What we register is change. In the first flush of enthusiasm he had actually said that to somebody (who?) and known it was right and inconsequence dismissed the matter for good and all.
No. More logical: in the course of a life any—even an ordinary—person sees so many other faces it must happen eventually that one recalls another.
Therefore he disregarded the commissionaire’s attempt at signaling and, feigning not to have noticed, hastened toward the car-park, only to find that the entrance he meant to go down by was closed thanks to a bomb outrage, so he had to use another, further away.
More nuisance; more annoyance. He felt fuming.
But even worse: he felt scared. And that was not meant to be a possibility in his world. It was among the exclusions. Hastily he produced the car key from his pocket and showed it to the guards on duty at the barrier, noticing that they were armed with pistols; he registered change. Grumpy, they allowed him to proceed but warned that since he had left his car here for so long its tank might be empty, thanks to thieves.
Peasants!
It was, naturally, full. The familiar roar of the engine resounded comfortingly under the low concrete ceiling as he headed for the exit… from which, as he suddenly realized, he was compelled to turn north only. Hence he must again pass the front of the Global Hotel.
The charge plate he proffered when he drove out provoked satisfactorily raised eyebrows, but that was a minor consolation.
The same had happened often enough already to glut his capacity for being amused by it.
What dismayed him was that Jackson was still talking to the woman, and as soon as the Urraco appeared he pointed in its direction, and coincidentally there was an almost impossible event: a delay at the Oxford Street junction. It took two taxis and a bus and a collision between two vegetable-laden handcarts to create it… but it had long been a precept by which he abided that nothing in his world happened without there being a reason.
And there was no way he could avoid the woman’s lingering stare, nor awareness of the change in her expression.
We register change…
By now he had half made up his mind that the simple erotic content of his latest memories accounted for his borderline obsession with fair-haired women; there had been other similar cases in the past, which wore away. But there was no mistake this time. She looked at him, and he recognized on her face an expression impossible to misinterpret.
I know you.
The jam had broken; a posse of police had arrived with braying sirens and overturned the interlocked carts, dumping their wares in the gutter, so that an instant flock of beggars and scavengers materialized and, for once tolerated, cleared the way. The taxis first, then his own car, then the bus, were waved past with urgent gestures implying that it would not matter in the slightest were a little animal matter mingled with the vegetables.
Godwin agreed, and accelerated eastward.
Oxford Street having been for a long while closed to all traffic but buses and taxis, and in any case being beset by homeless hawkers, peddlers, and prostitutes, Godwin detoured via Wigmore Street and made his eventual way to Holborn and the slums of the City, where squatters swarmed like ants in the abandoned office blocks—some bombed, some burned for the insurance, some simply left to rot when the owning company collapsed. Hordes of ragged and filthy children rushed out to celebrate this rare event, the passage of a car, and when he halted more from force of habit than necessity at a blind junction, they converged on him screaming for money and displaying stump wrists and carefully cultivated sores.
He scared them off with a roar of his engine and thereafter crossed intersections without slowing, blasting his horn.
Thinking of Sittingbourne, he turned south to A2. In Greenwich an armed fascist patrol had set up a roadblock guarded by stern-faced boys with stolen army guns wearing Union Jack armbands on their black leather motorcycling jackets. Luckily a trio of policemen had paused to pass the time of day with them and someone had cracked a good joke which made them all chuckle. Barely glancing at him except to ensure he was white, they waved him by.
As darkness fell he arrived at his destination, a half-timbered rambling building which had been a coaching-inn and which the twentieth century had evolved into a roadhouse. It boasted a fabulous wine list, report said; Godwin dared not sample it, but he knew about its cuisine, and progressed through Whitstable native oysters via saddle of mutton with onion sauce and braised asparagus to steamed suet pudding and treacle, deferentially served by black-jacketed waiters to the accompaniment of quiet but unobtrusive music and the cheerful chatter of the other diners. The place was as crowded as he had ever seen it, but it was keeping up its standards. He overheard more than one person exclaiming over the superb quality of the red Bordeaux.
But even as Godwin was preparing to relax after his meal with a cigar and a cup of coffee, a familiar pressure started to build at the back of his mind. Annoyed, he attempted to dismiss it from consciousness; it was, of course, impossible. Somewhere, patience had come to an end.
And there was only one safe place to be when that happened. Home.
At least, he suspected that to be the case. He had never previously thought much about the question. But then, he had never before been other than eager for the reward it was his just entitlement to claim after a successfully completed assignment. The very idea of stalling would have puzzled him in the past—indeed, it was puzzling to him now, though he was all too hideously aware of the reason for his unprecedented reaction.
Damn Bill Harvey and his wartime recollections! Damn the blond woman in Park Lane!
He scribbled an illegible signature on the bill, having forgotten by what pseudonym they knew him here—not that it mattered, for none of his bills was ever presented for payment—and hastened back to the car, and back to London.
