The Butt (23 page)

Tom was struggling to digest this when the man offered him another tid-bit: ‘Besides, I was going to grow a beard anyway, yeah. Can’t stand bloody shaving.’

Searching for a pretext to break from this repellent fellow, Tom spotted Adams skulking behind a trough of shrubbery. Tom was making his excuses, when there was a sudden ‘thwock-thwock-thwock!’ Gloria Swai-Phillips was standing on a small rostrum tapping a mic’. The desultory hubbub died away altogether, and she addressed the throng. ‘TRCDA is pleased to welcome you all to this gala reception, right?’ she began. ‘It’s a great honour to have such distinguished company here to meet our staff and field workers, yeah? I’d like to extend an especial welcome to the Proconsul’ – she inclined her head towards a hefty blond man in a Mao tunic – ‘Mr Fabien Renard, CEO of Endeavour Surety’ – this one had salt-and-pepper hair, a shiny suit – ‘and, of course, Commander Ellanoppolloppolou, for without the cooperation of him and his men, our work here would be impossible, yeah?’

The police commander’s hair was so sharply sculpted that it sat on his round head like one of the angular caps worn by his men. He withdrew a swagger stick from under his arm and conducted himself in a curt bow.

‘As you all know,’ Gloria resumed, ‘this is the fifth anniversary of our project being up and running in the Tontine Townships, yeah? During that time, we’ve helped some 700 tontine orphans to find new domiciles, yeah? These can be state facilities or private institutions, yeah? Other children stay in our own homes, and in several cases we’ve even managed to secure adoptions, yeah?’

Tom heard everything that Gloria said as a question. For weeks now he had ignored the locals’ nonsensical interrogatives – but she seemed genuinely to be querying reality, rather than simply affirming it.

There was a polite scattering of applause, and Gloria blushed. When she began speaking again, Tom found he couldn’t concentrate on her words. He stared at the flapping red slot of her mouth. It was no longer her resemblance to Martha that made him feel he knew Gloria intimately; it was an overpowering sense of déjà vu. He had been in this function room before, with these people and those chairs. He had been with a woman exactly like Gloria, who nurtured him, cuddled him, loved him as a mother loves her child.

She was saying. ‘There are real signs of change and progress, yeah?’ when Tom began to cry. The tears ran down the inside of his eyes, smearing this commonplace: the middle-aged woman giving a halting speech.

Adams sidled up. ‘We need to have a chat,’ he said in an undertone. ‘I’m afraid we got off on the wrong, ah, foot this morning. My apologies.’

He turned and discreetly worked his way towards the exit. Tom followed.

‘Tell me,’ Adams asked, ‘have you ever heard the term “rabia”?’

Tom thought for a moment, then said: ‘Yeah, I have – the Huffermans, Dave, Daphne’s husband. He said I’d need one if I was heading down to Ralladayo, but he never told me what it was.’

‘Who it is, rather.’ Adams pulled up a fold of seersucker over each knee. He rested his elbows on these pads, then pressed his palms together and brought his fingertips up to his horsy chin in a prayerful gesture. ‘A rabia’, he intoned, ‘is an individual who can guarantee a traveller safe passage through the territories of hostile tribes, or tribal subgroups.’

Jesus! The man’s insufferable, Tom thought, while to Adams he played the good student: ‘How do they manage that?’

‘The concept is, ah, simple enough. The rabia will belong either to a tribe that isn’t enemies with the tribe whose land you wish to cross, or – and this is where it gets complex – to an allied tribe. You see’ – the Consul squirmed with enthusiasm – ‘even if this more distant tribe is, technically, at, ah, loggerheads with the local mob, it doesn’t matter – it’s the proximate relationship that counts.’

‘And I need one of these rabia guys?’

Adams ignored the interruption. ‘The disputations concerning whether a given rabia can frank through a given traveller often become, ah, byzantine – especially where you’re headed, into the very heart of the native lands. I’ve witnessed this myself: scores of tribespeople, big men and women, powerful makkatas – all of them gathered in the remote desert for days, debating like learned statesmen!’

Adams’s face was flushed. One of his hands went up high, then came down to pat the back of his head.

Tom persisted with the practicalities. ‘How do I get the right one, then?’

