Equilateral (16 page)

The shock of light and heat, accompanied by waves of nausea and vertigo, drives him back at once. Aware of his frailty, the girl gently takes him by the shoulders and brings him to his
chair. He can’t have expected more tenderness from anyone, not even from Bint.

Δ

Despite the girl’s protestations, which are in the same key as Bint’s and similarly unintelligible, Thayer dresses himself and goes out to Miss Keaton’s bureau. She’s behind her typewriter.

“What happened to Bint?”

“Good morning, are you all right?” She gets up from her desk. “You look ghastly.”

“Bint’s not in my tent. Some other girl is there. She calls herself Bint but she’s not.”

“That’s odd,” she agrees briskly. She studies him, worried. He’s flushed now and his eyes are red. “How late did you remain at the banquet? Dr. McKinnon told you not to overindulge. Do you have a fever?”

“You didn’t send her away?”

He stares at her intently, as if her most minute features, some so minute they border on the invisible, may betray the most vitally important truths.

“No, I wouldn’t do that. I would ask you before I did, but I’m sufficiently occupied with the Equilateral! We still have men excavating Side AB. I’m calling for the doctor. If the fever has returned—”

“You didn’t send her away?” he repeats.

She stops to consider the question. She can ask him why he thinks she would send her away, but his only possible response will humiliate her. All this, over an Arab serving girl … To think he believes that she would … She’s dismayed, and then
angry. He stands before her, waiting for her to confirm his suspicions. Her anger is dulled when she recalls the shortened sides. Before she can speak, before she can formulate the single correct series of words that will make him
see
, he rushes from the bureau.

Δ

Thayer soon loses his way to the women’s dormitory, encountering unexpected lanes and alleys, before finding himself at the door to the tea room. This is where the jingle of female laughter was heard several months earlier.

Gazing off into space with a melancholic aspect redolent of the East, the Turk is in his accustomed place behind the counter. He’s surprised to see anyone at this hour, especially the astronomer.

Thayer says, “I’m looking for Bint.”

Daoud Pasha fingers his mustache and casts his eyes down, in feigned obsequiousness.

“You have a girl, Effendi. Do you wish a second?”

“No, I want Bint.”

Now the Turk, letting go of his mustache, looks sharply at Thayer.

“Which girl?”

“Bint, my attendant. She’s been with me for more than a year.”

The Turk’s manner turns gentle. His experience with Europeans extends back to the middle of the century, so he’s not surprised by Thayer’s error.

“That was Alya, Your Honor.”

“No, the girl’s name is Bint. Bint. You know her, you sent her to me.”

“
Bint
,” Daoud Pasha says. “That’s the word for ‘girl’ in Arabic. Your former attendant’s name is Alya. Your new attendant’s name is Wadha. If you prefer, I can send you Noora. She’s especially lovely, in her way. You can call her Bint too.”

“Her name’s not Alya,” Thayer insists. “Her name is Bint.”

“Every girl is a
bint
. Your mother is a
bint
. My mother is a
bint
. I have a
bint
for a wife, and Allah in His infinite wisdom has blessed me with four
bints
. And so it is written.” He repeats, “
Bint
is the word for ‘girl.’ “

Thayer demands, “Where is she?”

“She’s safe. She’s not involved.”

“With the attack on the Khedive? I’m sure she had nothing to do with it!”

“Certainly not, Effendi Professor.”

The police have thoroughly investigated the assassination attempt. They’ve discovered certain stratagems, deceits, maneuvers, and intrigues within plots within conspiracies. A network of faint lines has become momentarily visible. Daoud Pasha explains that one of the conspirators is a member of the Zeygerat Tribe, which is related in marriage and occasional warfare to Alya’s people, the Djebel Shammar. Members of both tribes are being returned to their villages. This is by order of the Khedive, who left for Cairo with Sir Harry in the cool of the night, after the banquet.

“I need her back.”

“You fancy her, Effendi?”

