Authors: John Brunner
Stand on Zanzibar (80 page)
“Ah, this is the bit I was just coming to, the one I said would tickle your sense of humour.” Chad was enjoying himself hugely. “Why hasn’t an expert spotted it before, is that what you’re going to say? Because it saved the Shinka from being made slaves in any great number. The Holaini, who settled down with the intention of sort of farming the Shinka as a slave-crop, lost their determination within a generation or so, partly because of interbreeding and partly because their aggression was being undermined by the company they were keeping. After that other slave-trading peoples avoided Shinka territory like the plague. They thought some powerful magic had been worked. Correctly!
“Virtually all the full-scale genetic studies of negroid stock have been done either in the New World, or in the most advanced countries of this continent, like South Africa.
This
country is too sheeting poor to enjoy the benefits, such as they are, of eugenic legislation. Nobody before now has mapped the genotype of any substantial number of Shinka, and certainly no one else but our group has been looking for what we were looking for.”
There was a pause. Half-inaudibly, Norman broke it, staring at the floor. He said, “That’s a shame. I’d begun to hope my ancestors might have come from here. I like this place.”
“Why shouldn’t you? Is there anywhere else on Earth where you escape the feeling that the human components of your environment are rivals, out to do you down? There used to be, but as far as I can tell this is the last to survive.” Chad upended his glass over his mouth. “Another, if I may!”
“I feel a bit stunned,” Gideon said. “You seem to be claiming that war could be cured, like a disease, with a dose of the proper medicine.”
“It’s early days yet, but that certainly doesn’t appear impossible,” Chad agreed. “Beyond that, though—there’s a target for a genetic optimisation programme! Building into every child born on the planet the in-stink-you-all attitudes of a Shinka. Sorry. Hey! Come to think of it, whatever happened to that project they had in Yatakang? I haven’t seen Sugaiguntung’s name in the news for—for ages.”
The others exchanged glances. Out of the corner of his eye Norman saw Donald tense and make as though to speak, but he didn’t.
Elihu said eventually, “Sugaiguntung’s dead, Chad. Did you not hear about it?”
“Christ, no!” Chad jolted forward on his chair. “Since I got here, I literally haven’t paid attention to anything except my work. You know how it is up-country where there’s one TV set for a village and you can’t get to see the screen because there are five hundred other people in the way.”
“The whole Yatakangi optimisation programme turned out to be a propaganda stunt,” Gideon said. “Sugaiguntung admitted he couldn’t do what the government had claimed and—”
“Yes, he could,” Donald said.
“What?”
“He could. He told me so just before I killed him.”
Norman tried to make his voice soothing; this, by the sound of it, was the renewed fit of irrationality he’d been afraid of. He said, “Come now, Donald! They killed Sugaiguntung themselves while he was trying to get away. He decided to defect because of the lies that had been put about.”
“Don’t you know you’re talking to the man who was there when he died?” Donald said.
After an incredulous pause, Norman gave a dumb head-shake.
“Oh, I heard the official version,” Donald said sourly. “What they said was like all good lies half-true. He did want to get away because he didn’t believe he could optimise human beings. But he realised that he could, after all. And far from the Yatakangi patrols homing on the beacon in his suit and shooting him out of the water while I escaped—that’s what they said, that’s the lie—I killed him. With a knife. While he was telling me all the ways he couldn’t do what he had promised.
“They’d trained me to kill people, you see. They took me away to a place on the water and there they showed me every way they’d ever thought of for one man to kill another. Do you want me to show you some of them?” He rose unsteadily to his feet. “I don’t want to kill any of you, but there’ll have to be a volunteer because otherwise I haven’t anything to work with, you see. You do see? It’s the highest expression of human ability to improve other humans, and it’s called eptification, and because it’s one of our finest and most monumental achievements—”
From behind, Tony, who had approached without a sound on soft-soled shoes, raised and fired a diadermic syringe at the nape of Donald’s neck. As though he had often practised the movement, he dropped it into one of his side-pockets and had his hands back in position to catch Donald as he slumped towards the floor.
