"Sometimes it's very hard just to be human, don't you think?" asked Helena. The way she asked it, and with the red from the dying sun warming her face and her fresh even smile, she became almost beautiful in the ocean evening.
"Not if you've ever tried to be an aardvark. It's really hard being an aardvark. If everyone would just try to be an aardvark, they'd see how easy it is to be human."
Remo left the deck, the Atlantic having been spoiled for him by Helena's mouth. She followed him into the off-white carpeted hallway, and down an elevator and onto the South American deck.
"Did I say something that offended you?" she asked.
"I don't remember asking you to come along," said Remo.
"I think you're crying out for help. I think deep down you are a very decent person. I sense these things," Helena said.
Remo tried to read a directional sign, encased in clear lucite. Behind him a wall quietly opened a crack.
"I think you're afraid of loving," Helena said.
"Where's the Middle East deck? I get lost in this junk heap."
He saw the reflection of the wall in the lucite. Helena was in the midst of telling Remo what a truly kind and gentle soul he was when she saw him flip backward on his feet. He was reading the map on the wall and then he was going backward as though a train had run into him. And more surprisingly the wall he went toward was opened as if it were a passage. There were men inside. They had knives. They were beginning a rush out into the corridor when the gentle American with the lost soul tore into them like an iron blade through wet grass. He was quiet as he moved and Helena heard grunts and the soft snap of breaking bone muffled by torn muscle. She thought she recognized some of the men, but she could not be sure because they were moving around her, like loose electrons. The American seemed to move so slowly and the others so quickly, yet it was his blows that struck the men with knives, and their knives that lunged at air and slashed at places where the American was not.
Helena had seen karate exhibitions before but she had never seen anything quite so pure as what this man practiced.
Then one of the men looked at her and his eyes widened. He growled a few guttural words and the men slid back behind the wall, dragging their wounded. The door slid shut behind them, leaving two in the final sweet stillness of the ultimate anesthetic.
Why hadn't they used guns? Remo thought.
"Was that an exhibition?" asked Helena. "It was beautiful."
Remo looked around. Was what an exhibition? Where was there an exhibition?
"You're a beautiful person. What's your name?" Helena asked.
Remo cocked an eyebrow.
"You can trust me. Don't be afraid. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
"Girlie, that's the dumbest thing I have ever heard from a human mouth. Dumb, girlie."
Remo calculated that if he headed straight down the corridor, he would come to one of the staircases. Everyone used the elevators, but he did not feel comfortable in them. Besides, walking twenty or thirty flights was nothing. He tried to remember how he had gotten to the outside deck, but he had wandered so aimlessly that he could not recall. His main attention had been on the walls and closets.
He wished, for once, that he had a mission on this ship. If someone had told him to clean up and get rid of the gangs hiding in the ship, he would do it. If someone had told him to get rid of all the delegates who did not speak good English, he would do it. If someone told him to get rid of Helena for the good of mankind, he would do it.
But all he had been told, by Chinn, was that he should not be late getting back to the Iranian consulate so that he could escort Ambassador Zarudi to the grand party to be held that evening in the central-decks stadium to honor the builder of the ship, Demosthenes Skouratis.
Remo found a staircase. Helena asked why her statement about fear was dumb.
"Because fear, like breathing, is necessary. Fear is a good thing. It's what keeps people alive. Too much fear, unnecessary fear, is what you meant. That's a bad thing."
Remo found an exit from the stairwell but it led to a conference room that held about a hundred delegates.
"You don't read Arabic, do you?" Helena said. "Would you like me to translate?"
"No," said Remo.
"This is the United Nations Agricultural Committee."
Remo saw that all the delegates were not delegates. Most were bodyguards. The delegates had these men positioned around them like body armor, an incredible waste of manpower. They created small clusters. There were about twenty clusters.
Helena explained that the Agricultural Committee had just unanimously passed two resolutions: one decried the loss of agriculture in what it called occupied Arab lands, and the other condemned the Western world for famine in the Third World and Communist countries.
Helena smiled at the vote. Remo wanted to get back to the Iranian consulate.
"Do you know what's so funny?" Helena asked.
"I wasn't paying attention."
"Well, the countries in charge of agriculture can't feed themselves. When the Algerians kicked out the French, they were exporting agricultural products. Now, after Algerian rule, they have to import enough food to eat."
"I know the UN's nonsense. Who doesn't? You don't take the Bronx Zoo seriously, why take this seriously?"
"Because I would hope for more from the United Nations."
"Why? It's made up of people, isn't it?"
"You've given up on the human race, haven't you?"
"I have eyes and ears," said Remo.
"I think if there's one thing the UN was offering, it was hope. That's why I want more from the UN—because I have hope."
"And an acute inability to see what a waste of time is."
"I do hope," said Helena. "I hope the backward nations stop inventing new words to disguise their backwardness and end their own backwardness, instead of expecting civilized man to feed their swollen populations forever. When they talk about the unequal distribution of wealth, they're really complaining about the unequal distribution of character and the work habits they don't have. Europe isn't physically rich. Its workers make it rich. Same with Japan and the United States. What the Third World rants about is that the industrialized nations have stopped running their governments for them and now they're starving. Well, they were victims of famine when civilized man colonized them, and now they're victims of famine again because the colonizers have been chased out."
"So what?" said Remo.
"So whole nations with an illiteracy rate just this side of the Stone Age, nations that select their leaders by the fastest knife or the longest penis in the country, are running the symbolic parliamentary body of the world. It means quite simply that there will never be a world body for food or health or science. It's like you let children loose in a temple and they spread their excrement on the holy tablets."
"Lady, I don't care. And I don't know why you do, either."
"Because the world is taking a giant step backward. Did you notice, they were very careful to have industrialized nations build this ship and navigate it and operate it. British, American, Scandinavian. That's the crew, especially around the atomic engines."
"You seem to have the world figured out," Remo said.
Helena laughed, a thin mirthless laugh, and her eyes clouded over. "Figuring out the world is no problem. Getting through the day is. Don't leave me, please."
Remo looked at her longing eyes, the pleading in her face, and he put a chair between the two of them and got out of the conference room before she could follow. What did he care if half the world didn't know how to use a contraceptive or thought it was too much bother and wanted the other half to support its spawn? Stupidity wasn't new to the world. He had heard the same argument put forth by Americans who either knew nothing of world economics or could keep an incredibly straight face while talking stupid.