“Robert Peter Sinclair,” he said, looking up at me for the first time.
I confirmed this, but was distracted by the fact that his was the first authentic island accent I had ever heard. He pronounced the name I usually used with a lengthened vowel: “Peyter”. The only time I had heard the accent before was when actors used it in films; hearing it used naturally gave me the odd feeling that he was putting on the accent to amuse me.
“Where are you travelling to, Mr Sinclair?”
“Muriseay, at first.”
“And where are you going after that?”
“Collago,” I said, and waited for his reaction.
He gave no obvious sign that he had heard. “May I see your ticket, Mr Sinclair?”
I reached into an inner pocket and produced the sheaf of flimsy dockets issued by the shipping company, but he waved them away.
“Not those. The lottery ticket.”
“Of course,” I said, feeling embarrassed that I had misunderstood, although it was a natural error. I put the shipping tickets away and found my wallet. “The number has been printed on the visa.”
“I want to see the ticket itself.”
I had sealed it up inside an envelope which was folded into the deepest pocket of my wallet, and it took a few seconds of fumbling to retrieve it. I had been keeping it as a souvenir, and no one had warned me it would be inspected.
I passed it over, and the two immigration officers looked closely at it, painstakingly comparing the serial number with the one inked into my passport. After what seemed like an over-zealous inspection they passed hack the ticket and I returned it to the safety of my wallet.
“What are your intentions after leaving Collago?”
“I don’t know yet. I understand there is a long convalescence. I thought I’d make my plans then.”
“Are you intending to return to Jethra?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right, Mr. Sinclair.” He pressed a rubber date-stamp in the space beneath the visa, closed the passport and slid it back across the desk to me. “You’re a lucky man.”
“I know,” I said conventionally, although I did have my doubts.
The woman behind me stepped forward to the desk, and I walked through to the bar on the same deck. Many of the passengers I had seen in the queue in front of me were already there. I bought myself a large whisky, and stood with the others. I soon struck up a tentative conversation with two people who were heading for a retirement home on Muriseay. Their names were Thorrin and Dellidua Sineham. They came from the university town of Old Haydl in the north of Faiandland. They had bought a luxury apartment overlooking the sea in a village just outside Muriseay Town, and they promised to show me a picture of it when they next came back from their cabin.
They seemed pleasant, ordinary people, who were at pains to explain that a luxury flat in the Archipelago cost no more to buy than a small house at home.
I had been speaking to them for a few minutes when the woman behind me in the queue came into the bar. She glanced briefly in my direction, then went and bought herself a drink. She came to stand near me, and as soon as the Sinehams said they were going down to their cabin, she turned and spoke to me.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I couldn’t help overhearing. Have you really won the lottery?”
I felt myself going on the defensive. “Yes.”
“I’ve never known anyone who’s won before.”
“Neither have I,” I said.
“I didn’t believe it was genuine. I’ve been buying the tickets for years, but the winning numbers are always so different from mine that I thought it must be crooked.”
“I’ve only ever bought one ticket. I won straight away. I can still hardly believe it.”
“Could I see the ticket?”
In the weeks since the news that I had won the big prize, innumerable people had asked to see the ticket, as if by looking at it or touching it some of my luck might rub off on them. It was now well thumbed and slightly frayed, but I took it out of my wallet again and showed it to her.
“And you bought this in the ordinary way?”
“Just one of those booths in the park.”
A fine day in late summer: I had been waiting to meet a friend in Seigniory Park, and while I walked up and down I noticed one of the Lotterie-Collago booths. These little makeshift franchise stands were a common sight in Jethra and the other big cities, and presumably also in other parts of the world. The franchises were normally granted to the disabled, or to wounded ex-servicemen. Hundreds of thousands of the lottery tickets were sold every month, yet the odd thing was that you rarely saw anyone ever go to the stands and buy one. Nor did people talk openly about buying the tickets, although almost everyone I knew had bought a few tickets at one time or another, and the day the winners were announced you always saw people standing in the streets checking the list in the newspapers.
Like most people I was tempted by the prize, even though the odds against winning were so long that I had never seriously thought about taking part. But on that particular day, idling in the park, I had noticed one of the vendors. He was a soldier, probably ten years younger than me, sitting stiffly and proudly in his wooden booth, wearing a dress uniform. He was badly disfigured by wounds: he was lacking an eye and an arm, and his neck was in a brace. Taken by compassion—the guilty, helpless compassion of a civilian who managed to avoid the draft—I went across and bought one of his tickets. The transaction was conducted quickly and, for my part, furtively, as if it were pornography I was buying, or illegal drugs.
Two weeks later I discovered I had won the major prize. I would receive the athanasia treatment, and afterwards live for ever. Shock and surprise, disbelief, extreme jubilation…these were a part of my reactions, and even now, a few weeks after the news, I had still not entirely adjusted to the prospect.
