‘I could thank you for tea later, Nola, but not yet. You can expect a visitor, I think.’
‘Another? You think?’
‘I am almost sure. I have put myself in the other’s place and asked what should I do. The answer? Come here, swiftly.’
‘Other?’ Parroting, I thought at once of Kovacs, of some error betraying our unspoken friendship. For it was that.
‘Captain Nikopoulos.’
My surprise was genuine. ‘What on earth could he want?’
He laughed at me. ‘Not you, Nola, not you. Francis Conway is his necessity.’ That struck below the belt. Francis was a vulnerability I should have discarded long ago. Had I known how. Derrick’s amusement was the knowingness of a nasty boy. His pleasure was to spy out the signs of fear, mine to deny him.
‘Don’t make mystery, Arthur. What is going on?’
‘I can tell you a little. The rest will have to come from Nikopoulos.’ He leaned forward, projecting intimacy. ‘We don’t want you, Nola – at any rate, not yet. I don’t give a damn about your petty thieving. It is accepted while you avoid outright greed. What a disgusting clique you commercials are.’
That, from the so-called Secret Service, was too much. ‘Your cabal peddles no honesties.’ I was more brazen than brave. The auditors knew and were bland but Political Security was a more subtle terror.
He ignored the insult but snapped his fingers for a blank-faced acolyte to hand him a carton and step woodenly back into place. I had staged such demonstrations myself on occasion. Arthur – no, the Superintendent, Confidential – laid the carton on my desk.
‘Do you recognize it, ma’am?’
Now we were official; the real dialogue had begun.
I told him: ‘Imported extra-strength chewing sweet. Of course I recognize it. It is forwarded, I suspect, through your Department, for distribution through mine.’
‘Suspect?’
‘Why not? It is a restricted distribution item consigned directly to Intelligence Officers of army units, via the Canteen Service, in tower areas.’ My steadiness gave me heart.
He raised his eyebrows, pretending surprise. ‘I believe some 30,000 items pass through your Department, yet you pay attention to one as minimal as this.’
‘I pay attention to the unusual, specially when tied to a revolting story involving deliberate addiction of Swill girls. Is it true?’
‘Perhaps, perhaps. What of it?’
‘In God’s name, Arthur, what can your spiteful files derive from the helpless Swill?’
‘Are people like your friend, Kovacs, helpless? Have you become a Swill lover?’
‘Don’t be vulgar.’
‘Vulgar? They are the pulse of the world. It is essential to know how they think and what they think and what they as a collective animal may do.’
His tone had altered; he had said something I believed, but I was not gulled. ‘So that you may stop them doing it.’
He frowned as though I had said a foolish thing. ‘Sometimes. And sometimes encourage. Most of the time, just worry about it. In the long run they are the world, not we Sweet.’
It was a proper rebuke. Under other circumstances his answer would have piqued my curiosity about the human being lurking within the bureaucrat, but he realized the irrelevance and returned to business. ‘If I gauge him rightly, Nikopoulos will be here within the hour. Have young Conway available. And please make sure that all staff are kept from this part of the house. I don’t want Nikopoulos alerted by some unexpected friend.’
‘There are no police spies in my household.’
He stood. ‘Don’t be too sure of it.’
I was shaken; he would know better than I if I harboured snakes unawares. To cover confusion I said, ‘One member of staff must stay in the front of the house. Not even a policeman would expect me to open my own front door.’
‘Of course not.’ He beamed at me. ‘The excellent Tallis must be with us to open the door.’
I was sure he had named the snake.
He repeated the fingersnapping display. Another police flunkey came forward with a roll of transparent material which he spread over a pane of the window, trimmed to fit and smoothed with a little roller. Applied, it was invisible. He returned silently to his place, a non-person. He should have been rewarded with a piece of sugar.
But Derrick was in explanatory mood. ‘A sneak’s toy, an invisible microphone, powered by the voice. Now, if my men and I retire to the kitchen, may we take up your offer of tea?’
I said, ‘Take what you want and be damned.’
