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‘As our chances of designing Pachyderm to the proper specifications are slim, a measure of scepticism will serve us both better than an extra dose of angst.’
‘But why is your work in my interests?’
‘Because—’ He leaned and kissed her. ‘It would be a riot.’
She laughed, an unfamiliar laugh, loose and full like her hair today, washed and unbound. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘You’re on.’
They drove to town together, Calvin as ever grumbling about the incessant rumple of speed bumps; weren’t there enough sleeping policemen in this country?
‘There’s some research we need done,’ he suggested, ‘preferably by someone who might have reason to do the work anyway and wouldn’t attract attention as being about anything odd. You’d be perfect.’
‘For?’
‘This AIDS business. We need to know what the demographic impact looks like. Not only to build AIDS mortality into the parameters, but to table Pachyderm entirely if this pre-existent virus looks capable of doing the job for us.’
‘AIDS isn’t really my area.’
‘I don’t expect you to do sero-positivity studies, computer modelling; umpteen well-funded epidemiologists are already doing the work for you. We’ve gotten a file together, but the results are conflicting and incomplete. There are several computer models that we haven’t gotten our hands on. Solicit them. Compile and compare.
How much will that disease cut into population growth? We don’t think much, but we need to be sure. Just in case we’re superfluous.
Maybe Nature’s ahead of us. You might find the research intriguing in its own right.’
‘I’ll consider it.’
‘Do. And you are free this afternoon?’
‘Could be.’
‘There’s a meeting of the Peace Corpse at three.’
‘Sorry?’
‘A little nickname of mine they don’t much like. QUIETUS rents an office suite at Nyayo House.’
‘That’s ironic.’ Nyayo House, home of the Kenyan 179
government, was rumoured to keep detainees naked up to their waists in cold water; they would often plunge inexplicably to the car-park from the fourteenth floor.
‘I’d like to introduce you as a new member. Though they won’t be keen at first. Ordinarily application is quite a process. We do a lot of checking background, references, interviews, and it has to be a unanimous decision. You’re coming in through the back door. My back door. They won’t like it.’
‘This all sounds so juvenile. Masonic.’
‘Our caution is not clubhouse blood-brothering. If Moi ever got wind of us, we’d be on the next plane, if not out the window. We hear a lot of screams coming up through the carpet; they keep us on our toes. And if QUIETUS gets any publicity at all, its ambitions are thwarted. That’s why this business with Threadgill is no joke. But as for you and the Corpse, consensus is a formality. QUIETUS is my baby. They do what I say.’
They met outside Nyayo House, a sulphur-coloured skyscraper with the rounded contours preferred by architects in the mid-sixties with a penchant for designing office buildings to resemble giant toiletries. This one looked like a twenty-storey tampon holder, the plastic kind that holds two. It was the suspicious ochre of a yolk you have too sniff to check if it’s gone off.
She didn’t recognize him at first as Calvin strode up the steps. His languour was arrogant—the others could wait. In his bearing, newly smooth and self-possessed, she discerned an earlier incarnation: Calvin Piper, who had all of Congress quaking at massive migrant families as near by as Mexico; who commanded his own jet and the best hotel suites; who could stroll into any US government office without an appointment. The Director was back.
Though the colour of poisonous puffball spoor, Nyayo House was a persuasive Western skyscraper from the outside, yet its lobby was Kenyan: directions to offices were handwritten, the floor gritted, two of the elevators didn’t work. In every hallway identical glassed photographs of President Moi glowered down at wananchi, giving the intended impression they were being watched.
The QUIETUS office was on an upper floor, and the door, 180
unmarked, resembled Calvin’s office with its several locks. She wondered if the cards and codes were necessary, or 007 self-importance.
Calvin pushed the heavy sound-proof door on to a different world.
Though the afternoon was sweltering, the suite was arctically air-conditioned, and raised the hair on Eleanor’s arms. The room suffered none of the scrawled signs and peeling linoleum of Nyayo proper, its sweeping conference table Tanzanian teak, the thick salmon carpet slashed with recent vacuuming. Sealed by wide double-glazing from the shanty patchwork of distant hills, the suite was muffled with self-congratulatory creams. Calvin was aware that you could not convincingly debate global annihilation with a handwritten sign on your door or weigh the fate of billions in folding chairs.
