Cleopatra's Sister

  ‘You’re better informed than I am,’ said Howard.

  ‘I’m a journalist. It’s a tendency of the trade – to have a smattering of information about a great range of things. Seldom enough to be really useful.’

  ‘Well, you impress me, anyway. But I’m relieved it’s professional. I don’t feel quite so ignorant.’

  ‘What do you do?’ Lucy asked after a moment.

  ‘I’m a palaeontologist.’

  ‘I’ve never met a palaeontologist. Could you tell me exactly what that involves?’

  And so he did. And she listened, he noticed, with absolute attention. When she asked a question it was pertinent and succinct. She made him repeat the names of Burgess Shale animals.

  ‘And the reason that they’re so interesting is this huge disparity? And that lots of them don’t relate to anything that’s around today?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Howard. ‘Most of them are evolutionary dead-ends. They include animals which are ancestral to the four major kinds of modern arthropods, but there are a whole lot more which are completely weird and wonderful and which have to be classified as entirely separate phyla, all of which have vanished. I’m sorry, I’m probably boring you …’

  ‘Do I look bored?’

  ‘Well, no – but I tend to get a bit carried away if given encouragement. I forget that others may not see the point of it. Especially when they’ve never set eyes on these creatures.’

  ‘The point being,’ said Lucy, ‘the implications for the way the world is today. The fact that there is the existing fauna, including us, instead of something entirely different.’

  He gazed at her with gratification. ‘Just so. The whole process becomes both remarkable and precarious. An accident of contingency. That’s not to say that there wouldn’t always have been certain tendencies – the emergence of creatures that fly, or run on four legs, or reproduce in a particular way. And there are those who insist that the appearance of intelligent life is an inevitability. Nevertheless, it gives pause for thought.’

  ‘I am feeling distinctly envious. I’ve always had quite a lot of job satisfaction myself, but your line sounds amazing. Picking up bits of rock in scenic places and then unravelling the secrets of the universe.’

  ‘I’ve left out most of it,’ said Howard sternly. ‘I spend the bulk of my time teaching students, many of whom aren’t much interested in what I’m trying to tell them. I also spend many hours squabbling with my colleagues about time-tables and the allocation of space.’

  ‘All the same … Do you have a particular favourite, out of these creatures?’

  ‘I’m pretty fixated generally. You tend to have a special respect for the ones which have not yet been definitively studied and described. And the ones of which there are only a very few known specimens. I’m rather fond of a thing called Hallucigenia, which really is like some sort of Salvador Dali dream object, with a bulbous excrescence at one end and a tube at the other, and spiky struts on top and a row of tentacles beneath. And indeed it has thrown everyone recently because it turns out the original description had it upside down. It’s as though these mysterious little animals get the last laugh.’

  ‘And you think there are some of them waiting for you in Nairobi?’

  ‘I’m sure of it. One of the exciting things is the way in which they are now turning up in all sorts of places.’

  ‘It must be driving you mad, being held up like this.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Howard, without conviction. In fact, the delay was becoming more acceptable by the minute. ‘As it happens, I’ve not met so very many journalists. Was it something journalistic that was taking you to Nairobi?’

  ‘Yes. Extremely mundane, though, I’m afraid. I was going there to write a bread-and-butter travel piece about game reserves and suchlike for a Sunday paper. Bread-and-butter in every sense. I’m feeling a bit skint and they pay well. Someone rang up out of the blue, so I jumped at it.’

  ‘That sounds exotic enough to me. What rates as non-mundane, then, in your trade?’

  ‘Things you really want to do as opposed to things you have to do to earn your keep, I suppose.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well,’ said Lucy. ‘Finding out about something important of which you reckon people don’t know enough – or don’t know the truth about – and then telling them. That, basically.’

  ‘Which is roughly what I buy a newspaper for, now you mention it. Information and informed opinion. I take it you’re the informed opinion side?’

  ‘I suppose I am. Though put like that, I worry about the opinion bit. It seems to stick out. Opinion but not opinionated, is what you hope.’

  ‘Presumably if it were the latter, people would cease to hire you.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Lucy. ‘They’d jump at you, in some circles.’

  ‘What papers do you write for, by the way?’

  She told him.

  ‘Then I must have read you. Lucy Faulkner …’

  ‘People never notice by-lines.’

  ‘Ah, is that what you say. By-line.’

  ‘I thought I was entitled to my own touch of professional jargon. You had arthropods and phyla and heaven knows what.’

  ‘I was boring you,’ said Howard.

  ‘On the contrary, I’d like to hear more.’

  ‘I fear there may be all too much opportunity, if things go on like this.’

  They both glanced towards the corridor, where the soldier still lounged at the entrance and fellow passengers banged in frustration on the glass partition wall.

  ‘This opinion business …’ said Howard. ‘Do you ever find yourself without one?’

  ‘No. Or at least hardly ever. That can be a problem. I’m a person who tends to leap into a position. You have to avoid that. Stay detached, at least while you’re finding things out.’

  ‘It’s beginning to sound a bit like science. And what sends you off after something?’

  ‘Curiosity. Wanting to get there before someone else does.’

