Stand on Zanzibar (42 page)

He could not imagine himself hating anyone; all hate had been leached out of his personality by the warm glow due to psychedelics. Yet there were people, among them staff-members of this hospital, who denied that universal love could take on chemical form. Why in the cosmos not? After all it was a commonplace of Christian tradition that Love could take on the substance of bread and wine …

Of course, the death of that baby was a terrible shame; the poor thing must have had an overdose. A shadow clouded his round, smiling countenance, but lasted only an instant. The sister had said it was the first such case in the eleven years she had worked here. There wouldn’t be another in the foreseeable future, or perhaps ever again, now that people were forbidden to start rhesus-problem prodgies.

He completed his task, meticulously rinsed and dried the hypodermic as he had seen the doctors do all around the hospital, and returned it to its case. Then he locked away the phial of Triptine from which he had drawn the necessary amount, and began to rack up the flasks for outward shipment. He whistled as he worked.

Who wouldn’t whistle, knowing that every patient who required a blood-transfusion in this hospital would from now on experience the wonderful, mind-opening enlightenment that Triptine could bestow?

About half an hour later the young pathologist who was investigating the reason for the baby’s inexplicable death came in and asked for a flask of O blood, which Henry issued to him. He was genuinely surprised when the pathologist returned and hit him under the jaw so hard that he crashed backwards into a stack of crated flasks and brought the whole lot tumbling.

As for the policeman who charged him formally with murder, Henry could not credit that such a person might be real.

continuity (18)

THE WALLS OF TROY

The hostility Donald felt when he returned to the everyday world was not illusion. It came from the other intending passengers crammed into the emergency expressport now serving the Ellay region. This was in fact a military base, hastily cleared of equipment the public was not allowed to see and patrolled continually by armed guards. Diverted, delayed, their schedules thrown out, hungry and thirsty because the Air Force canteens could not cope like the facilities at the regular port, and to top the lot uncertain whether their flights would materialise because expresses re-routed to the base were firing their sonic booms on to populated areas and there was talking of the residents taking out an injunction, they were looking around for someone to vent their resentment on, and the appearance of Donald armed with clearances that scissored through the red tape entangling everyone else offered a ready target.

He didn’t give a pint of whaledreck about their feelings.

His head ached slightly. One of the many successive processors at Boat Camp between whom he had been shuttled like a machine on an assembly-line had warned him that this might happen at intervals for a week or two. But the pain wasn’t severe enough to cancel out his basic state of mind.

He felt proud. The Donald Hogan of the previous thirty-four years had ceased to exist, but he was no loss. He had been passive, a recipient or rather a receptacle, open for the shovelling-in of external data but making no contribution of his own to the course of events, reserved, self-contained, so neutral that even Norman House sharing the same apt could call him in a fit of rage a bloodless, featureless zombie.

Not that he cared about Norman’s opinion now, either. He knew what latent capabilities resided in himself, and was possessed by savage eagerness for the moment when he could let them go.

At one of a range of folding tables spanning the hangar they were using as a transit hall, a weary official checked his documents. “Going to Yatakang, hm?” he said. “Off to get yourself optimised, I suppose!”

“Me? No, I function pretty well in all areas. You look like you’re saving up for a ticket, though.”

For a second he thought the man was going to hit him. His face burned dark red with the effort of self-control. He could say nothing more to Donald, but slapped the documents wordlessly under the cameras and stamping-machines before him, then waved him through.

“There was no call to say that,” the official from the next table said as Donald passed close enough to hear a whisper.

“What?”

The second official made sure his colleague was engaged again and not listening. “There was no call to say that,” he repeated. “He got married without having their genes matched and their first kid just had to be aborted. Pink spot.”

The sign of hereditary schizophrenia. Donald shrugged.

“I think I’d have hit you,” the official said.

“If he’d hit me, he’d have given up hitting people permanently,” Donald said, and grinned. It was wonderful to know it was more than a boast—it was a promise. He added after a moment. “You don’t have work to do?”

