The Green Gene

by Peter Dickinson

  Humayan nodded. They understood each other very well. As he turned the corner of the street he made sure that he remembered its name.

  The women in the enquiry office of R14 were just as polite as before, but more distant. Also he had to wait long enough to read three whole copies of Prism before Mr. Mann was free to see him, though he had come punctually for his appointment. But Mr. Mann himself was quite unchanged.

  “Sorry to keep you, Pete,” he said. “Some sod’s been mucking about with the big machine—you had any trouble?”

  “A little. I have taken to running my programmes two ways. You have got a rat there.”

  “A what?”

  “An electronic rat. You sometimes get them in big machines. It is only a way of saying it, but they are hard to catch, like real rats.”

  “I’m beginning to think we’ve got a human rat somewhere,” said Mr. Mann. “Sit down. What’s the matter? You look nervous.”

  “I am nervous,” said Humayan truthfully. “I will tell you. While I was a prisoner I had nothing to do but think. It stopped me from being so frightened. I thought about the work I had been doing here and I came to certain conclusions. I did not tell you about them at first because even I cannot do the necessary calculations in my head. Since I came back I have been checking them through. It will be a long time before I can publish any scientifically acceptable results, but already I can see with reasonable certainty which way my work is leading, and I am afraid you will not like it.”

  “Don’t mind me,” said Mr. Mann, reaching for the tape-recorder switch.

  “The results fall into two separate but linked sets,” said Humayan. “First, the probabilities are that this country is due for another surge in the green population in the very near future.”

  “That’s not too bad. We can cope with that provided we know about it.”

  “Perhaps. But after a very complex but perfectly valid series of calculations I am getting a significant correlation with another factor which we had not considered before. The intensity of the surge will be proportional to the severity of the … er, discipline … or restriction … what they would call repression … experienced by the Celts.”

  “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “Put it this way. There are a lot of variables, but I have taken as many of the measurable factors as I can find—things like freedom of movement and income in real terms and life-expectancy and so on. There is going to be a surge in any case, but if you do not wish to see, in one generation, a minority of Saxons living among a majority of green Celts, then you must either wipe the Celts out altogether or you must dramatically relax the restrictions that now exist. And certainly any attempt to control the coming surge by more repressive measures will have the opposite effect. This is not as surprising as it seems. I have been reading a Ministry of Agriculture pamphlet on the control of pigeons …”

  “Bugger pigeons,” said Mr. Mann, pressing a buzzer. “Your slave to command,” said the ceiling.

  “Cut that out,” said Mr. Mann. “Get Pollock over here at once. Put a gun at his head if he won’t come. Cancel everything for me …”

  “The Home Sec …” protested the ceiling.

  “Cancel him,” said Mr. Mann and switched the switch off.

  By now Humayan was having to make a deliberate effort to appear more nervous than he felt. He knew Professor Pollock’s work, which was clumsy and old-fashioned. Pollock, even if he went over and commandeered the Treasury computer, would take at least a month to discover the mistakes which Humayan had built in to his calculations and then buried layers deep.

  “Right,” said Mr. Mann. “Got anything on paper?”

  Humayan slid across the desk the twenty folio sheets he had prepared. Mr. Mann began to read them, looked at the lace-work of equations and pushed them aside.

  “Kept a copy?” he said.

  “I have one for myself and there is one in the Indian High Commission.”

  “Why the hell?”

  “Oh, you will think it silly, but I am a very nervous man and I have been through a frightening time. I can see this information would be extremely, er, inconvenient for you if it were generally known before you are ready for it. And I know you for a practical fellow, Mr. Mann. You would think it right to prevent this information from being published. You would take drastic steps.”

  Mr. Mann looked at him steadily. After the first flicker of surprise his stare was unreadable.

  “OK,” he said at last, acknowledging nothing but simply accepting the situation as it was, “what do you want?”

