Stand on Zanzibar
“However, ‘pure’ Shinka has been displaced almost completely. Heavy contamination exists in all urban centres with English, though there is no self-sufficient vocabulary forming a pidgin. The Holaini dialect constitutes a pidgin in that it hybridises a vocabulary mostly of local origin with grammar originating elsewhere and vice versa—these two poles often co-existing in the same speaker and varying in his speech according to the degree of communication he has with his listeners. Over the whole of the north of the country where Holaini influence is most pervasive the majority of the people irrespective of origin understand Holaini words and can follow simple Holaini sentences but the predominant domestic usage must be classed as contaminated Shinka.
“Additionally there are the enclaves of Inoko and Kpala each of which retains its parent language (now with heavy Shinka contamination) but is effectively bi-lingual or, in the case of children educated at schools where in class they have to speak English, tri-lingual.
“English is the language of government, foreign commerce and to a great extent of the intelligentsia. TV broadcasts are made in all five languages including English but entertainment is either locally produced in Shinka or bought in canned form from abroad in English.
“Languages of which traces can still be detected include Arabic, Spanish, Swahili, and along all the borders of the country the various adjacent dialects, which have occasionally supplied the common term for trade-objects.
“A systematic analysis of the vocabulary recorded will be begun as soon as…”
* * *
“Physically the inhabitants are negroid with marked incursions of Berber in the north and a substantial minority in the vicinity of Port Mey with some English or Indian ancestry. The average height for both sexes is below the average for adjacent countries (for men ½", for women 1" approx.) and so is the stripped weight. This is accountable (a) in terms of dietary deficiencies and (b) in terms of the debilitating effect of endemic diseases. Trypanosomiasis and malaria are well known to the inhabitants and they have been efficiently educated in public health measures for these, but an insidious and apparently antibiotic-resistant strain of ‘blackwater fever’ abounds and occasionally provokes infantile mortality though it does not appear to be fatal in adults. Tuberculosis, smallpox, and a number of other diseases are held at bay by an inoculation service well accepted by the populace, but…”
* * *
“The median IQ of the school pupils tested by our team lies nearly 2½ points below the average found in adjacent territories but it is uncertain at present whether this is statistically significant as the tests were difficult to weight for background noise. Assuming the difference is real it is probably due to dietary deficiencies over many generations, the staple diet of mealie flour, sago and other starches being only lightly reinforced with high-protein substances and fresh vegetables. Successful government education in the use of citrus fruits, however, has eradicated scurvy, and fish-meal is now available.
“On the other hand, a small number of outstandingly bright children were found, of whom one tested at approximately 176. Tests are continuing to try and determine whether there are any more exceptional genetic strains cropping out…”
* * *
“A number of conflicting rituals have been found associated with the standard landmark-events: birth, puberty, marriage, bearing and fathering of children, sickness and death. Some are of local origin while many others can be assigned to Muslim or Christian influence. A table is appended showing the significant features of such ceremonies with areas of highest incidence. NB: the attitude of the people towards these events is essentially celebratory rather than magical or propitiatory but it cannot be established whether this is an indigenous factor or due to gradual de-ritualisation by Europeans of their own religious festivals during the colonial period…”
* * *
“The structure of the family is typically patrilineal among Holaini and trends towards the matrilocal among the southern Shinka, especially in the cities where maximal movement of male labourers is found. However, both sexes enjoy equal rights before the law and folklore indicates that women of forceful personality were accepted into male councils before the advent of the European. The elaborate familial terms of aboriginal Shinka are giving way to a simplified pattern probably related to the English and much influenced by missionary teaching. However, it has not yet been determined…”
* * *
“The ideals of the community were examined both in Shinka and English with marked variation between the results. In English targets such as ‘wealth’ and ‘to be President’ scored high; in Shinka qualities such as (translating loosely) ‘public respect’ and ‘likable behaviour’ scored high. It has not yet been settled whether this is due to a real conflict or is a function of superior availability of the terms…”
* * *
“As is common in primitive societies there is a high reliance on proverbs and folk sayings in social conversation. However, the content is somewhat idiosyncratic.
“The universal admiration for Begi is well exemplified in the phrase ‘You could welcome Begi in your house’, a term of praise for someone whose family does him credit.
“Full study of the differences betwen Shinka and Holaini usage, as well as of Inoko and Kpala influence, must await…”
* * *
“To all study groups from Chad Mulligan:
“You don’t yet know! You haven’t yet established! You aren’t quite sure about!
“How about letting me have something I can take a proper grip on—soon?”
continuity (41)
SEWN ON WITH NEEDLE AND THREAD
An hour after sundown Jogajong shook Donald’s hand and gave him into the charge of one of his lieutenants. Escorted by four armed guerrillas and accompanied by four more carrying Sugaiguntung swathed in a sort of cocoon of plastic strips, he set out along a different trail from the one he had been brought in by. On his back, haversack-fashion, were the neatly rolled anti-radar flotation suits in which he and his companion would have to spend perhaps hours of lonely dark waiting before the coast was clear for the submarine.