“I’m sorry about that, sir,” he said to no one in particular. “It does happen with eptification for military purposes occasionally, that you get this exaggerated reaction. Of course you shouldn’t take any notice of what he said about wanting to demonstrate his skill on people—it’s part of the mental disorder he’s suffering as a result of his very difficult time over there in Yatakang. Perhaps you’ll excuse me; I’d better call an ambulance and get him back to the hotel before he wakes up. I only gave him a very light shot, just enough to relax him and…”
While he was speaking, the others remaining transfixed, he was carrying Donald towards the door. The sound of it closing behind him seemed to awaken the rest of the company from trance.
But none of them seemed anxious to say anything until Chad jumped up and began to pace the floor, occasionally shooting a venomous glance after Tony and his limp burden.
“Highest achievement! Faugh! I’ve heard about this dirty business of military eptification and it strikes me as the foulest thing one man can do to another, worse by far than killing him clean!”
“He talked about ‘the other’ Donald, and about having the right to use his name because he was dead,” Norman said. He tried to repress a shudder, and failed. “Allah be merciful! I wouldn’t have thought it possible … And I was saying I’d offer him a job with the project if he wanted one.”
He glanced at Elihu, and was shocked to see the ambassador’s face suddenly as old as Obomi’s.
“So Sugaiguntung is dead,” Chad said. “And Donald killed him. Well, it’s only to be expected, isn’t it? And according to Donald he did know, after all, how to carry out the improvements he’d promised.” He hesitated. “I’m inclined to think that was probably true, aren’t you? Everyone I know who’s grounded in the subject agreed that if anyone alive could do it Sugaiguntung was the man. Christ, doesn’t it make you sick?” He whirled suddenly, facing the others, and pounded his fist into his palm.
“Isn’t it
typical?
We train one man—one ordinary, inoffensive, retiring little man—to be an efficient killing machine and he kills the one person who stood a chance of saving us from ourselves!”
“Well, I guess if we put it to Shalmaneser—” Norman began, but Chad cut him short, stamping his foot.
“Norman, what in God’s name is it worth to be human, if we have to be saved from ourselves by a machine?”
* * *
There was no comment from anyone else. After a while, Chad walked dejectedly towards the door, head down. Norman nodded to Gideon and Elihu and followed him. He caught Chad up in the foyer and put his arm around his stooped shoulders.
Staring straight ahead of him, Chad said, “Sorry about that. I guess it’s better to be saved by a machine than not to be saved at all. And I guess, too, if they can tinker with bacteria they could synthesise whatever this stuff is that makes the Shinka peaceable. Christ, what does it matter if we have to take brotherly love out of an aerosol can? It’s contagious stuff no matter where you get it from.”
Norman nodded. His mouth was very dry.
“But it’s not right!” Chad whispered. “It’s not something to be made in a factory, packaged and wrapped and sold! It’s not something meant to be—to be dropped in bombs from UN aircraft! That’s what they’ll do with it, you know. And it isn’t right. It isn’t a product, a medicine, a drug. It’s thought and feeling and your own heart’s blood. It isn’t right!”
He ran forward suddenly, heels crashing on the hard tiled floor of the foyer, and tore open the double doors to the outside. On the steps beyond he halted, threw back his head, and shouted to the city, to Africa, to the world.
“God damn you for crazy idiots! All of you! You’re not fit to manage your own silly lives! I
know
you’re fools—I’ve watched you and wept for you. And … Oh my God!”
His voice cracked to a breathy moan.
“I love you! I’ve tried not to, and I can’t help it. I love you all…”
* * *
A long time later, when people had come from all the rooms to see what the shouting was about—Elihu, Gideon, scores of anonymous faces—he allowed Norman to take his hand and lead him quietly away.
BUCKFAST Georgette Tallon (“Old GT”): of a cerebral haemorrhage; at the headquarters of the corporation she founded and devoted her life to; in her 91st year.
ELLERMAN Eric Charles: by suicide quote/unquote; on the track of the rapitrans system serving his home block; aged 33.