Adams recovered himself. ‘Ordinarily, an Anglo traveller has to advertise here in the Tontines – there’s a message board. But it can take time, and even when you have the right rabia, they can prove costly. I should imagine your, ah, resources are rather depleted by now.’

Tom ruefully considered the Amex bill that had been forwarded to him in the TGS, Dixie’s girlish handwriting looping across the cellophane window. Tom was within a few hundred dollars of his credit limit. Prentice, naturally, had yet to pay back what he owed. Perhaps, Tom thought, I should raise this with Adams? But then he dismissed the idea. Instead, he grunted affirmatively.

Adams resumed. ‘However, I’ve managed to secure a rabia for you who doesn’t require payment, someone who urgently needs a ride down to Ralladayo.’

‘Oh, and who is this guy?’

‘Gloria? How so? I mean, she doesn’t exactly look like a . . .’

‘Be that as it may, Miss Swai-Phillips has all the main kinship lines – Entreati, Aval and Tayswengo, the latter through her mother’s great-uncle. She can get you through, and she’s happy to do so without charge–’

‘OK,’ Tom said, cutting him off. ‘But what’s the reason she’s going there?’

Adams’s Polaroids were clear enough; even so, he removed them, imposing – as Tom understood it – still more transparency on his next remark: ‘She wishes to help you in what you have to do – and make sure that you, ah . . . do it. There’s also a small orphanage at Ralladayo; I believe she’s been called in for, ah . . . consultancy. There is one other thing, though . . .’

To punish Tom for his own interruptions, Adams now broke off and beckoned to a lurking waiter. ‘Nescafé, please,’ he instructed the flat-faced Tugganarong. ‘No milk or sugar. D’you want anything?’ he asked Tom, who only waved the waiter away irritatedly, before interrogating the Consul: ‘What one thing? Goddamnit, Adams!’

‘Brian Prentice,’ Adams said airily. ‘He’ll be going with you as well. Seems his business here in the Tontines hasn’t been, ah . . . successfully concluded; so he will have to accompany Miss Swai-Phillips, and you, to Ralladayo.’

For a while Tom said nothing. He was getting used to the Consul’s penchant for such theatricality. Besides, he was also struck by the Consul’s ‘ahs’. These hiatuses were increasing in length, and during them the intent expression on Adams’s face suggested he was attuning himself to an inner voice.

The waiter deposited Adams’s bitter gloop on the coffee table and withdrew. Adams sipped it as if it were nectar.

It was plain that the Consul was telling Tom something that it was impossible to state directly. Tom followed a poisonous thread of speculation back along the corrugations of Route 1, across the desert, looping up and over the Great Dividing Range, threading through the cane fields, until it reached the complicated knot tied up in Vance. Could Adams even be aware that Tom had visited Endeavour Surety that very afternoon? That, unsure of his own moral outrage, he had provided himself with a baser, more legible motivation?

Tom meditated on how grossly intrusive it would be to kill another man. Even at half a mile’s distance, with a high-velocity rifle bullet, he knew it would feel as if he were slowly dabbling his hands in Prentice’s intestines. Yet it was blatantly obvious that this was what was expected of him – had been expected all along, by both Swai-Phillipses, by Adams – even by Justice Hogg. Prentice had to be terminated: his perverted consciousness stubbed out like one of his own filthy ‘fags’. And, although nothing could be said – and never would be – Tom’s own debt was to be paid in this coin: two rifles, a nest of cooking pots, $10,000 in cash and a man’s life.

Tom took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I noticed’, he said, ‘that Prentice couldn’t bring himself to attend Gloria’s charity reception.’

‘Really?’ Adams was unconcerned. ‘I expect he had to get some help to bring his stuff back to the TGS; apparently only half of it is required here; the ribavirin will go south, with you.’

Tom stood up. ‘If it’s all the same to you, Adams, I think I’ll start getting my own stuff together. I’ve gotta gas up the car, check the mechanics. I’ve also . . .’ He paused and gave the Consul a meaningful look. ‘I’ve also got to get a signature off Prentice, then finalize some paperwork with a guy outside the Sector.’

For the first time that Tom could recall, Adams smiled broadly, his normally pursed lips drawing back to reveal large and sharp teeth. ‘That’s excellent, Tom,’ he grinned. ‘I’m glad to see you’re adopting such a, ah . . . practical attitude. Miss Swai-Phillips asked me to tell you that unless she hears otherwise, she’ll meet you here in the lobby at six tomorrow morning, so you can get an early start.’