The trail was rough and the black-light goggles he had been loaned were inefficient. Here, crossing one of the slopes radiating away from the foot of Grandfather Loa, the ground was too warm for the vegetation and the human bodies around him to show up except as blurs. Used to walking soundlessly through the dark jungle, the Yatakangis with him seemed to exude contempt whenever he brushed against a hanging branch or threatened to lose his footing on some lump of mud.
Somehow, though, the distance was covered and they reached the first stage’s end at the headwaters of a small river. A crude wooden platform jutted out of the bank, and moored to it was a shabby praheng driven by a stern-sweep. The boatman was waiting immobile, cross-legged on the jetty, smoking a cigarette cupped very carefully between his palms which nonetheless glinted like a firefly when his fingers parted.
Sugaiguntung was placed gently in the bow of the boat and covered with old sacks. Donald stepped aboard next and sat on a midships thwart. Behind him came two of the guerrillas, their bolt-guns across their laps. He could not help wondering how much attention they were paying to him, how much to their ostensible task of watching for spies on shore. With not a word spoken except the password to identify the party, they drifted into the centre of the narrow stream and the boatman began to work his sweep with a faint rhythmical creaking like a cricket’s.
The river was like a tunnel floored with water. The trees on either bank leaned together overhead, their crowns trailing strands of creeper and dangling moss. Occasionally a nightbird shrieked, and once some monkeys were disturbed, probably by a snake, and Donald’s spine crawled at the unexpected racket.
At the junction where this river joined a larger, they passed a village with not a light showing. In case of someone being wakeful, however, Donald was told to lie down on the bottom boards. When he was allowed to get up again they were well out
in the middle of the main stream, riding with the current at a good walking pace, and the boatman had shipped his sweep, holding now a small paddle that served for rudder.
This is the twenty-first century. The thought crossed Donald’s mind for no special reason. This is Yatakang, one of the countries best-endowed with natural wealth and certainly not scientifically backward: witness, Sugaiguntung. And here I am being carried through the night in a rowing-boat.
Habitation began to become more frequent along the banks. This was one of the trickiest stages of the journey. Donald got off his thwart again and knelt on the bottom boards, his eyes just above the gunwale. A white police launch was tied up at a post facing a village larger than the first one, but there seemed to be no one on board. They passed it without incident and when it was well astern the boatman resumed his sweep. Their progress without it had slowed. Thinking the matter over, Donald deduced that they were approaching the estuary and running against the influx of the sea.
At the river-mouth itself there was a long necklace-strand of buildings, a small port devoted mainly to fishing to judge by the stretched nets on poles which were revealed by a few dim electric lights along the waterfront. Once more, however, no one was in sight; the boats would be out for their nightly expedition and it would be pointless to sit around and await their return before dawn. Donald began to breathe a little more easily.
A short distance from shore the boatman turned his fragile craft broadside to the direction it had been travelling in, and one of the guerrillas took up a flashlamp from the bottom of the boat. He hung it over the side after switching it on. It glowed pale blue. Donald guessed it was radiating mainly in the ultra-violet.
Ten minutes of interminable waiting passed. Then a larger boat, a fishing-prau, appeared from the drifting night mists that shrouded the surface of the water, exhibiting another lamp of the same blue tint as well as its normal running lights. The boatman went past Donald, tossing fenders over the side. Shortly, the two vessels bumped together, almost without noise for the big soft pads separating them.
Awkwardly, Donald helped the two guerrillas to manhandle Sugaiguntung into a rope sling that the sailors on the fishing-prau threw down. They guided him as he was lifted and vanished over the gunwale; then Donald followed and was seized by several hands.
The skipper of the prau greeted him and told him to put Sugaiguntung into his flotation suit right away because they planned to rely on the mist to make their drop closer to shore than they had anticipated. Donald did not question the wisdom of the decision. Everything had gone from him except a certain wan despair at the idea of returning home. The Donald Hogan who had lived in the world’s wealthiest country was lost forever, and he could not tell how the stranger who bore his old name would respond to the resumption of his former life.
He complied listlessly, easing each of Sugaiguntung’s limp limbs in turn into the soft plastic suit and pressing the valves on the inflation bottles. The scientist should be unconscious for about another hour.
He made a thorough check of the associated survival equipment—water-dye capsules, radio and sonar beacons for dire emergency, lifelines, iron rations, knife … After a little consideration he removed Sugaiguntung’s knife from its sheath and gave it to the skipper. He had said, back at Jogajong’s camp, that he had changed his mind. For the sake of insurance it might be as well to have him unarmed—not that an old man weakened by recent illness could offer any resistance to an eptified killer.
He donned his own suit in the same fashion and the skipper detailed one of his crew to rope them together with their lifelines. There must be no risk of them drifting apart while they were bobbing in the water.
He explained to Donald that they were going to be placed in a current that would carry them directly along the deepest part of the channel where the submarine was hiding. Standing by a few miles distant were units from the bases at Isola ready if necessary to mount a distracting raid on a port known to be used by Chinese ships for refuelling and refitment—a gross breach of Yatakangi neutrality, but one which Sugaiguntung’s defection would well repay. It was hoped, however, that no intervention would be necessary.
