GRAPH CHAD AND ELIHU: an early plateau low on the scale, then a simultaneous rise and a long, long parallel run not across the regular chart of the party but away from it at an angle of their own, pacing each other and still rising.
GRAPH NORMAN: an early peak caused by so successfully scoring off Guinevere, followed by a slow decline with occasional bumps tending towards determination to see her look equally foolish if she tries to involve him in a set-piece forfeit or towards self-disgust because he prizes such a petty achievement.
GRAPH THE PARTY: a planar representation hillocking over the roof-garden where those interested mostly in sex congregated early and heavily indented in the vicinity of Donald, Norman, Guinevere herself and one or two more, otherwise generally on an acceptably high level although a good many people have had the edge taken off their enjoyment by the aura radiating from Guinevere by now consulting in whispers with certain chosen sparewheels and who can be sure what infelicity, what incongruity, as minor as having referred to a post-turn-of-century artwork has given her the opening for another arrowed forfeit?
* * *
“If Gwinnie picks on me I’m going to give her a present. From this firm that sends people around to invade your apt and wreck the furniture!”
Now I can get the two shiggies, the fat and the thin ones, to change clothes, which ought to be good for five minutes and a few giggles, and during that time slip Norman a cap of …
* * *
“What was that?”
“That girl with the hideous caped outfit, I think—I saw Gwinnie consulting a history of costume in the other room just now.”
“Excuse me, do you mind saying that again?”
* * *
Like a cool breeze soughing through the room: a wave of interest and curiosity.
* * *
“No, that weird codder Lazarus hasn’t been through the mill yet and I never knew him to miss. He loves being humiliated, gives him the strangest kind of lift, apparently.”
“Are you sure? Who told you?”
“I made a wager with myself that she’d pick on Renée—you know, the fat shiggy with the glandular thing they can’t cure, like a big sagging jelly? She always gets hit hard.”
And what I’m going to do to Norman will make history. Not this time the cunning brown-nose doesn’t get off lightly! That codder with the Black Belt in case he tries to duck out, to be safe. Where is he? Not involved with another shiggy!
“But it must be pure propaganda! I mean, so far not even the dogs and cats and bushbabies they’ve made over for pets are…”
“Is something going on over there?”
“Let’s find out, shall we?”
“Darlings, how convenient for me to have caught you talking to each other! You see, I’m terribly afraid that—”
“If SCANALYZER carried it the news must have been processed by Shalmaneser so it’s at least possible. Unless they carried it in the rumour slot, was that it?”
* * *
It began to dawn on Guinevere by slow degrees that for the first time ever since she took to throwing forfeits parties the arrival of her well-briefed gang of sparewheels in the neighbourhood of the victims chosen for the first of the grand forfeits, the set-pieces that would include dialogue and climax in acts of maximum humiliation to get rid of people she was tired of knowing, had not signalled silence and giggling and craning of necks and climbing on furniture for a better view. Instead, on the far side of the room, a large number of the guests were talking to each other with serious faces, apparently sceptical but not scoffing. She waited a moment. A few people drifted away from the unidentified focus of attention and others joined; somebody hurried out of the room and came back with half a dozen friends also to be told—whatever the news might be.
“Hullo!” Norman said softly. “What’s going on? Guinevere isn’t getting the rapt audience she counts on.”
“Think war’s broken out?” Chad muttered and grabbed a fresh drink from a passing tray.
Alarm transfixed Donald like a lightning strike. The randomness of his activating this morning, unaccountable in terms of what the news channels were carrying, made him think for a moment that it could all too easily be war.
“Chad, what did you say about crying wolf in The Hipcrime Vocab?”
“Howinole do you expect me to remember? I’m drunk!”
“Wasn’t it something about—?”
“Ah, sheeting hole! I said it was an ad-hoc form of Pavlovian conditioning adopted by those with a lust for power to prevent the people due to be slaughtered in the next war from taking them out and humanely drowning them. Okay?”
“Why do you hate Miss Steel so much?” Elihu asked Norman under his breath.
“I don’t hate her personally, though if she were enough of a person to be worth such a strong emotion I think I easily could. What I hate is what she represents: the willingness of human beings to be reduced to a slick visual package, like a new television set—up-to-the-minute casing, same old works.”
“I hope I can believe that,” Elihu said unhappily.
“Why?”
“People who hate in concrete terms are dangerous. People who manage to hate only in abstracts are the only ones worth having for your friends.”
“Plagiarist!” Chad threw at him.
“Did you say that?”
“Christ yes. Put it in a book.”
“Someone quoted it to me once.” A look of wonder crossed Elihu’s face. “As a matter of fact it was Zad Obomi.”
“Profit but no honour in my own country,” Chad grunted.
“What’s she going to do now?” Norman said, watching Guinevere intently. They all turned to look; they were in a good spot from which to see what happened, able to view it along a sort of alley between the clump of people who had congregated to witness the humiliation of the fat girl and the thin one, and the other group worriedly muttering to each other about the as yet mysterious news.
“Shelley-lover,” Guinevere said to the man at the centre of the latter assembly, “if the news you’re spreading is so millennially important don’t you think you should share it with everybody rather than letting it wander around on its own, suffering the folk-process? What is it—have the Chinese towed California out to sea, possibly, or has the Second Coming been announced?”
“Second!” someone unidentifiable said within earshot of Don. “Prophet’s beard, you should try that new stiffener Ralph’s been feeding me!”
Guinevere looked for him with a glare of murderous ferocity and failed to locate him.
“Well, it’s something that was on SCANALYZER earlier this evening, Gwinnie,” the man she had addressed as Shelley explained in an apologetic manner. “Apparently the government of Yatakang has announced a two-generation programme based on a new breakthrough in tectogenetics. First off they’re going to optimise their population by making sure that only children of first-class heredity get born, and later, when they’ve done that, they’re going to start improving the genalysis and—well, I guess the only way you can put it is to say they propose to breed supermen.”
* * *
There was a stunned pause. The woman whose six-year-old son had been killed in an accident and who had by then re-married a husband forbidden to father children shattered the silence with a moan, and instantly everyone was talking, forfeits forgotten, except Guinevere, who stood in the middle of a clear patch of floor with her face whiter than chalk and her long sharp chromed nails digging deep, deep into the palms of her hands. Watching her, Norman saw how the tendons stood out on the backs of them like thick knotty cables feeding power into a machine.