Adams stood, and they shook hands formally, concluding the deal.

‘And Tom . . .’ Adams seemed on the verge of saying something incriminating. He shuffled his suede lace-ups, glancing round to see if anyone was within earshot. Tom assumed it would be the quid pro quo: how even if Lincoln were to die while Tom was over there, the conclusion of this other business would result in the charges against him being summarily dropped. But the Consul wasn’t such a fool. ‘That parcel Miss Swai-Phillips gave you. She said please not to forget it, whatever you do. It’s contents are most, ah . . . important – vital, even.’

‘Sure,’ Tom replied. ‘Absolutely, uh, Winnie. She can rely on me.’

And they parted.

Back up in his room, Tom began packing his stuff. The flimsy clothing designed for walking from poolside to lounger, the tubes of scientifically formulated skin unguents, his digital camera, cellphone and the roach motel, to which he had become sentimentally attached – all these he reverently slotted into his battered and filthy flight bag.

Tom pulled up abruptly and began manhandling the SUV into a three-point turn.

‘Better not,’ Gloria said, laying a hand on his arm. ‘Look up ahead.’

Low-flying helicopters were circling over the blast walls of a checkpoint. Even from several hundred yards off, Tom could see the coils of razor wire flaring in the evening sun.

‘They’ll’ve seen us,’ Gloria went on. ‘Better go through, yeah?’

By the time they had negotiated the checkpoint, it was twilight – too late to go back through and resume the right road. The sergeant on duty told them there was a decent motel a few klicks on, so Tom, close to collapsing with the frustration of it all, drove there.

It had been a long day, most of which had been taken up with having their papers checked. The 300 kilometres of Route 1 that ran through the Tontine Townships had more checkpoints than the previous 4,000.

The townships were at once desultory and threatening: the plantation settlements, each with its paramilitary blockhouse, dusty maidan and empty boulevards lined with converted containers, were identical to each other. As Route 1 turned into yet another central boulevard, to either side of which were ranged the same insurance offices, so another flock of prostitutes rose up and flapped after them, their wings beating invisible meat, their throats gobbling.

Stopping at the fifth checkpoint of the morning, and noting the paramilitaries’ Humvees, equipped with steel skirting to prevent hand grenades being tossed under them, Tom asked Gloria: ‘Why don’t the authorities stop the selling of tontines if it’s fuelling the violence?’

Now, Tom waited while Gloria showed her ID card to the security camera, then pulled the SUV in through the motel’s steel gates. Prentice – who had been banished to the jump seat – took his time getting out. He had been forbidden to smoke by Gloria, who, like most of the native Anglos, seemed untroubled by the flies. Tom waited for him to make his usual lame excuses, before skulking off for a ‘fag’. But instead, Prentice stretched, clapped his hands together and said, ‘Right. You must be worn out after that drive, Tom. You go get a sundowner while I unload the gear and check the firearms into the motel armoury.’

Tom’s hand went to the tontine conversion certificate concealed in his pocket – was its juju not working? Were his and Prentice’s grades of astande shifting once more? Certainly, Tom felt worryingly debilitated, and as he shuffled into the motel he heard Gloria saying, ‘Mind you check that parcel into the motel safe as well, Brian.’

The motel bar was full of fleshy red-faced men who stood drinking outsized wineglasses full of dark Belgian beer. Equally fleshy women, with peroxide hair, sat at the small tables eating dishes of what appeared to be cooked chicory. Obnoxious fleshy kids charged across the tiled floor from the reception desk and flung themselves into a small swimming pool that stank of chlorine. The bored Belgian barmaid explained to Tom that it had been built inside on account of the security situation.

‘I should think things’ll be easier tomorrow on the driving front, right?’ Gloria speculated, perching on the bar stool next to Tom’s.

He looked at his badly drawn wife. Gone was the hesitant charity worker recounting statistics in the function room of the Hilton. Gloria had been acting all day as if Tom and Prentice were annoying boys and she their competent elder sister. Tom wanted to reconnect with a still other Gloria: the woman who had swabbed the makkata’s gash on his inner thigh, then caressed him at the law courts. But, while his longing had grown through the long, flyblown day, she had became steadily more distant.

