand on the fund-raising side and take over our AIDS research. Basengi has enough on his plate and cannot handle the work as a sideline; it's too full-time. Any objections?'

  'I'll say,' said Bunny. 'Haven't you flagrantly circumvented due process?'

  'Yes,' said Calvin happily.

  'You're going to explain why?'

  'No I'm not.'

  'How much,' inquired Basengi, 'you have told Ms Merritt, please?'

  'Eleanor has been fully briefed.'

  'So,' said Bunny, 'a
fait accompli
, then?'

  'That's right.'

  'You wouldn't mind if we asked her a few questions? Even if they're rather too late?'

  'Be my guest.'

  When Bunny swivelled to the new member, Eleanor made herself sit up straight and look Bunny in the eye, though inside she was shrivelling like pawpaw peel in the Sahel. To think Calvin had roped her into this on the premise it would be fun.

  'You realize, Eleanor, that this is not one of those clubs you can join and then quit because it doesn't have a sauna?'

  'I'm not partial to saunas,' said Eleanor. 'What are you getting at?'

  'We can't afford to have disenchanted dilettantes gossiping at parties. That is why we like to do these interviews beforehand. To route out qualms. Do you have qualms?'

  Eleanor asked incredulously, 'Don't
you
?'

  'My commitment to QUIETUS is not in question here. Of course none of us has entered into this alliance lightly. I'm wondering if you have.'

  'I'm willing to do research,' said Eleanor. 'I can't see how gathering accurate estimates of the demographic impact of HIV can do anyone any harm. But if you expect me to assure you that I have unflagging, blind faith that the objective of this operation is in the interests of the human race, I can't. I'm willing to listen. I have seen in the field that sometimes quick, cruel solutions are kinder than keeping doomed populations lingering through one more day.'

  'Cruel solutions. You mean death.'

  'Yes.' Eleanor raised her chin. 'I've worked in Ethiopia. I hated to see those people suffer. They lead fearful, tormented

lives, for if they're not starving they're worrying about starving. I know all the arguments about food aid, how all it feeds is hunger. But I do not feel easy sitting in judgement, branding them better off dead. That is an assessment people may best make for themselves.'

  'Yes, but what is the price?' Basengi jittered. 'If the only question was these people starving, we could let them decide to live or die. But the land, it is destroyed—turned to desert, thousands of years of topsoil gone in ten. The politics, they go haywire. The animals, they are slaughtered. It is to the earth itself we owe a sacrifice—'

  'Time,' called Calvin. 'We're not here to debate the whole hoopla into the ground again. We arrived at concensus years ago. Please, Basengi, cut it short.'

  'But I am most interested in Eleanor's point of view,' said Bunny. 'I wanted to see if she had qualms. Now it seems she has nothing but. How did you persuade her to join our merry men, then? I'm confused.'

  'Eleanor has a mind of her own,' said Calvin. 'That seems an asset to me.'

  'I would be only too delighted,' Bunny snapped, 'that Ms Merritt has a quick, inquiring spirit with her own opinions of the world under ordinary circumstances. It is quite a different matter, however, to invite someone into our company who is not convinced of our purpose. At this stage, we hardly need a devil's advocate.'

  'Considering the nature of your purpose,' Eleanor returned, 'the question is whether you're all devil's advocates.'

  'See?' Bunny seethed. 'You said yourself, Calvin, you don't want us going round and round in circles we squared years ago. It took us relentless agonizing to finally transform from one more garrulous think-tank to effective sting operation. I do not relish wasting my time coddling a squeamish neophyte out of her naïve moral handwringing into the merciless realities of biological crisis. This is not a sorority. We aren't budgeted for initiation rites.'

  'Eleanor's candidacy is not up for a vote,' said Calvin abruptly. 'As you noted, Bunny, QUIETUS is for life. Eleanor's in; she can't get out.'

  Eleanor turned to Calvin. 'But what if I did want out? What would you do?'

  'Oh, I don't know,' said Calvin, offhand. 'I suppose we'd have to kill you.'

  Once again she had the inappropriate impulse to laugh. 'It would almost be worth it,' she said softly. 'To walk out that door and see if you'd put a bullet in my back. Single pieces of information may be worth risking your life for.'

  'I shouldn't try it,' said Calvin.

  'I'm chuffed,' said Eleanor, the Britishism for Bunny's benefit. 'You always kill the thing you love? I suppose two billion others should be chuffed as well.'

  'A good many elephants have suffered the same affection. Even in 1963 my threats weren't empty, Eleanor. Don't push me.' His voice was friendly, intimate.

  'I assume, if our new member is so well informed, she is aware that none of us participates in QUIETUS on a purely research basis?'

  'We have discussed it, more or less,' said Calvin.

  'What?' said Eleanor.

  'Should Pachyderm come to fruition, we have all agreed not to simply administer the organism but to subject ourselves to it,' Bunny explained. 'If the agent meets specifications, two-thirds of us should survive, possibly more, since the parameters demand a high mortality among juveniles. Membership is no guarantee of exemption; quite the opposite. This stipulation is a moral imperative, which I'm sure, so scrupulous, you can appreciate.'

  'Everyone except me,' said Calvin jovially. 'The scapegoat gets drawn and quartered.'

  'It's outrageous,' said Eleanor, 'to regard participation in your own cataclysm as brave resolve. Your vows are ignoble. If you're forcing Russian roulette on the rest of the world, of course you play.'

