“Nothing new. Money and politicians: the honey and the bees, as my dad used to say.”
“The only thing that puzzles me more is Germany’s blind acquiescence to paying ‘war reparations’ to Israel… a country that didn’t even exist at the time of the Second World War! More than 200 billion marks, and still paying! Even with all the guilt the Jews have managed to pile onto Germany, it doesn’t make sense. Germans born after 1935 can no more be guilty than you can because of your ancestors’ treatment of the American Indians! I’m surprised the French aren’t still collecting ‘reparations’ for Caesar’s conquest of Gaul!”
Lessing spotted the book he wanted beneath a stack of journals. He pulled it out and tried another topic: “Your family like the South Pacific?”
The Arab stopped, finger raised to make yet another point. He blinked and said, “Nadia’s adjusting, and Sami and Faisal think the beach was made just for them.”
Abu Talib’s Syrian wife, Nadia, had been a beauty in her youth, but now her pulchritude was best described as “ample.” His two teenaged sons were addicted to swimming, sports cars, prodigal allowances, and girls. “Spoiled rotten” was a fair description. The boys had set themselves the task of evaluating the sexual potential of each of the fifty girl students sent out by the Party’s Brazilian branch. This they performed with efficiency and enthusiasm — singly, in pairs, or in squads. Felix Bauer’s new German wife, Helga, was obliged to devote several classes to urgent sex education instead of genetic theory as the curriculum prescribed.
The Arab interrupted Lessing’s thought. “And your wife, Mr. Lessing? She’s teaching Nadia Indian cooking and learning to make baklava in return. Adjusting splendidly, eh?”
Lessing nodded. To be truthful, he didn’t know. Jameela was a mystery. Outwardly she had adapted well. She played tennis with Abu Talib’s sons, learned bridge from Mrs. Delacroix, went for walks and swimming with Helga Bauer, travelled over to Kolonia, Ponape’s one town, to socialize with the Indian merchant families living there, and kept an impeccable household. Yet Lessing sensed an incompleteness: all was not right beneath the surface.
They had discussed having children, but Jameela wanted to wait. What if Pacov were to reoccur? Or the simmering bush wars in Europe to worsen? Or the turmoil in the United States to explode into civil war?
The world was too dangerous now for children, Jameela said. That was no excuse, Lessing had replied: more kids were born during wars than during limes of peace. They grew up, lived and died, and kept the species going somehow. She only smiled. After a while he gave up.
Her problem might be homesickness — culture shock — isolation from her own people. She no longer discussed history and genetics with the Party faithful but concentrated on the daily round. All Lessing could do was to provide love and support. That he did to the best of his awkward ability.
As he started to fill out a loan card for the book, he was astonished to see that the desk was brightly lit by light from the windows.
Light?
From the windows?
At midnight?
He whirled, stunned.
There were five lights out there. Five brilliant, white suns had risen and hung just above the obsidian sea. He heard the racket of helicopter engines.
The suns were combat spotlights, the kind used to illumine ground-targets at night!
He stared at Abu Talib as the hoarse chatter of copter-mounted mini-guns and the shrieking hiss-boom of air-to-ground rockets started paperclips dancing upon the desk.
Wasn’t there anybody up in the watchtower? Who was on duty in the radar and sonar room over in the communications complex?
Lessing rushed out the door. He had to get to his people, organize a defense. Who the hell was attacking them, anyhow?
Another rocket blast dazzled and deafened him. A rose of red flame bloomed over by the darkened dormitories, and blazing rubble pattered down. Screams and yells erupted from behind the communications building, and he heard the lighter yammering of automatic rifles. Somebody on their side was shooting back— though ineffectually.
Where was he going? He let his combat nerves take over and found himself flattened against the pitch-fragrant planks of the south wall of the assembly building, Abu Talib beside him. Out in the leaping orange and scarlet glare of the central parade ground he saw people running, most in nightclothes, one or two nearly naked. There were bodies there, too, tumbled piles upon the grass.
“Where…?” the Arab grated in his ear.
He decided.
“Down toward the shore line… get Jameela… and your wife! Follow me! Do as I do!” He set off at a zig-zag run, Abu Talib at his heels.
A figure bulked up out of the back-lit smoke. It was Wayne Mallon, wearing only boxer shorts, a stitch-gun clutched in both hands. They threw questions at each other, but Mallon knew nothing. He had been up at communications. The trainee on duty had had less than a minute to jabber excitedly at the radar screens before the first big bird soared in from the ocean to spew death. Communications was now a burning shell.
“Come on!” Lessing took off running again, sneakers crunching upon the gravelled path. The helicopter engines still chuffed above their heads, but the rockets and mini-guns had gone silent.
A troop landing was imminent!
They met one of the Brazilian students, a girl of about fifteen. She had found a Riga-71 submachine gun some place, and Lessing paused to wrest it from her. She didn’t know what to do with the weapon, and he needed it. She shrieked at him in Portuguese, but all he could do was point her toward the presumed safety of the trees beyond the club’s perimeter.
It took them five minutes to negotiate the path from the library to the shore. Bewildered people blocked their way, some wounded, others dazed. The propane tanks behind the mess hall began to explode with bright and deadly regularity. Three of the helicopter-mounted spotlights had gone out, but two still circled above the parade ground. Most of the shooting had stopped.
They saw their first opfoes in the lane beside the assembly halclass="underline" two men in tight, black jump suits, heavy backpacks giving them the look of creatures from Mars, faces concealed by plastic visors with built-in corn-links. One wore a helmet like a Greek warrior, Lessing saw the dim, red eye that glimmered in its crest: a night-sight. Both carried short-barrelled automatic weapons. He couldn’t tell at this distance, but the guns looked Israeli.
He pulled Mallon and Abu Talib into the shadows behind one of the classrooms. “No use,” he panted. “We can thumb those two, but they’ll have back-up. We go down to the beach, along by the boathouse. I split off there. Head over to my place. Mallon, you stay with Abu Talib and get his family out of the club. Green light?”
Mallon nodded. The Arab would have argued, but Lessing gave him a shove. “Move!”
Gunfire crackled ahead, and they heard more shouts and screaming. A rifle grenade shattered a window and exploded. Boots thudded upon the gravel path. Lessing and Mallon both went prone, hauling Abu Talib down on top of themselves. Black figures lumbered past.
They reached the swimming beach. Lessing ‘s shoes filled with Ponape’s sand and treacle-warm sea water. He halted. An opfo crouched on the seawall ahead, squinting inland, away from them, at the pyrotechnics. Lessing put him down with a neck-snapper grip from behind. Abu Talib scrabbled for the man’s gun, but it skittered over the edge of the wall into the water. They didn’t stop to check whether the opfo was dead.