He’s looking at me as though that should be enough. I don’t understand. He rolls his hands over one another, slow and fluid, reeling in his thoughts. Then he nods.
“Imagine,” the Bey says, “that your wife was trapped in the mud in front of Piper 90, and she could not escape. What would Huster do?”
I shiver. “Stop the rig.”
“Yes. But Jorgmund would not. It would not see her. Jorgmund would roll on over her because the only thing it understands is the Pipe. Huster wouldn’t let that happen.”
“I don’t think Fust or van Meents would either.”
“Almost certainly not. But are you as sure of them as you are of Huster?”
I try to be. I fail. They just might take a little longer.
“No, I guess I’m not.”
“So: they stop the rig. Your wife is saved. Piper 90 is a day behind schedule. No problem for Huster or for us. But Jorgmund doesn’t understand: oh, there’s a good reason for the delay, but when the annual report is processed, it’s still a delay. Fust and van Meents are replaced with someone whose priorities are closer to that of Jorgmund. And then the person who replaces them is replaced later for the same thing . . . Do you see? Sooner or later you arrive at someone who is not human, not really; someone who is just a cog. And at what point along the way does the executive in charge of Piper 90 let it roll on over someone?” He wobbles his hand in the air, flutters the fingers. “How long before the Pipe is more important than a life? Or a home? Or a river which feeds a village? How long before the convenience of the Pipe is more important than these things?”
“I don’t know. Maybe never.”
“But Jorgmund already thinks that way. For Jorgmund, everything is judged by that one criterion: How did the day advance the Pipe? That’s it. Only the people within the structure can temper it, and those who do will naturally be selected out.”
“Maybe.”
The Bey shrugs. “I didn’t see it at first, when it happened to me. I thought I was fighting against greedy, evil men. And then I began to realise that they were just ordinary men, but that what was happening inside them was very strange. They were behaving as if they were evil. As if they hated us. The consequences of their actions were horrible. They deposed a just ruler—not a brilliant man, but a perfectly good, sensible one—because he would not give them money he did not owe them. They invaded his country and burned it and cast its people out into the wilderness, then installed a madman on the throne and called him a statesman. He plundered the wealth of the people and took the daughters of Addeh for concubines and outlawed their brothers who protested. So we rose up, and we fought him, though mostly we just stole from him and bilked him and made him angry. And then this poor nation was invaded again, by a hundred different armies, and they ate our food and diverted our rivers and we starved and thirsted and died in the crossfire. In the space of two decades they took a prosperous land which was waking to the modern world and transformed it into a battlefield of blood and burning trees. And all the time I could not understand why. There was no human reason for this. There wasn’t enough money, enough gold or oil or diamonds or rare earths, in all of the mountains or the lakes of Addeh Katir to pay for any of this. It was futile. It made no sense. Only an idiot would engage in such a battle.”
Zaher Bey’s voice is catching just a little. He’s not shouting or declaiming, but there’s a terrible intensity in what he says, a dreadful inspiration.
“An idiot or a machine. The All Asian Investment and Progressive Banking Group was a machine for making money. And Addeh Katir was refusing to pay. It didn’t matter that the outlay was greater than the debt. We could not be allowed to default. That would have ground the gears and shattered the engine. It can go in only one direction. So it rolled over us. Do you see? It rolled over us. And this will be the same.”
I’m not sure. It makes sense, but it’s also rather dark. There are so many things which would have to go wrong. And so many people who would have to be lazy, or wicked. It seems farfetched. Zaher Bey shrugs and finishes his beer, tilting it all the way back so that the foam slides into his mouth, and throws out his arms.
“Enough! I am a pessimistic old man at a party. Blah, blah, blah! Enough! I shall teach these young ones to dance, or I shall die in the attempt. Where is the band? Make music! Let the revels commence!” He leaps to his feet and raises his voice. “I am here! I am Zaher ibn Solomon Bey, Freeman of Addeh Katir, and I am the Prince of the Funky Chicken, Sultan of the Ineffable Conga!” A rousing cheer goes up, and he plunges into the throng. And somewhere there actually is a band, and he locates them and works out a tune which will satisfy him, and he grasps Huster by the arm and creates a cancan line, right there in the middle of the room.
I come home late, but not as late as Leah, who is working the late shift at the infirmary. She shuffles into bed as the sky is going pale and presses her cold nose against my back.
“I love you,” she says.
I love her too. I think I say it, but perhaps I just make a little grunt. Either way, she is content. The pressure of her nose does not abate.
