Black fury flooded up from the bottom of Old GT’s mind, engulfing first her belly, where it made her guts seem to twist into knots and pull tight, then her lungs, which gasped air and strained to fill with gases suddenly turned to sluggish pitch, then her heart, which thundered and battered at her ribs as though it would break out of their cage, her throat and tongue which grew stiff, cracking like old dry paper folded and pressed, and at last her brain, which composed the thought:
“!!!!!”
* * *
“Get the doc!” someone said.
“Xx xxx xx,” said someone else.
“_____”
“.….”
“ ”
.
continuity (31)
GROUNDWORK
The phone went again. Cursing, Donald stumbled to the switch. At first there was only a loud background noise, as of many people hurrying to and fro. Suddenly a woman’s voice blared at him, charged with anger.
“Hogan? You there? This is Deirdre Kwa-Loop! Engrelay head office just called me. There was a bargain, remember? Four hours on a beat!”
Stunned, Donald stared at the phone as though he could look along the cable despite the lack of a screen and see the face of the person he was talking to.
“Nothing to say, huh? I’m not surprised! I should have known better than to trust one of you bleeders! Well, I’ve been around this scene a while. I’m going to fix it so you never get—”
“Fasten it!” Donald snapped.
“The hole I will! Listen to me, paleass—”
“Where were you while I was tangling with a mucker?” Donald roared. In the mirror adjacent to the phone he saw the light in Bronwen’s room go on, a peach-coloured glow.
“Whatinole has that got to do with it?”
“A hundred people saw that mucker nearly kill Sugaiguntung! What did you want me to do—count off four hours and call you by a critonium clock? The word must have been all around the press club within five minutes!”
Heavy breathing. At length, reluctantly: “Well, after about four poppa-momma things are usually quiet, and—”
“So what you did you went out on the town, hm?”
No answer.
“I see,” Donald said with heavy sarcasm. “You thought I’d hire a gang of messengers and tell them, ‘I made a promise to this woman who can’t cover her own stories—you have four hours to find out where she’s hiding herself!’ Know where I was four hours after it happened? Drugged into coma at the university clinic! Will you take that as an excuse?”
Silence.
“The hole with you, then—I’m going back to bed!”
He cut the circuit. Almost at once, the phone buzzed again.
“Sheeting hole! What is it?”
“Management, Mr. Hogan,” said a young man’s voice, very nervous. “Is very many persons wish talk with you. Is saying most urgent, sir.”
Donald changed to Yatakangi and spoke loudly enough for the sound at the other end to carry if it wasn’t directionalised.
“Tell them to go peddle their grandmother’s urine. If there is another call on this phone before nine o’clock I shall have you—you personally—wrapped in the hide of a gangrened cow and hung up for the buzzards, do you understand?”
One thing I never appreciated before I came here: Yatakangi is a very satisfying language to invent insults in.
He thought for a while. Eventually he gathered up his clothes, his communikit and anything else that looked as though it might come in handy in the morning, carried them through into Bronwen’s room, and bolted the door from the far side before rejoining her.
This time, however, he did not manage to go back to sleep. It was as though his mind had sent unpleasant information garnered from Delahanty’s earlier call and the events of the day down echo-delay circuits of varying lengths, and all the echoes had coincided at this point in time.
He only vaguely noticed what he had been half-expecting: footsteps in the corridor, a thunderous knocking on his own room’s door, chinking and scratching sounds as someone tried a pass-key. But he had remembered to put over the deadlock. The would-be intruder cursed and went away, probably regretting the bribe he had given the reception clerk for the room number.
That, though, was less important than the conflicting thoughts and images reverberating in the gong of his skull. Ten years of behaving like a sponge, doing no more than absorb second-hand information, had not equipped him for action of the kind now expected of him. Even the new version of himself produced by eptification could not cope with the demands on him.
Beside him, Bronwen whispered invitations to lose himself in animal sensation, but he was drained of the capacity to respond. He told her to be quiet and let him think, and at once regretted it because out of the darkness a moron-face emerged, slack silly mouth reflected in a gash below. He repressed a moan and rolled over on his side, terrified.
There’s got to be a way—think, think!
Gradually possibilities developed towards plans. The mucker’s image faded, taking with it his sense of sick dismay, and it was replaced by a vague pride in what he was being relied on to do—an act that could determine the course of history.
I know how to get at Sugaiguntung. I know how to contact Jogajong. Between the two it’s just a matter of …
His body relaxed, and was rested even as his busy mind shaped and patterned the events of the day.
* * *
At eight o’clock he sent for breakfast and picked his way through many small dishes of cold fried and pickled delicacies—fish, fruit, vegetables. Gulps of scalding tea washed down the food. Bronwen, as naked as she had been all night, served him silently and made sure he was replete before taking any herself.
He found he liked that. It was sultanesque. It was foreign enough to match the strange country he had wandered to.
Couldn’t imagine Gennice doing it …
“I have to go out,” he said eventually. “Perhaps I’ll see you again this evening.”
She smiled and embraced him while he was thinking that if he did see her again something would have gone disastrously wrong. But it was bad to imagine such catastrophes. He put on his clothes, equipped himself, slung his communikit over his shoulder and went down brazenly to the main lobby.
It was morning-busy, but there were, in addition to the staff and clients, people of every possible colour who were simply sitting around until they spotted him. Then they closed in like sharks approaching a wounded swimmer, raising cameras, recorders and voices.
“Mr. Hogan you must—Mr. Hogan let me please—listen and I will—”
A fat Arab woman who had reacted faster than the others put a camera practically under his nose. He snatched it away and threw it in the face of a Japanese on the other side of him. When a burly turbaned Sikh got in his way he hit him with the side of his hand and stepped over his falling body. At the side of the main door there was an indoor palm in a pot, which he jumped at and pulled over, delaying all of the reporters except a persistent African whom he had to kick in the shins. The man stumbled and tripped up the next person coming after him, which gave Donald the chance to get out on the street and signal an empty cab.
A car with two impassive men in it followed him: proof of Totilung’s promise, he guessed. He offered his driver fifty talas if he could lose them, and the man took him through a series of narrow alleys half-blocked by bazaar-stalls, contriving eventually to get a herd of goats between his own vehicle and the one following.
Well pleased, Donald paid the man off and changed to a rixa next time they passed one. He could do nothing to make himself wholly inconspicuous, owing to his complexion and appearance, but at least for the moment no one knew for sure where he was.
Three rixas later, he reached the vicinity of Sugaiguntung’s home. He had no expectation of finding the professor in, unless his doctors had insisted that he rest following the attack by the mucker, but he wasn’t here to take advantage of the promised interview.