Game Control (39 page)

  She said in a hoarse whisper, 'I was afraid you might be dead.'

  'Oh, no,' he assured her. 'I've made my bed, now I'm lying in it. The mattress is concrete and shared with sixty other stinking Africans. Too perfect, don't you think?'

  Eleanor drew back. 'I'm sorry, but you do smell.'

  He chuckled. 'I expect something about QUIETUS has smelled from the beginning.'

  'I've been trying to get you a lawyer. Imanyara won't touch it. There's a question about which country should try you. I'm negotiating with the embassy to get you extradited to the States. At least in Washington you'd get a bed, and there's no

caning. With the stature of this case, you might even get yourself into one of those minimum security Howard Johnsons with a golf course.'

  'I don't play golf. And don't go to any trouble. I want lots of publicity. That's all I care about.'

  'Speaking of which, I brought you the papers.'

  He had made the front page of the
Independent
, though he was insulted to note that because of another Eastern European country doing something cheerful he had not made the lead.

Former USAID Division Head

Arrested in Bizarre Depopulation Scandal

  
Dr Piper is being held in police custody in Nairobi.

  
The State Department has issued no comment, pending investiga
tion. However, the current head of AID's population arm and Piper's
successor, Dr Aaron Spring, was forthcoming. Asked if he found the
charge incredible, Spring responded, 'Not in the least. Calvin Piper
is a strange and dangerous man, perfectly capable of going off the
deep end. He is obsessed with population, to the exclusion of every
other issue. Population growth is a complex and culturally delicate
issue in the Third World. At USAID, Piper was insensitive and
simplistic. He was one step from a homicidal maniac in 1983
.'

  
In his tenure at USAID, Piper was a successful lobbyist for popu
lation issues, and multiplied US funding for the field by several times.
Caught shipping birth control pills, IUDs and vacuum aspirators to
countries where they were illegal, he was replaced by the organization
for violating USAID guidelines.

  '
Despite his crusading for population activities,' Spring noted,
'Piper turned back the contraceptive clock in developing countries.
Our ground has been hard won, and the Dirty Harry of Demography
only alienated local governments. It won't come as any surprise in
Africa that Piper wants to march them all into gas chambers
.'

  
Active public support for family planning in Kenya, for example,
has only come about in the last ten years. Spring fears this new turn
of events will reflect badly on legitimate population programmes, and
urged the Third World to regard Dr Piper as 'a renegade lunatic. Ef
fectively, the man's insane'. Spring emphasized Piper's connections
with USAID had been severed since his departure.

  
Kenyan officials have expressed their anger, condemning the plot
as 'colonialist' and 'the devious scheming of foreign masters'. Distrust
for the West's enthusiasm for family planning runs deep in African
cultures.

  
Whether Piper will be tried in the US or in Kenya, where he has
lived off and on for thirty years, is now being negotiated between the
two governments. According to Dr Spring, 'Africa does odd things
to white men. Ask Conrad. Piper's been there too long.'—UPI

'Aaron Spring is a tit,' Calvin commented, reading the article with a wide grin. 'Since he took over, Congress has cut his funding to the quick. He's a sad, tubby bureaucrat who's losing his hair, and he's
jealous
.'

  'He has one point,' said Eleanor wearily. 'I'm not sure the publicity on your arrest is going to do the population lobby a world of good.'

  'Publicity is publicity,' said Calvin merrily. 'Often, the worse the better. Scandal! This is cake. Let me see the rest.'

  The tabloids were having a field day: 'Pop Expert Plans Baby Massacre; Deadly African Potion Could Destroy All Human Life…' However, these articles had a cry-wolf quality. QUIETUS was a real tabloid story, and if your papers always made mountains out of molehills, how did you write about real mountains? Calvin's story was impossible to sensationalize, and as a consequence the
Star
, the
Sunday World
and the
Daily Mail
were disappointingly staid.

'How are you?' asked Eleanor.

'Filthy, tired, hungry and pleased with myself.'

'I can't see why.'

  'This press is unparalleled. Though I didn't get very far. I don't suppose they'll hang me,' he mourned. 'But how are you?'

  'Not great.' Her eyes were twitching. 'Someone turned you in, didn't they?'

  'You should know.'

  'Why should I know?'

  He shrugged.

  'Well, it was obviously Wallace,' she said hurriedly.

  'I disagree.' He eyed her. 'It was more likely an inside job. I doubt if Threadgill's intelligence was so good that he knew Pachyderm was already on the table. Only a handful of people knew we'd cracked the pathogen.'

  Eleanor glanced at the guard. 'Shouldn't you watch what you say?'

  'Why? I'm guilty. I intend to plead guilty. There's nothing to hide.'

  'So who was the turncoat?'

  'Eleanor, my poppet. Let's give each other a little more credit. I think we both know perfectly well.'

Calvin had been in Nyayo House three more days and had started to stomach the
ugali
. His spirits were high. He enjoyed his notoriety among his cell-mates. He lived for another instalment of newspapers. His greatest fear had been that the story would get hushed up, and those front pages reassured him.

