The Sea and Summer

by George Turner

  2

  Arthur Derrick

  Now that I have them all under my hand, what am I to do with them? Some of my departmental officers would dispose of them, wipe them out. . . It is expedient that one man (or half a dozen) should die for the good . . . and think no more of it, or bother to tell me. File ’em and forget ’em. Murder is easy when control is absolute, communications not only censored but accepted as being censored and the people split by mutual antagonisms. Anything is easy. However monstrous. As with random seeding of infection.

  How my political masters would be horrified by knowledge of expedient murders! Not by the murders but by having their publicly stainless noses rubbed into the news of them. Surely, Derrick, something less – um – absolute . . . ?

  Have I done wrong? Then punish me, my masters! Let justice reign and the State rot! But the State will reign and justice will rot while your dilemmas need me as my cowardice needs you.

  Ah, well, now. . . Perhaps, after all, one understands the pressures of necessity. . . the pragmatic viewpoint . . .

  And so, the end of it.

  Nola looks, or thinks she looks, into my soul to see there an iceberg, because only icebergs survive in the frigid sea of policy. One hint of warmth in the blood and the suckerfish gather, cold mouths hungry for weakness.

  But I am, like so many more, only a counterfeit iceberg with the fear of falling at my heart. And some warmth, some hidden, frightened warmth.

  We of the Civil Service executive grades are the frozen ghosts of the youngsters who started out to be idealistic pillars of the State. So much for moral courage. The suicide rate among us is instructive: it sorts the human beings from the icemen.

  I don’t yet despise myself enough for that, but it will come.

  I have never ordered a killing.

  Nor will I.

  But the price of pity is a chilled gaze hiding the fear of falling.

  So, what shall I do with them?

  Sykes I have dealt with. And shudder for it. The Intelligence Officer had the sense to call me direct when they found the man in a state of collapse and raving at a scatterwitted gate sentry, telling of plots and horrors, plainly out of his mind with pain and shock. No trouble there: Hypno Section has him and will keep him blocked – for life if necessary. His incubation period is over and his temperature fluctuations have begun; he will have on-going psychological problems when he realizes that he is irreversibly sterile (Irreversibly? Some research there . . .) and that his mind harbours an uneasy gap.

  I should weep for poor Sykes but cannot remember where my tears are kept.

  I should weep for Kovacs, the best of them, the one irreplaceable soul, contorted and wasted but irreplaceable. The fools didn’t need to beat him halfway to the Med ward but the smell of blood fuels violence in small-souled men. Only a fool would kill Kovacs. Without his kind there would not even be the glacial State, only a crumbling bedlam.

  Nikopoulos is intelligent and cool-blooded (not cold-blooded) and dangerous when crossed. What is the price of his silence? Something may emerge. He talks, they tell me, of ‘New Men’ . . .

  Edward Conway is just a young lout but it appears that Nikopoulos is his private godling, so the Captain is the key to him. And Extras are a national resource. We hope.

  His disgusting brother – I have sat in this Staff Common Room for half an hour, listening with my earpiece to Nikopoulos and Nola floundering in their quicksand while at the unencumbered ear this grovelling figure-spitter tries to win my approbation. He doesn’t know yet why he has been summoned but he has fastened on me, unerringly, as the power to be cultivated.

  Who cares what happens to him?

  His unfortunate mother, I suppose.

  Could she be the key to his silence?

  Then there is poor Nola. Have no fear, Nola, your place in the glacier is assured. Training replacements takes too long. You will stay quiet for fear of me. I will see to it. Not the vengeance of the spurned, my ex-darling, but the self-regard of the cured.

  And bright little Arry Smivvers with his fatal flaw, seduced by however many pieces of silver it takes to maintain the Ultra lifestyle to which he has grown accustomed so quickly – what of him? He will tell nothing – but what will life with a small, gnawing shame do to him? Why, it will sap his self-confidence and keep both of us safe.

  But Francis is a fool and a frightened fool. It is his undeserved fortune that I balk at ordering a death. On the day I do so, I will have reached the end of my emotional tether, have given in to the lure of the easy way out.

