The Foreigners

by James Lovegrove

  A soft, low chuckling began, forestalling any comeback from Parry. MacLeod, the source of the sound, was shaking his head slowly like someone who has just heard a familiar but still amusing joke.

  “Yes?” van Wyk snapped. “Something you wish to share with us?”

  The Xenophobe looked round, mirth and malice glittering in his black-pearl eyes. “You lot. No wonder no one takes the FPP seriously. Listen to you – squabbling over who’s boss. Like children in the school playground.”

  “Captain Parry and I are discussing certain administrative adjustments,” van Wyk said. “Which are none of your business.”

  “Hey, you asked me if I had something to share with you.”

  “And now I’m asking you to keep your comments to yourself.”

  “A couple of minutes ago you were desperate to get me to talk, now you want me to shut up. What is it with you? Make up your mind, man!”

  “MacLeod...” van Wyk growled threateningly.

  “Don’t, van Wyk,” Parry said. “He’s just trying to get a rise. It’s his way.”

  “Then I would advise him not to. I’m a dangerous man to provoke.”

  “I’m really scared,” said MacLeod, sounding not in least bit scared at all. “What are you going to do? Beat me over the head with a rolled-up copy of the Constitution?”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “Oh, come on, captain! Do you think I’m just some stupid kaffir? Do you think I actually believe you’d dare lay a finger on me? I know your precious Constitution as well as you do!”

  “Never mind what you believe, MacLeod.” Van Wyk laid a hand on each arm of MacLeod’s chair and leaned towards him till their faces were less than a handspan apart. “What do you see in my eyes?”

  “I see,” MacLeod said, staring placidly back, “an FPP officer who’s overstepping the rules and who’s picking a fight with a bad man to pick a fight with.”

  “Van Wyk,” said Parry, “if I were you I’d back off. Now.”

  “Stay out of this,” van Wyk warned, not taking his eyes off MacLeod.

  “Don’t be an idiot. You so much as touch him, and he’ll be crying police violence to every bloody media source in this city.” Not to mention, Parry thought, you start a fight with MacLeod and he’ll kick your arse to kingdom come. Not that that’s something I wouldn’t like to see.

  “He’s protecting them,” van Wyk said, with a jab of his head at MacLeod. “You know it. I know it. He’s protecting these Triple-X bastards, and they’re getting away with murder because of it.” He looked back at the Xenophobe. “Just one name, MacLeod. That’s all I ask. One name.”

  “You want a name?” MacLeod grinned ferociously. “All right. I’ll give you a name. Stupid South African dickhead.”

  Van Wyk’s face flushed red and his eyes screwed to puckered slits. Parry could see how it was all going to unfold in the next few seconds: van Wyk grabbing MacLeod, MacLeod retaliating, an ugly scuffle being played out here at FPP HQ, at the very heart of law and reason in New Venice...

  He gestured to Johansen, and the burly Norwegian, needing no further invitation, hurried across the chamber to intervene. Before van Wyk knew what was happening, Johansen had seized him about the chest and was bundling him away from MacLeod.

  “What are you doing?” van Wyk yelled. “Let go, you oaf!” He strained and flailed, but Johansen had him in a powerful bearhug. Van Wyk was not getting free till Johansen let him free.

  MacLeod, looking not at all ruffled by anything that had just occurred, rose to his feet. He glanced at the two FPP officers struggling, then turned to Parry. “Well, that’s that then. Time I was off.”

  He made for the door. Parry moved to intercept him.

  “Mr MacLeod, I’m sorry about all this. Truly I am. Perhaps if you were to come up to my office, we could discuss things in a more civilised manner.”

  “Oh no, captain. No, I’ve done my bit. I’ve played the good little citizen. And you know what I’m going to do now? I, and my colleagues, are going to leave this building, and then I’m going to contact the news media and let them know about the way the FPP have harassed Xenophobes and abused their civil rights. Again. Just like at Koh Farang. I imagine a lot of people will be interested in that story, don’t you?” He skirted around Parry and opened the door.

