Watson, Ian - Novel 10 (2 page)

 
          
“And Mayor Barnes.
Mark Barnes.”

 
          
The
Mayor of Egremont was a tall, middle-aged
negro
with a
neatly-shaped Vandyke beard. He appeared to scan the few fleecy clouds in the
sky, wondering whether they could possibly have the impertinence to cast a few
spots of rain down on the occasion. It hardly looked likely, though. Then the
Mayor glanced round as though checking the whereabouts of the news gatherers,
who stood with electronic cameras locked on their shoulders and aiming lenses
pasted to their foreheads.

 
          
The
music continued until everyone, including the children, had arrived and
settled.

 
          
Finally
Mayor Barnes rose, and silence fell.

 
          
“Friends,”
he began. His voice was proud and passionate.

 
          
“The missiles are
all gone, the
doomsday machines are dismantled, the day of the gun is over — long since! But
we’ll never forget the debt that we owe to people like Norman Harper, who
helped to make this possible ...”

 
          
The
poet inclined his head modestly. Perhaps he only saw himself as a poet, but to
other people he was a legislator of mankind — an acknowledged one.

 
          
“We
were going to destroy the whole of this fair world of ours and all the people
in it because we couldn’t come to terms with death. Death was something that
never happened to us, but only to the other fellow. We expelled the dead from
our lives. We made them into strangers, who had nothing to do with us. We
pushed death abroad beyond our personal frontier — into enemy territory. And
when that happened, strangers — foreigners — all spelt death to us. Oh, we
fantasized about an afterlife, even about reincarnation, but we never gave a
thought to the business of our own dying which brings this life to an end ...”

 
          
Jim
sat up and took notice. The Mayor’s speech was going out across the whole land.
In view of the recent accident in Gracchus, did this represent the opening word
in a campaign against afterlife studies? To be sure, the idea that a soul might
survive enriched the death encounter of those people who still believed in such
a thing. So the notion of survival had its discreet uses. But if people could
hope to survive death, wasn’t that equivalent to a denial of death?

 
          
“Defence
— which was actually all
directed against Death the Strahger — became one of the biggest forces on Earth.
And oh boy, did we prosper! Did we get rich, on the bombs and warplanes and
bullets! And what a lot of media fun we got from the spectacle of the other
fellow’s death!”

 
          
If
there was a campaign in embryo, perhaps it was directed against the freezer freaks?
No frozen body had ever been revived, or ever would be, and the few rich people
who opted for this course invariably retired from life gracefully. Still, they
represented a kind of privileged opposition to the Houses of Death and the
policy of timely euthanasia. Possibly some of these people imagined that they
could ‘live through’ the age of Good Death into some future death-denying era?
That might well be their secret ambition. But obviously they did not believe in
the survival of a soul, or else they would not have had themselves frozen when
they became fatally ill or when the Census Office pulled their card. The soul
was a horse of a different colour.

 
          
A horse — or a nightmare?

 
          
“Friends,
we thrived on war — because the survivors of a war had magically defeated
death. Soldier boys returning home were our immortals. They’d put off the evil
hour. They’d outlived the other side. So we began to plan the biggest war of
all — the total war. If we could live through the doomsday of the whole dam
world, we really would have punched death in the eye! And we would just have
been punching
ourselves
in the eye,
hitting out at the death that is in all of us . . .”

 
          
“Too
true,” murmured Marta Bettijohn, and Jim nodded automatically. He wished he
could totally believe. The afternoon was so golden. The fact that Norman Harper
had chosen to retire on the very day that Jim arrived in Egremont was surely a
sign.

 
          
But
had the poet exactly
chosen
to
retire? Or had he been encouraged, as a political example . . .? Jim rejected
the thought. Norman Harper looked absolutely at peace with himself. Maybe the
'campaign’ was all in Jim’s imagination. Everything that Mayor Barnes said was
so true. One day, when death really was second nature to everyone, perhaps this
sort of oratory could wither away because it had become unnecessary.

 
          
Looking
round at the audience, Jim realized the extent to which death had already
become second nature, particularly for the younger people present. He felt
momentarily like an anachronism, something out of date; then he shucked off the
sensation. The sun shone down, gilding his spirit. He too was a guide in the
House of Death, and a good one. He concentrated on believing — in the path
which had saved perhaps a third of the human race from the fate of the rest.
How could he be an anachronism? The world had been this way for most of his
life.

 
          
“But
some people understood: people like our own Norman Harper. They got us to shake
hands with friendly, natural death again. Along with some others — who equally
deserve our praise and thanks — he started the great movement which has led to
the Houses of Death and the reconstruction of our whole society. So at last the
Big Fear went away. Now that we accept the death that is part of us, we have a
future again. For that we thank you,
Norman
, from the heart.”

 
          
Mayor
Barnes sat down, to quiet applause.

 
          
“The
man’s eloquent,” whispered Marta. “He could be a guide himself.”

 
          
“No,
he’s an orator, a politician. You shouldn’t make speeches to the dying.”

 
          
“Well,
of course not. But even so.”