Tom was so weary that once he’d had a couple of beers and tottered to his cabin, he didn’t have the energy to rejoin his companions for supper. Instead, he fell asleep, fully clothed, on the bed, the sanitary strip he had removed from the toilet bowl twined in his fingers.

This time giant fingers pinched his waist, then rolled him back and forth. Tom heard a rib crack – yet couldn’t cry out. Next, violent acceleration. Tom flew end over end, his mind smouldering with the effort of trying to alter his course: a bullet in dread of its own trajectory. If only, he smouldered, if only I can twist myself this way and hold my arms out, then I can go that much further, and fall harmlessly into the flower bed at the front of the apartment block . . . But he had no arms.

He reached the zenith of his parabola and, screaming, plummeted back down into the tangled and hairy mess of the bedding, where he burned.

In the morning Prentice had the SUV loaded up by the time Tom managed to drag himself along from his cabin. He felt terrible, and Gloria greeted him with ‘You look bloody terrible.’ It was a nagging enervation that reminded Tom of the aftermath of flu.

What was Gloria wearing? She stood in the colourless void of the pre-dawn desert entirely swathed in a black toga, the complicated drapes of which covered her face, her hands and even her feet. Her costume was creepily completed by green-tinted goggles.

‘It’s gonna be hot where we’re headed, yeah?’ Gloria said as Tom drove the SUV out of the motel compound and they set off back along Route 2.

He snorted, ‘And what’s it been here? This is the desert, isn’t it?’

‘Strictly speaking,’ said Prentice, pushing his face forward between the seats, ‘this is only the channel country, the River Mulgrene Delta. That’s why there’s so much gravel, and so many wadis – which are the dried-up tributaries. When it rains here – which only happens once or twice a decade – all this floods.’

‘What is this? A fucking geography class?’

Prentice, aggrieved, sat back, but Gloria said: ‘You’d do well to pay attention to geography, read the land – that’s how the traditional people survive here, right?

‘Take this Tayswengo toga,’ she continued. ‘It’s perfectly adapted to handle fifty-degree heat, yeah? The black cloth absorbs the sun’s rays, you sweat, then the folds hold and cool that sweat, so that you’ve gotta kinduv sleeve of coolness, yeah?’

As ever, Tom reflected, Gloria didn’t sound that sure of what she was saying.

This time they made the right turn to the south. The blacktop that had carried them through the Tontines, on towards Kellippi and now back again gave out after a few kilometres. There was a last road sign – TRANGADEN 1,570 KMS, LAKE MULGRENE NATURE PARK 876 KMS – then the impacted dirt corrugations began, the constant judder making further conversation, or even thought, an effort.

The trio were abandoned, each to his or her own discomfort. The flies infiltrated themselves into the rotten environment of the little vehicle. The heat built – then built some more. The stony bled crumpled up – then disappeared, subsumed by sand dunes that came flowing in from the east and the west.

At first these were low swells, then gradually they whipped up and up, until the rutted track was plunging through a mountainous sea of eighty-foot-high dunes. The SUV, never the easiest car to control, twisted and slid on the uncertain surface.

Tom couldn’t suspend disbelief in his own driving: it felt as if he was being rolled over and over through the desert. The lack of low-flying helicopters, checkpoints and even the threat of ambush, far from being a relief, was a further oppression; for without tension he couldn’t prevent himself from lapsing into a stupor.

After five draining hours, two signs staggered towards them out of the heat-haze. The first read TIREDNESS KILLS – TAKE A BREAK, the second YOU ARE NOW ENTERING ENTREATI TRIBAL LAND, SMOKING PERMITTED.

‘Smoking permitted,’ Tom croaked. ‘What the hell does that mean?’

‘Exactly what it says, right?’ Gloria replied sententiously. ‘The desert tribes – the Entreati in particular – have never been fully subjugated. They live, for the most part, as they’ve always done. Not, you understand, that smoking is widespread, for the most part the mobs use–’

‘Engwegge, yeah, I know that.’

Prentice was gurgling with suppressed laughter. In the rear-view, Tom saw that he had one of his fat packs of Reds out and was fondling it suggestively, sweaty fingers slipping on the cellophane.

