expert in genetics to Yatakang?”
“Well, if a company like that is taking it so seriously
“Well, if a company like that is taking it so seriously
“Well, if a company like that is taking it so seriously
there must be something in it.”
there must be something in it.”
there must be something in it.”
“But the government seems to be trying to convince people
“But the government seems to be trying to convince people
“But the government seems to be trying to convince people
it’s a lie.”
it’s a lie.”
it’s a lie.”
“What that means is that they haven’t got the skill to
“What that means is that they haven’t got the skill to
“What that means is that they haven’t got the skill to
do the same for us.”
do the same for us!”
DO THE SAME FOR US!”
“DO THE SAME FOR US!”
“DO THE SAME FOR US!”
“DO THE SAME FOR US!”
“DO THE SAME FOR US!”
“DO THE SAME FOR US!”
(UNFAIR Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried to cheat them out of and didn’t manage. See also DISHONESTY, SNEAKY, UNDERHAND and JUST LUCKY I GUESS.
—The Hipcrime Vocab by Chad C. Mulligan)
continuity (27)
MANSCAPE
Near the road, high grass flushed green with summer wet, set with low bushes, punctuated with trees. Tethered on expensive chains because they could gnaw through rope or leather, goats strained to crop the tree-bark and kill the trees though there was plenty of grazing closer to the pegs they circled. Chains apart, the road seemed like the only human intrusion into a beast-plant universe, and not the road as such because wild nature was reclaiming it, pitting its surface with holes that held bowlfuls of mud, but its idea of straightness.
Yet the manufactures of man came into view and went again. Every mile or two there were plots of ground trenched for vegetables surrounding a hamlet built in traditional Beninian style of timber and thatch. Some of the wealthier families’ homes were turtle-plated in a riot of colours, the owners having taken old cans, oil-drums, even sheets of metal from abandoned cars, and after flattening them with mallets lapped them together as carefully as medieval armour to protect the wood against wet, rot and termites.
Maps of the district had been kept up to date by a makeshift system involving as much gossip and rumour as actual surveying, but even if they had been revised last week by a team of UN geographers Norman would still have found it hard to relate that out there with this flapping on his knee. He had to say painfully to himself, “Those two hills must correspond to these markings, so this is where they would mine river-clay and bake it into porous filters for the plastics plant at—where?—Bephloti…”
The insect humming of the engine beneath their vehicle’s floor droned down to a grumble. Steering, Gideon Horsfall said, “Sheeting hole, I hoped we’d make it clear to Lalendi before I had to swap cylinders. I’ll pull down off the road when we get around the bend.”
Around the bend there was another of the interchangeable hamlets, except that this was one of the fourteen per cent of the country’s villages which possessed a school and a clinic. It was the wrong day for the clinic, a plain white concrete hut with large-lettered signs in English and Shinka, but the school was busy. As yet, in this region, the summer rains were only intermittent; the full drenching flow would follow in three weeks. Accordingly the teacher—a fat young man with a fan and spectacles of an old-fashioned pattern—was conducting his class under a grove of low trees. They were boys and girls from about six to twelve, clutching UN-issued plastic primers and trying not to let themselves be distracted by the appearance of the car.
It wasn’t yet raining, but it was horribly humid. Norman, clammy from head to toe, thought about the energy required to get out and stand up. He asked Gideon whether he needed help in swapping cylinders. Twisting around to take a pair of fresh ones—one hydrogen, one oxygen—from a crate on the back seat, Gideon declined the offer.
But Norman got out anyway, and found he was looking at the verandah-like frontage of a house on which a small group of women were assembled, and one man, middle-aged, very thin, who lay among them on a low trestle-table. They were wringing cloths in buckets of water and wiping his skin, and he seemed to be making no effort to co-operate.
A little puzzled, he asked Gideon, “What’s the matter over there? Is the man ill?”
Gideon didn’t look at once. He dropped the cylinder-tray at the back of the car, unclipped and reconnected the gas-hoses, and gathered up the empties for return to store before following Norman’s gesture.
“Ill? No, dead,” he said absently, and went to put the cylinders inside the car.
One of the older pupils of the school, squatting cross-legged at the back of the class, raised his hand and asked something of the teacher.
“Is something wrong?” Gideon demanded, realising that Norman had made no move to get back in the car.
“Not really,” Norman said after a pause. “It’s just that I … Well, you see, I’ve never seen a corpse before.”
“It doesn’t look any different from a living person,” Gideon said. “Except it doesn’t move, and it doesn’t suffer. The hole, I was afraid of that. Do you mind being a visual aid to the schoolmaster for five minutes?”
The women had finished their task of washing the corpse; they poured out the dirty water on the ground and a piglet came over to lap at a puddle it formed. From the long poles supporting the thatch over the verandah, a few chickens solemnly looked down. One of the women fetched a galvanised tub full of something sticky and white and began to daub the corpse’s face, using a bundle of hen’s feathers tied on a twig.
“What’s that for?” Norman asked Gideon.
“What? Oh, the white paint? Relic of early missionary interference, I gather. All the pictures of saints and angels they saw when they were being converted to Christianity had white skins, so they decided to give their dead a better chance of admission to heaven.”
The entire class of children rose to their feet and waited for the teacher to walk past, take station at their head, and lead them over towards the car.
“Good morning, gentlemen,” the fat young man said affably. “My class has requested permission to put a few questions to you. Since they have little chance to travel about themselves, perhaps you’d indulge them.”
“Certainly,” Gideon said with only the trace of a sigh.
“Thanks awfully. First, may we know where you come from?” The teacher turned and held out his hand expectantly to one of the older pupils, who gave him a rolled map in bright colours and simplified outlines. Those children who were not too much attracted by the car or the preparation of the corpse craned to see whereabouts in the world Gideon would point to.
When his finger stabbed down in the area of New York, there was a concerted sigh.
“Ah, you’re American!” the teacher said. “Sarah, we learned about America, didn’t we? What do you know of that great country so far away?”
A serious-mannered girl of thirteen or so, one of the oldest pupils, said, “America has over four hundred million people. Some of them are brown like us but most of them are Cock…”
She hesitated.
“Cauc…” corrected the teacher.
“Caucasian,” Sarah managed. “The capital is Washing-ham—”
“Washing—?”
“Washington. There are fifty-two states. At first there were thirteen but now there are four times that number. America is very rich and powerful and it sends us good seed for planting, new kinds of chickens and cows which are better than the ones we used to have, and lots of medicines and disinfectants to keep us healthy.”