Authors: John Brunner
After a second unpleasant drag she stubbed it. "How old are you, Austin?"
"What?"
"How old are you is what I said. I'm twenty-eight and it's a matter of public record. The president of the United States is sixty-six. The chairman of the Supreme Court is sixty-two. My editor is fifty-one.
Decimus was thirty last September."
"And he's dead."
"Yes. Christ, what a waste!" Peg stared blankly through the windshield. Approaching with grunts and snorts was one of the eight-ton crane-trucks used to collect automobiles without legal filters.
This one had trapped exotic prey; a Fiat and a Karmann-Ghia were clamped on its chain-hung magnet.
"Nearly forty," Austin murmured.
"Aries, aren't you?"
"Yes, provided you're asking as a joke."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"Well, I could say anything. There are over two hundred of me, you know."
"Joke!" She almost slapped him, wrenching around in her seat.
"Hell, don't you understand? Decimus is filthily horribly disgustingly
dead
!"
"You mean no one saw it coming in his horoscope?"
"Oh, you're inhuman! Why the hell don't you get out? You hate cars!"
And a fraction of a second later: "No, I didn't mean that! Don't go!"
He hadn't moved. Another pause.
"Any idea who did it?" she said at length.
"You're sure it was-ah-
done
?"
"Must have been! Mustn't it?"
"I guess so." Austin drew his rounded eyebrows together, not looking at her, but she could see sidelong how they formed a child's sketch for a sea gull. (How long before there were kids who didn't know what a gull was?) "Well, I can imagine a lot of people being glad to see him go. Did you check out the police?"
"I was about to when I decided to find you instead. I thought it ought to be you who broke the news to Zena."
"It was. Or rather, I called the wat and made sure she'd hear it first from someone she knew."
"Those poor kids!"
"Better off than some," Austin reminded her. Which was true, it being dogmatic Trainite policy never to bear your own as long as there were orphans to be fostered.
"I guess so…" Peg passed a tired hand over her face. "I wish I'd realized I was wasting my time! Now I don't know if the news has made the papers, or the TV, or anything." She rolled the car away from the curb at last. "Where to?" she added.
"Straight ahead about ten blocks. Worried about losing your job, Peg?"
"More thinking why don't I quit right now."
He hesitated. "Maybe it would be a good idea if you stuck with it."
"Why? Because you want someone in the media on your side?
Don't give me that. Thanks to Prexy just about everyone is-except the owners."
"I wasn't thinking of that. More that you might give me-well, the occasional warning."
"You are afraid, aren't you?" She halted for a red light "Okay, if I can. And if the job lasts…Who's going to take over from Decimus?"
"I don't know. I'm not in charge of anything."
"Sorry. It's fatally easy to fall into the notion that you are, what with people saying 'Trainite' all the time. I do try and remember to say
'commensalist,' but everyone shortens that to 'commie' and it's generally a quick way to start a fist-fight…Does it worry you, having your name taken in vain?"
"What the hell do you think I'm scared of?" He uttered a short harsh laugh. "It gives me goose-bumps!"
"Obviously not because of the wats. Because of demonstrations like this morning's?"
"Them? No! They annoy people, but they do no real harm. Create a lot of publicity, provide a few object lessons for the bastards who are wrecking the planet for commercial gain…And they allow the demonstrators to feel they're being constructive. No, the land of thing I have in mind is this. Suppose someone decides a whole city is offending against the biosphere, and pulls the plug on a nuclear bomb?"
"You think they might? That'd be crazy!"
"Isn't the moral of the twentieth century that we
are
crazy?" Austin sighed. "Worse still, if it did happen, any proof of the insanity of the guy who did it-or guys: the collective bit is becoming more popular, you noticed?-the evidence, anyway, would be burned up. Along with everything else for miles around."
She didn't know what to say to that.
Two blocks further on, he tapped her arm. "Here!"
"What?" Peg stared at her surroundings. This was a desolate, down-at-the-heels area, partly razed for redevelopment, the rest struggling along in a vampiric half-life. A few young blacks were passing a furtive joint in the porchway of a bankrupt store; otherwise no one was visible.
