The small neat secretary, a girl in the smartest of advanced fashionable styles including a skirt slit up to the waist to display at her crotch a tuft of shiny steel wool attached to her panties, listened to the ultramodern intercom on her highly-polished desk. The sound was directionalized, of course. It was cool and quiet in here because instead of windows there were cosmoramic projections, latest of late devices to prevent the intrusion of untasteful exterior reality. Nearby the chimneys reeked a twenty-four-hour day yet the view was of clean white clouds, blue sky, yellow sun not so bright that it dazzled. Superior to the natural article, yes.
Also birds flew or perched between two layers of glass on real branches in air-conditioned environment. It was not ordinary to see birds. Very yes.
“Mr. Hideki Katsamura,” the girl said. Mr. Hideki Katsamura rose from the plastic seat, faultless imitation of natural fur without risk of disease or perhaps pejorative associations owing to demise of so many regretted species. Solid family man, well-established, excellent command of English, correctly clad with sober fabric. Unflighty. Not excessively anxious to please and bowing to secretaries as some.
The wait had been long but one understood: the pressure of urgent business.
Very modern, the girl opened the door to Dr. Hirasaku’s office by pushing a hidden button.
Later, when Dr. Hirasaku and his co-directors had clearly given instructions for the visit to America allotting the franchises for new water-purifier, also many lists of competing products to be explained inferior and amounts of bids recorded so far and further details to be studied with care, Mr. Katsamura went home to new house in suburb of Osaka where the honey-carts called promptly and the center of the street received replenishment of other household waters in landscaped rivulets arched at one-block intervals with highly artistic ancient Chinese-pattern bridges, typical of supermodern pedestrian-precinct city planning must not be jammed uptight with cars. All excellent. All nylon.
RAVELED SLEEVE
The flight they put Michael Advowson on from Paris to New York was routed via London. Subsonic; he insisted. A minor but regular feature of his practice at home had been dressing the scalds of people who had been startled by a sonic boom when picking up the kettle from the fire.
The plane was scheduled to depart Orly at 2129. It was ninety minutes late. There was a bomb scare and they had to search the baggage.
He was in first class, since he wasn’t paying the fare himself. When he came aboard he was the only passenger ahead of the dividing curtain. First class kept getting smaller and smaller, harder and harder to fill, and the airlines were always pleased when some large international organization, or a major corporation, lashed out with the higher rate by way of compensating somebody for sending him or her to a place they didn’t want to go.
But then there weren’t many people in second class, either. People didn’t fly the Atlantic any more if they could help it, except from bravado. Even if your plane wasn’t sabotaged or hijacked, it was certain to be behind schedule.
Not that there was much to be said for ocean travel either, since the sinking of the Paolo Rizzi last summer and the drowning of thirteen hundred passengers in a sea made foul by a hundred and eighty thousand tons of oil from the tanker she’d collided with.
Moral, definitely: stay home.
When they shut off the appalling Muzak, he tried to doze, and nearly made it, but was awoken by the order to fasten his seat belt for the landing at London, which effectively put paid to his chances of sleeping for the moment.
Here, two new passengers took the seats across the aisle from him. In the nearer there was a pretty blonde girl with a drawn, sad expression, and in the window seat a dark-haired man some years her senior who was snoring almost before the plane took off again.
In the vast dim insulated cabin, feeling like Jonah in the belly of the great fish, Michael sat railing against fate.
Why me? Why pick me from the quiet fields of Ireland and pitch me into the horrible battlegrounds of the world?
Oh, intellectually he knew very well the reasons for his being selected. Irishmen had often been the mainstay of a UN peace-keeping force; as ex-MO, still on the reserve, who had recently come to the attention of a wide public because he had kicked up a noisy fuss over the slaughtering of cattle which were not in fact suffering an infectious disease ... Everywhere there had been the gantlets of reporters to run, incompetently aided by minor officials of WHO and/or the Commission on Refugees. He detested public life, which was why he had opted for a quiet country practice instead of the posts he could have had his pick of in major city hospitals, advancing to consultant rank before forty, but condemned to involvement in hospital politics, subservient to committees of civil servants—no thanks, he had said, very firmly.
But this he hadn’t been able to turn down.
Now when he closed his eyes he saw that poor child Eileen who had nearly lost her toe, multiplied over and over and turned black. He’d never before understood, in the guts where it counts, the misery a modern war could cause.
They had shown him the state people still were in at Noshri, victims of mindless terror, dazed, incapable of concentrating on the simplest tasks, often unable to work out how to feed themselves. Then they had flown him back to Paris, to meet the handful of other victims being cared for in good hospital conditions because Professor Duval was studying them. He had taken with him, in a portfolio chained to his wrist, a sample of Nutripon which, during his stay at Noshri, had been discovered in a cellar—a hole in the ground, really—half-filling a shell-case, a hoard perhaps put away by someone who did not believe there would be more food tomorrow, and who had gone insane or died before returning to eat the rest of what he had been given. He had taken part in the examination of it, watched the analysis, supervised the administration of minute doses to laboratory rats and monkeys ... There could be no doubt any longer; the food was poisoned. But it remained to be determined how, when, where.
