Earthworks (18 page)

I still stood looking, long after what had seemed my reflection had shrunk and gone from the water. Our most profound moments come in such periods of inactivity. From the ocean of myself, I knew something had evaporated. Almost for the first time, I was conscious of the way in which my life had been dogged by illness and delusion. What sort of phantom the Figure was, I still could not say; perhaps it has been my mind’s projection of a wish to escape from my own wretched circumstances, its best endeavour to create the free being I was not. However that might be, I realized that it was gone now; peace stole over me like a rising tide, as I understood that I should never again hand over the wheel to it.

Philosophy is not my strong point, though I have tried many a time to make sense of my life, and of the killing drag of history, but I tried then to review the phantasies that my sickness had inflicted on me. Some I have set down in this narrative. At the time, they held as firm a place in my understanding as parts of the real world, and the continents of delusion through which I had been forced to march were no more fantastic than Africa or England.

But the ocean that linked all continents forced itself on to my attention. Slopping round my body, it reminded me that I was cold and had better crawl out of it.

The mere thought of the effort made me feel terribly ill. Darkness whirled inside and outside my head.

I trod water, gasping. Slowly, a different sort of awareness came back to me. The pounding in my head seemed to bring it back. I caught a smell of onions frying, and flowers, but so faint...and then lost in my bursting head. So intense was the migraine for some while that I could not look out of my eyes to find where I was. At last the cloud lifted. I looked about me. There lay the half-finished, half-ruinous city of Walvis Bay. I was staring at it through the dark of night and from a strange angle; I stood up to my chest in the sea, under a pier that jutted out from the main promenade. I was back in my right mind at last, and someone was stalking me nearby.

Chapter Twelve

I made no attempt to evade whoever was after me. My will was directed to wading ashore, so that the low swells rolling up the beach did not bowl me off my feet and drown me.

The pillars of the pier were encrusted with seaweed. I leant against them with the water swilling round my ankles, trying to reorient myself. Although I was tired, I felt extraordinarily well, now that my head stopped pounding — had I not conquered my own personal devil? But what did that mean, how had it improved me, morally, spiritually, physically? As yet I could not tell, unless the lack of fear I felt for the man lurking in the shadows was a portent.

The last thing I recalled of the external world was my plunge to the ground with the anti-gravity unit. That I lived was proof that it had carried me safely down to the street. But what had that cathartic plunge done to me, and could it have had some tonic effect on my nerves and glands to the extent that the scintillating scotoma with which I was afflicted was at last cured? Again, I could not tell; but the uncharacteristic quality of my recent delusions, and their intensity, led me to hope so.

Of course I wondered what I had been doing during the hours that obviously had elapsed since I jumped from the hotel window. I had escaped detection by Peter Mercator’s forces — that was clear; nothing else was. What was Justine doing now, where was Thunderpeck?

But I was weary of questions.

I looked towards the promenade, where strings of bright lights burned. Music was playing, and I saw numerous people in silhouette, shadows within shadows, walking along the front. Walvis Bay was filling up for the President’s opening ceremony. I could also see the outline of the man who watched me, dimly lit as he stood on the beach and half-concealed by the supports of the pier.

Something was wedged in the angle of the uprights against which I rested. It had been stuck where it was for some while, for the action of the sea had worn most of it smooth and barnacles clung to it. When I pulled it free, it proved to be a length of a thin beam, with an iron bolt in one end; perhaps it had once formed part of a native boat, lost along the coast; in any case, it made a useful if cumbersome weapon. Concealing my movements, I tucked it into the top of my trousers under the bedraggled robe I wore.

“What do you want with me?” I called.

The outline at once stood away from the pier, with no attempt at camouflage.

“Are you in your right mind at last?” he asked. I knew the voice.

“Is that you, Mercator? We’d better have a talk.”

“That’s what I’ve been hoping for.”

I waded heavily out of the water. Mercator was no longer a figure of fear to me; it behoved me to discover what I could from him.

So we met on the beach, with the ocean grumbling behind us. When we had stared at each other long enough in the pale illumination cast by the lights on the distant promenade, we sat down facing one another. His face looked lined and ghastly, and I felt mine was too.

“How long have you been following me?”

“Not for very long, although I have been looking for you for several hours — ever since you hit me on the jaw and left the hotel with more ingenuity than sense.” His voice was husky; I could hardly hear him above the noise of the surf breaking.

“I did not disappear effectively enough.”

“Certainly you didn’t. When you jumped out of the window in that foolhardy way, you landed in a side street and then began to walk about openly, peering into people’s faces and talking to yourself. Israt and I would certainly have caught you again, had we not had other troubles.”

“What other troubles?” The sand was sticky and unpleasant between my hands as I sat there.

“We are being watched. Everyone is against everyone else here. They are particularly suspicious of a foreigner like me with an acquaintance like you. You know the anti-grav unit you borrowed? It belonged to the Prime Minister of Algeria, General Ramayanner Kurdan. Old Kurdan makes a dangerous enemy. Algeria’s history over the past two or three hundred — ”

“Never mind their history, Mercator. Of course they will be against you, if you plan to assassinate the President of Africa tomorrow. I am against it, and heaven knows I’m politically uncommitted. Isn’t el Mahasset generally known as the most capable statesman Africa has ever thrown up, a mixture of Nehru, Chou En-lai, and Churchill?”

“Yes, yes, Noland, I agree with you, but you see that’s just the point — ” He stopped suddenly and clutched his chest. He sagged forward, until his brow almost touched the sand. When he pulled his torso upright again, his face was harsh and strained, and his voice when he spoke was shaky. “You’re by no means the only sick man on the beach. Crisis — I came away without my pills. Do you realize that the ideal of health is gone from the world? It’s patriotic to be sick nowadays.”

