Stand on Zanzibar (67 page)

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 Sugaiguntung 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)

ONE OF MANY ESSENTIALLY IDENTICAL PRINTOUTS FROM SHALMANESER

PROGRAMME REJECTED

Q reason for rejection

ANOMALIES IN GROUND DATA

Q define Q specify

DATA IN FOLLOWING CATEGORIES NOT ACCEPTABLE: HISTORY COMMERCE SOCIALINTERACTION CULTURE

Q accept data as given

QUESTION MEANINGLESS AND INOPERABLE

continuity (34)

THERE LIVES MORE FAITH IN HONEST DOUBT

Norman should have been at the grand official ceremony when Ram Ibusa signed the contracts with the Beninia Consortium, at the press conference thereafter and at the formal banquet in the evening. Instead, he handed Ibusa over to the GT hospitality department and fled.

He had seen and heard and sensed too much. For all the cheering news about the market, where GT stock had already bounced back to the level it had left on the founder’s death and seemed set to go higher; for all the false gaiety and the excited PR releases and the loudspeakers relaying the specially commissioned “Beninia Theme”—he could not stand the atmosphere in the GT tower. There were so many grey faces, so many blithe masks slipped when the owners of them thought they weren’t being watched.

The feeling in the air was of the kind that might have reigned over a Hebrew encampment the day Jehovah declined, for His own inscrutable reasons, to perform a miracle and wipe out the high priest of Dagon.

And that, Norman judged, was not merely a comparison but a definition. The omniscient Shalmaneser had let his faithful disciples down, and with half their minds they were afraid it might not be his fault, but theirs.

Curse computers for a trick of Shaitan! Of all the times Shalmaneser might choose to fail us he picks now, now, when my life and hopes are committed to his judgment!

He bought a pack of Bay Golds and went home.

*   *   *

The Watch-&-Ward Inc. key slipped smoothly into the lock. The door moved aside and showed him the interior of the apt, untidy, some of the furniture in different places, the liquor console surrounded by dead men not carried to the disposall, but otherwise not changed.

He thought at first the place must be empty. He looked into his own bedroom and saw that the bed was rumpled but only because someone had lain on the cover, not because it had been slept in. Shrugging, he lit one of the reefers he had bought and went back into the living area.

A faint snore came to him.

He strode over to Donald’s old room and flung the door open. Chad Mulligan was asleep on the bed, not in it, his hair and beard unkempt and not a stitch on him, only shoes.

It was just after four poppa-momma. What in the world was the man doing asleep at this time of day?

“Chad?” he said. And a second time, more loudly: “Chad!”

“Wha…?” Eyes blinked open, shut, open again and this time stayed open. “Norman! Sheeting hole, I didn’t expect to see you back in New York! Uh—what time is it?”

“Gone four.”

Chad sat up and forced his legs over the side of the bed, knuckling his eyes and trying to stifle a monstrous yawn. “Ooh-
ah!
Sorry, Norman—
wowf!
Welcome home. Excuse me, I shan’t be fit company until I’ve showered.”

“Since when have you taken to sleeping in the daytime?”

Chad managed to rise to his feet, and kept rising until he was on tip-toe, thrusting out with both hands to stretch his stiff muscles. He said, “It’s not a habit. Just last night I was thinking and thinking and thinking and couldn’t sleep at all, so I got drunk at breakfast time and that was that.”

“What were you thinking about? And didn’t you know there’s an inducer in the pillow there? That would have put you to sleep.”

“Inducers make me dream,” Chad said. “Liquor doesn’t.”

Norman shrugged; neither he nor Donald had ever been affected in that way by a sleep-inducer, but he remembered that one or two of the shiggies who had stayed here had complained of the same trouble—a risk of nightmares.

“Go ahead and take your shower,” he said. “Don’t be too long. I want to talk to you.”

A sudden idea had come to him, which was probably a vain hope, but any chance no matter how slim was worth taking in the present crisis.

“Sure,” Chad muttered. “Do me a favour, though—have some coffee sent up.”

*   *   *

Five minutes later, dressed, hair and beard still wet but combed into orderliness, Chad collected the cup of coffee waiting for him and sat down in Donald’s chair facing Norman in his own favourite.

“I envy you that Hille chair,” Chad said absently. “About the only thing in the place I do envy you, to be candid. Comfortable. And you know it’s going to remain a chair, not suddenly turn into a cosmorama unit … Okay: talk to me!”

“Chad, you’re rated the most insightful living social analyst.”

“Whaledreck. I’m rated a drunken sot. I’ve reached the stage where I get too drunk too fast to bother going out to look for shiggies, and I
like
women.” He gulped down his coffee and wiped his moustache with the back of his hand.