HUSTER LEAVES. We wave him off, and we go on with life. I don’t think about Zaher Bey’s worries for a while. No immediate catastrophe comes calling, and Hellen Fust makes some good decisions, a few things get tightened up and a couple of minor spats are sorted out rather well. She has a winning smile and a practical manner. She’s not Huster, but she’s not an idiot. She’ll do. Van Meents keeps a lower profile, but he’s no dead weight either. So I begin to think maybe the Bey was just maudlin drunk, which can happen to anyone, even heroes, and there’s no question in my mind that’s what he is. A genuinely good man. I don’t see him very much, because Leah and I are busy kludging together some furniture and making a home up in our weird little V-shaped apartment (one of Rao Tsur’s friends sends us some dried flowers and Veda herself appears with a charcoal sketch of Shangri-La she did from memory, in a frame made of fan belt and the offcut from some decking), but occasionally I glimpse him riding out with one of the teams or talking to people in the roof garden. The rest of the Katiris sort of fade away: they don’t find jobs in Piper 90, and they don’t settle up the line. They’re around, you can hear them and glimpse them, but they keep themselves to themselves. I figure maybe they’re just trying to find a bit of quiet and be them for a while. I work, and play, and sleep, and the food on Piper 90 gets a bit better, and somehow a few months slip past me.
Until we come on the Found Thousand, and I get in over my head—again.
IT BEGINS with a piece of string and a stick. More accurately, a piece of twine. The twine and the stick are interlinked in a simple-yet-effective style to make a snare. The snare is occupied by a small, strange thing like a bald rabbit with the head of a fish. It hisses at me as I go near. I back away. It tries to bite Samuel P. instead. He shrugs, unlimbers his gun, and converts it into a slick, ichory smear: BANG.
The shot doesn’t echo. It sort of whispers away into the trees around us, giving the impression it is going to cover a lot of ground. Everyone looks around—everyone being me and Gonzo, and Annie and Bone, and Tobemory Trent.
“Sam,” says Gonzo, “if we are ambushed in the next twenty minutes by anthropophagous plants or by giant fish-rabbits looking for their horrid young, I am going to let them have you. In fact I will serve you to them on a plate made of banana leaves. I will put a white napkin over my arm and I will carry you into their dining room with an apple in your mouth, and I will offer to carve you. I will recommend a fullbodied red wine, because I suspect your meat will be gamey or even smoked, and I will bow until my nose touches the vile, gobbet-covered carpet of their lair and wish them bon appétit, and then I will walk out and consider myself richer and the world a better, less arsehole-ridden place.” Sam just stares at him, because this sort of discourse is not his daily fare, and Gonzo sighs. “Sam,” Gonzo says, “don’t do that again.”
We move on.
The forest is tropical; it i
s pungent with funk and perfume. It smells like the dressing room of an exceptionally expensive and environmentally conscious prostitute. Turn your head one way, and your nose is teased by a fine scent of sherbert and musk. Turn the other way, something trufflish and blatantly rude slips into your mouth and makes you swallow. This is a basic place, all reproduction and hunting and raw meat. It is like a woman who once visited Caucus to talk about the New Russo-Slav Feminism. She arrived at dinner in the sort of dress your mother would wear, with a Peter Pan collar and Shakespearean sleeves, but she was wearing it open to somewhere just below her ribs. She smoked vile black cigarettes, and when she moved—which was often, because she spoke with her hands and her shoulders and with everything she had—her very white, very round bosoms (quite clearly not breasts or knockers or even tatas, but the genuine, incontestable bosoms of a curvaceous forty-nine-year-old woman who isn’t wearing a brassiere) sallied forth individually or together to view the scene. It was my strong suspicion then, as it is now, that she took Sebastian to her bed that night and nearly killed him.
Svetlana Yegorova would have loved this forest.
We push through the undergrowth, all of us feeling that we are undressing someone we shouldn’t be. We aren’t exactly hiding, not after Samuel P.’s clarion call shot; we just go cautiously, as you might in the new world. We check in with one another, covering our backs. We retain a knowledge of where we might defend ourselves, where we might fall back, and where not to get stuck. And then we round a corner and there is a clearing and a small fortified village with little neat houses crouched behind a stone and wood stockade. It is—and this is not usually the case with fortified settlements in the new world—pretty. The houses are solid and strong, but they are also quaint. I find myself looking for bric-a-brac in the windows. People who live in lovely small houses inevitably feel the urge to line their windows with primary school paintings and china dogs from the seaside. The rich woodwork and weathered stone vanishes under strata of postcards, biscuit crumbs, carpet fluff and cat hair.
No bric-a-brac. But that’s hardly surprising. These houses are recent, and it’s not as if there’s been either the time or—as I look at them—the leisure to assemble that kind of crap. These houses are scarred and pocked. They have seen hard use. They have been shot at, bludgeoned and burned. Little pig, little pig . . . Was the first version of this village made of thatch? How many householders got roasted by the local bad guys (perhaps adult rabbit-fish breathe fire) before they managed to put this place together? Because the more I look at it, the more I realise that this is a defensible village, and it has been defended. Those little ripples in the grass have grown up around sharpened pegs protruding a few inches from the soil. No fun at all charging the walls over a field of those. You’d want very heavy boots, or caterpillar tracks. Shoes or tyres would be pierced, with obvious consequences. There is a safe path, but it curves and winds in on itself. Plenty of time for the defenders to pick you off if there is need. And once you are inside the wall—no mean feat—there are no sight lines except from the roofs. The houses create a winding maze of streets around the centre of the village. You’d pay for every metre.