“I’ve been ill,” Thayer murmurs. “The Equilateral must be finished …”

Δ

Thayer wanders through the settlement, blinded by the sun, always the sun, and his personal, internal fever. The suppression of the conspiracy has replaced many of the familiar fellahin with other, stranger men; it has also shifted the direction of some alleyways and the location of the souk. All the tents appear alike. He can no longer separate the specific from the general. His boots guide him back to his quarters or what he believes are his quarters.

Bint’s there, of course, to relieve him of the heat, accepting as much of it as she can on his behalf. She’s alone in the darkened room, holding the pitcher and a towel to be used for a compress. But this is not the Bint he knew, who is being returned to her village. Yet this is
not
the Bint who was there earlier this morning. She has been replaced again. The Bints are endless, each a subtle variation on the other, a difference in the gaze, the bearing, the architecture of her cheekbones, or the set of her mouth. But this Bint, he is certain, is the nearest possible reproduction of the Bint who observed the new excavations in the Hellas Basin.

“Alya,” Thayer says, speaking her name for the first time. He too is the nearest possible reproduction.

Twenty-Six

As Earth ascends in Mars’ western sky from night to night, Martian astronomers intensify their debates about the regular scorings visible on a section of the third planet’s dry lands. They note that the gaps in what appears to be an equal-sided triangle low in the northern temperate zone may be closing up just as the object reaches its farthest distance in the sky from the sun. This can’t be a coincidence. Telescopes usually occupied with planet five and the ringed sixth swivel in our direction.

The Equilateral approaches completion—a miracle, except for those who know the toil it has extracted from its builders. Even now the paving is being thwarted by another accident in the Point A pitch factory, obstructions in transporting the oil, and difficulties in handling it. Ballard makes threats and offers bribes. The European press calls him the greatest engineer of the century.

Ballard accepts the praise; this is the culmination of his career in civil works, a construction that ranks as a modern wonder of the world. His satisfaction allows him to ignore rumors
of further unrest in the Sudan, where the usual clerical fanatics rule that the Equilateral stands contrary to Mohammedan principles, whatever they may be. Ballard doesn’t trouble himself with the grievance-laden text delivered by his spies; it’s the usual grievances. He is, however, aware that the long-promised campaign against the Mahdists in Omdurman has failed to materialize. Those troops seen disembarking at Alexandria were apparently a mirage. Perhaps if Ballard had spoken with Thayer about the reports of poisoned wells, stolen camels, and villages annihilated in the dead of night, they would have connected them with the movements on the horizon that the astronomer detected from his perch in the balloon. Measures could have been taken.

But with little more than a week left before maximum elongation, Ballard is occupied with his final drive to victory—victory over the desert, victory over the smallness of men’s ambitions, and victory over men’s frailties and fears. He receives an influx of fellahin fresh from villages in North Africa, as distant as Morocco. They’re immediately dispatched to the unfinished sections of Side AB, where they’re given spades that have already excavated thousands of cubic yards. Hourly reports detail the final tests of the petroleum pipeline. The taps will be opened three days before maximum elongation, the amount of time required for the petroleum to occupy to a depth of twelve inches the paved, impermeable surface of the figure.

The engineers are already executing their plans to dismantle Point A, or at least to remove its salvageable artifacts: the light machinery, the water tankers, the hand tools, the tents, the surplus grain, and the livestock. The Europeans are also preparing
to remove themselves. The project will end directly after the Flare is ignited early in the morning of June the seventeenth. As he reviews the evacuation schedule, Ballard sees that Miss Keaton has booked three passages from Alexandria to Marseilles.

Despite the numerous engineering challenges that occupy him today, Ballard makes time to stop at Thayer’s tent. The astronomer is at his desk, studying Professor France-Lanord’s latest observations of Mars, which have just arrived. The girl is absent.

“I trust you bring good news, Ballard. News as good as this, at least.” He taps the sketches. “The growth of vegetation in the Hellas Basin has intensified since the equinox. The southern hemisphere harvest should meet their expectations.”

“Then engineers have won victory on two worlds. The Equilateral is almost done. The petroleum is about to flow. Some excavation is still under way on Side AB, between miles eighty and one hundred, but we’re close.”

“How close?”