HOGAN Donald Orville: by military eptification; at Boat Camp, Ellay; he is survived by Donald Hogan Mark II.
LINDT Gerald Shamus, Pvt. U. S. Army: by partisan action; at Ellay; aged 19.
NOAKES Benjamin Ralph (“Bennie”): hitripping once too often, a trifle too far; at his home; aged 24.
PETERSON Philip Hugh Clarence: from the bolt of a policeman’s gun; at the apt of one of his victims; aged 20.
PETERSON Sasha Maureen (née Wilde): by her son’s hand; at her home; aged 44.
ROWLEY Grace Jane: from senility complicated by a broken heart; in an official institution for the aged poor; aged 77.
SHELTON Poppy: by a fall; on the ground outside the window of her home; aged 23.
SUGAIGUNTUNG Lyukakarta Moktilong (Dr. Med., Dr. Biochem., Prof. Tectogen. Dedication Univ.): by a knife-thrust in the femoral artery; in the lonely waters of the Shongao Strait; aged 54.
WHATMOUGH Victor Ernest: by a gunshot “while the balance of his mind was disturbed” at his home; aged 60.
* * *
Also victims of muckers, rioting, sabotage, partisan activity, disease, overdose of drugs, accident, warfare, old age …
* * *
Despite the foregoing, the human race by tens of thousands would be knee-deep in the water around Zanzibar.
Bathed in his currents of liquid helium, self-contained, immobile, vastly well informed by every mechanical sense: Shalmaneser.
Every now and again there passes through his circuits a pulse which carries the cybernetic equivalent of the phrase, “Christ, what an imagination I’ve got.”
This non-novel was brought to you by John Brunner using Spicers Plus Fabric Bond and Commercial Bank papers interleaved with Serillo carbons in a Smith Corona 250 electric typewriter fitted with a Kolok black-record ribbon.
John Brunner was born in 1934. His first novel,
Galactic Storm,
was published in 1951 under the house name of Gill Hunt. In 1953 he sold his first story to
Astounding Science Fiction
as John Loxmith. With the sale of
Threshold of Eternity
(1959) and
The Hundredth Millennium
(1959) to Ace Books in the United States, he took up writing full time both under his own name and as Keith Woodcott. During the next six years he managed to write an astonishing twenty-seven novels for Ace along with work for other publishers. As the 1960s progressed, Brunner’s stories became more ambitious and experimental, culminating in
Stand on Zanzibar
in 1968. This was to win the Hugo Award in 1968, the British Science Fiction Award in 1970, and the French Prix Apollo in 1973. His next three major novels,
The Jagged Orbit
(1969),
The Sheep Look Up
(1972), and
The Shockwave Rider
(1975), explored different dystopian futures, making the four books a series of sorts. During the 1970s his health suffered and this slowed down his output subsequently. He died in 1995 while attending the World Science Fiction Convention at Glasgow.
Galactic Storm
(1951)
The Brink
(1959)
Echo in the Skull
(1959)
The World Swappers
(1959)
Threshold of Eternity
(1959)
The Hundredth Millennium
(1959)
The Atlantic Abomination
(1960)
The Skynappers
(1960)
Sanctuary in the Sky
(1960)
Slavers of Space
(1960)
Meeting at Infinity
(1961)
The Super Barbarians
(1962)
Times Without Number
(1962)
Secret Agent of Terra
(1962)
Castaways’ World
(1963)
The Rites of Ohe
(1963)
The Astronauts Must Not Land
(1963)
The Dreaming Earth
(1963)
Listen! The Stars!
(1963)
The Space-Time Juggler
(1963)
Endless Shadow
(1964)
To Conquer Chaos
(1964)
The Crutch of Memory
(1964)
The Repairmen of Cyclops
(1965)
Day of the Star Cities
(1965)
Telepathist
(1965)
The Squares of the City
(1965)
Enigma from Tantalus
(1965)
The Long Result
(1965)
The Altar on Asconel
(1965)
A Planet of Your Own
(1966)
Born Under Mars
(1967)
The Productions of Time
(1967)