  “It is difficult for me,” said Humayan with earnest humility. “My family, they see their genius go off to England, to a fine job. They expect great things. They are very ambitious for me, especially my uncle Prim. All I want, Mr. Mann, is to leave, to go away quietly with my girl-friend.”

  “No can do.”

  “Oh, I see your difficulty, I assure you. You think I will take my work to America or somewhere. These findings …” he waved casually at the sheaf of calculations, “they would be very popular in some universities. They have a political significance, you know? Of course I understand you cannot permit that.”

  “You haven’t told me why you want to go.”

  “Oh, I am sorry, but I do not like it here. I am a timid chap. These bombings, these kidnappings. And you know, I am not racially suited to the climate of this culture of yours. I am pining away. I must go to India, as soon as possible. My documents tell a lie. I am not a Saxon.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s your offer?”

  “I leave you my work. Any truly competent expert can follow it up. I guarantee to do no more work on the green gene, nor to refer again either in public or in private to the work I have done. Oh, I know you have a long arm, Mr. Mann. You will find a way to punish me if I break my guarantee.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Of course I arrange for the Indian High Commission to return you that copy as soon as I am out of the country. I will give you mine today. That is my side of the bargain. In return you will give me two air tickets to India, a year’s severance pay, a top-rate reference saying how satisfied you are with my work, and an exit visa for my girl-friend.”

  “She white?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  Mr. Mann looked at him for some time, his thoughts completely masked.

  “What’s her coding?” he said at last.

  Humayan’s fingers barely shook as he passed across the little slip on which the numbers were written. Mr. Mann tapped them out on his console, then leaned back in his chair to gaze in silence at the ceiling until the machine did its fizz and dick and the little plastic rectangle shot across the desk. He picked up, then threw it across the room with a shout of rage. Humayan went and retrieved it. The photograph was of Mr. Mann, and the biographical details consisted of nothing but his name, coding and date of birth.

  “Please wait,” said Humayan as Mr. Mann reached for the telephone. “I think perhaps I have found your rat for you.”

  “Huh?”

  Humayan pretended to study the card for twenty seconds. Then he did the same with Glenda’s number.

  “Yes, yes,” he sighed. “That might be it. There is a considerable coincidence between these numbers in binary notation. Let me see …”

  He thought for an instant and wrote a new number below Glenda’s.

  “Send for that, sir,” he said. “I do not know whose coding it is, but I think we will get your card again.” And so, of course, it proved.

  “Well, that’s something,” said Mr. Mann heavily. “How the hell d’you think it happened?”

  “Oh, any number of ways. Somebody—some amateur—using the machine for his own purposes without consulting a systems analyst. He sets up the coincidence by accident, and by accident instructs it to destroy the original instruction and reinstr
uct itself afresh. Shall I talk to your computer men?”

  Mr. Mann nodded, dialled three numbers, spoke briefly and passed the telephone over. The man at the other end understood at once, and started calling across the room to his colleagues with a huntsman’s cries of excitement. Humayan added a small extra clue and put the receiver down.

  “Christ, I’ll be glad to have the machine going OK again,” said Mr. Mann. “OK, I’m going to buy your package, Pete.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You can cut that out. I don’t like to be blackmailed, and it doesn’t happen often, but I’ve got a feeling you’re trouble. I got where I am by listening to that sort of feeling. So I want you out of the country, pronto. Pollock can check this stuff through with you for a couple of days, and you can fly Friday. This girl got a passport?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “OK, I’ll have a registrar out at the airport and you can marry her there. She can go on yours. That’ll make her an Indian citizen. I’m not having her back.”

  To be forcibly wedded to a witch!

  “You are most kind,” said Humayan.

  “Cut that out. Now …”

  They discussed for five minutes the details of sending the severance pay to Humayan’s mother. Mr. Mann took the last note and looked at the ceiling.

  “Got Pollock yet?” he said.

  “No dice,” said the ceiling.

  “OK, Pete. Wait over there. You’ll find a few magazines.”