A bank of computer screens covered one wall: 3-D continents revolving in full colour, vectors of increase streaking in alarming diagonals, spread sheets trilling margin to margin. As the displays flickered manically through their paces, the earth revolved with patches of green and grey and then bright red until Eleanor feared for it. On screen the planet seemed small and at their mercy.
The Corpse was gathered: Bunny, Basengi, Louis, Grant and a handful of others Eleanor couldn’t take in from nerves. They turned to her with stony astonishment. Eleanor perched by Calvin, arranging her skirt, trying to keep her teeth from chattering and wishing she’d brought a sweater. Bunny shot her a curdled smile. Eleanor wanted to go home.
Calvin assumed the head of the table and took out a device like a traffic radar detector. No one spoke as the black box gave off a restless static. After a full minute of white noise, the company relaxed and muttered as if some silent prayer had been offered and answered.
‘Bug free,’ he said. ‘So far. Most of you know Eleanor Merritt,’ he introduced. ‘Pathfinder. She has agreed to join QUIETUS. I have hopes she will give us a hand on the fund-raising side and take over our AIDS research. Basengi has enough on his plate and cannot handle the work as a sideline; it’s too full-time. Any objections?’
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‘I’ll say,’ said Bunny. ‘Haven’t you flagrantly circumvented due process?’
‘Yes,’ said Calvin happily.
‘You’re going to explain why?’
‘No I’m not.’
‘How much,’ inquired Basengi, ‘you have told Ms Merritt, please?’
‘Eleanor has been fully briefed.’
‘So,’ said Bunny, ‘a fait accompli, then?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You wouldn’t mind if we asked her a few questions? Even if they’re rather too late?’
‘Be my guest.’
When Bunny swivelled to the new member, Eleanor made herself sit up straight and look Bunny in the eye, though inside she was shrivelling like pawpaw peel in the Sahel. To think Calvin had roped her into this on the premise it would be fun.
‘You realize, Eleanor, that this is not one of those clubs you can join and then quit because it doesn’t have a sauna?’
‘I’m not partial to saunas,’ said Eleanor. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘We can’t afford to have disenchanted dilettantes gossiping at parties. That is why we like to do these interviews beforehand. To route out qualms. Do you have qualms?’
Eleanor asked incredulously, ‘Don’t you?’
‘My commitment to QUIETUS is not in question here. Of course none of us has entered into this alliance lightly. I’m wondering if you have.’
‘I’m willing to do research,’ said Eleanor. ‘I can’t see how gathering accurate estimates of the demographic impact of HIV can do anyone any harm. But if you expect me to assure you that I have unflagging, blind faith that the objective of this operation is in the interests of the human race, I can’t. I’m willing to listen. I have seen in the field that sometimes quick, cruel solutions ar
e kinder than keeping doomed populations lingering through one more day.’
‘Cruel solutions. You mean death.’
‘Yes.’ Eleanor raised her chin. ‘I’ve worked in Ethiopia. I hated to see those people suffer. They lead fearful, tormented 182
lives, for if they’re not starving they’re worrying about starving. I know all the arguments about food aid, how all it feeds is hunger.
But I do not feel easy sitting in judgement, branding them better off dead. That is an assessment people may best make for themselves.’
‘Yes, but what is the price?’ Basengi jittered. ‘If the only question was these people starving, we could let them decide to live or die.
But the land, it is destroyed—turned to desert, thousands of years of topsoil gone in ten. The politics, they go haywire. The animals, they are slaughtered. It is to the earth itself we owe a sacrifice—’
‘Time,’ called Calvin. ‘We’re not here to debate the whole hoop-la into the ground again. We arrived at concensus years ago. Please, Basengi, cut it short.’
‘But I am most interested in Eleanor’s point of view,’ said Bunny.
