“We can’t even claim in honesty that it was the result of foresight and planning—only that when the grabbing was good, we grabbed. Don’t believe anyone who tries to claim that the existence of Isola is proof of the superiority of the Western system. The Chinese couldn’t have taken over. There was no form of discontent they could have exploited. How do you whip up resentment against absentee landlords and pocketers of bribes when the highest ambition of the people concerned is either to become the former or be in a position to receive the latter?
“Life in the Philippines had become intolerable well before the civil war of the 1980s. The state of things obtaining (which some accounts misname anarchy, but which any decent dictionary will tell you was nothing of the sort, but free-enterprise capitalism gone out of its skull) was on the verge of ruining the country permanently. The annual average of unsolved murders was running around 30,000 in a population of under fifty million. In the eyes of the inhabitants of the Sulu Archipelago, where most of them were committed, the offence for which they revolted against and ultimately assassinated President Sayha was that he interfered in their traditional right to slaughter and steal. This was unforgivable.
“Oh, doubtless there were some among the people who gave that celebrated majority of eighty-eight per cent in the plebiscite on secession who hoped that being policed and governed by Big Brother in Washington would ensure them a quieter life, free them from the need to fit bullet-proof shutters and plant man-traps in their gardens. Far more, however, seem to have hoped that the bait on the hook (full States’ rights and a billion dollars of aid) would offer another and fatter cake of which they could snatch their slice.
“Which of these parties saw its dream fulfilled? Dear reader, you must be joking. That vaunted billion-dollar aid budget went nowhere near the natives’ pockets. It was spent on roads, airfields, port facilities and fortifications. And, while it’s true that the smugglers and black-marketeers who had hitherto rampaged unchecked had their hinder ends smartly kicked, to get rid of them the new owners imposed martial law and it hasn’t been lifted since 1991!
“Dubbed ‘Isola’ on the grounds that Montana was a mountainous territory and the new acquisition was an island territory, the Junior State went from the frying-pan into the fire. However, the Americans had been desperately in need of bases closer to the Asian mainland than what they currently had, and they were reasonably well satisfied.
“The Chinese, on the other hand, when they tried a counterstroke by wooing Yatakang, were disappointed. The Yatakangi are descendants of the former dominant people in South-East Asia and firm believers in the traditional military dictum that the first thing you do after contracting an alliance is prepare plans for the day when your ally welshes on you. Just because they’re Asiatics it doesn’t follow that they’re going to invite their yellow fellows into their beds. Nor, because they haven’t performed the Peking kotow, should it be assumed (as some blockbottoms I know in Washington have assumed) that they are all set to become the second Isola. Why should they? Things are peachy down in Yatakang; it’s among the world’s great nations, by Asian standards it’s fabulously wealthy, and it can enjoy the game of playing off Washington against Peking until doomsday, on present evidence.
“Until doomsday? Well, perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration. There’s one bright spot in the generally gloomy picture known as the Pacific Conflict Zone. According to my calculations, by the year 2500 or so we should have killed off every last member of our species who is stupid enough to take part in so futile a pastime as this war between ‘ideals’, and with luck they won’t have left their genes behind because they’ll typically have been killed at an age when society thinks they’re too young to assume the responsibility of childbearing. And after that we may get some peace and quiet for a change.”
—Better ? than ? by Chad C. Mulligan
continuity (7)
ARMS AND IDLENESS
Donald felt pitted and pendulumed in the vacant apt. Almost, he could have welcomed the return of Victoria and the need to act as though nothing had happened until Norman programmed the law to pick her up.
He dialled for a meal from the block kitchens, but between ordering it and its arrival his appetite seemed to be eroded by apathy. He put on a recent record he had bought and sat down to watch the play of colour on the screen which matched the music; it had hardly begun before he was on his feet again and tramping restlessly about. None of the TV channels which he checked offered a programme to interest him. A day or two before someone had persuaded him to get a polyforming kit. He opened its box and considered starting a copy of Rodin’s Kiss, but halted his hand in mid-movement and let the lid fall shut again.
Furious with himself, he stared out the window. The Manhattan-pattern was at its most brilliant at this time of the evening—an Aladdin’s Cave of multicoloured lights, gorgeous as the stars at the centre of the galaxy.
Out there: all those millions of people … Like looking up at the sky and wondering which of those suns shine on beings like ourselves. Christ: when did I last look up at the night sky?
He was suddenly appalled. These days, a great many people never left their homes at night except for some specific purpose, when they could call a cab to the door and expose themselves for no longer than it took to cross a sidewalk. It wasn’t inevitably dangerous to wander the night streets of the city—the hundreds of thousands who did still do so were proof enough of that. In a country of four hundred millions there were two or three muckers per day, yet some people acted as though they couldn’t get past the next corner without being attacked. There were rollings, robberies and rumbles; there were even riots.
But there must still be room, surely, for an ordinary person to go about ordinary business?
The habit had settled on Donald’s mind unnoticed, like gradually thickening fog. He had stopped going out after six or seven in the evening for the mere sake of not being at home. Most weekends there was a party; between times, friends of Norman’s called or they were invited to join someone for dinner, or a concert, or a freevent. And the cab that came to fetch them was driven by a man or a woman secure behind armoured glass, its doors could only be opened from the dashboard, and affixed to the neat little nozzle of the air-conditioning system was a certificate stating that the sleepy-gas cylinders had been approved by the City Licensing Authority. For all its smoothness and fuel-cell silence, it was like a tank, and encouraged the feeling that one was venturing on to a battlefield.
What do I know any longer about my fellow human beings?
He sensed a recurrence of his panic at lunchtime, and a desperate need to talk to someone to prove that there really were other people in the world, not just puppets on intangible strings. He approached the phone. But that wouldn’t do—just conversing with an image on a screen. He wanted to see and hear strangers, to be reassured of their independence from himself.
Breathing hard, he made for the apartment door. At the threshold he checked and returned to his bedroom, to tug open a drawer at the bottom of the built-in closet. Under a pile of disposable paper shirts he found what he was looking for: a Jettigun, the cartridge-charged gas-pistol marketed by GT under licence from Japanese Industries of Tokyo, and a Karatand.