Well, he thought—my life, if they require it. He had lost Sara, anyway.
The girl said: “Philadelphia coming in, El Majalem. They will be transferred as soon as focused.”
It hit him so hard that for a moment there seemed to be blackness before his eyes.
. . . Sara was in the target.
The girl said: 'In focus. Will you accept, El Majalem?”
He stared at the screen, wondering what it was he had been going to do. He heard her voice again, mesc-tolerant and weary:
“Philadelphia is in focus, El Majalem. Are you ready to accept the call?”
To the right of the desk there was the buildings code of numbers. Humayan was 71.
“Philadelphia...” the voice began again.
He didn’t look up. He said: “Cancel it.”
She said: “O.K. Canceled.”
The picture faded. He connected to 71. He said, when Humayun answered:
“This is Grayner. I'm in the TV room. You can come and collect me.”
Looking at her, he wondered how he could ever have been taken in by the false-Sara. The thing about her was not the lines of her face, her body, but the sparkle, the altogether inimitable glint of personality. And, although she was smiling, she was watching him warily; how could he have forgotten that wariness which was more a part of Sara than the tiny bulges just above her eyebrows? He remembered the flesh, peeled off by Dinkuhl's knife ... it should not have needed that.
He said humbly: “I’ve been getting into trouble, Sara, since I lost you.”
She laughed. ‘If being just on the point of calling down H-bombs on us is to be labeled as getting into trouble anyway, you didn’t.”
“There was more to it than that ... I meant, back in North America. I didn’t think of H-bombs. That call I tried to make,”—he looked directly at her—“I was prepared to not see you again, Sara. I didn’t want it to happen—the take-over—with any consent of mine. You understand?”
“Within limits.” She patted the plastifoam couch. “Come and sit down.” She was wearing the very full skirt which was the common dress of Siraqi women, and she drew it away to let him sit by her. “The other trouble. Details?”
He told her about the false-Sara; it was a relief to make confession. Sara said thoughtfully:
“You went airsphering with her?”
He nodded. “Yes.” He wondered if he looked as uneasy as he felt; he supposed so.
“It’s a very romantic occupation. A cousin of mine did a thesis on the aphrodisiacal effects of airsphering. He had to go outside Siraq for the practical work, of course... our young ladies don t go airsphering except with their fiancés. He went to Greece.”
Charles looked at her unhappily. “Yes?”
“The correlation was positive.” Sara paused. “Tell me. What was I like?”
“It was a very good disguise. Just like you, physically— of course, they had had access to your records. But I shouldn't have been deceived by it. It wasn't you, Sara.” “Not even in the airsphere, high above the clouds?” He grinned shamefacedly. “Least of all, then. I was surprised.”
“But pleased, I guess.” She got up from the couch and stood facing him; the trace of a smile made her face expressionless. She leaned forward slightly and slapped him, stingingly hard, on either cheek. He put his hand up and rubbed first one side and then the other. She stood looking at him.
“What was that for?”
The smile deepened, but he still could not read the inward expression. She said:
“The first was on behalf of the other Sara. She should have done it, so I'm doing it for her. The second was on my own account—for your still having thought it was me, afterward.”
He nodded, in gloom. “I'm sorry.”
“Sorry! What about doing something to show you really are sorry?”
He looked up. “I'll do anything, Sara.”
He thought her composure was going to desert her for a moment; there was the beginning of embarrassment, but she controlled it. She said brusquely:
“This afternoon then... you can take me airsphering.”
He grasped her hand, and she let him pull her down beside him on the couch again. She averted her face from his kisses, but she was smiling happily now. He hesitated in the attempt as a thought struck him.
“But you said ... no airsphering except with—”
“—Fiancés. Idiot! Don’t you realize you are being proposed to?”
He drew her to him, and now she took his kisses, and kissed him back. When, after some minutes, he released her, he offered her his cheek.
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Well?”