The official scowled and turned back to deal with his next passenger.

“Yatakang?” said the purser of the express, an elegant young biv-type sporting ambisextrous shoulder-long bangs. “You must be Mr. Hogan, then—I believe you’re the only person scheduled this flight…” He checked a list he was carrying. “Yes, that’s right. Here’s your seat-number, sir, and a pleasant flight. I’ll be round to see you before we take off.” He handed over a little plastic tag.

Donald took it and walked on into the cheerless coffin of the express. Settling into his seat among anonymous accidental companions, he recalled Delahanty’s injunction to make good his ignorance of the last few days’ news. When the purser toured the ship to perform the airline’s vaunted “personal touch service”, he answered affirmatively to the inquiry about wanting anything.

“You said I was the only person going to Yatakang, didn’t you?”

A flutter of long eyelashes and a mechanical smile. “Why, yes, sir.”

“Does this often happen?”

“Frankly, sir, as I understand it, if the terms of our charter under international agreement didn’t require us to make at least one stop a day in Gongilung, we wouldn’t bother. But there’s something about granting overflight facilities—I could get the details from the captain if you like…?”

“Don’t bother. But have you not had any other passengers for Yatakang lately? I’d have thought, what with the big news that broke out there the other day—”

“You mean reporters like yourself, sir? I’m afraid I haven’t noticed particularly,” the purser said in a frigid tone.

Donald sighed. It was all very well when professional ethics and respect for privacy were confined to a few expert groups like doctors and priests; now it was being adopted by the world and his uncle, the attitude was frustrating.

“I have a polytelly. Is it okay for me to use it during the flight?”

“I’m afraid not, sir. But I can pipe in a condensed-news channel to your seat-screen.”

“Do that, then. And if you have any recent papers on board I’d appreciate a sight of them.”

“I’ll see what I can find for you, sir. Will that be all?”

*   *   *

Flushed, the purser returned just as the tugs started to track the express across the field to its launch-ramp. “I could only find one of today’s and one of yesterday’s, I’m afraid,” he apologised.

That was more than Donald had expected, even so. He accepted them with a mutter of thanks and spread them out. The older of the two papers was beginning to fragment in accordance with the Federal anti-litter law which forbade ephemeral publications to be printed on permanent stock for other than historical purposes. Handling it carefully, he searched it for stories with a Yatakang dateline.

He found only one, and its credit was to a beam agency, one of Engrelay Satelserv’s major rivals, Video-Asia Reuters. That, of course, wasn’t surprising; these days, newspapers were ninety per cent trivia and features, unable to compete with TV news—indeed most of them, including the respective
Times
of New York and London, had switched their major cachet to television slots. And all he learned from his reading was something he could have deduced anyway: the people of Yatakang wanted to believe their government’s claim, whether or not it was exaggerated.

As he turned the next page it disintegrated, showering him with flakes of yellowing paper. He cursed it and thrust it into his seat’s disposall tube.

The take-off warning followed immediately, and he had to wait to tackle the second paper until the upward leg of their ballistic orbit had been entered.

This time, there was an entire page devoted to material on the subject of optimisation: one beam agency story from Gongilung reporting that voluntary funds were being raised in outlying islands so that doctors and nurses could go to the capital for training under Sugaiguntung, and about a dozen reporting reaction in other countries. There were several hints that public opinion was ranged against the verdict of the experts. When it came to a Minister of the Cuban government being booed at a Castro Day rally …

Donald frowned. Somehow these news items suggested a deeper pattern, but his head was aching again and he could not concentrate. The Mark I version of himself would have turned the problem out to graze in his subconscious, but now he did not have the patience. Instead of mulling the question over, he stuffed the paper down the disposall and switched on the condensed-news programme the purser had provided.

