Equilateral (12 page)

“Now we’re making no progress at all,” Miss Keaton announces. She’s already seen the day’s reports. “More delays,
more breakdowns, more sabotage. We haven’t excavated ten miles in the last week.”

“The fellahin are useless,” Thayer replies.

Ballard adds, “We should have hanged all eight.”

“Twice,” Miss Keaton says. “That would have done it, I’m sure.”

The engineer glares; Thayer remains contemplative. The bureau is not as busy as it should be: a few clerks chat idly among themselves near the filing cabinets, while most of the desks remain unoccupied. The Turk from the water bureau studies some tanker requisition documents. He looks up at Miss Keaton. She turns away and recovers her purpose.

“Sanford. Mr. Ballard,” she says. “I’ve given this some thought. We need better men to accomplish the task—stronger men, more dependable men. These are not the men of Egypt.”

“The men of Egypt are entirely contemptible. Worse than Hindus.”

“In that case, Mr. Ballard, we must forge new men—from the dross we’ve been given.”

He shakes his head.

“From our first day here, Miss Keaton, we’ve sought to improve the workers—in health and in spirit. We’ve built them schools and mosques. The Egyptians have never had overseers as generous as we are. We’ve worked ourselves to distraction trying to summon from them their greatest strengths and virtues.”

“I believe that may have been our error,” she says. “To excavate the Equilateral, we can’t appeal to the men’s best qualities. We must appeal to their worst! To see our work completed, we
have to employ the most refractory of the fellahin, the most rapacious, envious, dishonest, distrustful, and depraved of them.”

Ballard mutters darkly, “They’re worse than that. You don’t know their depravity by half.”

Thayer nods in affirmation. Depravity—yes, that’s exactly what it is, these slowdowns and these strikes, this obstinacy, this refusal to cooperate in human history’s grandest undertaking, its most elevating common enterprise. Depravity. The word strikes Thayer somewhere deep.

Miss Keaton says, “So we have to bring into play another fundamental force in human life: competitiveness, instilled into man by his species’ fight for survival. Every individual, even the lowliest Arab, needs to come out ahead of his neighbor. The desire to win is universal, regardless of the stakes or the level of racial development.” She pauses, to see if they’re accepting her assertion. The engineer’s frown has developed into a full glower. She says, “I propose a contest—”

“Ridiculous.”

“Conducted among the work teams assigned to each side. Each worker on the first completed side will receive an extra week’s wages.”

“A week’s wages,” Ballard repeats. “That should bankrupt the Concession right away.”

“The Concession’s full value depends on the Flare being ignited at maximum elongation. And it’s entirely worthless if we don’t complete the Equilateral at all.”

“We can’t do it. We don’t have the funds. There’s already an inquiry into disbursements. The French have threatened to withdraw.”

Thayer interrupts them, for the first time, to scoff: “And leave the triumph to Albion? I doubt it. The money can be found. It will be.”

Shaking his head, Ballard realizes that the lady has reached her man. He has seen this happen time and again, a woman interfering: in the Nyasaland mines, on the Twante Canal between the Irrawaddy and Rangoon, and once more when they raised the Jubilee Bridge in Bengal. He says, “A day’s supplemental pay is sufficient.”

“I’ll cable Sir Harry myself,” Thayer declares. “I’ll urge a full week of extra pay, and money placed in reserve for another competition, to complete the second side. It will take two weeks to get the amount authorized, but we have to announce the competition today, at this hour. I take full responsibility for the decision.”

“You better. The governors will raise hell.”

Thayer knows that at this late date Sir Harry will give in. The project has cost far more than originally envisioned, but in London, Paris, and Berlin the Concession’s bankers have succeeded in performing whatever financial machinations have been necessary. The extra wages are in fact a trivial addition to this month’s expenses, less than what it takes to bring them the water that keeps the men alive.

