And what was I to make of this subliminal perception business, anyway? Maria Posador had been right to assume — as she had — that I would react against it; yet now I had been told by Cortes that he had himself made appalling discoveries in the shantytowns, and Cortes struck me as a man not only of high intelligence but of a certain old-fashioned rectitude, a man to whom telling a lie, no matter how worthy a cause it furthered, would be repulsive. Again, in all honesty, I must reserve judgment, I told myself. And, in the same moment, I wondered how much of that impulse was true honesty, how much simple unwillingness to commit myself beyond the bounds of the field in which I was skilled.
It became clear as I reentered the city that since the frightened reaction of last night and this morning life had swung back toward normality; at any rate, there was a liveliness of the kind that was customary on saint’s day evenings, with many people in the bars and restaurants, and occasional groups of musicians playing in the squares and on street corners. In a vague hope that I might likewise get back to normal, I collected my camera and notebooks and went out into the market quarter again.
But here the stamp of the panic that had followed the Guerrero killing was impressed heavily even now. The streets were quiet; a municipal street sprinkler had been through them, and the surface of the road was shiny with recent wet.
I passed a small shrine set in the wall of one of the houses — a crude clay statuette of the Virgin, with a niche around it and a shelf with some candle spikes in front. There were several candles guttering here, one of them with a notice stuck on it. I lifted the sheet of paper and read it.
“For the soul of Mario Guerrero,” it said in Spanish. “He was killed by those” — then a word I couldn’t understand but which I presumed to be an obscenity — “Indians who themselves are without souls.”
“Ay!” said a harsh voice from across the street. “No toce!” I swung my head. Two ruffian-type men stepped from a dark doorway opposite, each carrying a heavy cudgel. I teased myself as they approached.
“Que hace Vd.?” said one of them threateningly. The other, after scrutinizing my face closely, motioned to his companion to lower his club.
“Es el Señor Hakluyt,no?” he said. “I have seen your honor on the television. Apologies, señor — we set that candle there as a warning and a reminder to these peasants that the death of Mario Guerrero” — he crossed himself — “will not go unavenged. It will be well, if you desire peace, not to come this way again.”
“Thanks for the advice,” I said shortly, and made at a smart pace for the end of the street. If I was going to have to contend with belligerent supporters of the Citizens’ Party, I might equally well get involved with Tezol’s faction, and no contract was going to make me risk my life in a street brawl. As a concession to duty, I went back to the main traffic nexus and spent a couple of hours counting the flow, before deciding to call it a day and going to bed.
I really needed at least another week’s work before progressing to a digest of my results; on the other hand, with the city in its present abnormal condition I would probably be fouling up my averages if I combined current data with what I already had. Rather than waste time, therefore, I settled down for the next two days at the traffic department, converting vehicle counts into computer data and running them, setting limits to my parameters, and developing the first approximations for the terms in my main equations. Owing to the relatively small quantity of data I had to hand, I went through the job rather more quickly than I really liked. But Angers was much impressed when, at noon on Friday, he found me actually sketching a diagram of a tentative revised layout for the market area.
I told him, of course,, that I had no real idea whether or not it would serve the purpose and that it usually took me at least six tries to find a scheme that even approximately suited the realities; he brushed aside the perfectly true statement as praiseworthy modesty and took me to lunch in the Plaza del Norte.
I didn’t really like the smooth-spoken Englishman; he was too — too dustproof. But he certainly knew highway engineering. He had, so he told me, left Britain in despair because although that country’s roads were notoriously the worst of any major nation in the world, there was no coherent traffic policy. He had worked for a time in Commonwealth countries and had had a hand in the West African Coastway; then he had helped to design two freeways in the States and the Manhattan Southern Overflow, and after that, as in his view the British still didn’t have a proper traffic policy, he had given up all intention of returning home and come to Vados instead. When he talked about the Manhattan Southern Overflow, my opinion of him went up a notch — he had been supervisory engineer on Section K, which I had often traveled while I lived in New York.
We were having a minor technical dispute when a heavy hand fell on my shoulder, and I found Fats Brown’s ample bulk eclipsing the sun.
“’Lo, Hakluyt,” he said in a cloud of cigar smoke. “Got news you might like to hear.”
He ignored Angers completely. Nettled, the Englishman addressed him.
“Hello, Brown! We don’t often see you here — have you actually secured a client who can pay his fee, for a change?”
“Your pal Andres Lucas is the one who worries about lining his pockets,” said Brown unconcernedly. “I’m the guy who worries about seeing justice done, remember? I’m easy to recognize, ’cause I’m damn near unique in Vados. Like I was saying, Hakluyt,” he continued, while Angers scowled, “it looks like I’ve managed to fix Judge Romero, thanks to Mig’s pull with Diaz. Gonzales has ordered a new trial. So I came out here to celebrate. If you want to congratulate Mig, he’s over there lunchin’ with me. See you around, Hakluyt. So long.”
He lumbered back to his own table. Angers glared after him. “Interfering blighter!” he said under his breath. “No business of his, our legal system, but he never stops trying to knock holes in it. Hah!” He ground his cigarette into an ashtray and stood up.
“Coming back to the office now?”
“In a little while,” I said. “I have to pick up some books at the hotel. I’ll see you later.”
The books were a pretext; I was more interested to see how the lunchtime meeting in the Plaza del Sur was going. I’d missed the morning papers, and I wanted to know if the National Party had plucked up sufficient courage to put in another appearance yet.
But when I reached the plaza, there was no meeting going on at all. Instead, perhaps a hundred policemen were lounging under the trees, most of them smoking and throwing dice. A few of them were clustered around a chessboard on which two of their number were playing.
Puzzled, I entered the hotel. The commissionaire saluted me, and I wondered whether to ask him what had happened. Then I reflected that he probably wouldn’t know, just as he had “not known” on the day of my arrival, and changed my mind altogether as I caught sight of Maria Posador in the lounge, idly moving pieces on one of the chessboard-topped tables, an unlit Russian cigarette between her fingers. She looked worried. She greeted me with a faint smile as I came up, and gestured at the chair opposite her. “Would you care for that game of chess now, señor?” she invited. “I feel in need of a small distraction.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you,” I said. “I have to get back to the traffic department. But perhaps you can tell me — why no meeting in the square today?”
She shrugged. “There was considerable disturbance there yesterday. Diaz has decreed that there shall be no more meetings until the furore over Guerrero’s death has died down.”