HARM (17 page)

There at a table sat Essanits. Two young secretaries sat at a table behind him. The guards came to attention and remained one on either side of Fremant. Through a window behind Essanits, he could see green things growing.

Essanits contemplated his prisoner for a while without speaking, his large, wide face expressionless. He was wearing a new white uniform.

“Fremant, I want you to do me a service.”

When Fremant made no response, Essanits said, “You are aware that striking a governor—in this case, myself—is illegal. I could have you severely punished. I hope that a night in that cozy little cell has sufficiently adjusted your attitude. How was your meal?”

“Adequate.”

“Adequate? Good. Perhaps the best we could hope for under the circumstances. I wish you to do me a service. Accompanied by guards, you will take the dog we captured to Stygia City, to Governor Safelkty, explain the circumstances under which it was caught, and hand it over for inspection.”

“Why me? Why not you?”

“I am busy here. We must establish proper organization. I am determined to put Haven City in working order. What happened to your eye? We need to arrest Elder Deselden and all his clique for blasphemy. Etcetera, etcetera.”

Fremant was silent, thinking, before he spoke again. “If you went back to Stygia City, Safelkty would probably kill you, wouldn’t he?”

Essanits banged a fist down on the table, “Confound it, man, I am offering you a chance, instead of a trial, at which you would probably be found guilty and punished.

“You know me for a lenient man. I am attempting to help you. I know you are a strangely neurotic fellow with associative identity disorder. Take this opportunity I offer you to get out of this town—you and that bluggerational dog!”

T
HEY NO LONGER
had to walk or ride, as formerly. Instead, they caught a carriage, a broad-wheeler. For a charge of three stigs apiece, Fremant and Bellamia crammed into its seats with four other people. Several other carriages passed on the way. They traveled through the newly designated province of Seldonia without event. A push-pull flew by overhead. In a push-pull they could have arrived in five minutes at the destination which had once taken them through three Dimoffs to gain.

Bellamia kissed Fremant as they set off. He noted that she always unthinkingly held his head when kissing him, as if afraid he might move away. But her soft and ample lips were hard to resist.

He did indeed love her. He regretted greatly that he was unable to love her with all of his being—as he felt the situation demanded. So he was especially kind, and kept his arm about her ample waist as they traveled, she with the caged dog on her lap. The dog radiated little fugitive pictograms, where naked people danced, to be transposed into leaves and blossoms; or was it leaves and blossoms that transposed themselves into naked people? In any case, these were friendly if disconcerting gestures from their captive.

A
S THEY HAD ANTICIPATED,
Stygia City had changed. At a well-defined boundary, their broad-wheeler was halted by a guard post. The passengers alighted and were directed to enter the post, one by one. There they were interrogated in an amiable way and had to give their names, their occupations, and where they came from, as well as a statement on their health.

All six passengers were passed and presented with tickets which identified them.

“Don’t lose them,” the clerk advised.

Fremant scrutinized his and Bellamia’s tickets. They were newly, if badly, printed and bore a signature: “Lord Safelkty, President of Stygia.”

“So now he’s president of the whole jupissing planet!” exclaimed Fremant.

“Where does it say that?” Bellamia stared blankly at the ticket. He remembered that she could not read. One or two of the other passengers experienced the same problem.

They went into the city.

It was much busier than they remembered it to be. Men were moving about in teams. Stalls had been set up, mostly attended by women. Slogans had been nailed up everywhere.
BE GOOD CITIZENS,
one of them urged.
CHILDREN ARE OUR FUTURE. BUILD MORE. LET WORK BE YOUR GOD.

The block previously known as the Center was now designated Government Offices. Across its portals hung this long exhortation:
CITIZENS, LEARN TO READ! OBTAIN A FREE ALFABET BOOK INSIDE. BECOME CLEVER. BE CLEVER. WE PROGRESS OR DIE. WORK FOR A BETTER LIFE—FOR YOURSELVES, FOR YOUR FRIENDS, FOR YOUR NEIGHBERS. IN THE FUTURE LIES HAPPINESS—IF WE SUCCEED
! It was signed: “Lord Safelkty, President of Stygia.”

When Fremant had read this notice aloud, he and Bellamia looked glumly at each other. “I’m clever enough,” she said. “I don’t want to be any more clever—or not to please him…”

Unlike Bellamia, Fremant was inspired by these signs, feeling that someone was trying to improve people’s lives. But these reflections he kept to himself.

They entered the building, where a doorman directed them to New Arrivals, a counter, behind which a smiling woman stood.

“We need to see the president.”