Δ

Thayer himself announces the competition from the most prominent structure in the center of Point A, the scaffold. A dragoman translates for the few hundred fellahin who are assembled there. It’s a difficult assignment, for the astronomer employs
abstract terms and sophisticated language. He’s trying to tell them more than the terms of the contest. He’s explaining, again, the fame that will be theirs once the Equilateral is realized. The dragoman struggles to keep up. For the fellahin Thayer remains a mysterious figure—another European, in a vest and tailored trousers, who spends most of his days alone in his quarters. Some understand him as the shaman who secretly directs their divine labors. In some hearts he inspires fear; in others loyalty and wonder.

Every fellah in attendance will be deputized to transmit to another company in the field Thayer’s speech and the underlying rationale for the contest. Given the peculiar ideas embedded within his rhetoric—for example, about how competition allows a man to find his place in the social order, as if God were unable to locate it for him—the speech will be misheard and distorted, bent to the cultural and religious mores of its audience. The emissaries with the farthest to ride will have the most opportunities to adjust what they identify as the statement’s inconsistencies, tautologies, and false antecedents. By the time the message reaches the farthest segments of the Equilateral, it will bear no relationship to what was said by the man who issued it, except of course for the promise of more pay.

Δ

After he’s been lowered into his camp bed—the fever has returned—but before he can sink into oblivion, Thayer considers the transcript of his speech that will be composed by the Concession and at some time in the future made available to historians on our sister planet. They too may not understand the
moral reasoning behind the contest. The premise of Miss Keaton’s argument is that competition is ingrained in man’s universal character because it’s encoded in creation through natural selection, the most fundamental of all competitions. We don’t know, however, whether Darwinian evolution is in fact a universal principle in every region of space. The development of Martian life may very well be governed by some other natural process that does not rely on mutation, adaptation, and natural selection.

If evolution is
not
a universal process, if competition is not a universal principle, if Mars is not subject to Darwinism, the planet’s economy may have developed according to entirely different natural laws. How does Mars apportion its commodities and goods? What is the role of capital? Of labor? How is personal status attained? By what means are social hierarchies erected? Does Mars enjoy a gentler sex that raises its young and performs the traditional female duties? If not, then … Lying in his camp bed, his eyes closed, Thayer struggles to imagine how the inhabitants of Mars conduct their lives on their shrunken, withered sphere.

Twenty

Whether because the fellahin understand the terms of the competition or because they’ve been frightened by the scaffold, which remains in place, work on the Equilateral assumes new urgency. Encouraging reports from the desert begin to arrive at Point A. With an influx of fresh diggers from Tripolitania, the excavation of Side AB between miles 100 and 220 is finally under way. The Libyans bring their own vocal compositions and vigor to the task. Before the first spade strikes, their imam blesses each segment to which they’ve been assigned. The pitch factories augment their output. Thayer asserts again that the Equilateral will be completed in time for maximum elongation. Mars is doing its part, moving into its best position to observe the Flare on the morning of June the seventeenth.

Thayer perceives that the mood in Point A has lifted. The men’s shouts and oaths are less rich in complaint, more relevant to their duties. The fellahin don’t look us in the eye, but their minds are now engaged to the needs of the Equilateral. The odor of fresh flatbread wafts pleasantly through the administrative quarters most mornings. Thayer has not established the location of the oven, but he presumes it’s close.

They should have done this years ago, put their faith in competition: the strongest over the weakest, the industrious over the indolent. These are the terms that allow for civilized society’s ascendance on Earth in the first place. Once more the universal laws have been confirmed.

But the winners of the competition have already been determined. Side AC was closest to completion when the contest was announced, and now nearly all its segments have been excavated. The Point C pitch factory has been steadily supplying the paving crews up and down the side. The petroleum piping is in place, with most of the problematic joints fitted. The fellahin aren’t aware of this. They don’t receive the reports and wouldn’t be able to read them if they did.

Δ

The wall-sized map of the Equilateral in Thayer’s tent now begins to show progress on each section. The astronomer can look at the map with satisfaction for twenty or thirty minutes at a time, just as he would gaze at a celestial body. Every notation on the chart announces a technical problem solved, a challenge met: another conquest for mankind.