  Calvin spent much of his time fantasizing about his trial. He would contest nothing. They could bring in Norman, Bunny and Threadgill to testify. Maybe poor Eleanor could be left out on humanitarian grounds—too bad they weren't married. Calvin pictured himself with his hands clasped beside his useless lawyer, with a beatific smile and cool, photogenic eyes. The case would be followed closely by the press, day by day, and once the prosecution discovered the lab the evidence would be damning. Climactically, Calvin would at last take the stand himself. He would accost the world with the proliferation of its own demise. He organized his statistics during the long nights on cement. The illustration about the

atomic bomb, he'd use that; it was graphic. The speech would be the most moving of his career. It would get quoted in full in the
New
York Times
. No demographer in the history of the field would have organized a more spectacular cameo.

  Therefore, imagine Calvin's surprise when a warder arrived to let him out. Surely Eleanor had bribed her way in for another visit, but there was no little room and she was nowhere in sight. They left him loitering in the hall, with no guard. He had to go and find one. 'Sorry,' said Calvin. 'Whom am I supposed to see? Where do I go?'

  'You go home,' said the lump.

  'I can't imagine anyone raised the bail for me. It must be astronomical.'

  'No bail,' said the guard, bored. 'You are free. Get out.'

  Mystified, Calvin wandered out into the smoggy, sunny glare of hideous downtown Nairobi, which he had hoped to have left behind for ever. Bereft, he wandered to a news-stand and bought the
Standard.

  
Dr Piper has been released, as there is no evidence of wrong-doing
besides, said the President, 'offending good taste and common decency,
and wasting wananchi's time'. He had no wish to detain Dr Piper
further, as the Kenyan justice system was reserved for prosecuting
dangerous criminals, and not 'schoolboy pranksters'.

padlocked, with a notice advising its tenants that entry was forbidden due to non-payment of rent.

  Back on the street, he found a pay phone and, after dialling ten times with an irate queue forming behind him, he got through to Pachyderm. 'This is Piper.
Where's Norman
?'

  The secretary was cool. 'Oh, Norman's been expecting you'd like to talk to him. He said he'd lunch at the Norfolk.' She hung up without saying goodbye.

  Calvin scuttled towards the hotel lobby to wash up, but he reeked so much that security wouldn't let him in. He glanced in the door glass at his pilled beard and bath-mat hair. Decency be damned, he wanted some answers.

  Norman was out on the terrace, with a dapper bow-tie. The microbiologist was munching buns with Campari and soda, perusing the Hot 'n' Snackies on which he rested his eye an extra beat before looking up.

  Calvin threw the
Standard
on the table. 'What's this about
vinegar
and bleach
? Did you suspend some shy little protein in that liquid they didn't find?'

  'The only thing suspended in that salad dressing,' Norman purred, 'was your disbelief.' He took another nibble on his roll and dabbed his chin.

  'But it killed Malthus.'

  'I'm not surprised. We cooked up quite a porridge: Worcestershire, Peptang, mango chutney, Ribena and Marmite, dusted with a little Omo, sprinkled with Vim and garnished with a generous spray of Doom. I imagine such a breakfast would do in the heartiest monkey.'

  'What about the photographs?'

  'We found a little village not far from the lab. Told them we were making a movie. They were only too delighted to cooperate. Especially the kids. Dead sweet. Lolling on the ground with their tongues out—regular scene-stealers, every one. Then we threw a picnic. It was a hoot, Pipe, you should have been there.'

  'I wasn't invited. You're going to explain to me, I hope, why I have spent eight days in the holding cells of Nyayo house so you could have a picnic?'

  'We never expected you to get arrested,' said Norman, sounding injured. 'All in good fun and that. Say, you couldn't sit in the next chair? You smell like a long drop.'

  'I will not. I've suffered for your little joke, the least I can do is ruin your lunch.'

  Norman kept a napkin over his nose. 'It wasn't just a joke, Pipe. It was research.'

  'Into what?'

  'Your character. See, Pachyderm's a bloody lot of work, my
mutu.
We've been putting in serious hours. We'd gotten somewhere, but we were still looking at five more years. Life's short. I've found the project theoretically enthralling, but I didn't want to waste my time if you were going to oo-worms in the eleventh hour. And I can't say what tipped me off, but I wasn't sure you'd follow through. They aren't obvious at first, but you've your soft spots.'

  'You sound like Panga,' muttered Calvin.

  'Now I suppose we'll never know,' Norman bemoaned. 'What we turned up instead was a nasty leak in QUIETUS. You should thank me. Better to find it now than later, when there's something spicier than Worcestershire in that sauce. And now you've learned something: next time you initiate an illegal international conspiracy, you'll find a girlfriend who keeps her mug shut.'

  'I wish you wouldn't spread rumours about Eleanor being a grass.'

  'It's common knowledge, boyo. And from what I hear, she's in no shape to worry about local gossip.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'Word's out she had a nervous breakdown—has been experiencing humours—whatever the latest lingo is for falling apart. Checked into Nairobi Hospital. Kept raving about how she was going to murder billions of people, so of course they put her on medication. I think your friend Wallie took her home with him.'

  'If she wasn't ga-ga before,' Calvin grumbled, 'Threadgill should finish the job.'

  'It's a pity about Pachyderm, though.' Norman reclined philosophically. 'I still think the idea was nifty. And what do you want me to do with the lab?'

After showering, Calvin went to retrieve Eleanor from Threadgill's ward. He approached the camp, diffident. Ducking his head under the tent flap, Calvin found Wallace sitting by the bed, murmuring over a thick black book. For Eleanor's sake, Calvin hoped it was Hans Christian Andersen, but when he crept nearer to the bed he saw the text was illustrated with spiritual diagrams of intersecting circles: WATER, WINDS OF VOID.