Hav (32 page)

But presently I crossed the line of the old railway, and the now neglected Escarpment road, and skirting the salt-flats I discovered a very different rural scene. The whole of the northwest plateau, stretching away towards the coast hills and the sea, seemed to be a shimmering mass of silver plastic, billowing slightly in the breeze, interspersed with vegetable fields, greenhouses and steel windmills. Brand-new roads criss-crossed the area, and trucks crawled about wherever I looked, and there were gangs of workers among the vegetables, and the windmills whirred. I was reminded of the flower-farms of Jersey, or the windmill plateau of Lassithi in Crete, or Carolina cotton-fields. It all looked purposeful, and profitable.

A sign explained it to me —
MYRMIDON RURAL ENTERPRISES
— and there was a concrete office behind it, and a helmet-flag flying. ‘Welcome, welcome, dirleddy,' said a gushing functionary inside. ‘It's always such a pleasure to welcome visitors from across the seas — you are from across the seas, I assume? Excellent, excellent. Oh, a guest of the League of Intellectuals, I see,' said he when he examined my blue pass. ‘Very good friends of ours here at Rural Enterprises — many keen brains to help and encourage us in our tasks. You are welcome
all the more
!

‘And I expect you are chiefly interested — tell me if I am wrong! — in the miracle of the GM snow raspberries. Well, that happens at the Escarpment end of the Enterprise, so suppose we stroll up there now — you have the time? Excellent, excellent, dirleddy. Off we go, then.'

Of course, he went on to tell me, much of the matter they grew was grown in the orthodox way, either under glass or under plastic sheeting — ‘so beautiful to see, don't you think so, especially when you drive over the ridge there — so, well, so spiritual, I always think, as though all those lovely growing things are shrouded not for death but for new life. Don't you get that feeling?'

Not precisely that feeling, I told him, but I did think it was a delightful surprise to find so much life and energy in that somewhat desiccated landscape.

‘Life, yes life, life all around us,' he said as we pottered through the sheeted fields and the rich vegetable gardens, impeccably planted with rows of cabbages, beans, rhubarb, potatoes — but no lettuces, I noticed.

‘No lettuces yet, then?'

‘Not as yet, but we have high hopes. Some of our workers here have specialized in lettuces in their homelands, and several are employed specifically in lettuce research. For you do realize, I suppose, that most of these industrious employees you see in our fields are transients from across the seas? Oh yes, we are fortunate to find such enthusiastic sources of labour — and at such economic rates, too.'

They didn't — er — demand high wages, then?

‘I can speak frankly to you? They hardly demand anything at all. They come, you see, mostly from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, just for a season, no women or families, and having really nothing much to spend their money on here, go home relatively rich however much we pay them. They are looked after, too. Transient Services look after them very well — ship them in, put them up and ship them off again. No questions asked, anywhere. We have the best advice, from South Africa and from the United States, about the handling of transient labour. You're going on to the Balad? Well then, you'll see how well it is all organized.'

And so, to a metaphorical blast of trumpets, as it were, he displayed to me a separate, fenced enclosure where the snow raspberries were grown — some under plastic outside, some in hot-houses. ‘We are still experimenting, but this is the very site where the first generically modified snow raspberry was produced, available all the year round.' With a supplementary flourish he showed me into one of the greenhouses, and there amidst a racket of machinery and a bustle of overalled workers, stood rank upon rank of wooden boxes full of the gleaming crimson fruit. ‘Waiting for canning,' he said. ‘Within the hour they'll be canned. Here, dirleddy, taste one while they're still fresh.'

He rummaged about for a moment or two, looking for a particularly lush one, and then fastidiously passed it to me between his finger and his thumb. It was certainly more interesting than the frozen berries at the League, but I could not help thinking that if this is what snow raspberries had always tasted like, the mystique that used to surround them was misplaced — all that fuss about the harvesting, the dinner ceremonials that Armand Sauvignon talked about, the ludicrous prices . . .

‘Did you ever eat one in the old days,' I asked, ‘before modification?'