It was small and cheap but it cracked the edge of his composure. ‘You always had the making of a mean-tongued bitch.’
We had been reduced in a moment to spitefulness. So much for our yesterdays – each had seen what the other had become.
I sent for Tallis and told him that the staff must keep to their work areas, but I could think of no reason for the order. ‘Invent something, Tallis.’ Let him earn his crumshaw.
I do not know how he explained the presence of police in the kitchen, or if he bothered to explain anything.
I dressed slowly, wondering, concluding that the chewing sweet had flushed an unexpected quarry and that a trap was laid for Nikopoulos. What could he have done? I was accustomed to the honest masks of public servants concealing dishonest minds but I had read the Captain as one of the rare incorruptible.
I was returning to the office, still in the corridor, when Tallis opened the front door to yet another group of police thugs bringing a prisoner. It was not Nikopoulos.
Billy had been terribly beaten. A thug at each arm held him erect. His face was barely recognizable, blood and bruises framing bloodshot, hating eyes. Even the backs of his hands were blackened as though boots had stamped on them.
I cried out something useless, like, ‘Oh, no!’ and he spat at me. Or tried to. The spittle clung in muck to his torn, uncontrollable lips. I burst into tears, not knowing what I might have done wrong.
Derrick emerged from the service corridor, saying, ‘No, no, Mr Kovacs, the Ma’am is not at fault. Your connections made you obvious game.’
Billy seemed to see truth in that; his eyes lost their blaze. I had wept for shock on seeing him, now I wept for one of the few good men I had known and raged at Derrick, ‘Did your animals have to treat him like this?’
He eyed me with smiling speculation and asked his men, ‘Did you?’
One answered, full of grievance, ‘He was hard to take, sir. If the soldiers hadn’t been with us we mightn’t have got out alive.’
Billy said with care, manipulating words in his ruined mouth, ‘Bastard hit Vi.’
One of them raised a bandaged hand. ‘The woman bit me, sir, and hung on.’
I heard my voice without dignity or restraint, ‘Why, why? He’s a good man.’
Derrick shook my arm furiously. ‘If you knew what he did to a wretched army sergeant last night you would think differently. Have you a first-aid kit?’ I nodded and he ordered the hovering Tallis, ‘Take him away and patch him up.’
I said, ‘Billy, I am so sorry,’ and I think that the new agony on his face was intended to be a smile. He was the one I should have met years ago.
They vanished into the Staff areas and I went to the office to stare at the wall, at the untouched cup of tea and at the still not understood web of circumstance centered on my home.
It seemed only a flash of time from Tallis knocking at my bedroom to the moment when, through the transparent microphone, I saw Nikopoulos’ hovercar skim the low garden fence and settle on the path.
Derrick reappeared as if the success of his prediction had catapulted him into instant existence. ‘Let him tell what he wants, Nola. I need to know how much he knows.’ He stared hard into my eyes as though to penetrate my mind. ‘Don’t warn him. Don’t dare. I would take no pleasure in tossing you to the towers.’
He went away, leaving me with the threat only the Little Sweet, the disposable Sweet, commonly feared.
The suddenness of his malice drove into me the nature of their fear. We had created the class gap as an economic necessity for control of the crumbling world, not seeing it as a garbage tip that could swallow us alive.
My anger boiled with all the conventional urges to rebellion and defiance but I knew that I would do what Derrick required. A lifetime of privilege found no courage for the towers. Tallis came, smooth-faced. ‘Captain Nikopoulos, ma’am, with a younger officer. A cadet, I imagine.’
‘Also in dire urgency?’
‘I suspect so, ma’am. He has asked for Francis Conway.’
The Captain was direct; sometimes it scores. ‘His reason?’
‘The police don’t commonly offer reasons, ma’am.’
‘Do they not? Well, show them in here.’
‘And the lad, ma’am? Conway?’
‘Hasn’t Mr Derrick given you your orders?’ He remained a fraction too impassive; self-control involves knowing when to relax. ‘Keep him handy but out of sight.’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ He went away.