The woman never ceased to smile. “You can make an appointment with me. There may be a two-week wait, I must warn you.”

“We have to see him today, lady.”

“That can’t be done, I’m afraid.”

Bellamia set the caged dog down on the counter. It projected a small white shelf. On the shelf there slowly emerged a bloody beaten head, the head of the Dogover killed beyond the lake. Maggots fell from its open mouth. The clerk lurched back in horror.

“I—I’ll see what can be done. Please…”

A few minutes later they were entering the presidential suite. The waiting room was supervised by a man Fremant recognized as Hazelmarr, the youth who had stayed behind when they escaped from Astaroth’s prison. Hazelmarr was no longer a youth. He had grown a thin mustache and cut off most of his hair. He wore heavy clothes. He was in a minor position of authority.

And in the widening of his eyes, and a slight stiffening, he showed he recognized Fremant.

“We have an appointment to speak to Safelkty,” said Fremant, striding up to the desk.

“What’s your business?” Hazelmarr inquired. “The president is occupied just now.”

“I’m here on official business. I’ve come from Haven City. So announce me, will you?”

Hazelmarr’s face remained expressionless. “You can’t take that insect in with you.”

He pointed with a pencil at the dog.

“This dog? I certainly can.” He took the cage from Bellamia’s hands and set it on the desk in front of Hazelmarr. The dog, startled, gave forth a series of brown and gray pentagons which rushed toward the clerk, fading only as they reached his face.

Hazelmarr gave a shriek. Lurching back, he tipped over his chair and fell sprawling on the floor. Fremant picked up the cage and marched right into Safelkty’s office, Bellamia following.

Safelkty was remarkably like Essanits in build, a big man, tending toward heaviness. He also had a large, plain face, although alert blue eyes improved matters. A neat beard, showing flecks of white, clung to his jawline. He rose from his seat without haste.

“You were having trouble with my little clerk?” he said, with a slight smile.

“Nothing serious,” Fremant replied. He introduced himself and Bellamia. The president was courteous and offered them seats. Fremant then explained the importance of the dog as virtually the last of its species.

Safelkty listened with interest. “Thank you for bringing him this long way. It shows initiative. We’ll pop the creature in Cereb. I am told the gadget is now up and running. We can test both the machine and your dog.”

“Splendid.”

“I can see you have been through much. Be my guests while you are here and stay in our New Hope Hotel.”

EIGHT

I
T WAS CLEAR THAT
S
AFELKTY
set little store by what revelations the dog might provide in the mind-evaluator. Yet he was scientist enough to see they should at least attempt the experiment. For Fremant’s part, he rejoiced that here was a man who appeared not to be a bully, and who received them with courtesy. Bellamia and he were installed in a comfortable room in the newly built hotel.

A mixture of relief and weariness overcame them. Both sank together into a deep sleep, in which numerous strange dreams drifted like phantoms from scenes of old plays.

Once more, almost with a sense of faint, faded pleasure at its familiarity, he was back in the grand dilapidated edifice, HARM, containing its whispers and echoes whenever he moved, like the murmurings of the past—a past he never entirely possessed.

And the heavy woman, the officer broad in the beam, was there, explaining again that he was free to go once he signed the release document. She had wheeled in her trolley and checked him medically. She had injected 20 cc of a strange liquid into his veins and had presented him with another copy of the document.

The injection made him at once giddy and exuberant. He signed the document without bothering to read it over again. I, Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali…

Pushing the trolley aside, the janitor woman took his arm to propel him forward, as if he had shown some reluctance to leave, perhaps mistaking his feebleness for unwillingness. Or perhaps she thought he was feigning weakness. Certainly it seemed to him that everything was unfolding as dumb show. His walk toward the door of the room was a mere drift.

“So you admit I’m not guilty,” he said in a dreamy fashion, mumbling.

“If you were guilty, you’d be leaving as a heap of bones in a black sack.”

“Black sack. Black sack, yes.”

Then they were in a corridor, still drifting. He could hear neither his own footsteps nor hers. They stopped at a cubbyhole, where his watch and a few trifling belongings were handed over to him. The assistant there smiled at him, even shook his hand as if they were old friends and, smiling, said something Fremant did not hear.

They were at the door, the door to the outside world. A guard hastened with great sloth to fling it open. The door swung back on its hinges without a sound. And there was the street, an ordinary street with pavements on either side of the road and railings on the opposite side. And beyond the railings a neat hedge, showing signs of autumn. Everything was orderly. There were lampposts. Double yellow lines. A car passed, and an old man in a hat was walking along slowly with a white dog on a lead. He knew—he knew with a burst of joy—this was not Syria, not Uzbekistan, but London.