  ‘Definitely like science.’

  ‘Up to a point,’ said Lucy. ‘Remember plenty of journalists manipulate the truth and do fearful things with evidence.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘So I claim.’

  At this point the tranquillity of their conversation was threatened by a somewhat raucous family party encamped near by, so they moved away to a solitary table with a couple of chairs close to the shrouded windows, and talked there, becoming more and more impervious to the gathering restlessness of others in the group. An hour passed, and more, during which Lucy and Howard were too absorbed to notice an incident in which a soldier threatened one of the computer salesmen with the butt of his rifle and another in which a battle was fought and won over the right to visit the toilets in small, escorted parties. When eventually they were distracted by a couple of squabbling children and the by now fairly explosive atmosphere in the room, it was late afternoon.

  ‘Heavens! We’ve been here going on two hours,’ said Lucy.

  ‘So we have. It hasn’t seemed like that.’

  ‘Perhaps we should be making more of an effort to find out what’s happening.’

  ‘I think other people are doing precisely that.’

  Indeed, there was one group haranguing the soldier on the door, clearly to no effect, while individuals were knocking angrily on the glass partition every time anyone with any appearance of authority walked by in the corridor beyond.

  ‘It really is getting past a joke,’ said Howard.

  ‘I’m beginning to feel a bit knackered, I must say.’

  He looked at her solicitously. ‘Are you? Shall I see if they’ve got any drinks on that trolley?’

  ‘I’ll survive,’ said Lucy. ‘Don’t worry. Anyway, something seems to be going on. Look.’

  The door had opened and the soldiers were apparently being issued instructions by a more highly ranking colleague. The door remained open, with the officer standing there. The soldiers t
oured the room, indicating that the group should gather up possessions and depart.

  ‘Where are we going?’ said Howard.

  The man shrugged. ‘Go in buses.’

  ‘Yes, but go where in buses?’

  At the door, others were pressing the point with the officer.

  ‘Transport is waiting. Hurry, please.’

  ‘Are we being taken to a hotel? How long before there is another plane for us?’

  ‘There will be statement of information very soon.’

  The party straggled along the corridors again and out on to the tarmac at the back of the airport building. There were several coaches parked and in the distance people were getting into one of them.

  ‘That’s the Japanese group,’ said Lucy.

  Howard suggested that perhaps they were being allocated a superior grade of hotel.

  ‘Maybe … It does seem peculiar to keep on segregating us like this, though.’

  They got into the coach. The Americans had now come out of the building and were being directed to other vehicles. Howard caught sight of Chuck Newland, who waved.

  The driver got in, the engines revved, the coach set off.

  They drove along anonymous airport access roads and on to a dual carriageway. The landscape was flat, with a distant grey smudge of hills. There were fields of sugar cane, beans, and the occasional patch of olives or orange trees. Once they passed a village of squat mud-walled houses interspersed with low breeze-block apartment buildings. A string of camels prompted a buzz of comment.

  There was very little traffic. ‘The only thing I’m learning about this place at the moment is that they have an extraordinarily high accident rate,’ said Howard.

  At intervals, ever since leaving the airport, they had been passing the carcasses of cars and lorries, pitched on their sides by the road and, in some cases, burnt out.

  ‘I’ve noticed that too,’ said Lucy. ‘I suppose this must be the beginning of Marsopolis.’

  They were driving through suburban sprawl now. Apartment blocks, small concrete villas with gardens, shops and petrol stations. There were people about, who stared briefly at the coach as they passed. As the city thickened around them the dishevelled appearance of the place became more pronounced. An overturned bus; debris of bricks and stones on the road; buildings with broken windows.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ said Howard. ‘There has definitely been something going on here.’

  Lucy nodded. The army was still much in evidence. Soldiers lounged on street corners, or patrolled entrances and bus stops. People appeared to be going about their business, though perhaps rather hurriedly and in smaller numbers than one might have expected. Many of the shops were shuttered.

  They had reached the seafront now. The corniche road ran alongside a long beach, entirely deserted except for the odd gang of children. The coach passengers gazed at it with interest. The atmosphere of anticipation grew stronger as hotels were spotted on the other side of the road; Beau Rivage, Plaza, Excelsior. ‘Whoa, there!’ someone shouted. ‘This’ll do nicely.’

  But the coach forged on, and indeed shortly turned off the corniche to a distinctly unprosperous hinterland of shabby shops and housing set among warehouses, depots and small factories. A stir of discontent and apprehension spread through the bus.

  Lucy sighed. ‘It’s not going to be the Beau Rivage or the Bella Vista, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Wherever it is, will you have dinner with me?’ said Howard.

  She looked directly at him. She smiled.

  ‘I was rather thinking along those lines, as it happens.’

  The coach was now turning into a large concrete compound with a high wire perimeter fence. In the centre was a sprawl of buildings, at the entrance to which the coach drew up. The door was opened and the passengers disembarked, looking around with dismay. The attendant military waved them towards the barrack-like structure.

  ‘We want a hotel. Tell the driver to take us to a hotel.’

  ‘Is here hotel,’ said one of the soldiers.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’

  The group milled about, conferring mutinously.

