Stand on Zanzibar
“T’avais raison, Jeannine. T’as parlé au sujet des Américains qui allaient s’intéresser à la Béninie, et voici une réclame que je viens de trouver dans le journal. Tu l’as vue?”
“Montre-le-moi … Ah, Pierre! C’est épatant! Moi, je vais y écrire sur le champ! Toi?”
“Je leur ai déjà donné un coup de téléphone.”
“Mais … qu’est-ce que pense Rosalie de tout cela?”
“Sais pas.”
“Tu n’as pas demandé à ta femme si elle veut—?”
“Heu! Je m’en fiche, Jeannine. Je te dis franchement: je m’en fiche!”
“Frank, do you suppose they have eugenic laws in a backward country like Beninia?”
“What?”
“GT is hiring people to go there. And they’ve established an office right here in the city to interview candidates.”
* * *
Teach: mathematics, English, French, geography, economics, law …
Train: teachers, doctors, nurses, engineers, meteorologists, mechanics, agronomists …
Build: houses, schools, hospitals, roads, docks, power stations, factories …
Process: iron, aluminium, wolfram, germanium, uranium, water, polythene, glass …
Sell: power, antibiotics, knives, shoes, television sets, bull-sperm, liquor …
Live: faster, longer, higher off the hog.
* * *
THE BENINIA CONSORTIUM WANTS—WANTS—WANTS—!
continuity (33)
GOT IT AND GONE
The rain had ceased while Donald was making his phone-call, but water was still running in the gutters. It seemed for a short eternity that the only sound anywhere was the trickling of it as it drained through the grating of a sewer.
At last Superintendent Totilung spoke.
“Mr. Hogan, I believe Professor Dr. Sugaiguntung has been expecting a visit from you. He told me he had offered you a private interview.”
“That’s right,” Donald said, his voice creaking like an old iron gate. Still half inside the phone-booth, gas-gun in hand, communikit slung over his shoulder, he glanced sidelong towards the mouth of the valley. It was blocked by a policeman with his bolt-gun drawn.
“And a personally guided tour of his laboratories.”
“That’s right too.”
“You’re full of contradictions, Mr. Hogan. Any number of foreign reporters would have given their arms for the privilege you’ve been accorded. Yet you haven’t been in touch with the professor all day. Will your head office be as pleased with you tomorrow as they were this morning?”
Totilung’s eyes, bright, sharp, dark like currants in a suet roll, fixed him. Mere shock began to cede place in Donald’s mind to honest fear; he felt the agonising prickle of sweat inside his clothes.
“I propose to call on Dr. Sugaiguntung this evening, at his home.”
“You expect to find there all the information you want—his experimental animals, his charts and graphs, his computer analyses, films, instruments?” Totilung’s manner was deliberately scathing.
“You let me plan my work and I’ll be pleased to let you get on with yours,” Donald said tightly. “In my judgment the interview comes before the guided tour of the labs, so—”
“You’ve wasted your chance, then,” Totilung shrugged. “I’m carrying a warrant for your arrest on charges of assault and battery, and of damaging a camera the property of Miss Fatima Saud.” She added in Yatakangi to her companion, “Bring those handcuffs over here—but keep your gun ready! This man’s a trained killer.”
Wary, not taking his eyes off Donald, the policeman drew the cuffs from his pocket and approached Totilung.
* * *
I’ve been tricked. I’ve been conned. I’ve been driven down a blind alley of life. I never wanted to be herded into corners where I had to kill or be killed. To be back where I was, bored and ordinary and dull, I’d give anything, anything!
But he could not afford to be arrested and waste time and perhaps be deported. Tonight he must pull the plum from the tree and carry it home.
He forced himself towards calm with a deep, controlled breath. Assuming Totilung had been hunting him when someone reported that he was calling an Engrelay satellite from this booth, she would have come straight here. The street on which the alley debouched was too narrow for a prowl car; it, and the driver, must be waiting at the end of the block. With luck he had only Totilung and one man to contend with for the moment.