“Very,” Ballard assures him. In fact a dune field lies between the completed segments. Thousands of men are hacking through it from each side, but they remain miles apart. They’ll still be digging in the hours before the Flare is ignited.

“And the pitch?”

“Laid down, nearly everywhere. And then, after the Flare, we’ll be good and done. I’m looking forward to seeing civilization again! Provisions have been made for returning the fellahin to their villages. The Nubians will go back to their armies. Every person will be restored to his proper place, or hers.”

Thayer doesn’t acknowledge the suggestion. Ballard gives him another moment and then adds:

“My advice is to make a clean break of it.”

The astronomer returns to France-Lanord’s sketches.

Ballard says, “You’ve taken on responsibility for the girl, based on chivalric ideals not shared by the Arabs or even known to them. According to local custom the girl was ruined long ago, losing the protection of her fathers and brothers—otherwise she would have never come to Point A. But she’ll never be received as your companion in England. It’s not possible for you to live there together. Allowing the attachment to linger will make the inevitable separation all the worse. I’m telling you this as a friend, Sanford.”

The astronomer listens in silence, still as the sands. Then he says, “Have you tested the electrical igniters? The chronometers?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Every section of the Equilateral must be lit simultaneously.”

“I know,” Ballard says. “Listen, this is hardly my affair, but sometimes what’s hardest to make out is right there … You may not be aware that someone cares for you. You may not observe that it’s someone you care for in the only way that is proper. Someone who possesses many admirable qualities with whom you can share a life in England or anywhere else in the world. You know of whom I speak.”

“I don’t,” Thayer murmurs.

Δ

After Ballard leaves, Thayer falls into a kind of trance, similar to and perhaps indistinguishable from a fever-induced stupor.
As is often the case when he appears insensible to his surroundings, his mind is working with great vigor.

When Miss Keaton stops in, he instructs her to make the arrangements to return Bint to her village. Taking notes, the secretary displays no emotion. She herself is not sure how she feels; or rather, she is keenly aware of her relief and elation, and at the same time she senses Thayer’s regret and suffers for it.

Thayer says, “Don’t let on that you’re doing this, but deposit some extra money into her account. A few hundred pounds.”

“All right. I can do that.”

“No one will marry her, you know.”

“No, no one will,” Miss Keaton agrees sadly. She recognizes that in this part of the world an unmarried woman is a manifest tragedy: shunned, impoverished, unprotected, purposeless, and as lonely as a planet without its star. She abstains from extending this observation.

Twenty-Seven

The rocky red runner sprints toward June the seventeenth, rising earlier every night. Ares burns in the constellation Aquarius; so does Merrikh, Nergal, Pyroeis, Angaraka, Ma’adim. Point A’s atmosphere is steeped in volatiles as petroleum is pumped into the excavated figure. We should have known the planet’s sanguineous rays meant war.

During the hours of the night when the fifteenth becomes the sixteenth, the night before maximum elongation, the pumping of the petroleum proceeds close to schedule, the greatest transport of liquid substance in the history of civilization, through a system of conduits twice the length of the Roman aqueducts at their maximum extent. Teams of riders patrol the pipeline, checking for leaks. If any occur, engineers stand by at dozens of designated sites, prepared to seal them.

Already Point A is taking on the chill of abandonment, like a resort out of season (if either the words
chill
or
resort
can be employed as similes anywhere within the baked flats of the Western Desert). The evacuation has begun, many of the fellahin paid, dismissed, and conveyed home. Whole neighborhoods
are silently dismantled, leaving the sand as unblemished as if it has never been inhabited at all.

Damp whispers warn of shadows moving between tents. Ballard doesn’t necessarily credit these reports as true, knowing that his informants are prone to night terrors and extravagant noonday speculation, but he knows too that the number of informants is dwindling.

The imminence of maximum elongation has returned him to his customary alertness. He stays awake that night while two ancient spheres wheel along indelibly grooved tracks. Petroleum mist precipitates into his lungs. The hyenas that prowl the middens fall into speechless meditation. At around eleven the engineer checks that his guns are loaded, takes his best, the Martini-Henry with which he once brought down a leopard, and steps from his tent.