Real go-getters, then. Real survivors. People who have had it rough and come through. Our kind of people, in fact. Gonzo is grinning widely as he threads his way to the gate and bangs on it. It makes the kind of dull noise which very, very solid things make. He bangs louder. There is a small door set into the main one, a Judas port. In the Judas port there is a viewing slot. It opens, and someone views us. Then she speaks.
“Go away.”
“We’re not bandits,” Gonzo says. “We don’t need supplies. We’re not looking to move in either. We’ve got some good news.” He’s almost embarrassed, and you can hear it in his voice.
“And who are you?” she says.
“My name’s Gonzo Lubitsch,” Gonzo replies, and in for a penny, in for a pound: “I’m here to rescue you. We can take you to a safe place. No monsters. We’re making the world right again.”
There is a sort of choked snort from the other side of the door.
“Is that so?”
“Yes!”
She chuckles.
“We have a safe place, Gonzo-Lubitsch-I’m-here-to-rescue-you,” says the lady behind the grille. “We don’t need yours. So why don’t you walk back down the path, and run back through the forest, and go rescue someone else? We won’t hold it against you. We’ll be fine. Thanks, though.”
She shuts the grille firmly, though not rudely, and not all of our polite knockings can draw her back again. We hang around for a while feeling stupid and then go back to Piper 90.
Hellen Fust and Ricardo van Meents are not pleased.
The problem is a small one, but it comes at a key point. The village is in a strategically and logistically important location. To the south, there’s a stretch of water tentatively identified as a major sea. To the north, the land becomes rugged and mountainous, so that while we could build the Pipe through it, we couldn’t actually take Piper 90 up there, so we’d have to slow down and do it at one remove, the leading end of the construction moving farther and farther from our base of operations, becoming more and more exposed, until a midway point where Piper 90 would move around to the far end and all work would have to stop until contact was re-established, some five weeks later (one kilometre per hour times twenty-four hours times seven days times fives weeks is eight hundred and forty kilometres), putting us way behind, even without factoring in the extra distance and the fact that the final route of the Pipe would be inaccessible, unmaintainable and indefensible.
Piper 90 is going through that village, one way or another. And since Piper 90 is a large heavy thing made of steel, and it is wider than the whole of the town, that pretty much means the village will cease to exist.
The Advisory Panel is asked if there’s any way around this. Hellen Fust comes all the way down from a meeting in the top level. She asks, politely, if anyone has a remedy for the situation. She asks most particularly of Zaher Bey. He doesn’t answer. He just sits and glowers from beneath his brows, and contemplates her as if she is a moderately noxious insect.
“I don’t see any alternative,” Hellen Fust says.
“It’s very upsetting,” Hellen Fust says.
“If there were a more holistically appealing way of dealing with the situation which was satisfying to everyone, I’d be the first to advocate it,” Hellen Fust says.
“But without that I’m going to have to recommend that we continue as planned, and inform these people—with regret—that we’re going to have to relocate them,” Hellen Fust says.
“You mean we should just roll right on over their homes,” Zaher Bey says abruptly. Hellen Fust looks at him as if he’s being insufferably rude. The Bey looks across at me. His dark, angry eyes rest on mine. I look away.
Huster could not have solved this either, I am telling myself. He would have had to make the same choice, although maybe he could have persuaded those people it was for the best. Perhaps the difference, in the end, is that Hellen Fust does not go out to the village to tell the inhabitants what is going to happen. She sends us instead.
“I APPRECIATE you’ve had some bad experiences,” Gonzo says persuasively. “A lot of people have. But we’re here to make it all okay again. You don’t have to be afraid. We’ll take care of you.”
“We don’t need taking care of,” says the woman behind the grille patiently. “We can take care of ourselves. We are alive, after all.”
Gonzo is soft-pedalling. He wants to make this their choice, so that he doesn’t have to be a stormtrooper. It’s not working for him. Perhaps the woman—her name is Dina—perhaps she is used to smooth-talking men at her door. Or perhaps she can hear in Gonzo’s voice the tension and the regret, and she’s torturing him a little before giving in to the inevitable. Gonzo waves me over. Take charge, he is saying, and more quietly, do the deed.
Because my honour is negotiable, and his is not.
>
I take his place in front of the grille.
“Hi,” Dina says chirpily. I smile at her. I sit down on the ground and look up at the doors, and she has to stand on tiptoe (I know this because I can see her eyes drop out of sight and then hop back into view as she looks for me again) to see me.
“Your houses look pretty solid,” I say after a bit.
“Yes. They are.”
“Taken a beating too.”
“They have.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Lots of kinds.”
I was hoping to get more out of that line of questioning, to be honest. After a second or two of silence, Dina continues.
“Shark things. With legs.”
“Nasty.”
“Very.”
“And some soldiers.”
“Real ones?”
Dina sighs.
“Mostly, it’s been desperate people. They see what we have and they think they can just have it. We show them otherwise.”
“Yeah. I’m sure.” Just as I’m sure they can’t stop Piper 90, when it comes. The stone I’m sitting on is quite comfy. I shuffle on it, using the roughness to scratch an itch on my leg.