  Van Wyk broke off from railing at Johansen to call out, “Sergeant Fibich! That man is not to leave the basement!”

  Fibich obediently accosted MacLeod as he exited into the corridor, but there was little she could do other than ask him to return to the chamber, a request MacLeod blithely ignored. She offered Parry a hapless shrug as he strode out of the chamber in pursuit of the Xenophobe. “Sir, I –”

  Parry swept past her, perfunctorily manufolding INSIGNIFICANT. He caught up with MacLeod just as he was knocking on the door to the next chamber.

  “MacLeod,” he said, “listen. You do understand that by going to the media you’ll be making an already volatile situation much worse?”

  “Of course,” MacLeod replied. “What better reason for doing it? This is the opportunity I’ve been waiting for, captain. Everyone’s frightened that New Venice is about to become another Koh Farang, and now, thanks to your Captain van Wyk, I have fuel to add to the fire.”

  “And there’s nothing I can say that’ll –”

  “– dissuade me? Nothing at all.”

  The chamber door opened and out stepped the aborigine, Greg.

  “Greg, all well?” MacLeod asked.

  “No worries. I liked watching the fishes.”

  MacLeod laughed and set off to the next chamber along, to rouse the Tibetan monk.

  Within a minute, all three of the Xenophobes were in the corridor and trooping towards the staircase at the far end. Van Wyk, still in Johansen’s clasp, could be heard roaring and cursing, the noise echoing within the confined space.

  As the Xenophobes reached the stairs, Parry stirred himself to one last effort.

  “MacLeod. Any of you. Please. If you know anything – anything at all – about the deaths, for heaven’s sake help us. Foreigners are being lost. Sirens are dying. If you can do anything to stop it, you should. You know you should. This isn’t about politics or beliefs. Those are important, but this is even more important. I’m not asking you to betray your cause. All I’m asking is for you to be human.”

  At that, MacLeod, who had climbed as far as the third stair, halted and peered over his shoulder.

  “Captain,” he said, “it’s precisely because we’re human that we’re Xenophobes.”

  And with that simple, softly-spoken assertion, he resumed his ascent.

  Parry, at a loss for anything further to say or do, stood and watched the other two Xenophobes follow their leader up the stairs.

  The Tibetan monk was last in line. As he placed his hand on the steel banister, he paused, then looked round at Parry. His face appeared inexpressive, but there was, Parry thought, something in his eyes – a significance, a meaning, intended for him. Pity? Regret? The look lingered, lingered, but Parry could not interpret it, and the monk, seeming to realise this, bowed slowly and low, then turned again and proceeded after the others, rising step by step until the hem of his saffron robe, then his calves, and finally his sandals disappeared from view.

  34. Fret

  THERE COULD HAVE been recriminations. Parry could have bombarded van Wyk with I-told-you-so’s. He could have gone straight back up to Quesnel’s office and reported the whole sorry episode in the basement and entrusted it to the commissioner to mete out discipline where it was deserved.

  He could have, but frankly he could not be bothered. What difference would it make? Things had been thrown so severely out of kilter that the small measure of vengeful satisfaction he would gain from ensuring that van Wyk got his comeuppance would barely begin to redress the balance. Besides, settling scores and apportioning blame matter only to those who care, and Parry just did not care any more. He felt like a boxer who has soaked up o
ne too many blows from his opponent. He could carry on with the fight, but what would be the point? He wasn’t going to win. Better to sink to the mat and wait for the count of ten and an end to the punishment.

  On the news that lunchtime the lead report was on the Hannon Regency shinju. An employee of the hotel had leaked the story, no doubt in return for a handsome tip-off fee. Much was made of the grisly Triple-X graffito and all that it implied. Much was also made of the fact that this third set of deaths coincided with the announcement of a significant decrease in the numbers of Foreigners visiting New Venice. The downturn first registered on Friday had steepened severely, and no longer could the drop in the figures be dismissed as a statistical blip. Foreign population density was now at ninety per cent of seasonal average. “These are very sensitive beings,” commented François-Joseph Vieuxtemps, once again being called upon to give the benefit of his expertise. “As I clearly state in my book Foreigners Are Neither From Venus Nor From Mars, one cannot predict what human actions they will consider offensive. Nor can one predict what steps they will take to avoid such actions in future.”