So now to New York, to the UN. When he had never been further from Ireland before than on visits to relatives in Glasgow, Liverpool and London. Often, during the army service which entitled him to his rank of captain and the uniform he was currently compelled to wear since he was traveling on official business, he’d talked to people who had served with peace-keeping forces, sensed the vague pride they felt at being recruited to a cause that had as yet barely been invented, that larger and wealthier countries seemed to despise.
He had tried to encourage that pride in himself. He hadn’t had much success.
“What’s the uniform?”
An unexpected question from the girl across the aisle as the plane settled to its cruising altitude.
“Ah ... Irish Army, miss.”
“Do they approve of foreign soldiers invading America?” There was a hard bright sneer on her face, a hard bright edge of sarcasm on her voice.
He sighed, and turned his jacket—hanging from a hook at the side of his seat—to display the green-and-white UN brassard on its arm. The world-map symbol was becoming better known as the people of the planet became more frightened of themselves.
“Are you going to the UN, then?”
“Yes.”
“Me too. What for?”
“I’m testifying before the inquiry into the Noshri disaster.”
“So am I.”
He blinked at her in surprise.
“You don’t believe me?” Her tone was mocking. “Then you don’t know who I am. I’m Lucy Ramage. I’m a nurse. I was working at Noshri. I saw what those devils did.” The words had an eerie quality in the thrumming twilit cylinder of the plane. “I’m going to tell the world about it, too. You know they locked me up to try and stop me? Said I was crazy and dumped me in a mental home. Well, maybe it’s true. What I went through would drive anybody insane. This is the guy who got me out, snoring beside me. Without him I’d still be behind bars. Señor Arriegas, that’s his name, but he lets me call him Fernando. He’s from the Uruguayan Embassy i
n London.”
The mention of her name had struck a chord in Michael’s memory; he’d heard about this girl from one of the doctors at Noshri, a big Swede called Bertil or something. But the reference to Uruguay altered the whole perspective. What in the world could have interested the Tupamaros in a nurse from—wasn’t it New Zealand?—who had been working in Africa? Purely because they didn’t want to miss another chance to foment anti-American feeling? They were, everyone knew, embittered; when they seized power in the midst of the chaos their sabotage and Robin Hood-style attacks had created, the United States had kicked Uruguay out of the OAS, like Cuba, and then attempted to banish them from the UN as well. Thanks to a brilliant coup by the Secretary-General, who whistled up the support not only of both communist blocs but of all but a handful of the nominally neutralist nations, the motion had been overwhelmingly defeated.
So, fuming, Washington had had to choose between expelling the entire UN from its soil—a move that had a lot of backing, of course—and permitting these avowed Marxist-Maoists to enter the States. The compromise had been to let them in, but only on UN passports, not those of their own country. A fiction, and everyone knew it, but at least it had saved the rest of the world from ganging up on America.
Lucy had gone on while he was reviewing all this. He heard her say, “You know, back home in New Zealand I never thought much about politics. I never voted. If I had, I suppose I might have been a Liberal. I only went to work for Globe Relief because it was a chance to travel, see the world before I got married and settled down. It’s a good place for kids, New Zealand. I mean I have three nieces and a nephew and they’re all okay. But then I saw all those horrors at Noshri and I realized What they say about the Americans isn’t just propaganda, it’s all true Have you been to Noshri?”
“Yes.” Michael’s voice felt like gravel in his throat. It was becoming clearer by the minute that this girl was mentally disoriented, to put it kindly. She had all the signs: wandering gaze, high-pitched nonstop talking, irrelevance of affect, the lot. How to break off this unwished-for conversation without being downright insulting? Which would certainly lead to a big fuss.
“Yes, I saw in Noshri what the imperialists are doing,” Lucy went on, staring straight ahead now. “The rich countries have ruined what they own, so they’re out to steal from the people who have a little left. They want the copper, the zinc, the tin, the oil. And of course there’s the timber, which is getting scarce.” She sounded as though she was reciting a memorized list. Probably was. “Now they’ve thought of a new way to get it—drive everybody crazy so they can’t set up a strong stable independent government. It nearly worked at Noshri, would have done but for General Kaika, so now they’re trying it in Honduras.”
Michael started. He knew, of course, that there had been some sort of rebellion there, and that the government had called on American aid, but this was the first he’d heard of this particular accusation.
“Ah, you don’t want to talk about it, do you?” the girl said. “Your mind’s made up and you don’t want to be confused with any more facts!” She crowed with laughter and turned her back, curling up on her seat, knees doubled up and her hands interlocked around them.
The plane droned on through the black sky, above the clouds masking the Atlantic. It suddenly occurred to Michael that he ought to look at the moon. He hadn’t seen it all the time he was in Paris, nor the stars.
He slid up the blind of his window and peered out. There was no moon visible. When he consulted his diary he discovered that it had set, a tiny sliver, at exactly the time the plane had taken off from London.
Turn right and go home. (He realized he was in his home time zone.)
Wish I could.
APRIL
HERO FIDDLING
Hey, man with the big muscles!
Yes, you!
Steam-powered, gas-powered, electrically-powered,
You with the big concrete and cement footprints!
