“I’m just going to tell you about a few odds and ends you don’t have because you can’t afford them, and I’ll quit. You could have in your home a domesticated computer of approximately Rehoboam standard, that would give you access to as much knowledge as most provincial libraries as well as handling your budget problems, diagnosing and prescribing for illness and teaching you how to cook a cordon bleu meal. You could have real polyform furniture that changed not only its shape but its texture, like Karatands do, over a range from fur to stainless-steel slickness. You could have a garbage disposal system that paid for itself by reclaiming the constituent elements of everything fed into it and returning them as ingots of metal and barrels of crude organics. You could have individual power-units for every single powered device you own, which would save the purchase price within months and render you immune from overload blackouts in winter.
“Shut up just a moment—I’ve nearly finished.
“When I say you could have them, I don’t mean all of you. I mean that if you did, your next-door neighbour wouldn’t, or in the case of big things on an urban scale, that if your city did the next city along the line wouldn’t. Is that clear? The knowledge exists to make all these things possible, but because we are so damned nearly broke on a planet-wide basis your home contains virtually nothing that your grandfather wouldn’t immediately recognise and know how to use without being told, and what’s more he’d probably complain about the stink of uncleared garbage from the street and he might even complain about your stink because water was cheaper in his day and he could take as many showers and even tub-baths as he felt like.
“All right, codder, I know perfectly well you’ve been trying to interrupt me and say you can’t possibly use all that on SCANALYZER. But how about showing Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere sleeping on the street in Calcutta some time?”
continuity (20)
THE SHADOW OF GRANDFATHER LOA
The tight adjustable harness passengers were not supposed to unfasten throughout the flight, because at this height emergencies arose so quickly, constricted Donald and made him think of straitjackets and padded cells. The whole passenger compartment could become exactly that—a padded cell—in the event of accident. An express had once collided with the tumbling third stage of a satellite launcher, its orbit decaying back to atmosphere, but all the sixty-seven occupants had lived.
That’s right. That’s wise. We need padded-cell protection from our own mad cleverness.
Also, of course, it was a womb, carrying its litter to a destination they could not see. For all the passengers knew, they might be borne to Accra instead of Gongilung, emerge blinking among tall black strangers instead of short yellow ones.
Donald rather hoped for that.
But when the can was cracked—for his exclusive benefit—he was spilled on to the Gongilung expressport just as promised. Mechanically, watched by the curious eyes of his companions, he made his way to the exit and stepped on to the travolator that would deliver him package-fashion into the arrivals hall. Glancing sidelong through its windows, he realised with jarring astonishment that he was looking at two things he had never seen before in his life.
Only fifty yards away, a Chinese express nursed at the refuelling bay, its long sides marked with the symbol of the red star and white sun. And beyond, veiled but not screened by a drizzle of light rain, was the first active volcano he had ever set eyes on.
Why—that must be Grandfather Loa!
What he had previously seen on maps acquired actuality. Nine thousand feet high, the mountain brooded over the Shongao Strait, smoking ruminatively, sometimes stirring like a drowsy old man dreaming of his youth and shaking a few rocks down the far side of the cone. There had been a strait on that side too, until 1941, but now there was a narrow land bridge made of lava and ash. Grandfather Loa had taken about two thousand lives on that occasion, mostly fishermen killed by the tsunami. He was not in the monster class with Krakatoa, boasting thirty-six thousand victims, but he was a powerful and dangerous neighbour.
On this side, then, the long narrow island of Shongao, bearing Gongilung the capital city and several others of considerable importance. Beyond the volcano, the smaller and rounder island of Angilam. To the left, or east as he was standing, the long catena of the archipelago swung in an arc that if extended would encounter Isola; to the right, the islands diffused more and were scattered into a rough hexagon. It was a popular image among Yatakangi writers to compare their country to a scimitar, the westernmost islands forming the pommel. And here, at the hilt, was the centre of control.
He was staring with such fascination that he stumbled off the end of the travolator when the moving belt brought him to the fixed floor of the arrivals hall. Confused, struggling to retain his balance, he almost bumped into a girl in the traditional costume of shareng and slippers who was regarding him with an expression of cool contempt.
He had chiefly written and read, not spoken, Yatakangi since completing his original high-pressure course in the subject; his grip on the subtle Asiatic sounds had lessened. Attempting to undo the bad impression he had just created, he essayed a formal Yatakangi apology anyway, but she ignored it so completely he wondered if he had garbled it.
Consulting a radiofaxed copy of the express’s passenger manifest, she said, almost without the trace of an accent, “You will be Donald Hogan, is that correct?”
He nodded.
“Go to Post Five. Your baggage will be delivered.”
At his muttered thanks she at least inclined her head, but that was all the attention he received before she moved on to greet passengers descending from an adjacent travolator. His face hot with embarrassment, Donald walked across the hall towards a row of long counters such as one might see at any expressport, divided into posts each manned by an immigration officer and a customs man, uniformed in off-white with black skullcaps.
He was very conscious of being stared at. He was the only Caucasian in sight. Almost everyone else was of Asian extraction: local-born, or Chinese, or Burmese. There were some Sikhs at Post One, and scattered about there were a few Arabs and a solitary African negro. But no concessions were made to non-Asians; the only signs he could see were in Yatakangi, Chinese Cyrillic and Indonesian.
Reaching the line before Post Five, he fell in behind a family of prosperous expatriate Chinese—expatriate, clearly, because Yatakangi was the language they discussed him in. Their small daughter, aged about eight, marvelled loudly at how pale and ugly he was.
Wondering whether to embarrass them in revenge for his own discomfiture a moment earlier, by letting them know he understood what they were saying, he tried to distract himself by enumerating the ways in which this place differed from an expressport hall at home. The list was shorter than he had expected. The décor, of fierce greens and reds, matched the wet tropical climate of sea-level Shongao—up in the hills that spined the island, it was a trifle cooler but not much drier. There were about as many advertising displays as at home, though fewer of the items were commercial because more public services were under state control. Among them, too, were several political ones, including a couple that praised Marshal Solukarta for his promise to optimise the population. Many airlines had big displays on the walls: Chinese, Russian, Arab, Japanese, even Afghan and Greek. There were the inevitable cases showing local curios and souvenirs, and visible—though not audible—there was a thirty-three-inch holographic TV playing to people in the departures lounge separated from this hall by a pane of tinted glass.