On the miniature screen set into the back of the seat ahead he saw a series of short visual clips with earphone commentary. He studied them with what attention he could manage. He happened to have struck into the cycle at a point just before the sports news, and had to wait out four minutes’ worth before the bulletin cycled back to the station identification and began to repeat. And then he discovered he was watching a programme compiled by the staff of the same paper he had just thrown away, containing almost exclusively the same stories.

Annoyed, he reached out to switch off. At the same moment the picture quality deteriorated, and a sign appeared to say that because of increasing distance from Ellay there would be a change to a satellite-based service. Hoping that the airline might use one of the field leaders like Engrelay Satelserv, he stayed his hand.

Correct. The familiar figures of Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere took shape almost at once. Obviously this was a special signal for passengers in transit; it used only back views and the environment was the interior of an express identical to this. It had never occurred to him before, but it was logical that having secured maximum viewer-identification by selling so many personalised sets with homimage attachment the company would not wish to remind people actually going to some of the exotic places where Mr. & Mrs. Everywhere kept dropping in that in fact the couple were only models.

The purser had set his screen for a Caucasian version of the signal, and that was momentarily unfamiliar. On moving in with Norman he had accepted the latter’s offer of a TV just about to be discarded in favour of a newer model, and never bothered to alter the Afram standard to which it was set, so he was accustomed to seeing Mr. Everywhere as an Afram and his wife as one of Norman’s typical Scandahoovian shiggies. Here now he was getting the “white stocky young mature” version of the man, and it jarred.

He was annoyed with himself for feeling so concerned about something which was, after all, a commercial figment more appropriate to his former life. From now on Donald Hogan was going to make news, not watch it.

As though the programmers had read his mind, his own face appeared on the screen.

He thought it was an illusion until the commentary corrected the impression. “Donald Hogan!” said the small voice directly into his ears. “Engrelay Satelserv’s newest man on the spot!”

Whereinole did they dredge up these clips?
There was a younger Donald Hogan on a New York street, then gazing up at distant mountains—that was a Sun Valley vacation five years ago—and then, more familiar, boarding the express he had taken a few days ago from New York to California.

“Specially retained by Engrelay Satelserv, life-time expert in genetics and heredity Donald Hogan is bound on your behalf to Yatakang!”

Clips of a Gongilung street-scene, a fishing-prau chugging between islands on a noisy reaction-pump, a crowd massing in a handsome square.

“Yatakang, focus of planet-wide interest! Programme your autoshout for the name of Donald Hogan, whose dispatches from Gongilung will be featured in our bulletins from tomorrow on!”

Donald was stunned. They must be making a sensaysh out of it, to sacrifice so much time from even their ten-minute condensed-news cycle! His Mark II confidence evaporated. Euphoric from his recent eptification, he had thought he was a new person, immeasurably better equipped to affect the world. But the implications of that expensive plug stabbed deep into his mind. If State were willing to go to these lengths to maintain his cover identity, that meant he was only the visible tip of a scheme involving perhaps thousands of people. State just didn’t issue fiats to a powerful corporation like English Language Relay Satellite Service without good reason.

Meaningless phrases drifted up, dissociated, and presented themselves to his awareness, all seeming to have relevance to his situation and yet not cohering.

My name is Legion.

I fear the Greeks, even bearing gifts.

The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children.

Say can you look into the seeds of time?

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Struggling to make sense of these fragments, he finally arrived at what his subconscious might be trying to convey.

The prize, these days, is not in finding a beautiful mistress. It’s in having presentable prodgies. Helen the unattainable is in the womb, and every mother dreams of bearing her. Now her whereabouts is known. She lives in Yatakang and I’ve been sent in search of her, ordered to bring her back or say her beauty is a lie—if necessary to make it a lie, with vitriol. Odysseus the cunning lurked inside the belly of the horse and the Trojans breached the wall and took it in while Laocoön and his sons were killed by snakes. A snake is cramped around my forehead and if it squeezes any tighter it will crack my skull.