Part 14 (1/2)
agonal conveyors. Smoke and vapors vented from the overtaxed condensers of the power plant roiled between the rusting hoppers, drifted across the soaked ashy earth at the height of a man's waist to hang reeking over the terraces of the opencast mines.
Reactor-glare beat its way up and down the spectrum, now white and electric, now somnolent and purple-a constant unhealthy flicker of partially contained plasma struggling against the abused lines of force that restrained it, filling the wind with an awful, modulating, voracious roar like junk-tides on an abandoned planet at the very gutter-edge of Time. The denizens of this city, white-eyes and thin demented bones, watched the light racing and arcing across their grim skyline, and huddled close. Why should they be any less desperate for comfort than their customers? That leaky old engine menaced them, but they depended on it.
”I was on Centauri VII, Captain. I know what I saw when Grishkin burst through into the final bunker. I had been operating the cutter not a minute before he began to scrabble his way through, barehanded. Yusef Karem saw it too, but later, and his report was garbled; Fleet agents were already close behind him- by then, they had cooked my sergeant's brains and knew we were there.”
Ben Barka had a bolthole in the ganger's shed of an ,, ore furnace: a dusty room with faded yellow duty rosters pinned to the walls and a collection of the shaky, scuffed furniture that always seems to find its way into such places-two or three hard chairs, some adjustable metal shelving, and a half-made folding bed.
From small grimy windows the top-gas extractors and blast pipes of the smelter were visible, crawling over its outer sh.e.l.l like vast slow worms. Its charging platforms and skip-inclines hung askew, creaking on their broken welds in the wind. Shunting lines ran 130.
The Centaur? Device *
round its base, detouring heaps of machine-tool rejects once destined for the fire. Nothing here had been built to last; its very bulk seemed to lend it an impermanent air.
”What I saw is probably the most powerful propaganda tool the Galaxy has ever known. Conceive of a sort of psychical radio of great range and selectivity, which, by broadcasting images direct to the cortex, win bypa.s.s the interpretive moment and eliminate the possibility of evasion-”
Ben Barka was pacing the shabby room nervously, slapping his cane against the open palm of his left hand and frequently consulting his watch. He seemed to be expecting someone else. ”No more willful ignorance, Captain! The responsibility will be enormous!”
Truck ma.s.saged Ms foot, stretched. He felt rested and energetic, but wary.
Down hi the port he'd rather admired the desert fervor of ben Barka's eyes; this was less romantic.
”That's a disgusting little fantasy,” he said. ”I don't know anything about 'interpretive moments.' Whatever you saw in the bunker, the General seems convinced that it's a bomb. I suspect you're both as mad as Grishkin. Hethinks it's G.o.d.**
Ben Barka nibbed some grime from a window pane, examined the end of his finger edgily.
”Did you ever stop to think, Captain, that there may now remain no useful definition of the terms 'sane' and 'insane1? It's war. Anything else is an impersonation, a dream.”
”Then stop it. You wouldn't have anything to eat round here, would you? Fm famished.”
”Give us the Device and it will stop. I can promise you that”
”Oh sure. It's not a case of giving. IVe never even seen the b.l.o.o.d.y thing-and if it was, I wouldn't. I don't see you as much of an alternative to General Gaw. If only you'd slaughter each other instead of the
131.
rest of us. Why don't you hold your war on Earth? fll sell tickets and applaud.”
The colonel looked nonplused.
”Now, if yours are the 'safer hands' Angina had in mind, you've been wasting your time. Can I go now?”
At this, the door of the hut sc.r.a.ped open abruptly and an Earth-European in the uniform of the UASR(N) Political Corps bustled over the threshold. His skin was'gray, his hands were covered with small seedy scabs, and the cuffs of his shut were frayed. Five centuries earlier, there would have been permanent ink stains on his fingers too, and secret meetings in his attic every second Wednesday.
He had obviously been eavesdropping. He glared aggressively at Truck, put his thumb in his mouth and ripped savagely at the nail, then said without looking at ben Barka, ”I'll take over now.”
