As soon as they were married he and Jameela would leave. But where would they go? To Copley in Russia, as Jameela had sarcastically suggested? She needed a life, not a rugged existence as a camp-follower! Could he change professions? He had no skills — and no way to get any in this post-Pacov world.
Heand Jameela could separate, of course: he to join Copley — the job he knew best — and she to live with her family in Tenerife for the time being. No, that was stupid! No more separations!
The Party of Humankind offered the only refuge Lessing could see, unpleasant though it might be in some ways. They couldn’t live in India or Pakistan, Europe was a horror, and the United States, too, was becoming impossible. Mulder had said that the door would always be open on Ponape. Being a resort manager (and part-time drill sergeant) on a distant, friendly island now struck him as better than any of the alternatives.
He made up his mind.
Tomorrow he would telephone Mulder in Virginia and ask for a transfer.
To himself he murmured the only Ponapean word he had learned: kaselehlia. It meant both “hello” and “welcome”; it did have a soft, warm, and friendly lilt to it.
But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites. and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee.
So Joshua smote all the country of the hills, and of the South, and of the vale, and of the springs, and all their kings; he left none remaining, but utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded.
And when the Lord thy God shall deliver them before thee, thou shalt smite them, and utterly destroy them; thou shalt make no covenant with them, nor shew mercy unto them.
For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God; the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.
And thou shalt consume all the people which the Lord thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them.
The Jews are the most remarkable people in human history because, whenever they have been faced with the guestion “to be or not to be,” they have always decided, with an uncanny insight, to be at any price: even if that price was the radical falsification of human nature, naturalness, reality, and the entire inner world as well as the external world.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sunday, January 17, 2044
Club Lingahnie’s library stood on a rise. It was a degree or two cooler than Lessing ‘s house down by the beach on Madolenihmw Bay. The building was new, a long, one-room frame cabin with an “office” tacked on the front, and it still smelled of sawdust, paint, and varnish.
Lessing’s watch told him that it was after midnight. He had been unable to sleep and didn’t want to bother Jameela. He had therefore slipped on his pants, shirt, and sneakers and come up here to browse.
It had taken Ponape to prove to Lessing that books could be fun. He had never been much of a reader, a reason for much misery during his brief encounter with college, but the island had a lonely, cut-off, Robinson Crusoe feel to it that made reading more attractive than satellite TV, sex, drugs, alcohol, or other pastimes to which visitors to the South Pacific were sometimes prone.
He had another reason for reading as well, one he was embarrassed to admit to Liese or Borchardt or Jennifer. He had always been interested in military matters, but he found himself outclassed in the long, historical debates with which his comrades whiled away the time. He thus quietly began reading up on World War II. From there it was only a step to other topics: nothing very scholarly, maybe, but a cut above the comic books Wrench included in his shipments from the United States.
He clicked the light switch and was blinded by the raw, white glare of the unshielded bulbs. He almost went for his beeper alarm!
Someone was here, sitting in the darkness in a chair by the one window.
He squinted and was surprised to see Abu Talib, the British-educated “Descendant” from Syria. The Arab and his family had been club guests — refugees, really — for three months now.
“Jesus, you startled me!” Lessing growled. “Thought you were a kikibird!” He took his hand out of his pocket and noticed it was trembling. Constant tension did that, even to an experienced mere!
The Arab arose gracefully. He was tall, with wavy, black hair, a cleft chin, and big, expressive, dark eyes, the kind described as “flashing.” In a friendlier age he might have been a film star. He wore an open-necked, white sports shirt, white duck pants, and thong sandals.
He said, “Terribly sorry, Mr. Lessing.”
“Nobody’s supposed to be in here after hours!” Lessing released his tension in a burst of official pique. “And why not turn on the light?”
“The dark is soothing, and one can look out over the bay from here. We Easterners meditate now and then, y’know.”
The man was apparently joking, though with Britishers it was hard to tell. Lessing glanced around but saw nothing out of order.
Abu Talib seemed disposed to talk. “Bloody humidity! Why Herman chose Ponape is a mystery! This is no Shangri-La.” The wry British accent didn’t match the face; it did provide Wrench with something to mimic at parlies.
“Didn’t mean to disturb you either. After a book.”
“Ah?” Abu Talib trailed a finger along the spines of the volumes on the shelf beside him. “Building up quite a library, eh?”
“I usually stick to novels.” What he really wanted was the newly-arrived history of the armored forces in the Baalbek War. Its bright, red dust cover wasn’t visible on the cataloging desk. Had somebody else already checked it out?
“Interested in some jolly pom tapes? I think I know where Mr. Bauer keeps them… for the edification of the senior members, you understand.”
Was the other still joking? “Not really. I prefer doing to watching. Never got the pom habit.”
The Arab smiled. “Neither did I. Afraid history’s my cuppa.”
“Your…?”
“Oh. Cup of tea. My hobby… my vice.”
“I hear a lot of these books came from your library in Syria.”
“My father’s and grandfather’s, really. They’d get me arrested in Damascus now.”
“In America, too. I’ve been looking at some of ’em.”
“Yes, the ones on twentieth-century history that aren’t ‘politically correct.’”
“The ones that say the ‘Holocaust’ never happened? That Adolf Hitler was a good guy in a white hat?”
“What? Oh, ah, yes… white hat. I see. Not so. The ‘Holocaust’ did happen. But it didn’t happen quite the way and to the extent the Establishment historians claim. Many people did die of typhus, malnutrition, and other diseases, but not the ‘six million’ claimed by the Jews.”
Lessing repressed a snort. “And no atrocities, I suppose?”
“Oh, there were, but not because of a systematic policy. There were sadists and brutal guards, the sort you get in every prison system, particularly when you can’t be choosy because of the war. Some zealous bureaucrats also ‘carried out orders’ in ways calculated to ‘solve problems quickly.’”
“If there were atrocities, why didn’t the Germans do something about them?”