It was part of the lore of the Lotterie that winners, even those who won the subsidiary cash prizes, returned to the place where they had bought the winning ticket and gave a present or tribute to the vendor. I did this at once, even before going to register my claim, but the little stall in the park had gone and the other vendors knew nothing about him. Later, I was able to make inquiries through the Lotterie, and discovered that he had died a few days after my purchase; the missing eye, the arm, the broken neck, were just the wounds that showed.
The Lotterie claimed that twenty major prizes were awarded every month, yet one heard remarkably little about the winners. I discovered part of the reason when I registered my claim. The Lotterie counselled utmost discretion in what I said about the prize, and warned me not to talk to the media. Although Lotterie-Collago welcomed the publicity, experience had shown that it put the winners in danger. They told me several cases of publicized winners who had been attacked in the streets; three of them had been killed.
Another reason was that because the lottery was international, only a small proportion of winners came from Faiandland. The tickets were on sale in every country of the northern continent, and throughout the Dream Archipelago.
The Lotterie staff plied me with documents and information sheets, urging me to sign over my affairs to them. I considered for a few days the mountain of business I should have to undertake on my own, then did as they suggested. From that time I had been completely in their hands. They helped me wind up my affairs in Jethra, my job, my flat, the few investments I had, they obtained the visa for me and they booked the passage on the ship. They would continue to manage my affairs until I returned. I had become a helpless functionary of their organization, swept irresistibly towards the athanasia clinic on the island of Collago.
The young woman passed me back my ticket, and I folded it away again inside its envelope, inside my wallet.
“So when will you start the treatment?” she said.
“I don’t know. Presumably as soon as I arrive on Collago. But I haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“But surely…there’s no que
stion?”
“No, but I’m just not sure yet.”
I was beginning to feel self-conscious, talking about this in a crowded bar with someone I hardly knew. In the last few weeks I had grown tired of other people’s assumptions about the prize, and because I was not as sure about it as they were I had grown equally tired of being defensive.
I had imagined that the long slow voyage through the islands would be time for contemplation, and I was looking forward to having enough solitude to think. The islands would give me space. Yet the ship was still tied up in Seevl Town, and Jethra was just an hour away.
Perhaps the woman sensed my reservedness, because she introduced herself to me. Her name was Mathilde Englen, and she had a doctorate in biochemistry. She had secured a two-year attachment to the agricultural research station on the island of Semell, and she talked for some time about the problems in the islands. Because of the war, food was in short supply in some parts of the Archipelago. Now, though, several previously uninhabited islands were being cleared, and farms established. They were short of many commodities: seed-stock, implements, manpower. Her own speciality was in hybrid cereals, and several were being developed for use in the islands. She was doubtful whether two years would be long enough for the research she had to do, but under the terms of her attachment it could be renewed for a second two-year period.
The bar was filling up as more people were cleared by the immigration officers, and as we had both finished our drinks I suggested that we go for lunch. We were the first to arrive in the dining saloon, but the service was slow and the food was indifferent. The main dish was paqua-leaves stuffed with a spiced mince; hot in flavour it was only lukewarm in temperature. I had eaten in Archipelagan-style restaurants in Jethra, so I was used to the food, but in the city the restaurants had to offer competitive service. On the ship there was no competition. At first disappointed, we saw no point in ruining the day by complaining, and concentrated instead on talking to each other.
By the time we had finished the ship was under way. I went up to the afterdeck and stood by the rail in the sunshine, watching dark Seevl and the distant mainland slipping away behind us.
That night I had a vivid dream about Mathilde, and when I met her in the morning my perception of her had undergone a subtle change.
6
As the ship sailed further south, and the weather became endlessly warm and sunny, there was no time for contemplating the pros and cons of my prize. I was distracted by the scenery, the unfolding panorama of the islands, and Mathilde was constantly on my mind.
I had not really expected to meet someone on the ship, but from the second day I thought of almost nothing else. Mathilde, I think, was glad of my company, and flattered by my interest in her, but that is as far as it went. I found that I was pursuing her with such single-minded intent that even I became self-conscious about it. I soon ran out of excuses for being with her, because she was the sort of woman who made excuses necessary. Every time I approached her I had to think of some new device: a drink in the bar?, a stroll around the deck?, a few minutes ashore? After these minor excursions she always slipped away with an excuse of her own: a short nap, hair to be washed, a letter to write. I knew she was not interested in me in the way I was interested in her, but that was no deterrent.
In some ways it was inevitable we should spend time together. We were the same age group—she was thirty-one, two years older than myself—and we came from the same sort of Jethran background. She, like me, felt outnumbered by the retirement couples on board with us, but unlike me made friends with several of them. I found her intelligent and shrewd, and, after a few drinks, possessed of an unexpectedly bawdy sense of humour. She was slim and fair-haired, read a lot of books, had been politically active in Jethra (we found we had a friend of a friend in common) and on the one or two occasions we were able to leave the ship briefly, she revealed herself knowledgeable about island customs.
The dream that started it all was one of those rare lucid dreams that are still comprehensible after waking. It was extremely simple. In a mildly erotic way I was on an island with a young woman, readily identified as Mathilde, and we were in love.