  Humayan sat in a too-cosy chair and looked at an old copy of Prism. It contained a scholarly article by Gideon Glister on the folk-rites of Liverpool dockers. Humayan had already read that, in far-away Bombay. He turned to the small ads and found his own advertisement. It meant nothing. But studying the neighbouring snippets he thought he could begin to detect traces of a code by which a man sitting in an office in London could instruct foreign agents. No wonder the editor had written them all himself.

  “We’ve got Pollock,” said the ceiling suddenly. “He’s in a fizz—he was having some morning massage from a fat girl at the Daffodil. He’ll be along in an hour.”

  “OK,” said Mr. Mann.

  “Listen, boss,” said the ceiling. “I’ve got trouble of my own. There’s been a maniac on the line from the computer room saying what have I been playing at. I mean, all I’ve done is use the machine to play the horses a bit, but he says …”

  “Christ,” said Mr. Mann. “If it was you I’ll have your editorial balls. OK, Pete. Be around in an hour. I’ll send Pollock up to your office. Watch your step.”

  “I must thank you for your help,” said Humayan. “And I would like to say goodbye to the Director, if I may.”

  “Oh, the Old Man says a lovely goodbye,” said Mr. Mann dismissively. “He’s always got time for that. Ring his secretary and fix it. Her name’s Lil.”

  Professor Pollock was a very handsome old man indeed—the sort of academic who owes his steady promotion to looking the part. Humayan spent some enjoyable vengeful hours throwing invisible dust into his eyes. He was, mercifully, bored by the task he had been set, and would not apply his mind to it with more energy than he needed to follow Humayan’s deferential explanations.

  The interview with the Director took place next afternoon. Humayan was sick with nerves, but fortunately the Director’s palms were permanently clammy so the extra sweatiness of the handshake was not apparent. The noble eyebrows twitched benignly.

  “Leaving us to get married, I hear?” said the Director. “Yes, sir. It is partly that, and partly I fear that my nerves are not good after my kidnapping.”

  “Ah yes, a very unfortunate business. But we will lay the scoundrels by the heels. I do trust, Mr. Humayan, that apart from that you have enjoyed your visit to our country.”

  “Oh, yes, sir. All my life I will remember it. I have even enjoyed the food.”

  The Director answered as if Humayan himself had written the script.

  “Have you? Now I like a good curry myself.”

  “Then you must visit my friend Mr. Palati,” said Humayan, opening his briefcase. “His cooking is most authentic. Look, I have a menu here, because of some notes I made for my work during a meal.”

  He passed the gaudy card across and the Director took it with a slight shrug of embarrassment. Humayan was visibly shuddering as he waited for him to open it. At last he did. The eyebrows shot up, then contracted. Humayan knew the exact words the Director was reading.

  SIR, I have heard some rumours of which you ought to know more. I dare not speak aloud of this, for there are hidden microphones in your room. What I have heard is that in the near future the trouble in the big computer will be traced to the young gentleman in A3, and will be made out to be deliberate sabotage. His friendship with you may then be used to unseat you from your position. However, I have also learnt that the man responsible for the assassination of Doctor Glister is hiding at 43 Aboukir Road, W.9, in the basement. I believe this to be known to Department R14, but they are concealing his presence for their own reasons. If he were questioned, he would reveal facts about the explosion at Horseman’s Yard which would enable you to counter the threat to yourself. Do not trust anyone in this building.

  The Director glanced sideways at Humayan without moving his head.

  “Some of this looks pretty indigestible,” he said.

  “Oh, no, I assure you it is all very good.”

  “I’m not sure I oughtn’t to ask you to stay and help me choose.”

  This was the next danger point.

  “So sorry,” said Humayan. “I cannot stay. Mr. Mann has made very kind arrangements to fly me out in haste. And I am sure you know more about Indian food than I do. I am not a great expert.”

