“It made me ashamed—that’s what did it! It made me ashamed to see them running to save their own skins and not one trying to help the man on the ground!”
Hurt by the gibe because it came from a foreigner, and worse yet from a round-eye, Totilung said stiffly, “But when a mucker—”
“Yes, someone had told them you can’t cope with a mucker! But I did it, didn’t I? I got so furious at seeing this herd of cowards, I went for him. I must have been mad with rage, or…”
He checked himself. Totilung said, “Go on. Say what you were going to say.”
“Or else I wouldn’t have pushed him through the glass door.” Nausea boiled up his stomach at the memory.
Totiling sat quite still for a good thirty seconds, her square masculine face giving no clue to her thoughts. At last she switched off the recorder and rose.
“There is a lot more I should like to know,” she said. “But as things are…” She shrugged. “I will add only a word of warning.”
“What?”
“We in Yatakang do not much care for expert assassins who drop in from other countries. From now on until you leave I shall make sure that you are watched—partly because of what you have done, much more because of what you may be going to do.”
She turned on her heel and Constable Song leapt to open the door for her. Across the threshold as she went out Donald heard her say to someone, “All right, you can see him now.”
* * *
Yatakangi medical treatment might have helped Donald’s abused body; it couldn’t reach in to salve his horrified mind. Thirty-four years of easygoing existence had not prepared him to hear someone call him an expert assassin and realise it was a true description. Distracted, he barely paid attention when his new visitor came in accompanied by the same nurse he had found by his bed on waking.
“Mr. Hogan?” the man said, and repeated, “Mr. Hogan…?”
Donald forced his head to turn, and recognised the man with the bald crown whose life he had saved from the mucker. Upright instead of sprawling, he now had a tantalising air of familiarity, as though long ago his face had appeared on a TV screen.
He uttered a mechanical greeting in Yatakangi. The man responded in good English. “Please, let me speak your language—it’s a long time since I had the opportunity. English is—ah—out of fashion here these days … Well! Sir, I wish first of all to express my gratitude and admiration, but I think words are too feeble to do that.”
It’s the last thing in the world I’d want to be admired for, and as for thanks I don’t deserve them.
But it was too great an effort to explain that. Donald sighed and gave a nod. He said, “Ah—I don’t believe I know your name.”
“My name is Sugaiguntung,” said the man.
I believe in logic, the sequence of cause and effect, and in science its only begotten son our law, which was conceived by the ancient Greeks, thrived under Isaac Newton, suffered under Albert Einstein …
That fragment of a “creed for materialists” which a friend in college had once shown to him rose through Donald’s confused mind. Simultaneously he seemed to be thinking I don’t believe in coincidences like this and it was right outside the building where he works and Christ what a time to find myself face to face with him.
The situation was so absurd he found himself having to repress a hysterical giggle, and Sugaiguntung looked alarmed, as though suspecting that he might be choking. He gestured at the nurse to come forward, but Donald mastered his fit of idiot amusement.
“I feel like laughing at myself for not recognising you,” he mumbled. “I’m very sorry—won’t you sit down?”
Very cautiously—presumably because of the sword-cut across his buttocks—Sugaiguntung lowered himself to the chair Totilung had vacated. Leaning forward with an earnest expression, he said, “Sir, I understand you’re a reporter. Since you might now be writing my obituary…” He hesitated. “Well, such a debt can never be repaid. But possibly there’s something I could do that would be of professional use? An exclusive interview, a guided tour of my laboratories? Ask as much of my time as you like. But for you, I’d have no time at all.”
Like a man on the border of drunkenness trying not to give away the state he is in, Donald fought to order his chaotic thoughts. Helped by the trank, he grew calm. Reviewing in memory what Sugaiguntung had just said, he was struck by the curious turn of phrase he had employed, and a relay closed in that part of his mind where he stored tiny details noted long ago, about such matters as not snapping one’s fingers in Yatakang.
Christ, that would be a dirty trick to play on him! But I’m soiled already, and it would short-cut me out of this hateful, horrible country …
He studied Sugaiguntung from the corner of his eye. He knew the scientist was in his middle fifties. Perhaps that made him old enough to adhere to some of the ancient ways which the Solukarta government was propagandising against. It was worth taking the chance.
There was, or had been, a Yatakangi belief that if one man saved another’s life, the man saved must put himself—once only—absolutely at his rescuer’s disposal, to do something if need be which would cost the life the rescuer had earned. Not until he fulfilled this obligation could he call his life his own again.
He said suddenly, “All right, professor. There is one thing I want from you.”
Sugaiguntung cocked his head alertly.
“Professor, I’m not just a reporter.” I’m an expert assassin—STOP THAT! “I took my degree in biology and wrote my doctorate thesis in palaeogenetics. The reason I was sent here—the reason why it was so ridiculous for me not to have recognised you at once—well, I’m here to cover the genetic optimisation programme, of course. As I understand it, your government has pledged itself to do two things, and used your name as a guarantee that they will be done. First they’re going to clean up Yatakangi heredity and ensure that only sound stock survives. And then they’re going to breed an improved model of man.
“Experts in my country find it hard to believe that with its present resources of trained geneticists your government can keep even the first part of its promise, and nobody at all except yourself could bring about the second.
“So let me ask you straight out whether it can be done. Because if not—well, sure I’d like to have an exclusive interview, sure I’d like to tour your labs. But it would be a waste of time.”
Hearing himself speak, he wondered if he was being a fool. As Keteng had said, Americans lacked subtlety, and that was about the crudest possible approach.
There was a silence which seemed to drag on towards eternity. He could hardly credit his senses when at last he saw Sugaiguntung move his head once from side to side: no.
Forgetful of bruises and cuts, he jerked himself into a sitting position. He ignored the nurse as she darted to adjust the head of the bed.
“Professor, do you mean—?”
Sugaiguntung leapt from his chair and began to pace back and forth. “If I don’t confide the truth to someone,” he snapped with un-Yatakangi fierceness, “I shall myself go out of my mind! I shall turn mucker like my miserable student today! Mr. Hogan!” His voice dropped almost to a whisper. “I’m a loyal and patriotic citizen of my country—this is my home and I love it dearly! But is it not a man’s responsibility to save what he loves from the stupidity of someone else?”
Donald nodded, astonished at the reaction he had called forth, like peering down the crater of Grandfather Loa and finding that the mists had parted to show bright lava, red as flowers.