‘Not I,' he laughed; ‘I was too poor in those days, and too young anyway. But our collaborators from across the seas assure us that, in the development of this process, none of the fruit's delicious taste has been lost. As you see, however, we are careful to grow, harvest and can them in careful segregation from other crops, in case of contamination. In this, of course, we are given valuable instruction by our associates from across the seas, and by now canned snow raspberries, under the trade name Havberry, are one of our principal products — you must surely be familiar with them, in your own homeland? No? There may be political reasons for that. In America, of course, they are very popular. Our Arab friends, too, are eager customers. Some of the container ships you must have seen at Yuan Wen Kuo are entirely dedicated to the trade.'

Before I drove away he gave me an elaborately wrapped box. ‘Please take this, dirleddy, as a souvenir of your visit. It is our newest product. One day, I assure you, it will be as familiar around the world as Benedictine.'

When I was out of sight I stopped the car and unwrapped the package. Nestled inside it was a blue bottle, labelled ‘Aqua Hav: 45% Proof. Genuine Snow Raspberry Liqueur'.

Beyond the Havberry plant a new hard road led southward, and a slip road took traffic on to the H1 and thence to Yuan Wen Kuo. A few miles on the road forked, and was signed to Hav City one way, Balad the other. I remembered the Balad as a very crumbled, shabby, disreputable, spiced, straggly and crowded slum quarter, through which the railway ran up to the Escarpment tunnel and a tram line ran down to the city proper.

Now everybody spoke of it rather evasively, as though not to spoil my surprise, and I soon saw why. There was no warning. I crossed a slight bump in the road and there was Balad laid out before me. The whole of it had been turned into an airport. Two huge runways ran north and south, and there was the usual airport conglomeration of sleek terminal buildings, control tower, hangars and car parks. Lights flashed, luggage carts rumbled, buses went here and there and even as I watched a black-and-white aircraft laboured into the sky. Nothing was left of the old Balad, not a hovel or mosque. Even the scummy old lake had vanished. Only rows and rows of barrack-like structures, flat-roofed and identical, seemed in attendance upon the airfield.

Billboards now lined the road:
FLY HAVAIR
! —
SEE THE OTHER HALF
! —
CAIRO 450 HD
! —
TWO FLIGHTS A WEEK TO BEIJING
! I wondered who took all these flights, since I had met nobody who seemed to travel anywhere. All the tourists, I knew, came to Lazaretto by charter flights, and the aircraft I saw standing on the tarmac at the airport, or in the aicraft park beside the terminal building, all seemed to be private jets. ‘Oh, don't believe everything the ads say,' advised a uniformed Havair girl I asked in the terminal atrium. ‘Those Beijing flights are really just for the Government, bringing in specialist workers and flying them out again, and hardly anyone
flies
to Cairo — it's much easier and cheaper to take the hydrofoil. Except for the foreign charters this whole airport is really just for private jets, people comng to YWK, or the GM research place, or the Medina of course, or Cathars and such going out.'

Cathars and such? But she was a busy woman, and I did not keep her from her work. Instead I went and looked out of the window at the aeroplanes. There were three Shenjen 824s in the Havair colours of black and white: almost the whole fleet, I would guess, and each named very Havianly —
Avzar Melchik, Rahman ibn Muhammed, Gunboat Carlotta
. A solitary fighter jet, heavily camouflaged, stood outside one of the hangars. And the many corporate jets which crowded the tarmac were one and all sleek and very luxurious, with curtained windows, crested doors, names in flowery Arabic, in calligraphic Chinese or discreet American advertising script. Some had bold ‘M's on their flanks, simple and elegant; but remembering Azzam's joke I wondered if it stood for Myrmidon or for something else . . .

The terminal, though equipped with all the airport gimmicks, from executive lounges to shopping centres, was virtually empty, so after wandering around for a time, looking at the series of photographs illustrating the Development of Aviation in Hav, and wondering at the photograph of Ivan Rostrovich garlanded with Hav roses at the conclusion of his pioneering flight from Tabriz, and peering at the plaque, now fading a bit, which told me that the airport had been officially opened by His Excellency Anjak Creen, Myrmidonic Minister of Travel, in 2001 — after wandering for a while in this way, like anyone else in any airport anywhere, I popped into one of the airport cafés, where the young men in Hav dress at the counter were desultorily chatting, and ordered a cup of coffee.