  The Director stared long at the garish card, as if unable to make up his mind between Methee Bhaji and Duck Vindaloo. The point was that he was in no position to challenge a powerful and entrenched official such as Mr. Mann without careful preparation. To him it must appear that Humayan’s hasty dispatch was part of the plot, and to interfere with that would be to put Mr. Mann on his guard. Evidently the Director followed this train of reasoning without further prompting.

  “Well,” he said, “it has been an honour to have you working for us, Mr. Humayan. I’m sure we will all remember you for a long time.”

  “Oh, I hope so,” said Humayan with a sudden rush of pleasure at being allowed to tell the exact truth.

  He was searched, quite politely, as he left the building, but he had expected this and carried nothing more than the usual detritus from a cleared desk. It was going to be an agony to wait the fourteen hours until they were safely on the plane. So many things could happen. Mr. Mann or the Director could change their minds, Anna make a mistake, Professor Pollock pass on the calculations to some unknown genius of a student. He would have liked to visit a brothel but dared not leave Glenda alone too long. Her unshakeable leaden depression was beginning to frighten him.

  On his way home he retired to a public lavatory and wrote a careful note for Anna about how he had hurried the rat-hunt as far as Tarquin, and how rapidly the situation would explode when it reached A3. The memory of Anna, and her fears, and how she had chosen to assuage them, all mixed themselves up with his worries for Glenda. He wrapped the note in his newspaper, left the lavatory and bought an eye-patch at a chemist’s. He was irritated by his own reaction to Glenda. He felt no special affection for her but she was his responsibility, perhaps for the rest of his days. As he squared his moral shoulders for the task he found that he did not even feel particularly noble about taking it on. It was just something that had happened to him, as she said, like a traffic accident. Perhaps it was lucky that Mr. Mann was forcing them into marriage.

  She sat on the edge of her bed, gawky and bedraggled, rocking herself to and fro with a motion that suggested that if he didn’t stop it now it would go on for e
ver. He had intended to let them have supper first, but he changed his mind, took the eye-patch out of his pocket and, looking well away from her, plucked her spectacles from her face.

  “What the hell?” she said.

  Fumblingly, not daring to focus, he adjusted the eye-patch so that it covered her left eye, the eye of the witch; then he could look at her. He did so with compassion, mainly for himself. She was ugly by the standards of any nation. She would never learn to wear a sari. She was a distressing object. He moved and sat beside her and slid his hand round her shoulders so that he could stroke the flesh of her bare right arm. The flesh seemed to contract into chilly rubber under his touch.

  “Pete,” she croaked.

  “I love you,” he lied.

  “Pete … what do your friends call you? Mr. Palati calls you something else—not all that stuff you taught me.”

  “He calls me Pravi.”

  “Oh. Yes. Well, I suppose that’ll do. It’ll take a bit of getting used to, Pravi. OK, may I call you Pravi?”

  “Of course.”

  “Oh, Pete, I’m never going to be any use to you. I’m ugly, and I’m clumsy, and I hate being touched, even.”

  He took his arm away but sat where he was. She was not, after all, a person whom it was proper to lie to.

  “It is true that you are not physically attractive,” he said. “Not yet—perhaps it will come. But I want to help you. I want to love you. We will wait.”

  “P … Pravi, when they were questioning me … they … you know it was interesting in a way, just like doctors with a disease that they can’t cure. I couldn’t tell them anything, and I don’t think they specially enjoyed doing it. It was their job. It was a tiresome job, but it was only tiresome because they didn’t get results. They were like plumbers come about the central heating. You know, they’d try something, and that didn’t work, so they’d just sigh and try something else. So they found out … oh, I didn’t really mind the noises and the dark and all the modern inventions, so they just went back to hurting me, and their way of hurting was … Oh, Pete, I don’t think I’ll ever be any use to … to anybody. You’ll have to find yourself another girl. Lots of other girls. I won’t mind, I promise … Oh, God, I wish I could stop thinking about Kate.”