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.’