When I saw Mathilde in the morning I felt such a surge of spontaneous warmth that I acted as if we had known each other for years, rather than just met briefly the day before. Probably out of surprise, Mathilde responded with almost equal warmth, and before either of us realized it a pattern had been set. From then I pursued her, and she, with tact, firmness and a generous amusement, eluded me.
My other main preoccupation on the ship was my discovery of the islands. I never tired of standing at the rail of the ship to watch the view, and our frequent calls at ports on the way were all rich visual experiences.
The shipping line had fixed an immense, stylized chart on the wall of the main saloon, and this showed the entire Midway Sea and all the principal islands and shipping routes. A first reaction to the chart was the complexity of the Archipelago and the sheer quantity of islands, and amazement that ships’ crews could navigate safely. The sea carried a lot of shipping: in a typical day on deck I would see twenty or thirty cargo ships, at least one or two steamers like the one I was on, and innumerable small inter-island ferries. Around some of the larger islands there was traffic of privately owned pleasure boats, and fleets of fishing boats were common sights.
It was generally said that the islands of the Archipelago were impossible to count, although upwards of ten thousand had been named. The whole of the Midway Sea had been surveyed and charted, but quite apart from the inhabited islands, and the larger uninhabited ones, there was a multitude of tiny islets, crags and rocks, many of which appeared and disappeared with the tides.
From the chart I learned that the islands which lay immediately to the south of Jethra were known as the Torqui Group; the main island, Derril, was one we called at on the third day. Beyond these to the south lay the Lesser Serques. The islands were grouped for administrative and geographical reasons, but each island was, in theory at least, politically and economically independent.
In simple terms, the Midway Sea girdled the world at the equator, but it was larger by far than either of the two continental land masses lying to north and south of it. In one part of the world, the sea extended to within a few degrees of the South Pole, and in the northern hemisphere the country called Koillin, one of those with which we were presently at war, actually had part of its territory crossing the equator; in general, though, the continents were cool and the islands were tropical.
One of the anecdotal facts taught in schools about the Dream Archipelago, and one which I heard the other passengers repeat many times, was that the islands were so numerous and so close together that from every single island at least another seven could be seen. I never doubted this, except to think it was probably an understatement; even from the relatively low eminence of the ship’s deck I could frequently see more than twelve separate islands.
It was extraordinary to reflect that I had spent my life in Jethra without awareness of this totally strange place. Two days’ sailing from Jethra and I felt I had travelled to another world, yet I was still closer to home than, say, the mountain passes in the north of Faiandland.
And if I continued to travel, south or west or east through the Archipelago, I could sail for months and still see the same unfolding diversity, impossible to describe, impossible even to absorb when seeing it. Large, small, rocky, fertile, mountainous and flat; these simple variations could be seen in an afternoon, to just one side of the ship. The senses became dulled to the scenic variety, and the imagination took over. I began to see the islands as designs on a painted cyclorama, one hauled smoothly past the ship, endlessly inventive, meticulously fabricated.
But then came our ports of call, confounding the fancy.
Our brief visits to islands were the real regulators of the ship’s day. Ports disrupted everything. I soon learned this, and gave up trying to eat or sleep by the clock. The best time to
sleep was mid-voyage, because then the ship had a steady rhythm to it, and the food in the restaurant was also better, because then the crew was eating.
The ship was always expected, whether we docked at noon or midnight, and its arrival was obviously an event of some importance. Crowds were generally waiting on the quay, and behind them stood rows of trucks and carts to take away the cargo and mail we brought. Then there was the chaotic exchange of deck passengers, and as they came or left there were always arguments, greetings or farewells, suddenly remembered last messages shouted to the shore, disrupting our otherwise placid existence. In the ports we were reminded that we were a ship: something that called, something that carried, something from outside.
I always left the ship when I could, and made brief explorations of the little towns. My impressions were superficial: I felt like a tourist, unable to see beyond the war memorials and palm trees to the people beyond. Yet the Archipelago was not meant for tourists, and the towns had no guides or currency exchanges, no museums of local culture. On several islands I tried to buy picture postcards to send home, but when at last I found some I discovered that mail to the north could only be sent by special permit. By trial and error I worked out a few things for myself: the usage of the archaic non-decimal currency, the difference between the various kinds of bread and meat on sale, and a rule-of-thumb guide to how prices compared with home.
Mathilde sometimes accompanied me on these expeditions, and her presence was enough to blind me to surroundings. All the time I was with her I knew I was making a mistake, yet she continued to attract me. I think we were both relieved, although in my case it was a perverse kind of relief, when on the fourth day we came to Semell Town and she disembarked. We went through the motions of making an arrangement to meet again, even though her voice was glib with insincerity. When she was ashore I stood by the ship’s rail and watched her walk along the concrete wharf, her pale hair shining in the sunlight. A car was waiting to meet her. I saw a man load her bags into the back, and before she climbed in she turned towards the ship. She waved briefly to me, then she was gone.
The Affirmation Page 6
