It being Saturday there were a lot of people about.
“Someone came and asked me about him the other day. Something about a woman with two prodgies he deserted down in Ellay.”
“What?”
“Helen something, he said. Helen—Jones?”
All looking, listening, curious.
“But he has three right here in the block. That makes five.”
“Five?”
“Five!”
At a drinks dispenser someone emptied his plastic cup and threw it. It tapped lightly on Eric’s arms folded over the cans and packs he had brought from the store.
“Hey, big man making five prodgies! And left the one with two, did you? Whassamatter, wouldn’t she breed any more Right Catholics for you?”
Not recognised, a figure out of nightmare, someone in his way, compelling him to stop.
“Going to have a nice cosy evening all by yourselves giving the next one a good start in life? Plenty of liquor, plenty of joints to get you in the mood? Maybe you need the lift to lay that fat cow. I know I would!”
“So fix that!”
Hands tugging at the things he carried. Weakly he tried to struggle free. They pulled it all away from him.
“Whassamatter, codder? Want it back?”
“Give it here—it’s mine, I paid for it!”
“Not so fast, darling, not so fast! Hey, Shirley, want a pack of joints? Plenty here! Doug, how about some beer?”
“No, stop it, stop it—”
“Harry, catch the pack, he’s getting wild.”
Going from hand to hand, shiggies’ as well as men’s, always marginally faster than he could react to intercept it. His breath was lacerating now and his eyes were blurred.
“Why don’t you complain to Pope Eglantine, darling? Get him to call down the wrath of heaven on us! You’re a good boy, aren’t you—always breeding like you’re told to!”
“You heard about his first wife down in Ellay with the two kids before he moved up here?”
“Dirty bleeder—”
“Trying to run away now he’s been found out, wants to go to Africa they told me—”
“Just because he’s got a clean genotype—”
“Shows off the Populimit Bulletin all the time and then it turns out—”
“Probably burns it on the altar secretly and apologises for buying it—”
“Always screaming and crying, two of them at once, can’t hardly sleep for the racket—”
“My boy says his daughter wanted to know why we don’t have girl twins like they do—”
“Dirty bleeder—”
The next thing thrown was one of the cans of beer. It hit Eric’s forehead and left a cut; he was suddenly blinking away blood.
“On the orbit, darling! Square on the orbit! Hey, let me—”
Crash.
“Don’t let him get away, he’s trying to get away—”
“Say, if he likes to breed so much why don’t we—?”
“Got him again! Donna, you want to have a shot? Here—”
“Catch him, Doug! Right, sparewheels, let’s—”
“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”
“Lookitim lookitim look!”
“Have to wash before he goes to see the Pope again—”
“No wonder she threw him out, two children looking like that—”
“Five—”
“Right Catholic—”
“Stop him!”
“Ouch! Christ, the bleeder’s—”
“See what you did to my sparewheel? I’m going to—”
And they did.
When it was over and they got scared they took him down to the rapitrans and when nobody except the people who already knew were watching they pushed him over the edge of the platform in front of an incoming car and said he fainted suddenly or committed suicide—versions differed but of course with the word having leaked out about the poor shiggy called Helen he abandoned in Ellay and the five prodgies and the secret Right Catholic beliefs and all the rest of it nobody inquired too closely.
* * *
When Stal saw news about it on the TV he was pretty well satisfied but by then Zink had found someone who thought he could get the stuff ready-cured out of the packing station and would split the profits sixty-forty.
continuity (39)
BETTER TO BE A VOLCANO
As he had done on the days previous, Donald spent the daylight hours wandering around the clearing, brooding, or sitting on one of the tree-stump seats trying not to have to think. His isolation was self-aggravated. There was news to be had; despite the postponement of their intended uprising, Jogajong’s organisation was active, with many spies and agents—at least one in every town of Yatakang, delivering frequent reports. Jogajong made a great show of openness towards Donald, introducing and praising him to anyone of importance who made his way to the camp, but the pretence rang hollow. Whenever there was business to discuss someone was assigned to make sure Donald did not approach the speakers too closely.
Not that he was concerned about that. Human affairs, even on the scale of revolution in a country of over two hundred million, had begun to dwindle in his mind during the interminable hours of waiting. He stared into the trees and saw the luxuriance of their leaves and blossoms fed by the cycle of putrefaction; on that spot, ten thousand years ago, there was conceivably such another tree … but where was man? Fat, somehow obscene fungi clung here and there to tree-trunks, attended by insects. Lower, there were snakes, bugs, scorpions against which he had been counselled never to put his shoes on without shaking them, nor lie down without examining his bedding. Higher, there were birds of species he could not name except for the brightest parakeets which chattered to one another in shrill, grating voices. There were many other creatures in the jungle, but most of them were afraid of the smell of man and kept their distance.
He listened to the wind soughing in the upper branches. When it rained, he hated the irregularity of the splashing and dripping it induced. Patternless, it mocked at pattern, hence at reason. The air was never free of an oppressive smell, either from rotting vegetation or from the volcanic vent, and like a man condemned to slake his thirst from muddy ponds he began to imagine that there was a special taste to air, like the taste of pure water, and sniffed the breeze hopefully when it blew from the seaward side, expecting some delirious miracle of inhalation.
But the idea of the sea also troubled him: enormous, massive, patient, capable of wrath, a hostile beast encircling the hostile giant of the jungle and equally ready to wash away the memory of man. He struggled to picture the hundred islands of Yatakang, a flourishing nation with science, technology, an advanced civilisation, and beyond it China, India, Europe, America. Fabled names, read from maps. This was no tidy arrangement of blue and green and brown on a flat sheet with neat square corners. This was a chaos. It belonged to Grandfather Loa, the Chronos of today who might choose at will to eat his children.
More than at anything else, he stared at the volcano, shrouded much of the time in mist, but occasionally appearing to his view as though the slumbering deity was fitfully aware of the mite whom he awed and remembered to make himself manifest.
Remembered: Bronwen, her sleek brown body and her statement so calmly uttered that he had known he was going to be needed to save Sugaiguntung. Brushing contact, ships that pass in the night. It seemed vaguely desirable that her leukaemia should overcome her. She carried more of him in her mind than he cared to part with to so casual an acquaintance.
Also Deirdre Kwa-Loop: how would Engrelay Satelserv explain the sudden fading from their programmes of the dispatches they had advertised so loudly? Ah, there would be a new sensation and they would ghost stories under his name to cover the gap until the fickle awareness of the public overlooked it altogether. As well try to recall the identity of each hair shed to the comb, each paring lost to the nail-scissors. Today, tomorrow, sub specie aeternitatis, small things to distract half-empty minds. Heedless, the presence of Grandfather Loa.