I had seen my voyage to the Dream Archipelago as a break with the past, a new beginning, but already it seemed as if the first few days, at least, would have to he spent in the same sort of half-hearted isolation I had grown used to in Jethra.
I had been lucky. Everyone I knew said it about me, and I even believed it myself. At first there had been parties, but as we all began to appreciate what had happened to me, I found myself more and more cut off from them. When finally the time had come to leave Jethra, to travel to the Dream Archipelago to collect my prize, I was glad to go. I was eager for travel, for the heat of the tropics, for the sound of different languages and a sight of different customs. Yet now it had started I knew that it would be more enjoyable in company.
I said something to the woman behind me, but she merely replied, smiled politely and returned to her book.
I reached the head of the queue and handed over my passport. I ilad already opened it at the page where the Archipelagan High Commission in Jethra had stamped the visa, but the officer closed it and examined it from the front. The other sat beside him, staring at my face.
The officer looked at my photograph and personal details.
"Robert Peter Sinclair," he said, looking up at me for the first time.
I confirmed this, but was distracted by the fact that his was the first authentic island accent I had ever heard. He pronounced the name I usually used with a lengthened voweclass="underline" "Peyter". The only time I had heard the accent before was when actors used it in films; ilearing it used naturally gave me the odd feeling that he was putting on the accent to amuse me.
"Where are you travelling to, Mr Sinclair?"
"Muriseay, at first."
"And where are you going after that?"
"Coliago," I said, and waited for his reaction.
He gave no obvious sign that he had heard. "May I see your ticket, Mr Sinclair?"
I reached into an inner pocket and produced the sheaf of flimsy dockets issued by the shipping company, but he waved them away.
"Not those. The lottery ticket."
"Of course," I said, feeling enlbarrassed that I had misunderstood, although it was a natural error. I put the shipping tickets away and found my wallet. "The number has been printed on the visa."
"I want to see the ticket itself."
I had sealed it up inside an envelope which was folded into the deepest pocket of my wallet, and it took a few seconds of fumbling to retrieve it. I had been keeping it as a souvenir, and no one had warned me it would be inspected.
I passed it over, and the two immigration officers looked closely at it, painstakingly comparing the serial number with the one inked into my passport.
After what seemed like an overzealous inspection they passed hack the ticket and I returned it to the safety of my wallet.
"What are your intentions after leaving Collago?"
"I don't know yet. I understand there is a long convalescence. I thought I'd make my plans then."
"Are you intending to return to Jethra?"
"I don't know."
"All right, Mr. Sinclair." He pressed a rubber date-stamp in the space beneath the visa, closed the passport and slid it back across the desk to me.
"You're a lucky man."
"I know," I said conventionally, although I did have my don bts.
The woman behind me stepped forward to the desk, and I walked through to the bar on the same deck. Many of the passengers I had seen in the queue in front of me were already there. I bought myself a large whisky, and stood with the others. I soon struck up a tentative conversation with two people who were heading for a retirement home on Muriseay. Their names were Thorrin and Deilidua Sineham. They came from the university town of Old Haydl in the north of Faiandland. They had bought a luxury apartment overlooking the sea in a village just outside Muriseay Town, and they promised to show me a picture of it when they next came hack from their cabin.
They seemed pleasant, ordinary people, who were at pains to explain that a luxury flat in the Archipelago cost no more to buy than a small house at home.
I had been speaking to them for a few minutes when the wonlan behind me in the queue came into the bar. She glanced briefly in my direction, then went and bought herself a drink. She came to stand near me, and as soon as the Sinehams said they were going down to their cabin, she turned and spoke to me.
"I hope you don't mind," she said. "I couldn't help overhearing. Have you really won the lottery?"
I felt myself going on the defensive. "Yes."
"I've never known anyone who's won before."
"Neither have I," I said.
"I didn't believe it was genuine. I've been buying the tickets for years, but the winning numbers are always so different from mine that I thought it must be crooked."
"I've only ever bought one ticket. I won straight away. I can still hardly believe it."
"Could I see the ticket?"
In the weeks since the news that I had won the big prize, innumerable people had asked to see the ticket, as if by looking at it or touching it some of my luck might rub off on them. It was now well thumbed and slightly frayed, but I took it out of my wallet again and showed it to her.
"And you bought this in the ordinary way?"
"Just one of those booths in the park."
A fine day in late summer: I had been waiting to meet a friend in Seigniory Park, and while I walked up and down I noticed one of the Lotterie-Collago booths. These little makeshift franchise stands were a common sight in Jethra and the other big cities, and presumably also in other parts of the world. The franchises were normally granted to the disabled, or to wounded exservicemen. Hundreds of thousands of the lottery tickets were sold every month, yet the odd thing was that you rarely saw anyone ever go to the stands and buy one. Nor did people talk openly about buying the tickets, although almost everyone I knew had bought a few tickets at one time or another, and the day the winners were announced you always saw people standing in the streets checking the list in the newspapers.
Like most people I was tempted by the prize, even though the odds against winning were so long that I had never seriously thought about taking part. But on that particular day, idling in the park, I had noticed one of the vendors. He was a soldier, probably ten years younger than me, sitting stiffly and proudly in his wooden booth, wearing a dress uniform. He was badly disfigured by wounds: he was lacking an eye and an arm, and his neck was in a brace. Taken by compassion--the guilty, helpless compassion of a civilian who managed to avoid the draft--I went across and bought one of his tickets. The transaction was conducted quickly and, for my part, furtively, as if it were pornography I was buying, or illegal drugs.
Two weeks later I discovered I had won the major prize. I would receive the athanasia treatment, and afterwards live forever. Shock and surprise, disbelief, extreme jubilation . . . these were a part of my reactions, and even now, a few weeks after the news, I had still not entirely adjusted to the prospect.
It was part of the lore of the Lotterie that winners, even those who won the subsidiary cash prizes, returned to the place where they had bought the winning ticket and gave a present or tribute to the vendor. I did this at once, even before going to register my claim, but the little stall in the park had gone and the other vendors knew nothing about him. Later, I was able to make inquiries through the Lotterie, and discovered that he had died a few days after my purchase; the missing eye, the arm, the broken neck, were just the wounds that showed.
The Lotterie claimed that twenty major prizes were awarded every month, yet one heard remarkably little about the winners. I discovered part of the reason when I registered my claim. The Lotterie counselled utmost discretion in what I said about the prize, and warned me not to talk to the media.