Authors: John Brunner
Stand on Zanzibar (68 page)
“I want to hire you,” Norman said stonily.
“Hire me? You must be hitripping. On the one hand, I’m too rich to have to work. I figured out I can exhaust myself just about twice as soon as I can exhaust my money. I’m trying to get that down to a fifty per cent margin and going to work would screw me up. On the other hand, I can’t make anybody listen to me so what’s the good of my working? That’s settled, I hope. Have a drink—no, have a joint. Come out with me and collect some shiggies and we’ll celebrate your return. Anything!”
“I have an almost completely free hand on the Beninia project. I want you, at a salary you can name yourself.”
“Whatinole for?” Chad’s astonishment seemed genuine.
Norman hesitated. “Well—you’ve heard Elihu singing the praises of Beninia, haven’t you?”
“You were there at the time. Sounded like he had his private pipeline to Paradise.”
“Think I’m the sort of codder who’s easily persuaded?”
“You mean do I think you’re a hard case? Uh-uh. But you like to come on as one. What are you working up to—understudying Elihu’s PR job?”
“Exactly. Chad, that is a country which just seems to have been getting on quietly with its own business in the middle of all kinds of chaos. There used to be others, but they’ve all been caved in by outside interference—Nepal, Tahiti, Samoa—gradually reduced to Jettex Cursion status.”
“What else would you expect? Like I keep telling people, we’re a disgusting species with horrible manners and not fit to survive.” He added irrelevantly, “Did you get the letter I sent you?”
“Yes, of course I did. I didn’t reply because I was too sheeting busy. Now
listen
to me, will you? Outside interference or not, the Beninians haven’t had a murder in fifteen years. They’ve never had a mucker at all, not even one. They talk a language in which you can’t say that a man has lost his temper except by saying he’s gone temporarily out of his skull. Thousands of Inoko and Kpala poured over the border as refugees only a generation ago and there’s never been any tribal disorder between them and the people who were there already. The president runs the whole shtick—a million population, which is piddling by modern standards but a lot of people if you try and count heads—he runs it like a household, a family, not a nation. Is that clear? I don’t think I can explain what the difference is, but I’ve seen it going on.”
He was beginning to get through. What he could see of Chad’s face above the beard and moustache expressed concentration.
“One big happy family, hm? Okay, so what do you want me to do about it? Sounds as though they’re getting along all right by themselves.”
“Haven’t you caught any of the news bulletins where the need for the Beninia project was explained? I saw a replay of what Engrelay Satelserv is carrying while I was down at the GT tower just now, and all it left out was the risk that Dahomalia and RUNG may fight over Obomi’s grave.”
“Sure I’ve been catching the news. Been following the progress of your old beddy Donald.”
There was a moment of blank puzzlement. “What about Donald?” Norman demanded.
“It was in the same bulletin where I saw about the Beninia project!”
“I guess I didn’t catch the whole bulletin, only the extract they were replaying at GT … What did he do?”
“Saved Sugaiguntung from a mucker, is all. Killed the man with his bare hands.”
“
Donald?
Chad, are you orbiting? Donald could never in a million years—”
“All human beings are wild animals and they’re not fit to roam around loose.” Chad got to his feet and approached the liquor console. “I’d better have a hair of the dog.”
Norman shook his head, dazed. Donald? Coping with a mucker? It seemed so fantastic he dismissed it from his mind and switched back to what he had been saying before.
“Chad, I’m going to keep hammering at you until you cave in, understand?”
“About going to Beninia?” Chad measured out a generous helping of vodka and began to compose a whistler manually, as though he distrusted the programmed mixing instructions. “What for? You want a sociological advisor, you go get someone with the proper background. What do I know about West Africa? Only what I’ve read and seen on screens. Go hire some specialists.”
“I
have
specialists. I want you, Y-O-U.”
“To do what that you think they can’t?”
“Turn Beninia upside down and shake out its pockets.”
