There was barely enough current in Tom’s brain for the connections to be made — but then they were. At high speed the entire narrative spooled through the viewfinder of his awareness, and the depth and complexity of the set-up, and the shallowness and simplicity of his own responses, stunned him with blow after blow.
Adams — who’d known so very much about Tom without even having to ask, right down to the fact that he drank Seven and Sevens — had been omniscient in the break-fast room at the Mimosa — and then there was Swai-Phillips, who had already known that Tom had met with the Consul. The indifference and then hostility of the junior embassy attaché — who had been got to long before Tom called.
Then, once things were up and running, they had a legman keeping an eye on Tom’s every move. First there were tails from behind — Squolly’s men — and then they were replaced by a better tail, one who worked from the front and was able to anticipate which way he’d go before Tom knew himself.
The man who knew what the inside of the courtroom was like — even knew that it had good airconditioning; the man the car-rental clerk knew the name of without having to be told; the man who’d slipped it to the clerk in the Goods Shed Store that the rifles weren’t for Tom; the man who was never marked by the makkata in Vance to begin with, and whose thigh was checked by other makkatas along the way, purely to confirm that he was the plant. Yes, the man whose case was being handled on a no-win-no-fee basis, and who performed brilliantly as an instrument to be played upon by the wills of others.
Lincoln, Tom kicked himself. The old man was the only damn one of them who had told the truth. He tried to warn me — the rest of them were all in on it. And to Prentice, he croaked: ‘That makkata.’
‘What’s that, old chap? Speak up.’
‘That makkata, back in Vance, he was a fucking fraud, wasn’t he?’
‘Oh, absolutely,’ Prentice laughed. ‘Pissed out of his brains, the ceremony was a total cock-up. You must’ve realized, Tom, you were inquivoo all along.’
They had reached the dispensary, and Prentice let go of Tom’s hand to withdraw an envelope from the back pocket of his jeans. It was identical to the one that Tom had left under his swag — the one that contained Tom’s copy of the tontine.
‘All tontines are, of course, fully reciprocal, Tom,’ Prentice said, waggling the envelope. ‘You may have thought you could convert it unilaterally, but I’m afraid you couldn’t. I’m surprised the man at Endeavour didn’t spell it out for you, but then insurance salesmen aren’t the most honest of chaps. The natives are easy to rook; however, it’s different with an Anglo — they couriered a copy round to me at the Hilton within an hour.’
Prentice smiled complicitly. ‘Our tontine covers — you’ll’ve noticed, if you’ve read the small print — severe mental impairment, as well as injury and death. In the absence of your having appointed someone to hold your power of attorney. . Well, let’s just put it this way, since I can see you’re still a little groggy: it seems I’m on the verge of coming into a considerable sum of money.
‘But don’t think I’m going to be selfish,’ he continued, holding the dispensary door open for Tom. ‘By far the bulk of it will go to support my kids — and to help Erich’s work, naturally. So, best not to look on this, um, procedure as a punishment at all; rather it’s your way of giving a lot of people a much deserved reward.’
Erich von Sasser was waiting for them in the anteroom to the operating room, together with Vishtar Loman. The doctors were already in their gowns and masks, but a third shrouded figure — smaller, slimmer — was scrubbing up at a sink in the corner.
Prentice helped Tom on to the gurney, then went to take his turn at the sink. The other operating assistant was Atalaya Intwennyfortee, and it seemed she was playing the part of of anaesthetist, because she came over to where Tom lay bearing a kidney dish, and looked down at him. Her beautiful dark eyes were joined by Von Sasser’s hollow sockets.
‘I’m afraid, Tom,’ the neuro-anthropologist said breezily, ‘that a lack of funds means we aren’t able to give you a pre-med’, but Ms Intwennyfortee here has something that should help you relax.’
Atalaya took a quid of engwegge from the kidney dish and pushed it into Tom’s defenceless mouth. Biting down on it, feeling the nicotine immediately perfuse through his gums and into his bloodstream, Tom ruminated on what a pity it was that his last smells were so bitterly antiseptic.
In gown and mask, Prentice joined the other two standing over Tom, and Von Sasser put one rubber-gloved hand on his shoulder and the other on Atalaya’s. ‘Well, Tom,’ he said, ‘if you’re puzzled as to why Brian is helping out with your oppo, cast your mind back to Papa’s Songs. You’ll recall that there’s nothing a Tayswengo fears more than gettanka, or ritualized humiliation, and that he — or she — would rather see a man die — or at any rate, experience an ego-death — than suffer such a fate.’
However, Tom wasn’t casting his mind back anywhere; he was adrift in his engwegge trance, and faintly amused by the way things had turned out. After all, he was only doing what he had always done: passively conforming to an invented belief system.
The Butt End
Some years later. .
The Honorary Consul, Winthrop Adams, stood on the casino steps together with his two friends, Jethro Swai-Phillips and Brian Prentice.
Prentice, who had a good deal of ready cash, was known around Vance as something of a high-roller, and, although he only blew into town from time to time, he liked to cut loose and enjoy himself. Treating his mates to a few hundred bucks’ worth of chips, so they could fritter them away on blackjack or craps, gave him immense — and not altogether discreditable — pleasure.
The three men lingered, chatting on the white marble steps, under the white marble pyramid of the vulgarly grandiose building; then Prentice waved his arm, hoping to gain the attention of one of the cab drivers waiting in the shade of the ornamental palms on the far side of Dundas Boulevard.
‘Can’t I give you a ride, Brian?’ Swai-Phillips asked.
‘No, that’s all right, old chap,’ Prentice said. ‘I’ve got my Hummer to pick up from the garage, and I need to do a few errands in town before I head over—’ He stopped abruptly. Something — or, rather, someone — had caught his eye.
An old wino was shuffling along the arc of the sixteen-metre line, bending down to pick up cigarette butt after butt, then lifting each in turn up to the sky and scrutinizing it, before letting it fall. Every time he bent down he displayed the back of his cropped head to the three spectators, and the white trough of a scar that bisected it from nape to crown.
‘I say,’ Prentice exclaimed. ‘Isn’t that Tom Brodzinski?’
‘Yes,’ Adams said. ‘I believe it is.’
‘What’s he still doing here?’ Prentice demanded.
‘Well, Brian.’ The Consul couldn’t avoid sounding official, if not officious. ‘There have been numerous, ah, complications with his, ah, status. Seems his passport was, ah, mislaid and, given his record, it’s proving tricky to get him another one. He’s stuck in limbo, poor fellow.’
‘He looks like he’s getting a bellyful of grog in limbo,’ Swai-Phillips caustically observed.
‘Well,’ Adams said pedantically, ‘I shouldn’t imagine there’s a lot else he can do, given his, ah, mental-health problems.’