Yet Mars may not be impressed by the Equilateral. Each visible segment of the red planet’s canal system surpasses, by itself, the extent of man’s global excavations. The astronomers and engineers of Mars will observe the Equilateral with amused, condescendingly benevolent smiles, if they have smiling-capable organs. They will find the greatest expression of our intellect and labor hardly less primitive than the ceremonial mask carved out by a Hottentot.

Or they will not understand man at all. Their minds may well be too distant from ours; too advanced or too different or too-something in a way that we can’t comprehend. The astronomers of Mars will be aware that Earth has lit a massive fire on its surface precisely at the moment when the planet’s position in the Martian sky is farthest from the sun. They will peer down at the Equilateral and observe its geometric perfection. But they may not find these phenomena sufficiently remarkable to record in their notebooks.

Twenty-One

The courier from London delivers a week-old issue of the
Times
, and in the paper’s illustrated section a long article by the Cairo correspondent confirms the Equilateral’s progress. Based on an interview conducted by telegraph, he seconds Thayer’s assertion that it will be done on schedule. Although flawed by several risible inaccuracies, the article properly reiterates what interplanetary communication promises for the ordinary man: the wisdom of an ancient race, its inventions and technologies, the opening of a vast new market.

Articles like this one have become familiar in newspaper supplements for a decade, as have sketches of the Equilateral, whose base now stretches eight columns across the page and is decorated with dunes, camels, and fanciful palm trees. (Not a single palm has yet been encountered on the plain.) At the top of the figure, like corks, bob four cameos of “Sandy” Thayer, Sir Harry, Ballard, and Miss Keaton, to her astonishment and embarrassment.

“This is uncalled-for,” she cries.

Thayer is stooped over the newspaper, which has been laid
out on a drafting table. He doesn’t immediately reply. After a while he looks up. “What’s that?”

“My picture. I’m hardly a Concession panjandrum. I’m your personal secretary.”

“That’s all right,” he says. He hasn’t noticed the drawing. Now he studies it for a few solemn moments and raises his gaze to her. It’s been a long while since her face was held in such steady regard, by him or by any man. His eyes return to the page. He pronounces, “It’s a handsome likeness.”

“I don’t recall sitting for it. They must have spied on me aboard ship or when you addressed Parliament.”

“Newspapermen,” he declares. “The article is very foolish. They repeatedly say ‘men from Mars,’ even though I’ve told them time and again that, whoever built the canals and whoever observes the Equilateral, they’re anything
but
men. They can’t be, for they haven’t evolved from the same organisms that men have.” He reads on. “But I can’t say I’m not pleased. Sir Harry will be pleased. This will be useful in raising support for Line CD.”

Although Miss Keaton has long avoided the merest flutter of vanity, she can’t help but be gratified by the sketch. It must have been done years ago, for the woman in the image is not the desert-dried spinster who encounters her in the mirror every morning. Miss Keaton glows now, against her will, for the caress of Thayer’s close observation still lingers on her cheek.

This moment of female weakness leads to another, a few hours later, when the secretary looks up from her correspondence to watch as Bint pours water from a brown clay pitcher into a
basin, one hand steadying the pitcher at its wide bottom. The girl performs this task with complete, cosmic stillness, like a statue that may have been unearthed from beneath the sands, yet she’s as supple as a cat and as fecund as the Nile. Thayer burns for her, of course.

From long experience the secretary recognizes that Thayer’s attentions regarding Bint are ephemeral and predictable, of no greater weight than those she’s observed him direct, before they came to Egypt, toward other females. A shopgirl. A singer. Some kitchen girl, not unlike Bint, except that she was Irish: lithe, apple-cheeked, bright-eyed, with a giggle that carried throughout his drafty, many-winged manor in Cambridgeshire, where Miss Keaton shared his study. A parade of kitchen girls.

Thayer romances these creatures discreetly but without shame. He never speaks of them to Miss Keaton, even when it’s clear that he’s arrived from an assignation. Maintaining his accounts, she’s aware of the gifts the girls receive, the pins, the hats, the necklaces, the wraps, and even the pair of Pekinese bestowed on an actress at the Gaiety. She senses that not a single affair has ended unhappily, with expectations unmet.