On the top step, the janitor woman turned, put her arms around him, and kissed him on the lips in farewell. He felt her rimless glasses touch his cheek.

“Good luck, dearie!” she said.

She retreated. The great door closed behind her. He was standing alone in the street, aware of the cool air on his face.

He made no move. He could not believe he was free. Although he expected every moment that the door would reopen and they would drag him back into the prison, he made no attempt to leave the spot.

A small car, a shabby Renault Clio, drove up and stopped close by. A young man got out and came briskly to Paul’s side. Paul did not recognize him.

“I’m Ned,” he said. “Sorry I’m late, the traffic’s hell all down Marylebone Road. The government’s giving away ice creams to all immigrants. They phoned to say you could be collected at eleven a.m.” He glanced at his watch. “Gosh, it’s now twenty to twelve—sorry!”

None of this did he understand. He muttered the words “twenty to twelve” over and over, puzzled by them.

His faculties returned when Ned remarked, “Jump in, old chum. Doris is waiting for you.”

“She’s dead,” he heard his own voice saying.

“No, no, Doris is fine. Are you okay?”

But before he could rejoin his wife, the whole scene faded away. He woke in the bed next to Bellamia in the New Hope Hotel, crying with dismay to be back.

T
HEY PRESENTED THEMSELVES,
with the dog, before the government offices. After a long delay, Safelkty arrived, apologizing briefly. At first his manner was lofty and abstracted. He gave lengthy orders to an attendant, taking no notice of his visitors.

He looked with approval at the caged dog before greeting them in an amiable way.

His carriage came immediately, a smart vehicle, its panels gleaming, pulled by two of the humped insect-horses, gaudily dressed with plumes.

“We are working on horseless carriages,” Safelkty remarked as they all climbed in and were seated. “Motors are being designed. You’ll notice my carriage has the new rubber wheels?”

“Are you comfortable?” he asked Bellamia. His manner was one of warm friendliness, which immediately won Fremant and Bellamia over. “How did you find the hotel?”

Safelkty was one who behaved with good form when he remembered to do so. He looked upon himself as a good statesman and a good man. Whether his decisions were, in themselves, moral or immoral, whether good or ill would result from them, was a matter of indifference to him. It was for this reason that people regarded him, rightly, as decisive.

He pointed out developments and improvements in Stygia City as they bowled along.

“It is our Renaissance,” he said proudly.

Fremant did not know the word but recognized its intent and felt delighted to know so great a man.

“You see how clean everywhere is?”

Fremant had not noticed.

“Haven is a filthy hole.” Safelkty waved out of the window at a bystander as he spoke.

“Not really…”

“I have my reports.” He stuck his thumbs into the top of his jeans. “It’s a filthy hole thanks to religion. The religious believe they will die and go to a cleaner world, so they don’t mind filth in this one.”

“I wasn’t aware that was the case.”

“It
is
the case. I’m
telling
you. Some fools think that when you die you go to a place called Heaven, full of hymns and clouds—or that you get fifty virgins all to yourself. Well, let me tell you, that’s all a load of garbage. When you die, your body starts stinking and decaying into a vile mess, okay? It’s a scientific
fact.
”

“Mmmm.”

“I’m telling you, your body decays into a vile mess. No Heaven, no Paradise. See? Do I make myself clear?”

“But it’s claimed that the spirit—”

Safelkty’s jaw set. “I don’t need any argument. I’m
telling
you.”

Bellamia nudged Fremant to keep quiet.

They reached the great bulk of the
New Worlds
within minutes. It towered over a new addition, a domed building attached to the ship. “We have new workshops here,” Safelkty explained as they entered the smoky confines.

Men were at work constructing engines and engine parts. A great roaring came from their benches. Safelkty explained briefly that they worked on what he called “treejuice.” He said that Stygia had once, in the days before the Disaster, millions of years back, been heavily forested. With the pressure of the soil and rock on them, those dead forests had been turned into a combustible liquid; this treejuice was now being harnessed to work for them.

They passed into the interior of the ship itself. As they took an elevator, Safelkty again had a word of explanation, saying that his scientists believed the ship had functioned by something he called “gravedy.”

Finally they came to a chamber where several men and women were working. However absorbed they were in their work, all snapped to attention when Safelkty entered. Jovially he insisted they continue with their valuable work. He then summoned an old man, by name Tolsteem, to explain their objectives to his visitors.