  Well, on with it: ‘No need, Nola, I have him here.’ I lead my little cavalcade of problems to her office.

  3

  Nola Parkes

  The policemen came to the office door with guns, Derrick pushing Francis ahead of him. The brothers glared at each other with the hard anger you see in fanatics and the uninhibited young. The sight of Francis mind-naked left me amazed that I had not recognized the power of repressed passion in him. He had the opportunist’s talent for blandness but the sight of his brother surprised an instant of truth out of him. It disappeared as he came to the desk, declaring stoutly, ‘I’ve done nothing wrong, ma’am.’

  Nor had he, but Derrick slapped his ear smartly. ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Why should I shut up? I—’

  He gasped as Derrick threw him into the arms of a policeman. ‘If he talks before I require it, break a couple of teeth for him.’ He considered the boy with an expert’s distaste. ‘You are the only innocent party here and the only one for whom I feel no glimmer of respect.’

  He must have made use of his time in the Staff area, and he had never been a slouch at probing personalities. He turned to Nikopoulos. ‘Captain, you can’t play spur of the moment games without leaving a trail. Taking a patrol car into the Fringe identified you as soon as I heard the Sykes report.’ Nikopoulos acknowledged the point with a twitch of lips. Derrick was genial. ‘You had no choice, I realize that. You depended on speed to carry you through but you didn’t know that I knew about Sykes.’ He moved aside to let Billy be pushed in. Billy’s bright eyes told me he had been given a stimulant of some kind but he limped badly; that he stood without assistance was more pride than strength. His hands had been bandaged and his face cleaned and steristripped. I could only guess at the bruises under his clothes.

  Derrick said, ‘Mr Kovacs has more heart than sense. He let Sykes go back to barracks. Between the lot of you, you could only take chances and multiply errors after that.’

  I tired of his gamesmanship, though there was probably some player’s point to it, and said as sharply as my uncertain voice allowed, ‘Find Mr Kovacs a chair! Young Conway!’ Edward had been staring at Billy with fascinated horror; he jumped as though I had stung him. ‘Get up and let the man sit!’

  A most cryptic look of affection, doubt and complicity passed between the man and the boy who put his arm around Billy’s shoulders and said softly, ‘Sit down, Dad.’

  That last word set off a series of reactions. Derrick’s eyebrows rose in disapproval of Sweet/Swill rapprochement, Nikopoulos looked unaccountably like a golfer who has sunk an improbable putt and Francis emitted half a laugh before a hand was clapped over his mouth. I had no idea what it all meant but Billy had his chair, which was the least I could do for him. And, I feared, the most.

  Derrick remained tiresomely jocular. ‘All comfortable? May we proceed?’

  Billy said through thickened lips, ‘Shitmouth!’

  A policeman moved to strike him but Derrick pushed the man’s arm down. His joviality vanished; he surveyed Billy with the same brooding concern that had surfaced earlier when he spoke of the Swill. ‘Mr Kovacs may be the one honourable human being among us – in his fashion. He may even be aware of his stature – in his fashion. I, at any rate, respect him – up to a point. Captain?’

  Nikopoulos nodded. Francis was a study in disgust but I felt the little glow that comes with having one’s conviction upheld. Edward showed the youth
he had not grown out of by flashing Billy an approving, comforting wink. Billy did not relax his surly, pensive expression. I thought he knew exactly how good and how evil he was, how intuitively competent and how short of greater wisdom. And I wondered why Derrick used such a blatantly lubricating approach.

  He continued amiably, as though he had heard my thought, ‘Now we should test his stature. Eh, Captain?’

  Nikopoulos frowned, making play of taking this spider-and-fly game seriously. ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘You’re an amateur.’

  It was not the moment I would have chosen to launch an insult but I supposed he thought he had nothing left to lose. I think now that he was putting Derrick off balance, seeking the word or hint he could turn to advantage.

  Derrick reacted intelligently: he stood perfectly still for perhaps half a minute, swallowing anger. Then he spoke to his police: ‘Strip that thing off the window.’