‘I wanted to see if she had qualms. Now it seems she has nothing but. How did you persuade her to join our merry men, then? I’m confused.’
‘Eleanor has a mind of her own,’ said Calvin. ‘That seems an asset to me.’
‘I would be only too delighted,’ Bunny snapped, ‘that Ms Merritt has a quick, inquiring spirit with her own opinions of the world under ordinary circumstances. It is quite a different matter, however, to invite someone into our company who is not convinced of our purpose. At this stage, we hardly need a devil’s advocate.’
‘Considering the nature of your purpose,’ Eleanor returned, ‘the question is whether you’re all devil’s advocates.’
‘See?’ Bunny seethed. ‘You said yourself, Calvin, you don’t want us going round and round in circles we squared years ago. It took us relentless agonizing to finally transform from one more garrulous think-tank to effective sting operation. I do not relish wasting my time coddling a squeamish neophyte out of her naïve moral hand-wringing into the merciless realities of biological crisis. This is not a sorority. We aren’t budgeted for initiation rites.’
‘Eleanor’s candidacy is not up for a vote,’ said Calvin abruptly.
‘As you noted, Bunny, QUIETUS is for life. Eleanor’s in; she can’t get out.’
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Eleanor turned to Calvin. ‘But what if I did want out? What would you do?’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Calvin, offhand. ‘I suppose we’d have to kill you.’
Once again she had the inappropriate impulse to laugh. ‘It would almost be worth it,’ she said softly. ‘To walk out that door and see if you’d put a bullet in my back. Single pieces of information may be worth risking your life for.’
‘I shouldn’t try it,’ said Calvin.
‘I’m chuffed,’ said Eleanor, the Britishism for Bunny’s benefit.
‘You always kill the thing you love? I suppose two billion others should be chuffed as well.’
‘A good many elephants have suffered the same affection. Even in 1963 my threats weren’t empty, Eleanor. Don’t push me.’ His voice was friendly, intimate.
‘I assume, if our new member is so well informed, she is aware that none of us participates in QUIETUS on a purely research basis?’
‘We have discussed it, more or less,’ said Calvin.
‘What?’ said Eleanor.
‘Should Pachyderm come to fruition, we have all agreed not to simply administer the organism but to subject ourselves to it,’ Bunny explained. ‘If the agent meets specifications, two-thirds of us should survive, possibly more, since the parameters demand a high mortality among juveniles. Membership is no guarantee of exemption; quite the opposite. This stipulation is a moral imperative, which I’m sure, so scrupulous, you can appreciate.’
‘Everyone except me,’ said Calvin jovially. ‘The scapegoat gets drawn and quartered.’
‘It’s outrageous,’ said Eleanor, ‘to regard participation in your own cataclysm as brave resolve. Your vows are ignoble. If you’re forcing Russian roulette on the rest of the world, of course you play.’
‘This moral posturing is a waste of time,’ Calvin interjected. ‘Can we get to work? Grant has been modelling labour-force projections.
I’d like a report.’
Grant sat at the keyboard and a screen flashed a 3-D graph that resembled a quarter-volcano made of stair steps. ‘The situation in thirty-five years looks volatile,’ the dreary man 184
began in a monotone. ‘Because African economies cannot keep pace with population growth, up to 50 per cent of the work force will be unemployed. By 2025, 60 per cent of Africans will have migrated to urban centres…’
Numbers of any kind were coming to have a hypnotic effect on Eleanor; a mere post code could put her to sleep.
‘Aquifer depletion, agricultural subdivision—a huge, unsatisfied, young, hungry population with no work—’
Eleanor’s head took a speculative tilt. She hoped she appeared intent; in truth, she was remembering that Solastina was completely out of pasta.
‘We predict total anarchy,’ Grant declared with a grim smile.
‘Nairobi in 2025 will make Nairobi in 1990 look like Gothenburg.’