“Since you are going to marry me, I’d prefer to get all my punishment over in advance. I went airsphering more than once.”
Sara raised her eyebrows. “How many times?”
“About half a dozen.”
She looked at his offered face, and at her hand.
“No. Not just yet. A good wife always keeps something in reserve.”
The Director s garden on the roof of the Averroes Institute was almost exclusively made up of evergreens and roses; the roses were made to bloom all the year round so the seasons did not touch it. From the garden, on this morning, it was a small party that looked out, away from the center of El Majalem, toward the military camp on the outskirts. The party was made up of Professor Koupal and Humayun, Sara and Charles, and Dinkuhl. The sky was a sparkling blue, and the great sun itself dimmed, by comparison, the sunlets that were strung above their heads.
Professor Koupal said: “Dai has been telling me about your idea, Charles. We’d considered the idea of utilizing the space stations as solar power collectors, of course, but the distribution is impossible. They can collect all right, but the only power they use is for TV boosting. We can’t run cables up to them.
“This idea of yours—of maintaining a collector on air-spheres; it might work. We could run cables there, for reasonably low cloud levels at any rate. There’s one thing—wouldn’t they drift?”
‘They couldn’t if they were cabled, could they? At least, not far. The airspheres take care of the buoyancy, and the cables take care of the drift You could have an operator up there, as well.”
Professor Koupal nodded his head. “Cheap power all the year round. Make a big difference in the cloudy territories—the British Isles, and so on. What do you think, Dai?”
“Very nice. I can foresee some lively problems. I suggest this presents a good first job for the Bhaldun lab.”
Sara protested: “Let’s get over the honeymoon first. We haven’t officially accepted Bhaldun yet.”
Humayun said: “I speak with my full military authority.” He grinned. “Any recalcitrance and I’ll split you—Charles to Cairo and you to Constantinople. I can make that opposing hemispheres once the take-over is accomplished.”
“Managerialist!” Sara said. “We wouldn’t go.” Professor Koupal said: “It’s a pity we can’t do anything about utilizing power in space. Such a waste. But short of developing a power transmitter, it can’t be done.”
Charles said: “There’s one way of utilizing it.”
“And that is...?”
“Atomic-powered spaceships are clumsy and hellishly expensive. Diamond-solar power would make them a different proposition altogether.”
Professor Koupal nodded slowly. Humayun said:
“Get thee to Bhaldun. Delay the honeymoon.”
“Delay the spaceships,” Sara said. “First things come first.”
Charles said: “What about you, Hiram? Decided on anything yet?”
The indifference that Charles had first noticed behind Dinkuhl’s ordinary flippancy, when he tried to persuade him to join him in warning Raven, now, for the most part, had taken its place. He did not talk very much, and then laconically.
He said: I'm not sure.”
Humayun said: “I’ve offered him the job of running the Telecom units, as we take them over. It’s still open.” Ch
arles asked: “What about it, Hiram?”
Dinkuhl appeared to rouse himself. “Very kind of everybody. I guess I'm not an organizer, though.” Charles said: “When we first met in this business—in Detroit—you said you had thought of trying to get KF transferred to Siraq. Well, here you are. Why not?”
“A misconception,” Dinkuhl said. “KF was a legacy from capitalism—Siraq was capitalist. I missed the nuances. KF stemmed from philanthropic capitalism, from capitalism in decay. Siraq is a different kind of capitalism. Military capitalism, maybe. Nearer to the roots, anyway. And the root of capitalism is giving people what they want—what they want, not what they ought to want They never wanted KF, except the cranks, and a sane and healthy society doesn't cater for the cranks.” Charles said: “Isn't there anything you want?”
“There is one thing—”
Humayun looked at his finger-watch. “I think... now!”