“Well, this is Operation Cereb, so called,” Tolsteem began nervously. “Under our leader, Lord Safelkty, we have forged ahead. We now have good motive power, which before we lacked. And, by the way, I think we did meet once before.”

He glanced anxiously at the leader before continuing. “The question of consciousness was a mystery throughout the ages on Earth, finally solved only recently. We now know that consciousness is at least in part a chemical reaction—or interaction, I should say—which occurs in the cerebral cortex, where are sited those chemicals which drive its functioning. Even small creatures, even insects, lacking a cerebral cortex, nevertheless have a certain similar neural resource and marginal awareness—”

“Keep it short, Tolsteem,” said Safelkty. “I do not have all day.”

Tolsteem began to wring his hands nervously as he continued.

“To cut an interesting story too short, then, we have developed the original mind-evaluator, and can now focus on any conscious activity in any mind by replication of the chemical responses, agitated by a small electrical current, such that the process can be reproduced, externally, on a screen—”

“As we are about to demonstrate,” said Safelkty, snapping his fingers with impatience. Other assistants had removed the captive dog from its cage and strapped it into the Cereb apparatus. The dog, in its anxiety, was projecting faint little mothlike signals which seemed to smolder, then writhe into nonexistence almost as soon as they emerged.

“It can’t speak, having no vocal cords,” said Safelkty. “Instead, it gives forth these imagoes. I do not believe it will have anything useful to convey to us regarding the Dogover culture.”

Once switched on, the machine produced a steady hum. Various overhead lights were turned off, but the screen remained blank. An operator worked a variety of knobs, watching dials, listening carefully to slight alterations in tone.

The screen finally lit. A scatter of symbols crossed it, resembling falling leaves. Next moment a coherent picture emerged.

The audience was looking at something resembling a dance. Naked humans, male and female, were prancing about in a glade. Their movements were clumsy. They appeared joyless. Seated in a crescent on chairs were five of the doglike beings, watching the performance. After a while, their tail-appendages moved, the little fingers of which twiddled together—probably a form of applause, as the dancers then stopped and bowed to their audience.

Confused images followed. Then another picture came clear. Small humans were at work, building a kind of hut, triangular in shape, of a type Fremant recognized. They built rapidly, as if trained, while other humans brought sticks and straw for the building. Two dog-beings looked on from a bank nearby. When the hut was thatched and finished, the humans adorned it with flowers, yellow and blue. They stood back and fell silent. A large dog-being, its body decorated with similar yellow and blue flowers, approached. It nodded to the right and to the left, sending out a string of elaborate signals, while the humans bowed. It entered the hut.

“Stop!” ordered Safelkty, in a loud voice. “Stop this nonsense. It’s a fake!”

Tolsteem, who had appeared so nervous and submissive only moments earlier, now spoke up sharply.

“Of course it’s not a fake! Allow us to continue, Master. This is most interesting.”

“I order you to switch off the Cereb!”

Tolsteem stood up to confront his leader. “No, sir, you must see this. You are a scientist. You must respect the truth!”

“I do not respect this rubbish!”

“This ‘rubbish,’ sir—as you call it—clearly indicates that Stygia once had a culture where the pygmies were inferior to the species we have mistakenly called ‘dogs.’ We have to face up to the fact.”

“You’re being confused by one wretched dog’s imagining.”

“No, sir. We are viewing a record from its memory of times that were. You forget that we seem to have been cast upon a planet where the insects have dominance and have adopted many intelligent and semi-intelligent forms.

“The human-like forms here had no such good fortune. The ‘insects,’ as we must call them, may well have had many million years’ head start on them. Why should we have assumed that the great impulse toward life would always take the same pathways across the universe? Watch on, I say! Truth is a bitter herb, a cure for illusion—and pride!”

Safelkty seemed almost to burst with suppressed anger but said nothing in response. He gestured abruptly as a sign that the evaluator should continue.

Other scenes played. Each indicated that Tolsteem’s analysis was correct. The dog-beings kept the small humans as slaves and playthings. In one scene, a group of six humanoids were judged by their masters to have committed a crime. They stood in a circle, linking arms around shoulders, looking inward and down. And then they died, killing themselves by voluntary stoppage of their hearts. The viewers watched this strange act in silence, disconcerted.

Happier scenes followed. Newborn dogs, their tails waving freely, played among the humans. Humans cuddled and ran about with the baby dogs in their arms. Again, dogs and humans splashed about freely in a river. So secure was the dog-species in its supremacy that the supremacy was not insisted upon. Such episodes of frolic touched the watchers greatly.