 
          
Noel
Resnick, Master of the House, rose next. He performed a slow mesmeric dance
about the focal point of the microphone while he spoke, lifting himself up on
right tiptoes then on left tiptoes. Jim recalled that stutterers occasionally
‘danced* like this to lose their stutter.

 
          
“.
. . there was no dialogue with one’s own death
, ’
’
Resnick was saying in a firm voice. “Consequently so-called ‘men of good will*
spoke out against this country, or that group of people. Traitors were sought
and pilloried as scapegoats. All this, because these men of ‘good will* placed
their own death
out there.
They drove
it like a stake into the hearts of the enemies they manufactured.
Confrontation and victory were the watchwords. So was ‘putting up a fight’ —
for freedom, for the individual, you name it — even if it meant mass death for
everybody. And the real name of their enemy was always Death itself. But it
just so happens that there is no enemy alien named ‘Death*. There is no war.
There is no other side. There is only here, and us.”

 
          
Obviously
Resnick too was something of a politician. Was he in competition with Mayor
Barnes? The answer hardly interested Jim, yet he noted the existence of a
question. He noted, too, that this Resnick was a tough Master — even if he had
overcome a stutter, and perhaps because of this. The Master of the larger House
of Death in Gracchus had been more sympathetic and flexible; but even he had
put his foot down in the end.

 
          
A
flight of wild ducks winged overhead in a V formation. How did the ducks learn
to fly with such perfect symmetry? Why, in much the same way that a young child
learns the symmetry of day and night, and of waking and sleeping. In its infant
brain the child decides that there must exist a corresponding cycle of life and
death too. As death follows life, so must another life follow death . . .

 
          
Was
this really such a false decision, if the same instinctive sense of symmetry
guided the wild ducks in their flight?

 
          
Jim
shook his head as though to clear it of delusions — to shake the malaise of the
old deluded days which he had hardly even known.

 
          
Instead,
he concentrated on the jolly solidity of Marta Bettijohn — and on being in this
crowd which could genuinely celebrate death as part of life. And especially he
concentrated on the focus of their celebrations, the white-haired poet whom
they all honoured on this, his last day in the public world.

 
          
Presently,
Resnick ceased to sway about before the microphone like a vast pendulum bob,
and sat down. Norman Harper stood, and embraced his audience with outstretched,
gnarled hands.

 
          
“It’s
my day to retire,” he said affectionately. “I shall not make a speech.” He
chuckled softly.
“How could I compete with what has gone
before?
Instead, let me simply quote a favourite passage from my own
Book of Death."

 
          
The
poet closed his eyes. Like blind Homer he recited.

 
          
“The
embryo bird must partly die
If
its wings are to
emerge, to fly.

 
          
The
caterpillar dies, as well,

 
          
To
become the butterfly, so swell.

 
          
While
man himself dies every seven Years, but goes not up to heaven.

 
          
So
here is death, and here is life:

 
          
These
Siamese twins shall know no strife ...”

 
          
“Doggerel,”
muttered Jim, despite himself.

 
          
“Hush!”
said Marta. “What did you say?”

 
          
“Nothing, sorry.”

 
          
“Each
life is several generations

           
Of births and deaths like transit
stations;

 
          
And
then the train returns at last

           
To where it
started, in the past.

 
          
Our
death is in us, not ‘out there’;

 
          
It
grows out of us, like our hair.

 
          
It
falls like hair, like
Autumn
leaves;

 
          
And
in the earth new life achieves.

 
          
There
is no Enemy, no Thief:

 
          
A
dangerous and a false belief!

 
          
Many
times in life we die

 
          
So
that our new mind-wings can fly;

 
          
And
when we finally fold those wings,

 
          
Our
spirit sings,
then
dies away.

 
          
There
is no more; there is no Sting.

 
          
We
shall be as we were before.

 
          
The
day is over, perfect day ...”

 
          
Someone
— a man — pushed roughly between Jim and Marta. The man ran to the front of the
dais, where Norman Harper continued to recite, unaware of the disturbance.

 
          
The
intruder raised his right hand. Something resembling a pipe stem was clutched
in it.

 
          
A
sharp crack sounded, then a second crack — no louder than two branches snapping
underfoot.

 
          
Blood
bloomed on Norman Harper’s throat and chest. Gagging, the poet staggered
backwards. He crashed into the chair which he had been occupying so calmly just
a few minutes earlier. Chair and poet plunged off the back of the dais on to
the lawn. Both lay motionless.

 
          
Uncomprehending
silence followed, for a few moments. During this pause the intruder lowered his
right hand. He let what he held fall to the turf. Then somebody screamed, and
someone else.

 
          
Marta
seized Jim’s arm. Her fingers squeezed him cruelly.

 
          
“He
—
murdered
— Norman!’’ she cried in
Jim’s face. “He ... a
handgunV
’

 
          
There
was a huge incongruity about what had happened. It was like a TV play — but no
TV
play
like this had been made or screened for many
years. It was something from the proscribed archives. Jim sat dumbly watching
it. The lead actor — the murderer — seemed to have little idea what to do now
that he had performed his act. Nobody else seemed to have much idea what to do
about him.