  One of them lifted an edge with a fingernail and pulled it away.

  ‘All of you retire to the Staff area.’

  The arrogance of the order, with no hint of explanation, was breathtaking. The man holding Francis began to ask, ‘Sir, are you sure—’

  ‘Quite sure. They won’t attack me. Their play is over. They have nowhere left to run.’

  He gave a little frozen smile as the policemen went. It was an impressive demonstration of confidence, to say openly that he wanted no witnesses of what was now to be said and done, that he did not care what might be said, hinted, sneered afterward behind his back.

  With the little smile still on ice he asked, ‘Nola, are you sure you want to listen to dangerous information?’

  I was not, but neither would I be casually dismissed. ‘I want to know how and why I have been used.’

  ‘So you shall but it won’t amount to much.’ He turned to Francis. ‘Tell me about extra-strength chewing sweet.’

  The boy’s assessments had done their work, fixing on Derrick as the power to be courted. He recited submissively, ‘It’s a new small-quantity line for delivery to selected army bases only. It comes special delivery from Department One, Internal Affairs . . .’

  ‘My Department,’ Derrick said.

  Francis dried up, startled and unable to decide how that affected him.

  ‘Come on, Francis. Why is it being distributed?’

  Francis shook. ‘I’m not supposed to tell.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to know. Now, tell.’

  ‘It’s for soldiers to feed their Swill girls so they’ll tell what goes on in the towers in return for more. They get addicted.’

  ‘The fool who told you that is under arrest. He can’t help you. Did you protest against delivering the product?’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Though it meant keeping facts from your Ma’am? You thought a senior man’s confidences declared his interest in you and could be to your advantage. You had no doubts?’

  ‘About telling the Ma’am? He would have . . .’

  ‘He would have killed you. That wouldn’t have mattered to anyone but yourself. I meant, did you have any doubts about making addicts of teenage girls?’

  He did not understand, actually did not understand. ‘Why? They’re only Swill.’

  I have never sat through anything quite like the silence that followed. He searched our faces for agreement. ‘Well, aren’t they?’ He fixed on Derrick for support. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? It’s your Department that puts the chewey out. So it has to be all right.’

  Derrick nodded and spoke again in that brooding, inward-looking tone. ‘Like you, lad, I do what I must. The penalty for standing up for conscience is too high.’

  There it was. He, too, was caught in the web of Sweet survival and afraid to struggle, wearing authority as a mask for the activities of despair. I saw again something of what had attracted me in the years before he reached the eminence where corruption is the only path to continuance. Acquiesce, aid and abet – or drop from sight. How well I understood.

  He returned to cold-blooded statement: ‘Control Series XC 42 is an immune system repressant activated by contact with saliva. It produces strong symptoms which pass quickly and are dangerous only to persons with cardiac weaknesses. Random infections incurred during the twelve days of symptom expression are easily buffered by routine treatments without affecting the virus, which is a tailored recombinant product with a built-in progressive mutation that renders it harmless in twelve days. During that time it can be transmitted by intimate contact, as in kissing, biting or coitus. In its active stage it can be killed by fairly heroic methods, as Officer Conway is aware, but these are not dangerous to the life of a normally healthy patient,’ His cold stare relaxed into a crocodile smile at the young man. ‘He was bitten by an infected girl who seems to be a natural immune but a carrier. He was no doubt concerned for his future in the marriage market but after treatment his spermatozoa remain in the full operative eagerness of bouncing youth. No other patient can boast of that. All the others are sterile. That is the end result of the infection. It is also, as the military might express it, the purpose of the exercise.’ He turned his bleakness on Billy. ‘As a proponent of the cull theory, what do you think of the method?’

  Billy matched him, ice for ice. ‘Less trouble than shooting ’em. No mass disposal problem. We get enough trouble with the sewers as it is.’ He licked his lips because speaking hurt them. ‘There’d be room to flush you and your kind, though.’

  He spoke for all of us. Time stopped, I think, while we tried to take in a legend come to murderous life. Nikopoulos had had time to assimilate and consider; his brittle pragmatism (a necessity of his trade, I suppose) had looked all around it. He asked, ‘Can you control it?’