  In a subsidiary report it was revealed that, according to well-informed sources, Sirens were starting to drift away from the city too. For most of them money was a stronger motive for staying than the remote-but-pertinent possibility of violent death was a motive for leaving, but dozens none the less had headed off for pastures new, and more would surely soon follow. When it came down to it, one resort-city was much the same as another to a Siren, and a resort-city where you were not likely to be ambushed and murdered by Triple-Xers while plying your trade was understandably more appealing than one where you were.

  There was a sour, nervy atmosphere in the city as Parry walked home from HQ that afternoon. He was reminded of London in the run-up to the Riots. It seemed almost everywhere he went he heard flashpoints of argument, voices frayed at the edges. Strangers’ glances were furtive, clouded with mistrust. And if people were not succumbing to their anxiety, they were overcompensating for it, masking it too strenuously. Holidaymakers were braying when they should have been laughing. Stall-holders were bragging about their wares instead of simply selling them. Café proprietors and restaurateurs were patrolling their outdoor tables, slapping backs, laying on the bonhomie with a trowel. Universal unease, and Parry, as he walked, wallowed in it, drawing a perverse comfort from it. He even nearly laughed when he caught sight of the headline on a copy of the Clarion on Sunday that someone was reading: “New Venice Sunk?”

  That evening he went out, in plain clothes, to attend Sirensong. His hope was that he might overhear something useful, might eavesdrop on a conversation that would provide a lead to the Triple-X cell. The chances of this happening, though, were slim, and he knew it. The real reason he was going out was to observe how the Foreigners were behaving.

  And they were behaving in a manner that could only be described as agitated. Their movements were rapid and awkward, not at all elegant, and they were perceptibly less confident than usual as they negotiated with Sirens (who themselves were drinking and smoking too much, talking loudly, affecting an air of exaggerated nonchalance). At each location he loitered at, Parry got the impression that the golden giants were there against their better judgement, impelled by urges they could not contain or control. That made him think that he had been wrong about their love of the human voice. (He had been wrong about so much else. Why not this?) What impulse could override common sense, could drive you to take excessive risks, could surmount even the fear of death? Not aesthetic appreciation, that was for sure. What else could it be but lust? The Foreigners’ desire for singing was nothing more than the heedless, insatiable hunger of the libido. Maybe they were able to convince themselves that the pleasure they derived from singing was more than merely physical. Or maybe for them, as for many humans, there was little distinction between lust and love, the latter a euphemism for the former. He had always given them the benefit of the doubt before. They were such immaculate creatures that even to think of them as possessing sexuality was somehow wrong, tarring them with the brush of human traits. They were above such concerns as gold is above dross. Yet now, as he watched them haggle with Sirens, he saw being acted out over and over again the prelude to a more intimate transaction, the financial foreplay of the world’s oldest profession. For all the dissimilarities – the terminology, the nature of the service being provided, the fact that the participants did not belong the same species as each other – at the end of the day (literally) it was still just whore and client, trick-turner and punter, hooker and john.

  Throughout the following day, Monday, Parry’s disenchantment deepened while the mood in New Venice grew edgier and more unsettled. He did not go in to work. Unable to face all those searching looks, all those pairs of eyes seeking from him a reassurance he would not be able to give, not to mention all the comments he was bound to get about his forehead, which still bore a faint bluish bruise – unable to face the prospect of any of this, he called in sick, something he had never done before, not even when genuinely feeling under the weather. He phoned Johansen’s work board and lied about having a cracking headache, and then stayed indoors all day watching TV and hating himself for his cowardice. Concerned calls came in from Johansen and from Avni, and he listened to them while the home board recorded them and then he erased them. The morning slipped by, and his beloved city continued to writhe in pain. Through the television, as though through a window, distanced, he observed its suffering. What could he do? Nothing. Was there some way of solving this mess? None whatsoever. He thought several times about calling Anna, just to share some of his misery with her. But given the way they had parted after their lunch at the Touching Bass... No.

