I want out. I want out. I want OUT!
A hand touched him on the shoulder. He jumped and whirled and it was only Bronwen come to see what had become of him. She moved so silently he had not heard her approach.
“It was my head office,” Donald said. “Pleased with what I’ve done.”
The words tasted filthy on his tongue.
context (23)
TO BE AVOIDED
Transcript—SECRET—for secure file
Dr. Corning (at State)
We have Scramble A on, don’t we? Good, yes, we do. Dick, sorry to bother you.
Mr. Richard Ruze (Engrelay)
No trouble, Raphael. What can we do for you that we aren’t doing already?
Dr. Corning
Yes, we are asking a lot of you just now, aren’t we? I have to ask something else, though, I’m afraid. You’re carrying this tremendous story filed by the man you sent to Gongilung, Donald Hogan—
Mr. Ruze
Yes, it’s wonderful, isn’t it? We’re extremely grateful to you for giving him to us—we didn’t expect to get anything out of him, let alone a sensaysh like this.
Dr. Corning
I’m sorry, I didn’t quite follow that. It unscrambled as something about giving him to you and I think it must—
Mr. Ruze
You mean you don’t know about that?
Dr. Corning
(inaudible)
Mr. Ruze
He’s one of your own people. We’re giving him his cover for the trip—hired him as a special correspondent. That was what I thought you had in mind when you said we were doing a lot for you at—
Dr. Corning
No, Dick, I was thinking of something else entirely. A matter I guess is uppermost in my mind. Well, look, this means you’re going to feel I’m applying leverage, but—
Mr. Ruze
Lever away, Raphael. We show a sheeting great profit on the Hogan scene so far and we can afford to be generous.
Dr. Corning
I’ll go straight to the point, then. You know we run trend-studies on all the big media. Our computers say you’re liable to involve Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere in the Yatakangi scene soon. (Pause of 8 sec.) All right, you didn’t say yes, but we were right last time and the time before.
Mr. Ruze
You want it not. Tell me why?
Dr. Corning
Yatakang means one thing to the audience right now, and we’re taking that subject straight and slow.
Mr. Ruze
I have Shalmaneser time booked for SCANALYZER as usual in an hour or so. I put in a Yatakangi programme for evaluation.
Dr. Corning
Think he’ll tell me the details? I’d like a sight of that, if you don’t mind, to see if it agrees our own study.
Mr. Ruze
Which said …
Dr. Corning
Gave them a sixty-forty chance of bringing it off when we first checked. We programmed in some new material about Yatakangi human resources and dragged it down to fifty-fifty. Since then we’ve been re-evaluating every forty-eight hours and currently it’s seventy-three to twenty seven against. (Pause of 11 sec.)
Mr. Ruze
I see. You think it might raise false hopes.
Dr. Corning
The impact of Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere would give the claim sort of automatic cachet. It would save you possible later embarrassment and us a lot of definite problems if you—
Mr. Ruze
I read you. Guess we can send them back to MAMP … By the way, Raphael, when you asked us to lay that on heavy you hinted there was a big breakthrough due shortly. It’s a long time and no roughage.
Dr. Corning
On that, we have eighty-two to eighteen in favour. When it breaks ninety the whole story will bust loose.
Mr. Ruze
It’d better be worth the wait.
Dr. Corning
I so testify. Well, thanks very much, Dick—glad you saw what I set course for.
Mr. Ruze
Don’t I always? I’ll call you the results from Shal when I have them. ’Bye.
Dr. Corning
’Bye.
continuity (30)
TURN HER ON AND LET HER ROLL
At the head of his cabinet table, in the rather mean and ill-maintained Parliament building, President Obomi struggled to focus his surviving eye on those who had joined him. There was a small patch where vision blurred into meaningless dots and swirls; the doctors said something about a retinal trauma and talked of optic nerve regrafting and regretted that it would take a month to heal if they did operate. There might, now, be a month to spare. He hoped so.
Immediately to his left were Ram Ibusa and Leon Elai; beyond them, Kitty Gbe sat next to Gideon Horsfall. Facing the president from the foot of the table was Elihu Masters. And on the other side were the representatives from GT led by Norman House.
“Well?” said the president at length.
Norman licked his lips and pushed across the shiny top of the table a thick pile of green printouts from Shalmaneser.
“It’ll work,” he said, and wondered what he would have done if he had not been able to utter that simple phrase.
“Have you any reservations, Norman?” Elihu inquired.
“I—no. None. I don’t believe anyone else has.”
Terence, Worthy, Consuela, all shook their heads. Their faces had a uniformly dazed expression, as though they found it impossible to accept the evidence of their own judgment.
“So we think it will work,” the president said. “Ought it to be done? Leon?”
Dr. Leon Elai also clutched a thick file of Shalmaneser printouts. He said, “Zad, I’ve never had material like this to work with before. I’ve barely had time to read it, there’s so much! But I’ve extracted a kind of digest, and…”
“Let me hear it, please.”
“Well, first there are the problems with our neighbours.” Dr. Elai extracted a handwritten white sheet from among the stack of green. “The probabilities are high that for about two years there will be accusations against us for submitting to neo-colonialism. By that time the economic pressure to cooperate in the subsidiary aspects of the project such as placing contracts for manufactures which will by then show signs of being cheaper here than anywhere else on the continent will tend to reduce their violence. Also there will be a chance for them to buy cheap power from us. Within a decade at most, it says, they will become reconciled to the idea.
“Chinese and Egyptian interference is likely to be worse and go on longer. However, we can count on South African support, Kenyan, Tanzanian—shall I read the list?”
“Tell us how it comes out on balance.”
“There appears to be no chance of outside intervention halting the project unless some country is prepared to launch a major missile attack on us. And the probability of United Nations retaliation for such a crime is ninety-one per cent.” A trace of awe coloured Elai’s voice, as though he had never expected to be talking of the foreign affairs interests of his country in such terms.
“Very well. We may expect to be safe from other people’s jealousy, then.” Obomi’s eye switched to Ram Ibusa. “Ram, I have worried about the impact of so much money on our precarious economy. Are we going to suffer from inflation, unjust distribution of income, a top-heavy tax-structure?”