As though he were abruptly to be haunted by an earlier version of himself, so deeply buried in the past as to have been virtually forgotten, he realized as he approached his home that he was worrying about finding a parking space in his street. Never before had he left the Urraco at his own door. Without thinking much about the necessity to do otherwise, he had simply accepted it as risky, perhaps because of what had happened to other vehicles, the ruined Mark X Jaguar being only the latest of dozens. But the pressure in his head was increasing, and now it was peaking occasionally into pain and sending little bright shooting lights across his field of vision. He was going to have no time to do anything else.
Miraculously the very Jaguar he had been thinking about was gone when he drove cautiously around the corner, leaving a handy vacancy immediately in front of the house. He reversed into it thankfully and scrambled out without bothering to lock up.
Nobody would really touch his car, would they? Nobody ever had done. Not even during all that time in the Park Lane car-park when there were bomb scares and police investigations.
Anyway, what the hell? There could always be another!
Half blind with pain by now, he rushed upstairs and, not sparing time to turn the room on nor even to empty his bladder, he spent the last few moments of individual awareness trying desperately to reach a decision about his reward.
Then a dazzling inspiration struck him. Maybe he didn’t have to choose. Maybe what had happened to undermine his last reward was a way of indicating that there were other possibilities he, with his limited imagination, had never thought of. Had Irma requested her Sirian plants? Had Hermann known in advance about Arikapanotulandaba’s amazing powers? When had Hugo & Diana experienced free fall?
Thankful, convinced, he surrendered.
It was dark. It was oppressively hot, but the air was dry. There was a stink of excrement. He ached in all his limbs, he was parched with thirst, his belly was acid with hunger, and there were sores around his wrists and ankles due to thick leather straps, first sewn and then riveted into place with copper rivets. Those on his legs hobbled him; those on his arms prevented him even reaching behind to cleanse
himself after a motion. Also his scalp itched terribly.
He squatted on the floor of a room—no, a cell—too low for him to stand up, too narrow for him to lie down at full stretch. The posture in itself was not uncomfortable; all his life he had been accustomed to sitting on the ground. But he wished he could walk more than two strides.
More details impinged on his awareness. He wore a foul, greasy garment, too shapeless to be called a robe, which covered him from shoulders to knees. He was accustomed to sandals protecting his feet, but they were a forgotten luxury now. There were two small holes and one large in the walls and floor of his cell: one serving to piss and shit into, one admitting a little air—but it was so small, he could not even thrust his emaciated fist down it—and one closed with a heavy and expensive door, made of solid wood. The rest of the structure was of mud brick, not kiln-fired, not even baked, only sun-dried. But it was enough of an obstacle to contain such a weakling as a man.
From far away he heard the noise of a celebration: chanting, drumming, beating of cymbals, punctuated with loud laughter. His mouth turned bitterly down at the corners.
But that was ill-advised. That was stupid. That was dangerous. There was a reason why he was here—he firmly believed it—and it was his duty to endure patiently until understanding came. He forced his lips to shape a smile, and between gapped and aching teeth he hummed a sacred melody for the sake of its magical protective powers. A certain comfort came upon him as he repeated it over and over, lulling his consciousness into a state of vague, starvation-bred euphoria.
Abruptly he was aroused by the scraping of the wooden bars locking the cell door as they were drawn aside. He turned to face the entrance, rising to his knees.
The door creaked on its peglike hinges. In the opening was the jailer’s bodyguard, club upraised. He believed the prisoner to be a sorcerer, and terribly dangerous. But he also believed in his club, and was proud of it, for it had been cut from a tree the like of which did not grow within seven days’ journey. He had studded it with copper nails and around its narrower end he had bound leather strips for better purchase.
Behind him, though, came the jailer himself, wearing a relatively cleanly robe with an embroidered hem and a pair of costly copper bracelets.
“Come on, you!” he barked. “Got to make you fit to enter the king’s presence!”
All of a sudden the prisoner realized the music had stopped while he was lost in his self-induced torpor. From the same direction there now came shouts and occasional wails of anguish.
Very interesting!
Stiffly, so he expected the creaking of his joints to be audible, he complied. He was hastened up a narrow passageway leading to a flight of much-worn stone stairs. At the top two women were waiting by the light of a rush-dip torch: one scrawny and middle-aged, one still youthful, both naked but for loincloths and bracelets. They had visibly been weeping; their eyes were red and swollen.
“Throw away that rag you’re wearing!” barked the jailer. And, when the prisoner was slow to comply, ripped it from him.
“Rinse him down!” he ordered. “Anoint him with something that’ll get rid of the stink! Hurry!”
The women had brought rags and pottery jars of clean water. With obvious distaste, for their services were not ordinarily misapplied to jailbirds, they slopped and sluiced away the worst of the dirt, then ladled perfumed oil on to his hair and beard and tore at the tangled locks with bone combs. A passable result was rapidly achieved, and the jailer, fretting, handed him a new robe, ankle-length, of blue cloth with red embroidery. Also his bodyguard produced a pair of sandals with leather thongs.
When he was presentable, he was hustled along another passageway and into a large courtyard, where he was surrendered into the charge of a guard captain, a burly man with a bronze sword, helmet and greaves, and bronze strips on his leather cuirass. He was accompanied by four taller men bearing long spears, like pikes, also helmeted, but with only epaulette plates on their cuirasses and short daggers in their belts instead of swords.