  'This moral posturing is a waste of time,' Calvin interjected. 'Can we get to work? Grant has been modelling labour-force projections. I'd like a report.'

  Grant sat at the keyboard and a screen flashed a 3-D graph that resembled a quarter-volcano made of stair steps. 'The situation in thirty-five years looks volatile,' the dreary man

began in a monotone. 'Because African economies cannot keep pace with population growth, up to 50 per cent of the work force will be unemployed. By 2025, 60 per cent of Africans will have migrated to urban centres…'

  Numbers of any kind were coming to have a hypnotic effect on Eleanor; a mere post code could put her to sleep.

  'Aquifer depletion, agricultural subdivision—a huge, unsatisfied, young, hungry population with no work—'

  Eleanor's head took a speculative tilt. She hoped she appeared intent; in truth, she was remembering that Solastina was completely out of pasta.

  'We predict total anarchy,' Grant declared with a grim smile. 'Nairobi in 2025 will make Nairobi in 1990 look like Gothenburg.'

  The screen changed; the peak of the volcano shifted, with a shelf on its right side. 'Here we have the Pachyderm Effect. With approximately 20 per cent cropping of current reproductive ages, concentrating on younger parents so that progeny are not readily replaced, and 40 per cent cropping of juveniles, especially the under-fives, we see a very different picture for 2025: a population gently larger than today's, with plenty of time for economies to catch up with employment.' The screen changed. 'This is a labour force of a size that could conceivably sustain its own population. Environmental strategies have some chance of success, crop yields are likely to increase. With Pachyderm, Africa could easily become the dominant economic power of the next century. Ready for South America?'

  She had to give QUIETUS credit: their attention span was astounding. Continent by continent they suffered Grant's statistics, and no one around the table ever looked less than rapt. Eleanor had a hard time keeping her eyes open. When he arrived at North America, she woke up.

  'We have discussed designing an alternative pathogen for industrialized nations, with their below-replacement fertility rates. The North is threatened by an ageing population. Shrinking labour pools will force it to accept immigration, transforming the cultural complexion of these countries. The old are economically unproductive and burdensome to social systems.

We recommend an agent that hits geriatric targets and leaves the juvenile cohort largely intact.'

  Eleanor squirmed. She liked her grandmother.

  The meeting went on to 8 p.m. In the main of it, Eleanor, too, got caught up in the exercise: the optimum labour force, country by country, for 2025. By then Eleanor would be out of work herself. What would she do, with family planning deprived of support after Calvin's purge?

  Flower-arranging. Towards the end she could no longer attend to the digits flashing across Nyayo's computer screens and imagined a little shop she could keep through retirement, shifting jonquils, snipping stems. Plants you could always get on with. Better than pets: if you abused them they didn't complain, but withered humbly to the soil from which they came. Eleanor and plants understood each other.

  When the session broke up, Bunny put her hand on Calvin's arm. That woman was always touching him, with her little excuses.

  'I would like to speak with you,' said Bunny severely.

  Calvin glanced to Eleanor.

  'It's OK. I just want to go to sleep.'

  'The car—?'

  'I'll take a
matatu
.'

  Bunny raised her eyebrows, disapproving.
Wazungu
took taxis.

  On the way to catch her bus, Eleanor passed the hawkers on Moi who were just wrapping up their remaining flowers. She bought the remnants off several, and swayed down the avenue with an abundant array of glads, sweet peas, baby's breath. When she boarded the 'The Shining Way', TOLERANCE OF LADIES on the bumper, commuters stared; she was the only white on the bus. Eleanor didn't get a seat, and drew her shoulders around her blooms, glads poking other passengers, baby's breath exhaling against her cheek. The
matatu'
s loud disco suggested the many parties Eleanor had attended tongue-tied, wallflower; she and her bundle made one big wilting bouquet.

  By the time she reached Karen and trembled down the steps, in the dark press of Kenya's population the glads were dejected, the sweet peas had soured and the baby's breath

'Calvin Piper, you astonish me.'

  The screens were dark; a single spot lit the conference table. Calvin poured two neat shots from the well-stocked QUIETUS bar. Dealing death all day required a healthy allowance in the budget for whisky.

  'I thought I was beyond astonishing you, Bunny. How encouraging.'

  'You of all people dragging your latest skirt along to QUIETUS! Did you hope to impress her?'

  'Not nearly as much as anticipated. She's taken the proposition in her stride.'

  'But after all our precautions! How many years have we kept the operation tight? For God's sake, Calvin! Have you gone off your head?'

  '
Inshe Allah
.'

  'Don't
que sera sera
me.
Shauri ya Mungu
is for passive pastoralists with goats, not for a man with a brain. And just how many more forty-year-olds will be trotted to our multimedia show on afternoons you're too cheap to take them to a matinée?'

  'Eleanor's thirty-eight,' said Calvin.

  'Don't be cute. Eleanor Merritt constitutes a heinous security lapse. You were entirely out of order! Couldn't you tell that the whole committee was outraged?'

  'Imagine my concern.'

  'I'm awaiting an explanation.'

  'Then you'll wait a long time.'

  Bunny drummed her fingers. 'You don't really fancy her, do you?'

  He considered, 'I do, a bit.'

  'She doesn't seem your type,' Bunny ventured.

  'What's my type?'