And then—over side in a sort of makeshift bosun’s chair, deposited in the water with scarcely a splash, the two of them together, spy and defector.
The crew waved, barely distinguishable for the dark and the swirling mist, and the prau faded into nothing. They were alone in a universe of blurs and ripples.
* * *
We must have been here an hour … No: my watch tells me thirty-five minutes.
Apprehensively Donald strained his eyes and saw exactly what he had expected to see—nothing. The bobbing motion was maddening, threatening to make him queasy; he had not eaten well during his stay at Jogajong’s camp although the rebel leader made a point of providing a balanced diet and keeping his followers healthy. The food had been monotonous and untempting. Now he wished he had filled up on something bland like plain boiled rice, for pangs of hunger were starting to quarrel with shadowy nausea in his belly.
Can they really spot us here, rendezvous with us, take us safely aboard?
It was no use reminding himself that this was how Jogajong had been stolen out of the country and sent back, or that Sugaiguntung’s value compelled the authorities at home to adopt the safest available route. The rest of the universe felt infinitely far away, as though there could be no contact between this place and any other. The recession of the galaxies had reached its limit; separated from one another by a gulf no light could pass, they too were beginning to disintegrate.
Is it all going to have been worth while? Shall I have saved the people of Yatakang from being deceived by a monstrous lie, as Sugaiguntung assured me?
But that was back in Gongilung. At Jogajong’s camp, the scientist had spoken of returning, refusing to co-operate after all.
Why did I not question him to find out his reasons?
He tried to disguise the answer to that from himself, and failed.
Because I was afraid to. If I took unfair advantage of superstition and exploited the traditional reward due to me against his will, I would prefer not to know. I want to believe as long as I can that he came voluntarily.
There was a moan. His blood seemed to freeze in his veins. For an instant his fevered imagination interpreted the faint sound as the wail of a police patrol-launch’s siren, far off in the mist. It was an eternal instant before he corrected the idea and realised it was a Yatakangi word in Sugaiguntung’s voice.
They had drifted apart to the limit of the lifeline linking their flotation suits. Hastily he hauled on the rope to bring them together. It must be a terrible shock to awaken here; he must offer reassurance before Sugaiguntung could think his mind deranged.
“Doctor, it’s all right—here I am, Donald Hogan!”
He grasped Sugaiguntung’s arms and peered close under his protective hood. The older man’s eyes were open to their limit and he was staring fearfully straight ahead. After a moment he appeared to relax.
“Where am I?” he said in a feeble voice.
“We’re waiting for an American submarine to come and pick us up,” Donald explained softly.
“What?” Sugaiguntung tensed all over, and the jerk made him bob violently so that Donald almost lost his grip. “You—you kidnapped me?”
“You said you wanted to come,” Donald countered. “You were very sick from the fever, you weren’t yourself, it was better not to overstrain you by making you walk through the jungle and—”
“You kidnapped me!” Sugaiguntung repeated. “I said, I told you, I had changed my mind about coming with you!”
“You couldn’t have gone back to Gongilung. Once you were committed, there was no turning back. And from here you can’t go back. Only onward.”
One can’t go back from anywhere. One can never, never, never go back!
For a while Sugaiguntung seemed weakened by his outburst. He shook himself free of Donald’s hands. War
ily, Donald allowed that, keeping a tight grip on the rope instead so that they would remain within arms’ reach of each other, and watched as the scientist turned his head to this side and that until he was satisfied that they were truly isolated.
Eventually he spoke again, in a voice thin with weariness.
“What is this thing I’m wearing that’s so stiff and hard to move in?”
“It’s inflated to buoy you up. That’s why it’s stiff. It’s—I don’t know. I guess it’s one of the regular survival suits they use for fliers and submarine crews. Jogajong had some ready for use at his camp.”
“Oh yes, I’ve heard of them.” There were faint plashing noises as Sugaiguntung inspected the equipment hung about him. “Yes, I see, I understand. There are radar beacons, sonar beacons, to make sure the submarine will find us?”
“Those are only to be used in emergency, when the searchers don’t know where to look. Don’t worry—they’re absolutely sure where to come and collect us.” Donald spoke more optimistically than his mood warranted.
“They’re not operating?” The words were coloured with alarm.
“The risk is too great. There are Yatakangi patrols all over these waters and there’s been a lot of Chinese activity too, they tell me.”
“I see,” Sugaiguntung said again, and after another cautious survey of the suit fell silent.
That was all right by Donald. Once more he strained his eyes into the mist.
Christ, are they never going to turn up? How long should I allow them—one hour, two, three?
Suddenly, without warning, Sugaiguntung said, “You kidnapped me. I’m not here willingly. I shall not co-operate with your foreign government.”
Donald’s heart sank. He said fiercely, “You told me you had been tricked by your bosses! You said your people were being cheated! Solukarta had pretended you could turn them into supermen and that was a disgusting lie!”
“But I can,” Sugaiguntung said.