There was a formal exchange that included an oath or two. During it, the prisoner registered that the air stank of incense, roast meat, and terror in approximately equal proportions. He also saw that ahead of him, on the far side of the courtyard, there were several large windows beyond which torches shone and people’s shadows moved. That was where the shouting was coming from, though it was not so loud by now.
The wailing and weeping, however, had proved contagious. It was being echoed from somewhere behind him, doubtless from other cells like his where hapless prisoners were confined in misery. It was amazing they had the strength to cry.
Then it was time for him to be taken into the royal presence and display his gifts as a soothsayer. With the guard captain ahead of him, two soldiers flanking and two following him, he limped across the irregular paving of the courtyard, resolving that the first thing he was going to demand when he entered the banqueting hall was a goblet of wine. And some decent bread, too, to mend the pangs in his belly. If this pagan despot wanted to use his services, he could damned well pay for them!
The prospect of bread and wine quite elevated his spirits, together with the sensation of clean cloth on his body and sound footgear under his abraded soles. He heard music beginning again and by reflex started to hum along, for he recognized it.
It was by William Walton.
It was Belshazzar’s Feast.
Hurt, puzzled, dismayed, he halted in his tracks. Instead of colliding with him from behind, the soldiers following him froze like a stopped cinema film. So did those either side; so did the captain a pace ahead. It became impossible to move. The shifting shadows visible on the wall beyond the high windows, cast by flickering torches, became equally still. Everything turned into a fixed picture. Only his mind kept on functioning, though he was incapable of moving a single muscle. It was far worse than being confined in a cell, and it lasted for what felt like an eon. Then—
Then it was worse still. He was taller, but he was also older, and instead of merely being chafed at wrists and ankles he had open, running sores; he had worn metal gyves until they were lately struck from him with such casualness he thought one of his wrist bones might be broken. He was completely naked, and did not need to glance down at himself to realize he was closer than ever to the verge of starvation.
The air was hot, but now with the full blast of a noontide sun, and it reeked not just with the stench of unwashed humanity but also with the fouler stink of rotting meat and new-spilled blood. He was in a barrel-shaped, vault-like room, shadowy but not cool, one end of which was blocked with the same two-palms-by-one fired brick that made up its ceiling-wall, the other being closed by a chained metal grille.
He was not alone. Slumped on the floor, or leaning with their backs against the wall in attitudes of unspeakable despair, were half a dozen men and women and two very young girls, not more than ten, all naked, all bruised and filthy. The girls were on either side of a woman who looked like their mother. It was obvious from their expressions and their tear-swollen eyes they wanted to hug her for what comfort the contact could provide; it was also plain that they dared not, for they were indecently unclad, and instead of reaching out with their hands they were using them to shield their private parts.
From outside, at intervals, could be heard screams, some of which were definitely not human, and the roar of a crowd brought to a peak of hysteria.
Someone, using a pebble or a smuggled stick, had managed to erode the outline of a fish into one of the softer bricks. One of the men was on his knees before this symbol and praying with all the force terror could lend him, except that not a sound emerged from his working lips.
The rest looked on as though they could not summon enough energy even to whisper.
More and different noise, much closer, heralded the arrival of four lanistae: all clad in rags, all armed with whips and sharp metal goads, one of them one-eyed and another one-armed. The two intact ones held great baying, sl
avering hounds on leashes.
The girl-children started to scream.
But with cuffs and kicks and jabs the lanistae roused the captives and herded them along a twisting tunnel, also closed by a grille, which at their approach was drawn aside. They were forced to emerge into the harsh sunlight of the arena called the Colosseum. They signed themselves and attempted futilely to strike up an audible hymn, but the roar of the crowd—loudest on the expensive side, where the spectators enjoyed awnings as a protection against the heat—drowned everything else, even the winding of buccinae as the editor of the games signaled for the next item.
A gang of slaves hurried out of the arena, wheeling with them carts which had served first to remove the carcasses from the last performance, then to bring clean sand while a musical interlude kept the throng entertained. But music was not what they had come here for.
A gust of laughter greeted the appearance of the captives, bare and helpless, and the emperor himself deigned to glance down from his box, where in fact a game of dice was occupying his attention. But on seeing that none of the victims was armed, and that a lion was being released from a cage on the far side, he lowered his emerald monocle and went back to something less predictable in its outcome.
The lion was nearly as ill-favored as the meal he was scheduled to enjoy. His tawny pelt was blotched with some sort of eczema, and he favored his right front foot as he looked about him, growling, in a posture halfway between a crouch and getting ready to spring. The crowd shouted louder than ever and people began to toss empty wine jars and bits of broken masonry in the hope of arousing the beast.
But instead of scenting food and rising to his full height and pouncing, he looked vaguely puzzled for a moment and then sat back and inspected his right forepaw. After licking it a couple of times, he looked again at the huddled group of humans in front of him.
PLAYERS AT THE GAME OF PEOPLE by John Brunner Page 9