  ‘It controls itself. The mutations render it harmless even in carriers after two weeks. The chewey is being withdrawn, so the outbreak is effectively over.’

  Nikopoulos laughed. ‘Just a trial run! We’re not for the chop this time around. Now you can count up the cases, draw the proliferation graphs and make the demographic estimates.’

  All this coolness roused my gorge; I could not hold in some expression of horror. ‘Arthur, how could our own people do this? I can understand an enemy. . . awful things are done in wartime . . . but this is barbaric.’

  He gave me what I deserved. ‘Doing it to somebody else’s people is not barbaric? Isn’t it better than the nuclear winter we have held off for a century and which nobody would survive? No plague in history ever killed off the whole of even an enclosed community. If there has to be a cull – and you know damned well that sooner or later there has to be – let’s at least learn to do it with a minimum of suffering for the culled.’

  The arguments of bleakness are hard to counter. The heart rejects them, the mind rejects them but the intellect cringes before the intimations of the inevitable. He had not done with me. Something of the lost man behind the bureaucrat cried plaintively in his voice.

  ‘We are barbarians. With survival the only moral touchstone, we show what we are. We kill in order to live. Our final decency is the ability to see what we are and exercise some rational control over it. The world’s survivors will be the ruthless, not the holy meek.’

  I asked, ‘Is that the best philosophy can devise for the future of us all?’

  ‘Don’t be catty, Nola. Philosophy devises nothing, so we get ready to ride out the storm. It’s too late for bitching. It was always too late.’

  Billy said thickly, ‘Three hundred million years we’ve got.’

  Derrick understood the odd interruption. ‘Ah, a reader! That’s one calculation of how long life may exist on this planet. There are others but they all tell the same tale. We are only the beginning of humanity, the larval stage, the species preparing for its discovery of what intelligence is for. We will survive and develop, each crest a little higher than the one before. Time will take care of us – one way or another.’

  Francis had followed all this in bewitched silence. Now he said with a
n air of having extracted the essential meaning, ‘That’s all in the future. We aren’t going to die now.’

  Derrick growled, ‘You may if you don’t take care.’

  The boy came astonishingly alert, an animal in terror, questing for the enemy. ‘I haven’t done anything!’

  ‘You have become a symbol – that’s worse than doing. The Newport soldiers know what has been done to them. A dozen are sterile and you can guarantee their vengefulness.’

  ‘But I didn’t do it.’

  ‘They know the face of the delivery boy and his name. They can find you. You are marked.’

  Francis spoke in what I can call only a muted scream. ‘But I don’t have to go there again! I don’t, ma’am, do I?’

  He had no strength to fall back on; inside him was a void free of everything but his overriding need. He cared only that Francis should persist, scot free. After all, he was only fifteen. I said hurriedly because I could not bear the total selfishness of his fear, ‘No, not again. It is over.’

  Derrick continued, ignoring us, ‘The army will find you. When it does you will try to implicate others and possibly precipitate the chaos your brother had sense enough to retreat from. You will leave the Ma’am’s service at once.’

  Nikopoulos nodded vigorously – those two saw eye to eye.

  With a side glance at me Francis chattered, ‘There’s others want me. Other Departments. I know a lot of people.’

  Derrick shook him lightly. ‘No names! You are a dangerous young time bomb and I won’t have you exploding at will. It’s time to take your headful of knowledge out of play.’ He cocked a cynical eye at me. ‘Poor Nola. You didn’t realize what you were taking on. You created a market in child prodigies. There are at least two others operating. This one can go home to his mother. He’ll be out of the way there with his family for keepers.’

  Francis shrieked and flung himself on the floor, literally at Derrick’s feet, pleading unintelligibly. Derrick stepped back and the boy followed, clawing for his ankles. The brother, Edward, with a grimace of ancient scorn, kicked him in the ribs, took him by the hair and an armpit and dragged him to his feet. He shook Francis’ head back and forth and snarled at him, ‘Shut up, you shit!’