Ben Barka s.h.i.+pped his stick and clasped his hands behind his back. He nodded coldly. Long, rolling dunes came back into his eyes, under a white moon.
Trains full of overfed colonial infantrymen steamed out of the marshaling yards of Alexandria into the jaws of his ambush.
”I'd prefer you to sit in that chair,” said the PCO. His nose was running.
When it became evident that Truck didn't intend to resist, he wiped it on his sleeve and grinned triumphantly.
”By dint of ceaseless energy and intelligence,** he began, hi a vigoriously offensive voice, ”the watchful peoples of the United Arab Republics have uncovered a projected violation of their sovereignty involving an an ti humanitarian weapon built by the decadents of Centauri VII in an attempt to halt their engulfment by the equally corrupt expansionist forces of the so-called Israeli World Government.*”
He sniffed loudly. ”Well, we all know what happened there,” he said parenthetically.
”While we of the UASR would abhor and strongly protest the use of any such device as antibeneficial to 132.
the interest of freedom-loving nationals of all the planets, there seems a possibility that in the hands of a properly-const.i.tuted Socialist democracy it would signal the overture of a new era of Socialist co-operation: the instant peaceful conversion of the Galaxy to true Marxist-Leninism, the end of die cla.s.s struggle, the-*'
He stared hard at Truck.
”Well?”
”Do we have to have this rucking down hi here?** Truck appealed. But ben Bark a, listening to the onion-skins peeling off the Saharan rock in a far-off cold dawn, only lifted one eyebrow. What did he have to do with Europe, his eyes were asking, in this or any other century-?
”You'll address me. The colonel isn't responsible for interrogation. Look here, Captain, we've started out on the wrong foot here, m tell you what welldo. We'll cut the philosophy-fair enough, it isn't your line, I can understand that-and get down to bra.s.s tacks. O.K.?”
Truck shrugged stonily.
”Well then, about this propaganda machine: we know you can control it. It's in your genes.” He grinned ingratiatingly and repeated, ”Your genes,” He narrowed his eyes, as if that might enable him to spot the actual deformity, there in the bone. ”Captain,” he said, ”I'm empowered to offer you the rank of Hero of the UASR.” His eyes bulged at the thought of it ”Also-wait for it!-immediate honorary professors.h.i.+p in Political Philosophy at Cairo University. New Cairo, that is, of course. What do you think of that?”
It was everything he'd ever wanted, you could see that.
”I think you're a clown.**
”Captain, Captain. You're a s.p.a.cer. You owe the Zionists nothing. Plenty of the hinterland people are committed to a Socialist Galaxy**-it had been fas.h.i.+onable, a couple of years before the New Music-”even
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your wife, Captain. She was once a member of the Party-”
”Ob, s.h.i.+t.” Truck got to his feet, stormed across the room to confront ben Barka. 'Tm sick of this little idiot,” he said. ”Can I go now?”
”Sit down!” yelped the PCO. He danced around in the doorway, fumbling for something in his belt, his nose running horribly.
”No. Look, ben Barka, you don't really have anything in common with this wretched little commissar and his rubbish? You don't really agree with that stuff?” - The colonel blinked once, slowly. Beyond his initial nod, he hadn't once acknowledged the existence of the PCO. Now he brooded on the man's crumpled uniform and great raw ears. He smiled faintly. ”Yes, I think I do.” After a while, ”Yes, I do.'* In his eyes, the remnants of an old dream, dissolving wadies, camels, and fellaheen fading into insubstantiality.
”Then you and Alice Gaw make a fine pair. G.o.d help you both.'*
The PCO had succeeded in hauling out an enormous Chambers gun and was waving it about. ”I*m arresting you,” he shouted, ”in the name of the Peoples of the Galaxy.” Sick and hollow, Truck limped out. ”You'll co-operate. The exigencies of the cla.s.s struggle demand it!” In the doorway, fumes from the chancy old reactor catching at his throat, Truck stared back over the greasy, bobbing head of his monkey captor. Ben Barka was sitting on the camp bed. Nothing but an old dream. Sand dunes and an old, sold-out dream.