He let his shoulders slump in resignation as she took the cuffs and stepped up to him, making sure her body did not block her companion’s fire. The latter followed close behind her, gun levelled. Donald held up his hands as though meekly preparing for the cuffs to be put on and fired the gas-gun—not at Totilung, but at the man.
The searing jet struck his cheek, blinded one eye, poured into his mouth as he gasped, scalded his lungs and doubled him over, choking. Reflex triggered his gun and a bolt went to ground with a sizzling noise in a pile of rubbish twenty feet away. Donald wasted no time on him, though. He accelerated the upward motion of his hands and drove the fingers that did not hold the gas-gun into Totilung’s fleshy jowl. Distracted by the handcuffs, she was slow in bringing up her arms to cover her face. He kicked her leg below the kneecap and as she twisted sideways in agony he dropped the gas-gun, grasped her arm and tripped her.
She fell backwards, sprawling, mouth open to scream, and he jumped on her belly with both feet, driving all the wind out of her. The man was recovering: choking and weeping, he was waving the gun as though mortally terrified of shooting his chief instead of Donald.
Donald leapt off Totilung and butted the policeman back against the opposite wall of the alley. His soft cap was no protection as his head slammed into the brickwork. He howled and let the gun fall.
Donald caught it before it hit the ground, turned it over in his hand as he stepped aside, and shot first the policeman and then Totilung to death.
It’s the thing we know best how to do to a man. We’re marvellous at it, wonderful, unparalleled.
Working fast, he pulled the bodies together, his hands becoming sticky with the melted fat on their crisp skins, turned to the consistency of pork-crackling by the energy bolts. He wiped them on an uncharred portion of the policeman’s uniform and unslung his communikit. He placed a book of matches inside the lid as he had been shown. Hand on the control knob, he forced himself to review the layout of the streets nearby and decided that if the prowl car which had brought Totilung had come as close as possible it must be on the right of the alley. There seemed to be more noise than a few minutes ago; the siesta was at an end.
He turned the control knob to its unmarked final setting and ran.
Coming in sight of other people after leaving the alley, he had to force himself to walk with deliberate slowness, his right hand in the side-pocket of his shirjack to disguise the bulge of the gun. After twenty paces like that he heard the dull crumping sound behind him. All around him people started and looked and pointed. He copied them, for fear of seeming more conspicuous than his complexion made him, and saw that two whole buildings extending right the way from the alley to where he stood had abruptly leaned back with a cloud of smoke and dust. The air was full of screams.
Shortly, the screams were drowned out by the noise of the buildings as they folded up wet cardboard fashion and slumped into rubble and corpses.
* * *
From then until sunset time was sliced into disconnected images that might be not visual, but internal. Once he was in a corner of two walls bringing back the lunch he had eaten at the reed-thatched inn by the sea, wondering with detached curiosity at the way his stomach had altered the colour of the food. Another time he was leaning over the counter of one of the ubiquitous street-corner kiosks, pretending to argue with the proprietor over prices because there was a police car passing. But there was no sequence in the experiences. There was a fixed, due moment at which he must return to contact with the world, and until
then he preferred not to perceive.
Darkness came, and triggered the command he had given himself. Shaking with the weakness that stemmed from terror, revulsion and vomiting, he made his way like a man in a dream to the district where Sugaiguntung had his home.
By half past seven he was within a block of it, and regaining his self-control. Concealed from a prowl car by a little clump of scented bushes, he felt his awareness mesh anew with exterior events. He re-learned how to frame coherent thoughts.
There’s a lot of activity around here. They can’t have dug out Totilung’s body yet, surely? But it wouldn’t take a genius to deduce what I did.
He fingered the gun in his pocket. It still had almost the full charge with which he had left the police-station armoury. He tried to find comfort in telling himself that he had been trained with the most advanced techniques to use such a weapon and win. It was no good. The only escape lay in action.