The screen changed; the peak of the volcano shifted, with a shelf on its right side. ‘Here we have the Pachyderm Effect. With approx-imately 20 per cent cropping of current reproductive ages, concentrating on younger parents so that progeny are not readily replaced, and 40 per cent cropping of juveniles, especially the under-fives, we see a very different picture for 2025: a population gently larger than today’s, with plenty of time for economies to catch up with employment.’ The screen changed. ‘This is a labour force of a size that could conceivably sustain its own population. Environmental strategies have some chance of success, crop yields are likely to increase. With Pachyderm, Africa could easily become the dominant economic power of the next century. Ready for South America?’
She had to give QUIETUS credit: their attention span was astounding. Continent by continent they suffered Grant’s statistics, and no one around the table ever looked less than rapt. Eleanor had a hard time keeping her eyes open. When he arrived at North America, she woke up.
‘We have discussed designing an alternative pathogen for industrialized nations, with their below-replacement fertility rates. The North is threatened by an ageing population. Shrinking labour pools will force it to accept immigration, transforming the cultural complexion of these countries. The old are economically unproductive and burdensome to social systems.
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We recommend an agent that hits geriatric targets and leaves the juvenile cohort largely intact.’
Eleanor squirmed. She liked her grandmother.
The meeting went on to 8 p.m. In the main of it, Eleanor, too, got caught up in the exercise: the optimum labour force, country by country, for 2025. By then Eleanor would be out of work herself.
What would she do, with family planning deprived of support after Calvin’s purge?
Flower-arranging. Towards the end she could no longer attend to the digits flashing across Nyayo’s computer screens and imagined a little shop she could keep through retirement, shifting jonquils, snipping stems. Plants you could always get on with. Better than pets: if you abused them they didn’t complain, but withered humbly to the soil from which they came. Eleanor and plants understood each other.
When the session broke up, Bunny put her hand on Calvin’s arm.
That woman was always touching him, with her little excuses.
‘I would like to speak with you,’ said Bunny severely.
Calvin glanced to Eleanor.
‘It’s OK. I just want to go to sleep.’
‘The car—?’
‘I’ll take a matatu.’
Bunny raised her eyebrows, disapproving. Wazungu took taxis.
On the way to catch her bus, Eleanor passed the hawkers on Moi who were just wrapping up their remaining flowers. She bought the remnants off several, and swayed down the avenue with an abundant array of glads, sweet peas, baby’s breath. When she boarded the ‘The Shining Way’, TOLERANCE OF LADIES on the bumper, commuters stared; she was the only white on the bus.
Eleanor didn’t get a seat, and drew her shoulders around her blooms, glads poking other passengers, baby’s breath exhaling against her cheek. The matatu’ s loud disco suggested the many parties Eleanor had attended tongue-tied, wallflower; she and her bundle made one big wilting bouquet.
By the time she reached Karen and trembled down the steps, in the dark press of Kenya’s population the glads were dejected, the sweet peas had soured and the baby’s breath
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had the croup. She tossed the defeated blossoms in a ditch and fled to Calvin’s bed.
‘Calvin Piper, you astonish me.’
The screens were dark; a single spot lit the conference table.
Calvin poured two neat shots from the well-stocked QUIETUS bar.
Dealing death all day required a healthy allowance in the budget for whisky.
‘I thought I was beyond astonishing you, Bunny. How encouraging.’
‘You of all people dragging your latest skirt along to QUIETUS!
Did you hope to impress her?’
‘Not nearly as much as anticipated. She’s taken the proposition in her stride.’
‘But after all our precautions! How many years have we kept the operation tight? For God’s sake, Calvin! Have you gone off your head?’
‘ Inshe Allah.’
‘Don’t que sera sera me. Shauri ya Mungu is for passive pastoralists with goats, not for a man with a brain. And just how many more forty-year-olds will be trotted to our multimedia show on afternoons you’re too cheap to take them to a matinée?’
‘Eleanor’s thirty-eight,’ said Calvin.
‘Don’t be cute. Eleanor Merritt constitutes a heinous security lapse.
You were entirely out of order! Couldn’t you tell that the whole committee was outraged?’
‘Imagine my concern.’
‘I’m awaiting an explanation.’