“Look, Mercator, I don’t need your lecture. I’m sorry if you’re ill now but I want nothing to do with you. I never intended to get involved with your affairs in the first place.”

“Don’t talk like that, Knowle. You are involved, and you know it. This issue concerns you and everyone.” The spasm was over now and he pulled himself together. “Listen, I followed you patiently because I have to ask you to do something.”

“Where’s your pet thug, Israt?”

He let anger ride into his voice. “Israt overcame your Doctor Thunderpeck and joined me, but got separated from me in the crowds in the streets. I just hope he is safe. In any case, he is not my pet thug; we happen to belong to the same religion — we are both Abstainers. Neither of us have done you any harm.”

“Ha! What about those wretched years I spent on your wretched farm?”

“Oh, use a little sense. Forget about that! Besides, I was only nominally in control of the farm. You can see how throughout the last centuries farmers have slowly become divorced from their land. It was inevitable when the farms, under pressure from so-called efficiency, grew larger and larger. When I retired this year, I was nothing more then a man who handled vast amounts of records and paperwork; I was as much shackled to my job as you were to yours.”

“You should try a few years in one of your stinking villages before you say that.”

“I am not responsible for the punitive system, Noland. I had no say in who worked the land. I am not trying to exonerate myself from blame, and certainly I am not trying to defend a system I in fact found more offensive than you did.” He dug his fingers into the sand and I saw that he was in pain again. “Listen, Noland, for God’s sake! I want your help, I beg you to help, before it is too late.”

“Sorry, no. Now let’s get you back to your doctor.”

“That can wait. Listen, I must trust you — not so much because you are a fellow countryman as because I can trust no African on an emotional topic such as this.”

“You’re mad, Mercator. Come on, let me get you back to the hotel.” As I bent to try and pick him up, he was protesting all the while, but I cut him off. “I ought to hand you over to the police — I would if I did not want to get involved. This idea you have of shooting el Mahasset is pure craziness.”

He was resisting my attempts to lift him. “It’s about that I have to speak to you. Noland, I know you’re pretty tough and unscrupulous. I want you to shoot el Mahasset for me. Believe me, I’ll make it worth your while.”

In sheer surprise, I let go of him. He pulled himself up on to his knees, coughing and clutching himself.

“Mahasset’s got to go! We don’t want Africa united. With the President out of the way, the African states will fall apart. They will war with each other, and their allies in America and Europe will be drawn in. It will result in nuclear war on the largest possible scale. The whole current structure of society will be wiped out.” He faltered and said: “Noland, I’m sick. It’s a cancerous growth in my lungs... But you hear what I’m saying. I can’t rely any more on myself to shoot the President. You must do it.”

I dropped on my knees beside him, clenching my fist at him.

“You think I’d help you plunge the world into war? You’re crazy, Mercator! I’d have known that right from the start if I’d bothered to look properly at the hints dropped in those letters Justine wrote you. Who’s got those letters anyhow?”

“I’ve got them, here, but I beg you to listen to my argument — ”

“I’ve heard enough,” I said. “Believe me, Mercator, I’m sorry for you. But I’m not going to shoot the President. Nor are you. Nobody is. Perhaps you’re nothing worse than a crazy idealist, but it’s idealists who’ve been causing trouble in the world for thousands of years.”

His face was distorted. “Spare me your speculations, you stupid pleb!”

I stood up. “I’ll go and get your doctor to you, Mercator, and then I’m informing the police of where you are and what you are planning.”

I climbed up on to the promenade, trailing sand and water from my garments.

He called to me until I was lost among the people on the front and could no longer hear.

The crowds were thinning now. As I passed the top of the great President’s Square, the completed buildings of which were illuminated by floodlight, I saw by the clock on the highest tower that the time was past midnight. This was already the day of the President’s arrival.

As I walked, I became less conscious of weariness than of a curious lightness in me which I associated with hunger. I seemed beyond the craving for food but badly needed a drink. So I steered my thoughts from myself and tried to evaluate what Mercator had told me. Why should a man, even a madman, want to destroy the world? I recalled what he had said earlier about having invested in anti-gravity research. Putting the two conversations together, I thought I had the answer; he would engineer a war so that he could become bigger and richer. Under its present grinding poverty, with most of its technological efforts devoted to agriculture and allied technologies, the world was only slowly developing anti-gravity as a commercial proposition. But a war would accelerate that development wonderfully; and Mercator, sick as he was, could not afford to wait to reap the rewards of his foresight.

So I diagnosed the situation and horrified myself by it.

For all that, I stuck to my word to go first to the South Atlantic Hotel to fetch the man’s doctor. So much I would do, if only for Justine’s sake.

Although the door to the Mercator suite was ajar, I had no premonition of ill as I went in. But when I entered the living-room, it was to be confronted by chaos. I could see at once that the place had been hastily searched. Contents of drawers and cupboards had been tipped on to the floor, vases broken, pictures set awry or smashed, tables overturned. Even the carpet had been dragged from the floor and flung into one corner. Sprawled over the back of an armchair lay Israt. I ran to him, calling his name, but he was dead.

A dagger with a beautifully wrought silver handle stuck from his gown; he had been stabbed through the back. By the signs, I saw that he had been stabbed five or more times, and I wondered how anyone could contain that much vengefulness.

Some warmth was still left in his body. This murder had not long been committed. As I stood there dazed, wondering what had become of the lovely and fateful Justine, I heard a sound from the next room. With a chill taking me, I thought that perhaps the murderer still lurked there. As I backed away from the bedroom door, it opened slowly. Mercator’s doctor was there, crawling forward on his hands and knees.