Action, distraction, fraction—I’m less than a man.
Circumspectly he moved on. A little way, and he had to throw himself flat in the shadow of an ornamental hedge to escape notice by a man on foot carrying a gun.
They’re waiting for me. Has Sugaiguntung repented of the confession he made, changed his mind about wanting out? I won’t let him. I daren’t.
It took him another half-hour to establish exactly how the premises were guarded. Apart from the prowl car, which was moving quietly back and forth along each of the three roads that served the area, there were seven police stationed around Sugaiguntung’s pentagonal garden, one sentry responsible for each side and paired men at the gates. Otherwise, he was relieved to discover, life seemed to be going on as usual. He caught snatches of sound from TV sets and in one of the nearby houses a group of people seemed to be rehearsing a scene from a traditional opera, singing in high forced voices and beating gongs.
At least he ran small risk of having to cope with inquisitive neighbours as well as the guards.
On leaving the hotel this morning, he had brought one trank with him to steady himself in the final emergency. He choked it down, praying that his stomach would not reject it before the capsule dissolved.
When it had taken effect, and his teeth no longer threatened to chatter, he made his way to the ornamentally deformed tree he had noticed this morning, which overhung the wall of Sugaiguntung’s home. The man responsible for guarding this side of the house always seemed to pass directly beneath it.
On his next tour, he did as previously, and Donald’s feet took him at the back of the neck, toes together. His whole weight followed and slammed the man face foremost into the ground, muddy from the rain. He struggled for only a few seconds before fainting, nose and mouth blocked against breath.
Donald shorted out his gun by tossing it into a puddle, where it discharged in a cloud of hissing steam, and clambered back into the tree. Edging along the stoutest of the branches which overhung the wall, he was able to drop on the far side where a flowering bush would break his fall. He was in sight of the main gate from here, where the two guards stood side by side in the glow of a lamp, but they were looking the other way.
On this side, the house’s windows were all in darkness except one, which was screened by wooden slats. He headed for it, avoiding the pool of light cast by a lamp over the front door, and stole a glance inside. He saw Sugaiguntung sitting alone on a low pouffe before a table laden with empty bowls and dishes, just finishing his evening meal. The door of the room opened and the woman he had seen this morning came in, to ask whether she should clear away.
He dodged around the nearest corner of the house and went to the opposite side, hurrying at the expense of silence because it could not be long before the policeman’s absence was noticed by his colleagues. At the back of the house there was a pair of sliding glass doors leading into the garden. He peered in, but saw nothing because the room beyond was so completely dark. He made to move on—and brilliant light leapt up in his face.
He was dazzled for an instant, too startled to move. Then his tortured eyes told him that the man who had put on the light was Sugaiguntung, and Sugaiguntung had recognised him and was coming to open the door.
He fell back, hand hovering by his gun, and hoped desperately that no one was looking in this direction from outside the grounds.
“Mr. Hogan! What are you doing here?” Sugaiguntung exclaimed.
“You invited me to call,” Donald said dryly, his moment of shock obliterated by the swift assistance of the trank he had taken.
“Yes! But the police say they want to arrest you, and—”
“I know. I hit someone with a camera this morning and because Totilung would dearly love to deport me she’s using it as an excuse. What’s more, she’ll have the chance if you don’t put out that light!”
“Come inside,” Sugaiguntung muttered, drawing back. “In the house is nobody but my housekeeper, and she is growing deaf.”
Donald darted past him. Sugaiguntung closed the door and let slatted blinds fall over it, blocking the view from outside.
“Professor, do you still want what you said you wanted yesterday?” Anxious for the answer, Donald kept his hand close to his gun.
Sugaiguntung looked blank.
“Do you want the chance to get away from being used as a political tool?” Donald rapped. “I said I could give you that. I’ve risked my life to make it possible. Well?”