Chad tasted the whistler critically and added another shake of angostura. “Uh-uh, Norman. You just leave me to rot myself into my grave, there’s a sweet codder. And I promise I’ll comfort my premature old age with the idea that there really is a place somewhere on the pocky face of Mother Earth where people don’t kill each other and don’t run
amok
and generally behave like decent people should. I don’t want to go there because at the bottom of my mind I guess I just don’t believe in such a place.”
“Nor does Shalmaneser,” Norman said.
“What?”
“Shalmaneser has rejected every single attempt we’ve made to integrate the facts about Beninia into his real-world awareness. He says he won’t accept what we tell him about its history, its commerce, its culture, or its social interactions. He claims there are anomalies in the data and they get spewed back.”
“Can’t you order him to accept the data?”
“If he refuses, you can no more order him to compute with them than you can make him act on the assumption that objects fall upwards. We’re going out of our skulls, Chad. The whole Beninia project was predicated on our being able to process every step of it through Shalmaneser—not just the hardware of it, but the educational programmes, the probable diplomatic crises, the entire economy of the country practically down to the prodgies’ pocket-money for half a century from now. And he keeps on about these anomalies which I know from my own experience aren’t there!”
Chad stared at him. After a pause he began to chuckle. “Of course they’re there,” he said. “You’ve just been telling me all about them. Don’t catch, hm? Norman, you must be suffering from brain-rot, I guess. Okay, you win—never let it be said I refused to help a friend out of trouble. Hang on until I finish my drink and I’ll come along and pay a call on Shalmaneser with you.”
Still baffled, yet convinced from Chad’s manner that to him there was a solution of transcendental obviousness, Norman was about to reply when the phone sounded. He swivelled his chair and reached for the switch.
The screen lit to show Rex Foster-Stern’s agitated countenance. “Norman!” he burst out. “Whatinole are you doing there? Prosper is going into orbit with fright—when we couldn’t find you for the press conference he practically fainted!”
“That’s okay,” Norman said. “Tell him I’ve been arranging to hire a special advisor.” He glanced at Chad, who gave a shrug and spread the hand that wasn’t holding his drink.
“Sheeting hole, couldn’t you have picked a better time to worry about recruitment?” Rex demanded. “Who is this advisor, anyhow?”
“Chad Mulligan. I’m bringing him down to talk to Shalmaneser now. Have him cleared for vocal interrogation in half an hour, will you?”
“Half an hour? Norman, you must be—”
“Half an hour,” Norman repeated firmly, and cut the circuit.
“Y’know something?” Chad said. “It might be quite interesting, at that. I’ve often thought I ought to get acquainted with Shal.”
NO REASON, PURPOSE OR JUSTIFICATION
The sergeant kept 019 262 587 355 Lindt Gerald S. Pvt. to the last and when handing over his pass accompanied it with a scowl.
“I sheeting well hope you behave yourself better outside than in, Lindt!”
“Yes, sergeant,” Gerry said, woodenly at attention in spite of having reclaimed his civilian clothes, eyes fixed on a point in space above the sergeant’s shoulder. He had lost five pounds during recruit training and had had to draw in the belt of his slax.
“Shouldn’t wonder,” the sergeant said with contempt. “You’re a softass at heart, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sergeant.”
“You’ve learned something in the army, at least, hm? Well, don’t take it for everlasting gospel. Before you’re through here we’ll have had that heart out of you and made it over in a different design. All right, shift the scene.”
“Permission to dismiss, sergeant?”
“Dis-miss!”
* * *
He was a week later going into Ellay on pass than the rest of his intake. Last time he had been on thirty-six hours’ punishment drill. He was beginning to get an insight into the technique now: any recruit who wet his boots, as the current phrase went, immediately on reporting was marked as a scapegoat. It saved the noncoms the trouble of choosing one by their own judgment. The rest of the squad saw the treatment meted out to him and were supposed to quake in their boots and behave themselves.
He had done rather better than average in every instruction session so far, being brighter than average and also in better physical condition. Most of the other men in his squad were brown-noses from states where they were still at an economic disadvantage and had neither the funds nor the imagination to dodge the draft; there was a sprinkling of whites from the same states and not a few Puerto Ricans had also been grabbed by the computers. Underlying the singling out he had experienced, he suspected, there might possibly be a lean-over-backwards official directive aimed at encouraging his companions: pick out the tall good-looking blue-eyed fair-haired one and hit him because he can’t complain it’s prejudice.
