After an interminable time they saw a taxi at an intersection, which they were able to hail. In it, they rode to the waterfront and left it at a place popular with tourists where there were several restaurants specialising in grilled fish and Yatakangi folksongs. Mingling with the crowd but taking every advantage of awnings, screens and corners to avoid showing themselves directly to the curious, Donald led the way to a stretch of beach where during the day there had been thirty or forty fishing-boats.
His heart was in his mouth on the last lap. He nearly fainted with relief when he saw that—in keeping with Halal’s promise—although many of the praus had already put to sea, their lights bobbing against the looming bulk of Grandfather Loa, a few were still nosed into the sand, their crews assembling one by one and laughing together, passing bottles of arrack and cigarettes.
“A man is supposed to have arranged for one of these boats to take us across the Strait,” Donald explained to Sugaiguntung in a low voice. “Wait here. I’ll go and find him.”
Sugaiguntung gave a nod. His face was mask-like, empty of emotion, as though he had not yet had time to digest the implications of what he was committed to. Leaving him on his own worried Donald, but there was no alternative: that face was far too well known to be shown to all these fishermen.
Halal had said he would arrange to have a blue lamp hung from the mast of the boat assigned to carry them. There was no such lamp on any of the boats, Donald discovered with renewed dismay. But there was one with a lamp on the mast even if it wasn’t blue. Growing desperate, he tried to persuade himself that the colour did not matter—perhaps they had not managed to find the necessary blue glass for it.
Three men were readying the boat for sea, coiling the typical Yatakangi seine-nets on the bow thwart and sluicing them down so that they would sink at once when they were tossed overside.
Gambling everything on guesswork, Donald hailed the man who appeared to be the skipper.
“I seek the man from Pakistan, Zulfikar Halal!”
If that kief-sodden coward caved in on this job, I’ll … But I wouldn’t have the chance. I’ll be jailed, or dead!
The skipper paused in his work and turned his head. He gazed for a long moment. Then he picked up a handlamp and flashed it directly at Donald.
He said, “Are you the American, Hogan?”
For an instant Donald failed to understand the question—the man had given his name a Yatakangi inflection. Directly the words sank in, the world seemed to capsize. Thinking that at any moment police might emerge from the hold of the prau, he jumped back, tugging his gun free from his pocket.
“No need for that!” the skipper said sharply, and laughed. “I know you. I know where you want to go. To Jogajong. He has many supporters among us fisherfolk. The word went around today that if you asked for help we should give it. Come aboard.”
context (24)
ONE OF MANY ESSENTIALLY IDENTICAL PRINTOUTS FROM SHALMANESER
PROGRAMME REJECTED
Q reason for rejection
ANOMALIES IN GROUND DATA
Q define Q specify
DATA IN FOLLOWING CATEGORIES NOT ACCEPTABLE: HISTORY COMMERCE SOCIALINTERACTION CULTURE
Q accept data as given
QUESTION MEANINGLESS AND INOPERABLE
continuity (34)
THERE LIVES MORE FAITH IN HONEST DOUBT
Norman should have been at the grand official ceremony when Ram Ibusa signed the contracts with the Beninia Consortium, at the press conference thereafter and at the formal banquet in the evening. Instead, he handed Ibusa over to the GT hospitality department and fled.
He had seen and heard and sensed too much. For all the cheering news about the market, where GT stock had already bounced back to the level it had left on the founder’s death and seemed set to go higher; for all the false gaiety and the excited PR releases and the loudspeakers relaying the specially commissioned “Beninia Theme”—he could not stand the atmosphere in the GT tower. There were so many grey faces, so many blithe masks slipped when the owners of them thought they weren’t being watched.
The feeling in the air was of the kind that might have reigned over a Hebrew encampment the day Jehovah declined, for His own inscrutable reasons, to perform a miracle and wipe out the high priest of Dagon.
And that, Norman judged, was not merely a comparison but a definition. The omniscient Shalmaneser had let his faithful disciples down, and with half their minds they were afraid it might not be his fault, but theirs.
Curse computers for a trick of Shaitan! Of all the times Shalmaneser might choose to fail us he picks now, now, when my life and hopes are committed to his judgment!
He bought a pack of Bay Golds and went home.
* * *
The Watch-&-Ward Inc. key slipped smoothly into the lock. The door moved aside and showed him the interior of the apt, untidy, some of the furniture in different places, the liquor console surrounded by dead men not carried to the disposall, but otherwise not changed.
He thought at first the place must be empty. He looked into his own bedroom and saw that the bed was rumpled but only because someone had lain on the cover, not because it had been slept in. Shrugging, he lit one of the reefers he had bought and went back into the living area.
A faint snore came to him.
He strode over to Donald’s old room and flung the door open. Chad Mulligan was asleep on the bed, not in it, his hair and beard unkempt and not a stitch on him, only shoes.
It was just after four poppa-momma. What in the world was the man doing asleep at this time of day?
“Chad?” he said. And a second time, more loudly: “Chad!”
“Wha…?” Eyes blinked open, shut, open again and this time stayed open. “Norman! Sheeting hole, I didn’t expect to see you back in New York! Uh—what time is it?”
“Gone four.”
Chad sat up and forced his legs over the side of the bed, knuckling his eyes and trying to stifle a monstrous yawn. “Ooh-ah! Sorry, Norman—wowf! Welcome home. Excuse me, I shan’t be fit company until I’ve showered.”
“Since when have you taken to sleeping in the daytime?”
Chad managed to rise to his feet, and kept rising until he was on tip-toe, thrusting out with both hands to stretch his stiff muscles. He said, “It’s not a habit. Just last night I was thinking and thinking and thinking and couldn’t sleep at all, so I got drunk at breakfast time and that was that.”
“What were you thinking about? And didn’t you know there’s an inducer in the pillow there? That would have put you to sleep.”
“Inducers make me dream,” Chad said. “Liquor doesn’t.”
Norman shrugged; neither he nor Donald had ever been affected in that way by a sleep-inducer, but he remembered that one or two of the shiggies who had stayed here had complained of the same trouble—a risk of nightmares.
“Go ahead and take your shower,” he said. “Don’t be too long. I want to talk to you.”
A sudden idea had come to him, which was probably a vain hope, but any chance no matter how slim was worth taking in the present crisis.
“Sure,” Chad muttered. “Do me a favour, though—have some coffee sent up.”
* * *
Five minutes later, dressed, hair and beard still wet but combed into orderliness, Chad collected the cup of coffee waiting for him and sat down in Donald’s chair facing Norman in his own favourite.
“I envy you that Hille chair,” Chad said absently. “About the only thing in the place I do envy you, to be candid. Comfortable. And you know it’s going to remain a chair, not suddenly turn into a cosmorama unit … Okay: talk to me!”
“Chad, you’re rated the most insightful living social analyst.”
“Whaledreck. I’m rated a drunken sot. I’ve reached the stage where I get too drunk too fast to bother going out to look for shiggies, and I like women.” He gulped down his coffee and wiped his moustache with the back of his hand.