“I have been thinking about it all day,” Sugaiguntung said after a pause. “I think—yes, I think it would be like a dream coming true.”
In the distance there was a shout and the sound of running feet. Donald suddenly felt as limp as a rag.
“Thank God. Then you must do as I tell you. At once. It may be too late even now, but I think not.”
* * *
Down the back pathway to the other gate, at which there were two more guards stationed, Sugaiguntung running on the path itself, Donald parelleling him noiselessly on soft ground. The guards looked behind them and turned a hand-lamp.
“Quickly!” Sugaiguntung panted. “Your sergeant wants you to go to that side of the house!” He pointed to his left. “Someone has knocked out the man who was on guard there!”
The policeman stared in the indicated direction. They saw the swivelling beams of handlamps and heard a voice bark an order. At once they took it for granted that Sugaiguntung was telling the truth and doubled away.
The moment they had rounded the corner of the wall, Donald flung open the gate and herded Sugaiguntung through. The gate gave on to the series of winding paths which he had scouted this morning. To the right and down-slope lay the sea.
If that bleeder Halal has let me down, what shall I do?
But it was too soon to think of such terrible possibilities. He hurried Sugaiguntung along as much as he dared, listening over the sound of his own breathing for any noise of pursuit. None had arisen before they emerged from the end of the path on to a quiet residential street. Now they had to walk without hurrying, occasionally crossing over to escape recognition by an evening stroller.
After an interminable time they saw a taxi at an intersection, which they were able to hail. In it, they rode to the waterfront and left it at a place popular with tourists where there were several restaurants specialising in grilled fish and Yatakangi folksongs. Mingling with the crowd but taking every advantage of awnings, screens and corners to avoid showing themselves directly to the curious, Donald led the way to a stretch of beach where during the day there had been thirty or forty fishing-boats.
His heart was in his mouth on the last lap. He nearly fainted with relief when he saw that—in keeping with Halal’s promise—although many of the praus had already put to sea, their lights bobbing against the looming bulk of Grandfather Loa, a few were still nosed into the sand, their crews assembling one by one and laughing together, passing bottles of arrack and cigarettes.
“A man is supposed to have arranged for one of these boats to take us across the Strait,” Donald explained to S
ugaiguntung in a low voice. “Wait here. I’ll go and find him.”
Sugaiguntung gave a nod. His face was mask-like, empty of emotion, as though he had not yet had time to digest the implications of what he was committed to. Leaving him on his own worried Donald, but there was no alternative: that face was far too well known to be shown to all these fishermen.
Halal had said he would arrange to have a blue lamp hung from the mast of the boat assigned to carry them. There was no such lamp on any of the boats, Donald discovered with renewed dismay. But there was one with a lamp on the mast even if it wasn’t blue. Growing desperate, he tried to persuade himself that the colour did not matter—perhaps they had not managed to find the necessary blue glass for it.
Three men were readying the boat for sea, coiling the typical Yatakangi seine-nets on the bow thwart and sluicing them down so that they would sink at once when they were tossed overside.
Gambling everything on guesswork, Donald hailed the man who appeared to be the skipper.
“I seek the man from Pakistan, Zulfikar Halal!”
If that kief-sodden coward caved in on this job, I’ll … But I wouldn’t have the chance. I’ll be jailed, or dead!
The skipper paused in his work and turned his head. He gazed for a long moment. Then he picked up a handlamp and flashed it directly at Donald.
He said, “Are you the American, Hogan?”
For an instant Donald failed to understand the question—the man had given his name a Yatakangi inflection. Directly the words sank in, the world seemed to capsize. Thinking that at any moment police might emerge from the hold of the prau, he jumped back, tugging his gun free from his pocket.
“No need for that!” the skipper said sharply, and laughed. “I know you. I know where you want to go. To Jogajong. He has many supporters among us fisherfolk. The word went around today that if you asked for help we should give it. Come aboard.”
context (24)