Globe-girdler, continent-tamer, putting the planet through hoops,
You I hail!
Packer and preserver of food in incorruptible cans,
Blocker-out of winter-blast with bricks and mortar,
Wheeled, shod, tracked with rails of shining iron,
Multiplier of goods and chattels, chewer-up of forests,
Furrow-maker across the unpopulous plains,
Flier higher than eagles, swimmer swifter than sharks,
Trafficker in the world’s wealth, miracle-worker,
I salute you, I sing your praises ...
—“Song of the States Unborn,” 1924
A VICTIM OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR
“I’ve done my best,” Gerry Thorne said, sounding aggrieved, and well he might be. Both he and Moses Greenbriar had been doing nicely out of the aid shipments from the Bamberley hydroponics plant—half a cent per person fed had added up to a considerable sum over the years. Moreover, several of the left and center group in Congress, small though that might nowadays be, had been advocating purchase of Nutripon by organizations like Earth Community Chest to maintain the welfare allotments in major cities where right-wing mayors were axing their welfare budgets on grounds of economy. There had been fairly widespread starvation during the past winter.
“I can’t work miracles,” he added.
Well ... maybe only conjuring tricks. Like this second home in the Virgins, splendid with its high stone-and-timber walls and this verandah on which you could pretty often sit right outdoors, provided the wind was from the south, not from the fetid puddle of the Gulf of Mexico or the colossal revolving sewer of the Sargasso. Never mind that the venom of the Trainites had reached this far and there was a fading line of skull-and-crossbones symbols facing the sea. Nobody really begrudged such luxury to a man who’d made his money in a Good Cause. He might have gone to work for DuPont.
The most remarkable thing of all was that you could still swim from here; although the Canary Current did sometimes sweep the ordure of Europe this far over, the Antilles Current came from the relatively cleanly coast of underdeveloped South America. This morning’s Coast Guard bulletin had said the water was okay, so Elly Greenbriar and Nancy Thorne were proving it.
“But where the hell did the stuff come from? The drug, the whatever!” Thorne’s question was rhetorical; the UN inquiry had been set up to determine exactly that.
“Well, it wasn’t the factory,” Greenbriar said, and took another sip of his gin. “We asked the Federal Narcotics Bureau for one of their top forensic chemists, and he tested fifty random samples from the warehouse. All clean. We’re set to give his report to the inquiry next week, but it won’t be much help.”
“I guess not. We’ve got everybody against us now, from the stinking isolationists who ‘don’t see why we should give away our precious food to ungrateful bastards,’ clear to the ungrateful bastards themselves. Anyway, a denial never catches up with a rumor. Did you hear about the raid on San Diego, for example? Some crazy Mex-Tup kid—say, you heard that one? Petronella Page used it on her show the other night. Mex-Tup kid! I thought it was kind of neat.”
“What do you mean, raid?” grunted Greenbriar. “Raids, plural. Three so far, according to my cousin Sophie.”
“How many?”
“Three. Sophie’s lived out there for twenty years, but when she called me the other day she said she’s thinking of moving back east. After the first raid they had another—they don’t think it was the same gang, because the payload was thermite instead of napalm—and then there was a third that burned out a block of black tenements.”
“Bastards,” Thorne said. “Burning people in their homes, hell!” His eyes were following a ship that had emerged into blurred view from the haze to the north: new and smart, one of the latest deep-trawling fish factories designed to bring up squid from the relatively safe bottom water. Surface fish nowadays were either so rare as to be prohibitively expensive, like cod and herring, or hopelessly high in dangerous substances such as orga
nic mercury. But so far squid were generally okay.
“Is that the second or third we’ve seen today?” Greenbriar asked.
“Third. Must be a good season for fishing ... I imagine you told your cousin she ought to move?”
“Oh, I’ve been telling her since the LA quake of ‘71, but of course she’d have taken such a loss on her home ... Still, I guess she’s finally made up her mind.”
“Speaking of losses,” Thorne murmured, “did you have stock in Angel City?”
Greenbriar gave a rueful smile.
“Me too. And they went through the floor. I switched into Puritan, but I lost a packet even so.”
“You take my advice,” Greenbriar said, “you switch right back out of Puritan.”
“Why in the world? They’re a Syndicate operation, aren’t they? Which makes them just about the solidest stock in the market.”
“Oh, sure, anything the Syndicate is backing turns to gold. But”—Greenbriar dropped his voice—“I hear gossip. Maybe only scuttlebutt, of course. Even so ...”
“Such as what?”
“The Trainites are after them.”
“Impossible!” Thorne jolted upright in his chair. “But the Trainites are on their side, always have been!”
“Then why are they conducting massive analyses of Puritan products?”
“Who says they are? Or even if they are, what does it signify? You know how paranoid they are about what they eat.”
“Paranoid enough to enlist Lucas Quarrey of Columbia?”
Thorne stared.
“It’s a fact,” Greenbriar said. “I know someone who knows him; in fact he’s done some minor contract work for the Trust now and then. Apparently he was discreetly approached the other day and asked if he would coordinate this project the Trainites’ own chemists have already launched.”