It is unlikely that I impressed Nikopoulos as calm and untroubled. The sight of Billy had shattered my staunchness. It is one thing to know that abominations are practiced behind the screens of power, altogether another to meet with them in the beaten body of a friend. There was, too, the microphone; I was burdened with deceit. If my hands were steady my spirit shook and I suppose my voice also as I talked commonplaces, ‘Captain Nikopoulos! I hardly expected you again so soon.’
He made an officer’s brief gesture of coming half to attention for the greeting. ‘Ma’am.’ If the voice was expressionless the face was not. His intention was ice cold and his eyes held me in suspicion. Of what?
I talked across nervousness, ‘By the look of him your colleague might be the other Conway boy.’ I talked at random but there was a superficial resemblance to Francis.
The boy came to attention like the rookie he was, not yet schooled in quick sketching of the social forms, ‘I am Edward Conway, ma’am.’
As surly-faced as Francis was incipiently handsome.
Nikopoulos laid a scribbled note on my desk. For all our sakes, turn off your recording gear.
‘I have none on.’ Not quite a lie, wholly an evasion. My shame was sure that he must detect the effort it cost me not to turn my head to the window.
He made no bones about coming around the desk to check the control panel, and said abruptly, ‘I’ll be taking Francis away. He’s in trouble and it would be better that well-wishers deal with him before others do.’
‘Have you a warrant of arrest?’
He smiled sourly. ‘Ma’am, don’t fence with me. Your safety also is in question. Send for Francis,’ and added unwillingly, preserving the forms, ‘if you please.’
‘I do not please, Captain, without an explanation of the implied threat.’ Oh, very haughty, the Ma’am.
He seemed to restrain himself from an outburst of ruthless haste; the other, Edward, watched me with the expectant malignance of youth. Nikopoulos fumbled in his pocket to produce what I should have expected if my wits had been less scattered, a tablet of extra-strength chewing sweet, its blue tinge unmistakable. ‘The new stuff,’ he said.
‘Quite so.’
He stripped the wrapping from the thing and held it out to me. ‘Chew it, ma’am.’
‘Are you drunk?’
‘No, ma’am. Chew it!’
‘I certainly will not.’ I had always held the habit an unclean one, involving much spitting, and had heard that users store the half-chewed mass behind their ears.
‘Sweet don’t chew, ma’am? Believe me, they do.’
I said resolutely, ‘This one does not.’
He wheedled unpleasantly. ‘One little chew can’t hurt, ma’am. Can it, now?’ He dropped pretence. ‘You know what this is, don’t you?’
I tried to be cool and steady. ‘It contains an extra-strength narcotic. I do not approve but it has been issued for special distribution and I have no authority to refuse.’
‘Special distribution?’
‘To Army Intelligence. I assume you already know that.’
‘Yes, I know. Chew it, ma’am.’
His determination was daunting. I attempted a useless asperity. ‘You’re raving. The stuff is habit forming.’
‘Not in one little chew, surely?’ He leaned across the desk to overawe. ‘You will chew this, ma’am, if I have to force it into your mouth and champ your jaws between my hands.’
He took my wrist and slapped the tablet into the palm. I could only ask, querulously, ‘Is this some manner of test?’
‘Now, there’s a question!’ There was no hate in him, only an absence of mercy. I remembered that Arthur Derrick, in the kitchen, listened to all this. And would not interfere? Perhaps it was not yet time. He would not let some evil thing happen to me. Or would he not?
Trusting in protection at hand, I said, ‘Very well,’ and put the table in my mouth. It was pleasantly sweet.
Instantly Nikopoulos’ hand was at my jaw, not forcing me to chew but clamping tightly so that I could not. He pulled my head forward and down. ‘Spit it out!’
I spat it into his open palm and he wrapped it in a handkerchief. I felt degraded and soiled.
He sighed, ‘I’m prepared to believe that you don’t know.’
Then he told me what it was and what it did.
