“Weren’t you at—?”
“No,” Donald said. “Spit the string and I’ll tell you if I’m interested, which’ll save your time and mine.”
The Afram blinked. After another few strides he shrugged. “No complaints about that, Father?”
“No.”
“Want your genotype read? Show me your palms. A fin gets you a strict scientific commentary—I have certificates.”
“Thanks, I can afford genalysis.”
“But no prodgies, hm?” The Afram looked wise. “Could be the trouble is with the Eugenics Board—no, don’t tell me. However bad it is there are ways to fix it. I have certain contacts, and if you can afford genalysis you can probably afford their services.”
“I’m clean,” Donald said with a sigh.
The Afram stopped dead. Involuntarily Donald did the same and turned so they were facing each other.
“You son of a bleeder,” the Afram said. “Here all I’m carrying is sickle-cell anaemia which in the malarial belt is actually advantageous, and they won’t let me though I’ve been married three times.”
“So why don’t you try the malarial countries?” Donald snapped. He slipped his hand into the pocket containing the Jettigun.
“A typical paleass remark!” the Afram sneered. “Why don’t you go back to Europe, then?”
Abruptly Donald’s annoyance faded. He said, “Look, cousin, you should meet my roomie and learn better. He’s Afram too.”
“You I don’t mind about,” the Afram said. “The fewer of you who fly straight orbits the better. But it’s a thing to weep about, you having a brown-nose roomie. Another generation, you’ll have melanin-high skin on the list of disallowed genes!”
He spat deliberately an inch from Donald’s feet and spun on his heel.
Depressed by the encounter, Donald walked on. He was barely aware of the distance he covered. Occasional stimuli made an impact on him—the banshee wail of a prowlie’s siren, children fighting over an insult, the ever-present music—but he was preoccupied.
The Afram’s reference to the malarial countries had sparked a train of thought, bringing back to mind what Norman had said earlier about Beninia. As ever, his computer-active subconscious had been stirring his information into new patterns.
State would want to know why Elihu Masters was making an approach to GT. Assumption: State does know why. If either the Dahomalians or the RUNGs persuade Beninia to federate, the disappointed party will have to fight or lose face. The only things that can prevent war are (a) President Obomi, who isn’t immortal, and (b) the intervention of an outside force they could join in railing against. In which case—!
He had it, all of a sudden. Three hours’ reading, five days a week bar vacation for ten years, had stocked his memory with all the information necessary to envisage the plan as it had to be.
But in the very instant it came to him, the knowledge was kicked to the back of his mind. Stopping dead, he wondered where in the name of God he was.
By the street-signs he had reached the lower East Side, an area presently at the bottom of the cycle of death and renewal that sometimes made the city seem like an organism. At the end of last century there had been a brief moment of glory here; decade by decade the would-be connectors had followed the intellectuals and the pseudos eastwards from the Village into the ruined area close to the river, until by 1990 or so this had been a high-price zone. But the wheel turned further, and the bored and prosperous moved out. Now the grace of the elegant buildings was crumbling again under a bright masking of advertisements: flagging vigour calls for Potengel, MasQ-Lines take the world in their stride, ask the man who’s married to Mary Jane … Across the display slanted the unrelated diagonals of fire-escapes, spotted with piles of garbage like forest fungi.
Donald turned slowly around. There were fewer people on the streets here. The very air breathed a sense of decay. Only a few minutes’ walk away was the brilliance and activity he had left behind without noticing, so it was small wonder the residents preferred not to spend their time here. The stores were closed except for the few that could afford automated pay-out clerks, and those were almost vacant of customers. There was no silence—there was no silent place in the city—but every sound which came to his ears seemed to be distant: not in that building but the next, not on this street but a block away.
Facing him now was one of the luxuries the architects had included when they worked this district over twenty years ago—an adventure playground elaborated into the gap between two tall buildings, a monkey-puzzle in three dimensions calculated so that a careless child could fall no further than one short level. For a moment his mind refused to accept the connection between the lines and forms he saw, and anything with solidity. Then the perspective separating near from far enabled him to grasp the image and he realised he was looking at a sort of Riemann ladder of concrete and steel silhouetted from behind by the last of the unbroken lamps on the struts.
Something moved among the frightful artificial branches. Donald, uncertain whether it was human, eased his hand into his pocket and began to wriggle his Karatand over his fingers.
The monstrous creature loomed, incredibly flexible, down the lip of a miniaturised precipice, and took on reality—a shadow, cast by a child passing in front of the surviving lamp.
Donald let out a great gasp of relief. The idea occurred to him that he must have been slipped a psychedelic, and then, when he discounted actual ingestion, he found himself wondering if perhaps the air was charged with the fumes of some drug affecting his perceptions.
Mechanically tugging the Karatand towards his wrist, he beat a retreat towards his own manor.
Unexpectedly, because this was not a cab-hiring district, he spotted a cruising taxi within a hundred yards. He called to the driver, who acknowledged him with a wave shadowed on the windshield.
Purring, the vehicle drew level with him. He made to get in as the driver activated the hydraulic door-controls.
Not so fast.
The words were as clear in his mind as if someone had spoken them from inside the passenger compartment. He delayed removing his hand from the door-pillar and looked for anything which might have alarmed him.
Probably imagination. I’m jumpy enough—
But no. Affixed to the air-conditioning nozzles was a device that automatically sent a radio signal to police headquarters if the driver dozed a passenger. It had been tampered with; the plastic seal certifying its annual inspection had discoloured to a warning red. He’d hailed a pseudo, one of the cabs whose drivers dozed their victims illegally and took them to be robbed in a dark side-street.
The door slammed. But not all the way. Even with the force of the hydraulics behind it, it could not crush the impact-sensitive Karatand which Donald had left in its way. There was a clang of hammered metal and a jar that travelled clear to his elbow, but he retained enough presence of mind not to snatch back his hand.
By law, these cabs were designed so that they could not be driven away unless the doors were closed. But Donald’s strength was inadequate to force his way out.
Impasse.
Behind the armour-glass of his cabin, the driver hit the door-controls again and again. The door slammed back and forth, but the Karatand endured. Suddenly very calm, Donald stared at the driver, but the man was too wary to let his face be seen even in the rear-view mirror. It was twisted to the side so that it covered his licence photograph, and its function had been taken over by a miniature TV unit.
What am I going to do now?
“All right, Shalmaneser!”
The voice made him start as it boomed from the speaker set in the roof.
“I’ll open up, you hit the sidewalk and we’ll say no more about it, how’s that?”