"Oh, don't worry about me," Austin said. "I told you: there are over two hundred of me."
"Yes. I didn't understand."
"People tend not to. But it's literal. You keep seeing references in the underground press. There are at least that many people who decided to call themselves Austin Train after I disappeared-half in California, the rest scattered across the country. I don't know whether to love them or hate them. But I guess they keep the heat off me."
"Sunshades."
"Okay, sunshades. But you shouldn't make remarks like that, Peg.
It dates you. When did you last see somebody carrying a parasol?"
He made to get out of the car. Peg checked him.
"What do you call yourself? No one told me."
One foot on the road, Austin chuckled. "Didn't they say you should ask for Fred Smith? Well, thanks for the ride. And by the way!"
"Yes?"
"If anything goes wrong, you can rely on Zena. You know that, don't you? You can always find sanctuary at the wat."
Certain types of medication, chiefly tranquilizers, must not be taken by someone who has also recently eaten cheese or chocolate.
All of a sudden it felt like a different world. There was an end to the endless succession of round white-rimmed hopeful eyes in dark faces, to the offering of handleless cups and empty cans and greedy dishes and the pale palms of those who were too apathetic even to collect a spent shell-case by way of a container, because everything they had once owned had been snatched from them and they couldn't believe it was worth investing precious energy in acquiring somediing else. And there was still a whole heap, at least a kilo, in the carton she'd been distributing from, and more cartons were stacked against the wall behind her, and more yet, incredibly many more, were being unloaded down a slide from die dark overshadowing shape of the ancient VC-10
which had somehow been set down on the improvised landing strip.
Disbelieving, Lucy Ramage brushed back a strand of fair hair from her eyes and turned to examine a segment of the peculiar substance she had been measuring out by the flaring acetylene lamp hung from a pole at the end of the trestle table.
It had a name. A trade name, no doubt properly registered.
"Bamberley Nutripon." The bit she had chosen was about as long as her little finger, cream-colored and of the consistency of stale Cheddar cheese. According to the instructions on every carton it was best to boil it because that made more of the starch digestible, or triturate it in water to make a dough, then fry it in small cakes or bake it on an iron griddle.
That, though, was for later: the elaboration, the cuisine bit. What counted right now was that it could be eaten as it was, and for the first time since she came here four mortal months ago she need not feel guilty about enjoying a balanced meal in her comfortable quarters tonight, because everyone who could be found had been given enough to fill the belly. She had seen them come to the table one by one and gape at the vast quantities they were allotted: ex-soldiers shy of an arm or leg; old men with cataracts filming their eyes; mothers with little children who struggled to make their babies mumble the food because they had starved past the point at which they forgot even how to cry.
And one in particular, there in front of me, when her mother tried to rouse and feed her…
Oh,
God
! No, there can't be a god. At least none that I want to believe in. I won't accept a god who'd let a mother find her baby dead on her hip when there was food in her hand that might have saved it!
Blackness-of sky, ground, human skins-crowded in on her and built an Africa-wide torture chamber in her head.
A helpful grip enfolded her arm as she felt herself sway and a quiet voice spoke in good English.
"You have been overdoing things, I suspect, Miss Ramage!"
She blinked. It was the nice major, Hippolyte Obou, who had been educated at the Sorbonne and was reputedly no older than her own age of twenty-four. He was extremely handsome, if one discounted the tribal scars striping his cheeks, and had always appeared to maintain a detached view of the war.
Which was more than could be said for General Kaika…
But she wasn't here to take sides or criticize. She was here to pick up pieces and patch them together. And although there had been moments when it seemed the job was impossible, everyone had been fed today, food was left over for tomorrow, and another consignment was promised immediately after the new year.
A different world.
"You will come to my office for a pick-you-up," the major said; he didn't make it a question. "Then I will ride you back to your accommodation in my jeep."