  On at least a dozen occasions that day the commissioner and NACA Liaison al-Shadhuli appeared on television, sometimes as a duo, sometimes separately, to deliver messages of reassurance. They spoke soothingly, but neither of them was able to offer much more than a promise that the culprits would be caught using all Constitutional means available, and neither, when pressed by members of the Press, sounded wholly convincing in their denials that New Venice was about to go the way of Koh Farang. As the day wore on, both officials grew appreciably less patient with their questioners. Wearily they made their points again and again, striving to generate new permutations of the same old answers.

  Then, in the evening, Toroa MacLeod entered the fray, as he had vowed he would, and the platform from which he did his best to foment the unrest in the city was none other than Calliope.

  The programme, recorded during the afternoon and aired at the primetime 7 p.m. slot on NVTV, had been trailed extensively throughout the day as a “Crisis in New Venice” special, and as the opening credits ended the camera found the show’s presenter in sober, sombre mode. None of the usual bounding onto the stage with her arms raised while the studio audience whooped and cheered and clapped. Instead, with the audience observing a preordained silence, the lights went up to reveal Calliope seated centre-stage in a white armchair, dressed in a plain, dark trouser-suit. The camera dollied in for a close-up. Calliope was possessed of a face that appeared to have been stretched vertically between the mouth and eyes, resulting in an artificially long nose. She was beautiful in a lofty, patrician kind of way, but when her hair was tied back, as it was today, depriving her features of their usual softening frame of jet-black ringlets, she looked hawklike and severe.

  “Good evening,” she said, as the camera came to rest, “and welcome to a special edition of the show. It can’t have escaped the attention of anyone in this beautiful city of ours, or in the wider world, that New Venice is currently facing the most serious crisis to have befallen any resort-city since Koh Farang. Last Monday...”

  And after giving a potted version of the events of the past seven days, Calliope continued: “As usual on this show, it is not our intention to cast aspersions or draw attention to mistakes. What we hope to do in the next hour is make a frank and honest assessment of
the situation and see if we can come up with any solutions. To help us do this we have a number of guests in the studio, and I’d like you to welcome the first of them now. He’s the head of the local chapter of the Xenophobe movement – Toroa MacLeod.”

  MacLeod strode onstage to polite applause. He was wearing a pair of khaki slacks and a loose-fitting, lilac-coloured shirt. After greeting his host with a brief handshake, he settled down into another white armchair positioned at right angles to hers.

  “Toroa? Did I pronounce that right?”

  “Impeccably, Miss Papaioannou.”

  “Calliope.”

  “Calliope.”

  “Toroa, first off, before we get to serious matters... This is the first time we’ve had you on the show, and I feel I have to mention those tattoos of yours. They’re very striking.”

  “Thank you.”

  “They’re known as ‘moko’, aren’t they?”

  “That’s correct. Score one for your researchers.”

  “Can you tell us a bit about them? Do they mean something?”

  “Well, you said ‘before we get to serious matters’. To me my moko is a serious matter. It symbolises my connection to my people and to the Maoritanga, my people’s way of life. In the early days, Maori men would draw marks on their faces in charcoal before going into battle, to make themselves look more ferocious. At some point – no one’s sure when – it was decided to make the marks permanent. I wear them now remind me of my heritage, but also to remind me that I am engaged in a battle myself, one no less fierce or important than, say, the Taranaki wars of the 1860’s. Just as my forebears did their best to resist the encroachment of white settlers onto their land, so I am determined to resist the encroachment onto our planet of a race of outsiders whom I consider no less insidious and destructive.”

  “You’re referring to Foreigners.”

  “Of course. The Pakeha.”