Two oil drums sprang up in the road, and, as Tom brought the car to a halt, two toga-swathed figures came from behind a dune and strolled towards them. They carried long hunting spears in one hand, automatic rifles in the other.

‘Entreati checkpoint, yeah?’ Gloria said superfluously. ‘Let me do all the talking – I’m the rabia. And remember,’ she preened, ‘don’t worry – you are my companions and your safety – both of your blood and your possessions – is in my face.’

‘Mind if I get out, old chap?’ Prentice ventured. ‘I need to stretch my legs.’

Tom got out and tipped his seat forward. Prentice emerged blinking into the harsh sunlight. He immediately scrabbled open his cigarettes, ostentatiously lit one, then paced up and down beside the Entreati tribesmen, taking exaggerated puffs.

Tom observed him with clinical loathing.

Gloria spoke to the men in a pidgin of clicks, clucks, tooth clacks, rights and yeahs. She indicated her companions, then led the Entreati to the rear of the SUV so she could point out the rifles and the ribavirin boxes in the trunk.

The Entreati were interested in all this. As they bobbed along with Gloria, their black garb and fast-nodding heads made them seem not threatening but pantomimic: children’s TV presenters taking part in an ethnological playlet.

Eventually, Gloria came over to where Tom was slumped in the shadow of a dune, sipping tepid water from his bottle.

‘There’s not exactly a problem,’ she began. ‘More of . . . an issue.’

‘Issue?’

‘It’s a ceremonial thing, yeah? These blokes’ makkata needs to examine you and Brian – your cuts, that is.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Tom knew full well what Gloria meant; he just didn’t want to know. The Entreati were leaning on the SUV, smoking. Gloria had presented them both with cartons of cigarettes. Snaggle-toothed grins unzipped in the hoods of their black robes as they drew on them.

There was a rustling on the face of the dune, and, glancing round, Tom saw the spidery figure of a makkata surfing down it, hanging ten on an invisible board.

The ceremony – if that’s what it was – was mercifully short. Tom was first: he followed the makkata a few paces from the road and dropped his pants. Feeling the light inquisition of the makkata’s fingers on his inner thigh, Tom flashed back to Bimple Hot Springs. Surely Prentice would fail this test? He had no scar. He would be unmasked while half naked. But Prentice showed no apprehension when it was his turn to go with the wizard.

When the makkata returned, he entered into muttered conference with the two other Entreati. This lasted a long time, many cigarettes were smoked, and the sand at the makkata’s feet was dashed by the long streams of engwegge juice he had ejected. Eventually, one of the robed men approached the three travellers, who were squatting in the ditch beside the road. He squatted as well and consulted with Gloria.

This is it, Tom thought, scrutinizing Prentice’s venal features. It’s the end of the road for you, kiddie-fiddler.

The clicking stopped and Gloria said, ‘Uh, OK, that figures.’

‘What?’ Tom said. ‘What figures?’

‘This bloke says the makkata has determined that your degrees of astande have been swapped over. We’re allowed to proceed, yeah? But since Brian is now astande vel dyav and you, Tom, are astande por mio, you can’t drive the car any more, right?’

‘What?’ Tom cried.

‘You heard me.’ Gloria was adamant. ‘Brian will have to drive – if he can, that is.’

‘Of course I can bloody drive,’ Prentice said huffily.

‘I can’t drive because I’m a rabia, yeah? I’m only along for the ride – if I drive I compromise my status. It’s obvious, yeah?’

Prentice tamped his latest butt into the sand with a fussy motion of his boot. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s settled, then.’ He marched over to the SUV, a resolute expression on his face.

His face? Clambering into the SUV, where he then sat awkwardly pinioned, knees tucked up to his chest, Tom took surreptitious peeps at the hateful countenance. In the rear-view he confirmed his suspicion: ‘It’s cleared up.’

‘Whassat?’ Prentice was yanking at the stick shift.

‘Your psoriasis – it’s gone.’ Tom leaned forward between the front seats. ‘Yesterday it was as bad as ever – don’t you remember, I had to smear your fucking cream on? Now it’s gone.’

‘Yes, well, it does clear up like that sometimes; it could be the desert air, y’know.’ He had managed to get the SUV going and was piloting them along the track – it was barely a road any more – with hesitant pumps of the gas pedal.