"There's no need to-"
But he brushed her words aside, taking her arm again, this time with a touch of gallantry. "Ah, it is little to do for someone who has brought such a Christmas present! This way, please."
"The office," a mere hut of planks and clay, had been one of the many headquarters of the invaders' district commander. Fighting had continued at Noshri a week after the official armistice. Right across one wall was stitched the line of holes left by a salvo of fifty-caliber machine-gun slugs. Opposite, the corresponding line of marks had two gaps in it where the slugs had been stopped before they crossed the little room. Lucy tried not to look in that direction, because she had had to tend the obstacles.
It was terribly hot, even this long after sunset. The air was saturated with moisture. She had thought about going half-naked like the local girls, and come close to that climax. Her formal nurse's uniform had vanished within days of her arrival. Her neat new aprons had been ripped into emergency bandages, then her dresses, her caps, and even the legs of her jeans one desperate day. For weeks now she had gone about in what was left of them, threads dangling above her knees, and shirts lacking so many buttons she had to knot the tails in front. At least, though, they were regularly washed by the girl Maua-not local, some sort of camp-follower-acting as her personal maid. Never having had a servant in her life, she had at first rebelled at being given one, and still was not reconciled to the idea; however, others of the UN team had pointed out that the girl was unskilled and by taking routine tasks off her could free Lucy to make maximum use of her own training.
And all this because a sea had died which she had never seen…
At one of the two rickety tables which, apart from chairs, constituted the entire furniture of the office, a tall thin sergeant was adding up figures on a printed form. Major Obou rapped an order at him, and from a battered olive-green ammunition case he dug out a bottle of good French brandy and a tin cup. Handing Lucy two fingers of the liquor, the major raised the bottle to his broad lips.
"Here's how!" he said. "And do sit down!"
She complied. The drink was too strong for her; after half a mouthful she set the cup on her knees and held it with both hands to stop herself trembling from fatigue. She thought of asking for water to dilute it, but decided it wouldn't be fair to involve the sergeant in that much trouble. Drinkable water was hard to find in Noshri. Rain, caught in buckets and tanks, was safe if you added a purifying tablet, but the rivers were sour with defoliants from the campaign of last summer and the invaders had filled most of the wells with carrion as they retreated.
"That should put-if you forgive the remark-a little color in your cheeks," encouraged Major Obou. She forced a smile in reply, and wondered for the latest of many times what she should make of this handsome dark man who took such pains to salt his English with bookish idioms, right or wrong. Her eyes were very tired from the heat and dust of the day, so she closed them. But that was no help. Behind the lids she saw the sights she had encountered wherever she went in this formerly flourishing town: a crossroads where a mortar shell had exploded squarely on a bus, leaving a shallow pit hemmed with smashed metal; charred roof-beams jutting over the ashes of what had been furniture and possibly people; trees curtailed by the wing of a crashing aircraft, shot down by a patrolling fighter because it was suspected of carrying arms, though she had seen for herself it contained only medical supplies…
She touched the base of her left thumbnail. Salvaging what she could from the wreckage, she had cut herself and had to have three stitches in the wound. A nerve had been severed, and there was a patch a quarter-inch on a side where she would never feel anything again.
At least she'd been inoculated against tetanus.
In one corner of the office a back-pack radio suddenly said something in the local language of which even yet Lucy had learned only a few words. Major Obou answered it, and rose.
"Drink up, Miss Ramage. There will be a government plane in one hour and I must be on hand. Before that I shall keep my promise to convey you home."
"There's no need to-"
"But there is." His face was suddenly stern. "I know to makes no sense to lay blame at anybody's door, and the causes of our war were very complex. But the people here have understood one thing, that it was the greed and carelessness of-forgive me-people like you which poisoned the Mediterranean and started the chain of events which led to our neighbors from the north invading us. So long as they were apathetic from hunger they were silent. Now that they have been fed, one fears that they will remember what they have been taught by agitators. I am aware that you come from New Zealand, very far away, with good motives. But a man seething with rage because he lost his home, his wife, his children, would not stop to ask where you come from if he met you in the road."