Nikopoulos was a professional who kept his humanity in some desk drawer of his life, to be indulged secretly; for the rest, he was all calculation, not to be liked or disliked, only feared – and perhaps trusted for what he was. It was not kindness that kept him silent while I sat stunned by what he had told me, but the awareness that! a response jerked out of me would be useless. What response could be adequate?
In his good time, Nikopoulos said, ‘The story is that these tablets are imported from outside, from the orientals. Should I believe that?’
That could be answered without thought. ‘You should not. Imported samples would have been subjected to analysis for purity and possible side effects of the supposedly stronger narcotic. The culture would have been detected at once.’
‘So – two possibilities. The tablets are imported with full knowledge of their properties or they are manufactured here and distributed with – um – malice aforethought.’
His urgency had gone; it might not have been genuine in the first place. Now he was conversational and of course I asked like a puppet, ‘But why?’
‘Billy Kovacs would say that’s common knowledge. Has he never punished you with his ultimate solution of the population problem, the cull?’
He had, and had dropped the subject when he saw that I did not take him seriously. ‘I thought it was his private rattle, his King Charles’ head.’
‘And now?’
How could I imagine that my own people would set out deliberately to sterilize a huge sector of the population? I thought of why they would not do it. ‘The risk is too great. If there is no vaccine, and if it penetrates Sweet areas it could recoil on its distributors.’
‘There’s a possible answer to that. It may help your peace of mind if you don’t hear it yet awhile. Again, there is a treatment for the disease and young Teddy here has had it, but it’s one that might kill as many as it cures.’
‘Young Teddy’ listened like a terrier to its master; this empty-souled man could attract hero worship.
‘That’s by the by,’ Nikopoulos continued. ‘An urgent question, ma’am, is what you will do with your knowledge.’
I answered that very carefully. ‘I will need to speak to some colleagues, in confidence. It may be possible to discover where pressure can be applied.’
Young Conway said, ‘I threatened to tell the Swill, but that wasn’t a good idea. It would cause riots and death and save nobody.’
That was good thinking from one at the age of urgent enthusiasm and thoughtless action. I asked, ‘Whom did you threaten?’
He looked to his Captain. ‘What’s the
man’s name?’
‘Arthur Derrick.’
All the activities of the morning fell into their pattern. ‘What did he say to that?’
‘He asked, “Would you?” and when I thought about it I knew I wouldn’t.’
Nikopoulos stood. ‘You know the situation, ma’am. Now, I want to get Francis out of here.’
‘I don’t understand why.’
‘Look,’ he said, ‘you used him for special delivery of the cartons. His presence was the signal to the Intelligence Officer that what he was delivering was the special stuff. In sanity’s name, why did you pick him for the job?’
Because I had, in a muddled way, tried to do something useful. ‘All his personal problems arise from fear of the towers. I thought it could do him good to become used slowly to the Swill ambience. He would be perfectly safe because the truck would not stop save inside the regimental area.’
Edward said, ‘Just riding through the towers would frighten the shit out of him,’ and coloured and muttered an apology.
‘I’ve heard the word before. I still don’t understand why Francis must go.’
Nikopoulos told me about a sergeant who had discovered the nature of the tablets (Arthur had said something about a sergeant and Billy) and by now would have spread the word throughout his unit. Francis, the messenger, would be the focus of the anger of the men. Unfair? What has fairness to do with outrage? The danger that he could be traced to Quarters was real. Wondering how long this charade must continue, I said, ‘I’ll send for him.’
Derrick’s ‘sneak’s toy’ was something more than a microphone. It could speak to us. It said, ‘No need, Nola, I have him here.’
Nikopoulos’ gaze communicated nothing but his body surged with rage and contempt for me. He went to the window, examined it, ran his fingers over it – it crackled and hissed – nodded to himself and said, ‘You bitch!’
Now the resolution was at hand I could ask composedly, ‘What could I have done? He was here an hour before you, with menaces. There are men with him. Had I warned you, you could not have escaped.’
‘Who?’
‘Derrick.’
‘Ah!’ He said to the boy, ‘Chin up, kid! And don’t talk until you have to.’
The Sea and Summer Page 35