He was the only blond in the whole squad.
Being better than others hadn’t saved him from worse treatment.
Thesis, antithesis—synthesis.
Along with everyone else he climbed aboard the hoverboat running shore-pass parties from Boat Camp to the mainland. He felt no particular enthusiasm about being turned loose. He felt no particular enthusiasm about anything except keeping his nose clean. But for the risk of appearing odd, he would probably have preferred to sit in the barrack-room and write home.
* * *
At the point where the hoverboat ran up the concrete slip and on to the road, someone had managed to stretch a single strand of GT-manufactured monofilament wire between two posts. The driver was in a hurry—he had seven more runs to make this evening before he could use his own pass—and hit the wire at nearly forty miles an hour. It sliced through the cab with hardly any drag at all, breaking inter-crystalline and not the tougher molecular bonds, barely leaving a mark on metal and plastic because they re-welded themselves on the Johanssen principle before air could get at the interfaces and cancel out their natural adhesion.
A force that tended to separate the parts, however, was capable of opposing the reunion.
Gerry Lindt happened to be turning to look at someone who had put a question to him. The twisting force was adequate to prevent his neck from bonding back together when the wire sliced through. Perhaps it was as well; he could have been paralysed from the neck down by the damage it did to his spinal cord. But the last horrible sight of his own torso as his eyes rolled along with his head towards the floor of the vehicle was nearer to eternal torment than even his sergeant would have wished on him.
It was obviously partisan work, not random sabotage. There was a grand roundup of suspected partisans organised immediately, and out of the two hundred and some they arrested they actually caught no fewer than four people in direct Chinese pay.
It was no special comfort to Gerry Lindt.
For a fearful moment after he had brought Sugaiguntung to the boat, Donald thought the scientist was going to balk. There were so many things he did not know about this man whose life he had altered like an act of God. Was he afraid of the sea, was he a claustrophobe who could not be hidden in the hold?
But the reason for Sugaiguntung’s hesitation became apparent with his next utterance.
“You did say—Jogajong?”
“Right!” Donald snapped. “Who else in this country could be trusted to keep you away from the gang in power?”
“I—I hadn’t realised.” Sugaiguntung licked his lips. “I don’t involve myself much in things like this. It’s all so strange and such a shock … Captain!”
The skipper looked attentive.
“Do you truly have faith in that man?”
Christ, we’re going to have a political debate now!
Donald sharpened his ears for the drone of a police helicopter or the chug of a reaction-powered patrol-boat.
“Yes, sir,” the skipper said.
“Why?”
“Look at me, sir, and my friends here—half in rags. Look at my boat, which needs painting and a new engine. Marshal Solukarta tells us fisherfolk that we are the bedrock of our country, bringing in the precious food that keeps us healthy and improves our brains. Then he fixes the price of fish at twenty talas a basket and when we complain he tells us we are committing treason. I am not even allowed to leave my work and try and make more money on land. Saving your presence, sir—you are Dr. Sugaiguntung, aren’t you?—what this country needs is not better children but better adults, who could raise their children better anyway.”
Sugaiguntung gave a shrug and approached the side of the boat. He looked for a way to clamber over the gunwale, but there was no ladder or step. Donald, giving a final nervous glance behind him, put away his gun and helped the skipper hoist the scientist aboard.
“You will have to hide in the fish-hold,” the skipper said. “It is stinking and dark. But the patrols are certain to stop us at least once if we approach the far shore. We shall have to make the trip very slowly, and before we can risk being searched there must be plenty of fish in the hold to deceive them.”
They must have done this kind of thing before, Donald realised, as with quick efficiency the two crewmen brought old tarpaulins and wrapped him and Sugaiguntung in them to protect their clothes. They were instructed to lie at the furthest end of the hold where there was a vent bringing in fresh air. Then they were left to themselves while the boat was put out to sea. Shortly, its whole fabric was shuddering with the irregular chug of the reaction-pumps.