The whole sub shook gently with the discharge of Jogajong from the flooding compartment. “Hah!” the navigator said. “Not before time. I have a slit-eye patrol-boat at the extreme edge of the detectors.”
“You mean they’ll notice him swimming ashore?”
“Him? No—his suit won’t give a blip at this range, not on their equipment. But we might. We’ll have to sit here and wait them out.”
The intelligence officer nodded and rubbed his sweating palms on his thighs, mechanically continuing the motion until long after the fabric of his pants had absorbed the moisture.
How did Lenin feel about the driver of his sealed train after he’d become unchallenged boss of the Russians? Did he even remember there had been a driver?
When he grew desperate to relieve the tension, he essayed a joke. He said, “How does it feel to have just changed the course of history?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said the navigator. “To my way of thinking, by the time history happens I’m going to be dead.”
continuity (11)
THE SOUND OF FALLING ROCK
Donald had not thought to wonder what the time was. Out on the street, under the Fuller Dome, the cycle of night and day seemed suspended. It was somewhere around dawn by now, apparently; there had been too many other demands on their time for the police to process the rioters as soon as they were brought in. The city was dead and drained, its roads like veins bled dry, garbage and cleansing vehicles inching along them like a few stranded leucocytes struggling against hopeless odds to defeat an invading disease.
Norman slumped beside him in the rear of the cab, eyes opening every now and then, but for the most part too preoccupied with the sickness and lethargy bequeathed to him by the gas to be able to pay attention to his surroundings. When they reached their apartment block, Donald had to half-carry him first to the elevators, then into the living-room.
In the middle of the carpet he trod on something hard and went back to look at it when he had deposited Norman in his favourite old Hille chair. It was a Watch-&-Ward Inc. key. He compared it with his own and found it apparently identical. Then a change in his surroundings registered. The polyorgan was missing. The door to Norman’s bedroom, which had been closed when he went out, was now standing ajar, and a glance through it showed that Victoria’s section of the closet was empty.
Gone. Coincidence? Or tipped off? That was a problem he had no energy left to wrestle with. He helped himself to one of Norman’s Bay Golds from the humidor. Though he almost never smoked pot, he needed some kind of a lift very badly, and to take alcohol on top of the police’s sleepy-gas would entail renewed nausea.
“Want one?” he said to Norman, seeing the Afram had stirred. Norman shook his head.
“What the hole happened? What were you doing out there?”
Donald waited till he ran out of stored breath before answering through a thin mist of smoke. He said, “I—owe you a big apology. I was out of my mind. We all were. Maybe the gas had something to do with it.”
Overlaying the familiar environment, remembered visions of the street, the churning bodies, Norman’s face appearing unrecognised before him. He shuddered.
“What were you doing there?” he added.
“Sentimental journey,” Norman said. “I saw Elihu Masters at the UN Hostel, and when I left him I thought, well, here I am further east on the island than I’ve been in months, I’ll walk down to where my parents used to live.”
“Are they still alive?” Donald said.
“I don’t know.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” Norman passed a limp hand over his forehead and briefly closed his eyes. “They separated when I was a kid. I’ve been on my own since I was eighteen. I think my mother’s in the Bahamas, but I don’t know. I thought I didn’t care. Oh, the hole!”
He paused long enough to lick his lips.
“Then suddenly having this riot burst out all around me—it was a nightmare. One moment I was walking along looking for the places I remembered and the next all the people were moving and forcing me along with them and the sweep-truck came around the corner and we were all jammed together like trapped rats. I wasn’t really frightened, though, until I recognised you and tried to make towards you and when I got close you started swinging both fists and you wouldn’t stop even though I kept shouting your name.”
Is he talking about me? It feels like a different person. Donald drew and drew on the reefer, overloading the automatic dilution effect of the tip so that the smoke was hot and harsh in his throat, like a punishment. He said when he had finished storing the latest lungful, “I was frightened. I was scared out of my mind. You see, I started it.”
“You must be crazy.”
“No—no, literally I did start it. And this is what’s so terrifying.” Donald clenched his empty hand so that the nails bit deep into his palm. Another shudder tremoloed down his spine and set up a resonance that became whole-body shivering within seconds. He felt the unreal chilliness of shock reaction now, his hands and feet growing numb.
“What sort of a person am I? I don’t know what sort of a person I am. I didn’t think I was the sort of person who could fail to recognise one of his closest friends and try to hit him with both fists. I didn’t think I wasn’t safe to be allowed out on the streets.”
Norman had apparently forgotten his own physical condition and was sitting up staring with an expression of disbelief.
“Did you see them bring down the police helicopter?”
“No.”
“They did. Somebody shot it down with a sporting gun. And when it crashed they beat the pilot to death with clubs. Honest to God, Norman”—his voice cracked—“I don’t remember clearly enough to be sure I wasn’t in there with them!”
I’m going to cave in. Some part of his mind retained enough detachment to realise, sensing an aura like that of a gathering storm. I mustn’t drop the roach on the carpet. He aimed it at an ashtray and the controlled gesture blended smashingly into something that must be done this instant, this very quantum of time, so that his hand began to move normally and ended up making a blind jab and letting the roach go and jerking back up with its mate to cover his face as he leaned forward and broke down sobbing.
Norman, uncertain, got up, took half a pace forward, changed his mind, changed it again and came near. He said, “Donald, some of this is from pot and some of it’s from the police gas and some of it’s tiredness…”
The facile excuses faded away. He stood gazing down at Donald.
Started it? Did he? What did he—what could he—do? He’s a colourless sort of codder, inoffensive, never blew up even when I snapped at him about bringing home nothing but Afram girls. Mild. Underneath: temper?
The admission came as a dismaying shock: I don’t know. For years we’ve shared a home, traded shiggies, talked small talk for politeness’s sake—and I literally don’t know.
And Elihu Masters seems to think I’m fit to take charge of a helpless little country and make it over like Guinevere making over one of her clients, slicking it into the latest modern style.
One of us is genuinely crazy. Me?
He tapped Donald’s shoulder awkwardly. “Here!” he said. “Let me help you to bed. There’s time for a couple of hours’ rest before I leave for work. And I don’t have to disturb you.”
Passive, Donald allowed himself to be led to his bedroom. He threw himself down across the coverlet.
“Want I should put your inducer on?” Norman asked, stretching out one hand towards the cable of the little Russian device concealed in the pillow, which guaranteed rest to the worst insomniac by induction of sleep-rhythms in the medulla.