  ‘This is ridiculous. We shouldn’t go in there. We should get back in the coach and sit tight till they take us to one of those places on the coast road.’

  ‘We should get hold of the embassy.’

  ‘Where the hell are the airline people?’

  More soldiers and a handful of official-looking men in suits had now emerged from the building. The coach started up and made for the exit. The gates were closed behind it and padlocked by a sentry. One of the officials was addressing those of the group who were nearest the door.

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  ‘It’s something about the passports.’

  ‘They’re going to give the passports back.’

  ‘Presumably then they’ll take us to a hotel.’

  ‘But why has the coach gone?’

  The passengers straggled into the building, still expressing doubts. The official stood at the entrance, holding a sheaf of papers and looking harassed.

  ‘Why have we been brought here?’ demanded Howard.

  ‘There are immigration procedures.’

  ‘All that could have been done at the airport.’

  ‘Please go inside.’

  ‘I want to telephone the British Embassy.’

  ‘Very soon. Please go inside.’

  He had become detached from Lucy. She was somewhere ahead, among those now filing through a door opening off a bare entrance hall furnished only with an unmanned reception desk and some empty noticeboards. Concern about this separation at once swamped his annoyance with the bureaucratic stonewalling. He abandoned the exchange and hurried into the building.

  The room into which they had been herded was stark. There was a long trestle table at one end, with three chairs behind it. The concrete floor was distinctly dirty. The walls were peeling. Howard eased himself through the crowd to Lucy’s side, and then felt an uprush of uncertainty. Would she think he was pestering her? Maybe she had been trying to get rid of him?

  Lucy had been processed into the room with the rest of the group and then had found that Howard was no longer there. She looked round and could see him nowhere. And she felt a twinge of deprivation, quite distinct from her general condition of increasing weariness, annoyance and vague alarm. This is absurd, she told herself. You only met this man a couple of hours ago.

  And suddenly there he was; somehow things weren’t so bad after all. They beamed at one another. Howard said, ‘I couldn’t see you, I …’ and then pulled himself up short and began to talk of his bout with the official at the entrance and to speculate as to why they were being incarcerated here.

  ‘People seem to think we’re going to be given back our passports.’

  And, sure enough, a soldier now appeared with a briefcase containing the passports, which were ranged upon the trestle table in a disorderly display. The passengers surged forward to claim them, and were shoved back.

  ‘Wait! Everybody wait there!’

  The official from the entrance now appeared, perusing lists.

  ‘Anderson?’

  Someone stepped forward.

  ‘Take passport please and go in there. Take luggage also.’

  The rest waited, grumbling. There were only a dozen or so chairs in the room. It was clear that this was going to take some time. People leaned up against the walls. Those who had initially appropriated the seating offered it to the elderly and the pregnant.

  ‘We’re developing group solidarity,’ said Lucy. ‘Interesting. I don’t think I’ve seen that happen before.’

  Howard’s name was now called. He collected his passport from the table and was directed into a room occupied by a single man behind a desk equipped with a pile of forms, one of which he handed to Howard.

  ‘Fill in form, please.’

  Father’s name, mother’s maiden name. Religious status. Occupation. Howard s
ighed and set to work. He handed the completed form to the official, who studied it closely. It seemed that he was unhappy about something. He stabbed at the paper with one finger.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Palaeontologist,’ said Howard. ‘It’s what I do. Occupation.’

  The man scowled. He rose and went into the next room. Through an open door Howard could see him conferring with colleagues. The form was handed from one to another. Now Howard’s original interrogator reached for a telephone and held a lengthy conversation. Howard could only suppose that his profession had never caught on in Callimbia.

  The interrogator returned, set down the form and looked at Howard with irritation and suspicion.

  ‘What is the purpose of your visit to Nairobi?’

  ‘I really don’t see what business that is of yours. This is not Nairobi.’

  ‘It is necessary information for immigration procedures.’

  ‘Oh, rubbish,’ said Howard. ‘I was going there to study some fossil specimens in the museum, if you must know.’

  The man made notes, laboriously. Howard hoped the term ‘fossil’ would give pause for thought.

  ‘How long do you intend to stay in Nairobi? Have you previously visited Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Morocco …? How much currency are you carrying with you?’

  The catechism continued. And as he provided perfunctory answers it suddenly occurred to Howard that the whole thing was a charade. They don’t really want to know all this, he thought. It is to wear us down. Or play for time. We are being used in some way. And for the first time he felt deep cold unease.

  At last it was finished.

  ‘Give me luggage now, please.’

  ‘Why?’ said Howard.

  ‘Customs inspection.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake …’ He handed over his flight bag. The official rummaged within, examined with care his electric razor and flipped open the books. He closed the bag, returned it to Howard, and nodded to a colleague who stepped forward and carried out a body search, investigating Howard’s pockets and running his hands up and down his trouser legs.

  ‘Go back to group now and wait, please.’

  ‘What for? And for how long?’

  ‘Information will be given soon.’

  The interrogator had taken Howard’s passport from him for inspection. He now dropped it into a wire tray beside him along with a couple of others.