Who should I find sitting there too but Chevallaz of Lazaretto!? He greeted me warily, it seemed to me, but warmly enough, and I told him about my visit to Casino Cove. He did not seem very interested. ‘That's all over now,' he said. ‘That's all behind us. We've moved on since then. Signor Biancheri's ambitions are too large for the old Casino — even Lazaretto is too small for him, I sometimes think.'

‘What about you? He says you've got a thousand chefs under you.'

‘Ah, he was joking, Signora Morris. Signor Biancheri is a generous man, he always speaks well of others. The truth is I am well satisfied with my position, which offers me opportunities far wider than before. I must confess to you that in the old Hav, when my responsibilities were more limited, now and then I felt the need to get away from it all — to escape, if you like, from everything. Do you know what I mean?'

Of course I did. Had not just the same thing been said to me, times beyond number, in the old Hav, and had I not felt it myself when the complexities of the place seemed to be hemming me in?

‘But my position is very different now. Today, for instance, I'm off to to Riyadh for a short business stay.'

‘Riyadh! Dear God! How are you going to get there? Surely Havair doesn't fly to Saudi Arabia?'

‘No, no, not yet,' he laughed. ‘No, business associates of Signor Biancheri are picking me up — they're flying in from Zurich in their own plane — should be landing very soon now. But you do realize, Ms Morris, don't you, that what you see here now' — and he gestured beyond the terminal windows — ‘is only a foretaste of what is on the way? Havair flies almost nowhere now, almost all the traffic here is private, but why do you think they've built these two world-class runways, and this terminal to rival anything in Europe or America? It's because in a few years' time this is going to be one of the global transport hubs, and Havair will be one of the world's most important airlines. No expense spared, as they say. They've got the world's best architects to build this place — your own Lord Rogers was invited to design this terminal. They've got the best publicists working on it. They've flown in thousands of workers to do the job, and built all those barracks to house them. That big glass block over there is the Havair training depot, and there they're building a whole new airline from scratch, no expense spared, with advisers from all over.'

This spiel took me aback. I had thought of Chevallaz as a professional restaurateur, a chef by background, bred to the bourgeois world of Swiss catering. Now he sounded more like a public-relations executive.

‘You don't believe me, do you, Ms Morris? You would if you knew the amount of money that's going into all this — not just on new aircraft for Havair, and all that kind of thing, but millions being spent on incentives, to make this an unrivalled staging-post for all the intercontinental airlines — and who knows, perhaps for interspace travel one day? Think of our position here. We're in the middle of everything. In the old days Hav was an almost unknown backwater — you remember that yourself — but the Intervention changed everything. Now Hav is poised to be one of the world's prime movers. You wait! Your Heathrows and American Airlines and Emirates and Lufthansas and the whole damned aviation industry will have to watch out!'

‘And where's the money coming from? Who's paying for it all?'

Chevallaz shrugged his shoulders. ‘Who knows, Ms Morris?' he said. ‘Who can tell? Hav still keeps its secrets — one reason all this is happening. Do you suppose it's just coincidence that this airport's code symbol is
HAV
? I don't suppose there is another city anywhere whose airport code is its own name! Think of the publicity advantages! It takes more than imagination to arrange a thing like that; it takes influence, and it takes persuasion. But that's the way we're going here — unique and unbeatable! Ah, there comes my plane. I'd better be moving.'

Gathering his briefcase and overcoat, and bowing slightly to me, he walked away. A black-and-silver private jet, with some sort of crest up on its fuselage, was turning off the runway to the terminal apron, and presently I saw him, escorted by uniformed officials, walking across to it. Its engines were not turned off, but its door opened, a step-ladder unfolded and I caught a glimpse of figures in black burkas ushering Signor Chevallaz aboard. In a matter of moments the plane was off down the runway and flinging itself into the sky.

‘Dear me,' I said to the young men behind the counter, who had been listening to our conversation. ‘Hav is certainly full of surprises. Whatever next?'