They looked. From the camp the leather-jacketed swarm was rising, like locusts, into the sharp blue sky. At this moment, throughout the Siraqi territory, similar swarms were setting out. Like locusts they would fasten on the neighboring lands, stripping them of their nerves and moving relentlessly on. Locusts with intelligence, locusts with a purpose. The kaleidoscope of civilization was being shaken; one could only guess into what new pattern it might settle, or whether there would be a pattern.
"Mankind is on the move again," said Professor Koupal.
“They’ll get by," Dinkuhl said. “Mankind is like Charlie; mankind is adaptable. You’ll be happy at Bhaldun, Charlie. A wife and a line of research—two lines of research. What more could you want? I hope you’ve glad I didn’t come in with you on the last break. There was no one I wanted to save from the H-bomb."
“You had thought of that? Why didn’t you, then? You wanted destruction."
The swarm had already become a cloud on the horizon, a fading cloud. Dinkuhl gestured toward it
“I prefer it spread well out.”
Humayun said: “I interrupted you just now. You were going to say there was something you wanted. If we can provide it, it’s yours.”
Dinkuhl nodded. “Very land of you. It isn’t much. I’d like the use of a camel.”
CODA
It was a part of the country from which even the aggressive Siraqi agriculture had fallen back in dismay-rocky barren ground useless for everything except grazing sheep. He had passed several flocks, tended by young boys who would presumably grow into the leather jackets that awaited them, the sun-powered wings. But this section was deserted. Dinkuhl was alone, with the camel and his thoughts. He had grown used by now to the uneasy rocking motion of his passage, and to the camel’s grunts, the flapping pad of its feet and what he suspected was the creaking of its joints.
It was night. Stars, but no moon. The stars themselves were big and brilliant in a cloudless sky. Weather, he reflected, was still on the side of Siraq. He wondered where the locusts had reached by now—Cape Town, Gibraltar, London, Moscow, Delhi?
The comet looked very big, too, and almost overhead. Great for the Cometeers. He tried to rouse disgust, or even the more detached feeling of ironical contempt, but indifference possessed him and would not be set aside. Indifference was a good armor, but a poor companion. A close one, though, and a determined one.
Indifference had come with the death of hope, and hope had died with the news Charlie had brought him, in the little room at the Averroes Institute. He had not known it then, because he had not known that hope had been with him at all, but he had understood it later.
“Destroy!” his mind had said. “Destroy!” He had not heard its quieter whisper: “That good may come from the casting down of evil.”
And suddenly he had seen Destruction in the wings, ready to move on stage, and he saw it for what it was— an ordinary player, supplanting, but essentially no different from the other players. And hope had died, unrecognized.
The Siraqis, the Managerialists, the Cometeers. . . There was nothing to despair of losing, and so there could be nothing to hope for. Was there hope without despair? Hope for hope’s sake? His mind cried irrationally: “Stay with me! Stay with me, anyway!”
Hope came with innocence, and went with knowledge. And can a man unlearn what he has learned?
“Stay with me!” his mind cried again. “Let me be a child, but stay with me. I was willing to give up everything to despair, except my knowledge. Take that, too, if I can have hope.”
He rode his swaying camel under the frost-bright stars. Ahead he could see the lights of a village, a small village but lit as though for carnival. He could hear voices singing; it was puzzling, because the village was still too far away for the songs to be from there. The voices were nearer, and at last he saw the singers, coming toward him along the stony path. They were young lads, shepherds.
They were rejoicing, and he was happy in their happiness. He tried to catch the words of their song, but he had very little understanding of the dialect. As they came abreast of him, he called out to them:
“What is the name of this village?”
Several of them answered him, but he knew what name it would be before they said it. He pricked the camel with the goad, urging it to greater speed.
He said aloud, crying to the black sky, to the stars, to the plunging comet:
“I was ready to give up knowledge for hope. And now hope and knowledge are the same.”
From the rag-bag of memory he found words—words that it surprised him to remember.
“Nunc dimittis...”
London: 24 iv 54.
John Christopher, Planet in Peril
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends