Super-State

by By Brian Aldiss

  ‘Time’s up, sir. We must cut you off there, and thanks for talking to us. Professor David Potts.’

  ‘Daniel!’

  ‘Well, there you have it. Some very positive responses. Over to you in the studio, Brandyball.’

  ‘Thanks, Lisa. And Lisa’s piece was recorded two days ago, before we heard of the unfortunate death by misadventure of Professor David Potts. We send commiserations from the Wee Small Hours Show to the professor’s family. Later on in the show, we’ll be going over to media mogul Wolfgang Frankel, right in the thick of action in Tebarou itself.’

  * * * *

  ‘I will if you will,

  I will if you will,

  I will if you will, so will—’

  A uniformed figure stepped out from behind a boulder. He stood in the path of the advancing troops and ordered them to stop singing at once. He was a captain, and his name was John Matthew Squire. He demanded to know who was in charge of the platoon.

  Sgt Jacques Bargane stepped forward and saluted.

  ‘We are on enemy territory, Sergeant. It’s imperative we keep silent. No singing. We don’t really want to give ourselves away.’ All this spoken in a quiet voice. ‘We rendezvous here, ready for the assault on Tebihai. How far behind is the rest of the company?’

  ‘Zilch, sir. There’s only me and this platoon.’

  ‘Where are the others, Sergeant?’

  ‘There’s only us, sir! Our LCT got swep’ downstream. It would have collided with any other boats it met. Probably sunk them, sir.’

  ‘Very good, Sergeant. Then we go in alone. Our objective will be to invade and capture the capital. Instruct your men accordingly.’

  ‘How’s that, sir?’

  ‘Tell your men what I say.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Bargane instructed his men accordingly.

  They formed up in single file and went forward, John Matthew Squire leading. No singing now. The air was thick, damp and heavy and hot, difficult to breathe. Sweat streamed down all their faces.

  The cliffs here were sterner and more durable than the previous ones. Great grey strata of granite had been heaved over on to their sides during some chthonic upheaval long ago. Here and there, vegetation had inserted itself in cracks and crannies. Roots of trees hung down like serpents before reinserting themselves in the rock face. Rivulets still poured down the strata. All told, Tebarou presented a grim southern bastion to the world, while to the north of the small state lay the inclement foothills of the Himalayas themselves.

  Squire signalled for the column to halt. He went forward alone, weapon at the ready. The path followed a bend in the river.

  A Tebarese sentry stood guard over a flight of steps. He was well armed but not vigilant. Squire shot him dead. Squire’s gun was equipped with a silencer. It hardly made a whisper. As the man fell first to his knees, then on to his face, another sentry ran out of a small shelter to see what had happened. Squire shot him too. The two bodies sprawled across the path.

  ‘Well done, sir,’ said the sergeant approvingly. ‘Good shot!’

  Squire bit his bottom lip in an attempt to stop himself trembling. It was the first time he had killed anyone. He found it a rather more serious matter than target practice.

  They moved forward, everyone treading carefully around the two bodies. The steps were wide where they came down to the path. Higher, they were more narrow, and uneven, carved between towering rock faces. They looked formidably steep. Some way above their heads, the climb curved and the staircase was lost to sight. This route led straight into the heart of Tebihai. A small stream, product of the recent rainstorm, filtered down through the ancient filth on the steps, carrying fish bones and crumpled cigarette packs along with it.

  ‘Let’s have the bazooka man and the machine-gunner ready at the front,’ John Matthew Squire said. ’Stay alert. Shoot anyone you see, man or woman or child. They’re all enemies. No hesitation. Go steady up this hill. We’ll need our breath at the top.’

  They started to advance as instructed.

  Above them towered the forbidding old fortress of Tebihai. The name could be interpreted as Place of Special Shocks. It had withstood attacks over many centuries. Although it was ancient and its inhabitants corrupt and cowardly, perennially short of food and justice, nevertheless the geographical position had always stood the city in good stead. Tebihai had always repelled boarders — with stones, with boiling oil, with dead dogs, with rifle and mortar fire.

  The beneficiary of this geography, the new President of Tebarou, Morbius el Fashid, had done his best to modernise and clean up the city. A new hospital was being discussed. He had commanded a new mosque to be built. He had commanded old black-clad women to sweep the filthy alleyways where they lived. He had commanded the populace to eat more fish and fruit. He was, by local standards, an enlightened man: he did not take bribes, he visited the mosque daily, his mistresses numbered only five. But he was subject to the whims of his mighty neighbour, China. In that respect, he was the victim of geography.

  He had never managed to cleanse the Great Serpent of Stairs which led down to the Sang Ba river. The thoroughfare was used only by fishermen and such miserable trades; so a little filth did not matter. As the small EU Rapid Reaction Force climbed the unending and exhausting steps, they passed the corrupt carcasses of cats and slipped on the remains of putrefying fish.

  At one point, they reached a level platform. To one side stood a shabby old wooden building which, to judge by its tables and benches, served as a tavern of some kind. A banner hung from its balcony, on which was depicted the present ruler, looking handsome with his beaked nose and beard, wearing his white turban. Below his portrait was the slogan, ‘For el Fashid and the Future’.

  Not a soul could be seen. The tavern appeared deserted. The platoon gasped for its collective breath, bending over, men letting their heads and arms dangle. Only Squire and the sergeant stayed alert for danger, together with LeRoy, hefting the bazooka.

  ‘Movement there, sir!’ That was Jacques Bargane, pointing at the balcony of the tavern.

  ‘Bazooka! Fire at that balcony!’

  ‘Yes, sir! A pleasure, sir!’ LeRoy went into action. The weapon was already on his shoulder. He aimed. Even as he fired, marksmen rose from hiding on the ground and upper floors of the building. Their shots rang out. The balcony, the woodwork, the entire upper storey of the tavern erupted in explosive flame as the bazooka shell struck.

  And several Rapid Reaction Force soldiers fell to the stones, killed or wounded by the rifle fire.

  With a shout, Squire urged their unscathed comrades onward. ‘No retreat! We attack! We win!’

  There were, as it proved, only two dozen more steps to go, and no longer was the way so steep. Before the steps broadened to give entry into a square, Squire ran to one side. A spartan concrete building stood ahead of him. With the men following, he rushed to it, signalling them to shoot their way in. A door splintered. Jacques booted it down and in they poured, firing as they went. A woman just inside the passageway had her face blown off. Jacques ran up a wooden flight of stairs. The others, including his brother, followed. Squire covered their rear.

  Upstairs, there was a brief gun battle. Then the force was in control. The dead bodies were hurled down into the street.

  ‘Signaller!’ called Squire. The signaller came smartly up. ‘Get on the mofo and tell HQ we need the air cover, as promised, immediately.’ He turned to stare up at the patchy clouds. ’Where the fuck are those SS20s?’ he asked himself.

  Henry came up to the captain. ‘Hey, cap, my buddy LeRoy was left behind. He may just be wounded or something. I am going back to get him if you’ll kindly cover me.’

  ‘No. You’ll only get yourself killed. Sorry. Remain here.’

  ‘You want that mothering bazooka, then I better go back.’

  ‘Stay where you are.’

  ‘What kind of an officer you are?’

  ‘The kind who orders you to stay put,
okay?’

  ‘LeRoy is my buddy, you rotten mother!’

  ‘Sorry. We’re all buddies here, Henry.’

  One of the other men gave a shout. He pointed across the square. Two tanks had entered from the eastern corner and were rolling towards them at a fair speed.

  Squire looked up at the sky in agony. ‘Where are those fucking fighter-bombers?’

  ‘Better get to the rear of the building, sir,’ the sergeant suggested. ‘Those buggers are the latest Chinese tanks. We did them in tank recognition last week.’

  ‘Let’s have some grenades under their tracks.’

  ‘Right.’ Jacques pulled a grenade from his belt, clutched the handle, pulled out the pin. He hurled it at the lead tank. It was a good throw. The grenade caught under one of the tank’s wheels and exploded immediately. The tank swerved away to the left.

  The cannon on the other tank immediately opened fire. The first shell whistled over the roof The second, following swiftly after, hit the building fair and square. The whole place crumbled like an old cake. Masonry and men alike went tumbling down.

  For a short while the air was full of blood and dust.

  * * * *

  ‘Wolfgang Frankel speaking from the front in Tebarou,’ said Wolfgang from the improvised studio in the Royal Laotian Hotel in Ou Neua. He had donned camouflage uniform for the occasion. ’The war is on! First blood has gone to our side in this unequal combat where the scales are so loaded against us. Units of the Rapid Reaction Force have successfully stormed the main square of the capital, Tebihai, and now occupy Fisherman’s Steps, which are the neck to the body of Tebarou.

  ‘Support was given by squadrons of fighter-bombers, which inflicted serious damage on the city. One EU life was lost. Many Tebarese were killed and several enemy tanks destroyed.

  ‘More reports later.’

  * * * *

 
  Early years are spent in a struggle with the relationship with the child’s parents or parent, or with the absence of parenting. The child is scarcely aware of the external world. This birth of the ontological being is nevertheless involved with a kind of recapitulation of phylogeny, for which the physical evidence will include the cutting of milk teeth, their loss, the growth of a second rank of teeth more suited to carnivorous habits, and later the development of gonads, pubic hair; etc.

  These complex workings taking place below awareness level have their influence on the individual’s cast of thought, on Schopenhauer’s melancholia, or on Gandhi’s determined optimism. On all but the most individual personalities, however, these powerful foreshadowings will have their effect in a perverted view of reality; while collectively they affect the whole concept and construction of society and what we call civilisation.

  We invent the term civilisation in order to differentiate ourselves from those without our borders, the so-called uncivilised. Those are the people with whom we can wage war because they threaten us: or, in our madness, are assumed to threaten us.>

  * * * *

  Rebecca Stromeyer left her publishing house early and caught a slo-mo to the cathedral square. There Köln cathedral stood, its sloping roofs touched with white in the first frosts of late autumn.

  Rebecca was well protected against the sudden cold. Wrapped in a black fake fur, and with her long black skirt tight against her black-booted legs, she, with her raven-black hair and dark eyes, made a perfect picture of beauty in the Victorian style now again fashionable after a matter of two centuries. She was possibly aware that she would prove irresistible to the man who awaited her in the cathedral.

  Approaching the ancient structure, which had survived the bombing of the city a century previously, she encountered two American tourists who had just emerged from the environs of the railway station, close to the cathedral. They were males, both very tall and square, flamboyantly dressed. Probably it was the beauty of Rebecca which moved them to speak to her.

  ‘You’re a lovely lady. Are you American, by any chance?’

  ‘No. I am a European. A Jewish European.’

  ‘Is that the case? You’re not available for dinner this evening, are you?’

  ‘Unfortunately not. Excuse me?’

  ‘Say, can you tell a couple of bewildered Yanks something? You have a beautiful cathedral, but how come you built it so near the rail station?’

  ‘The cathedral was here first, just by a whisker.’

  The two men stood and watched regretfully as Rebecca crossed beneath the tall facade and entered the portals of the great building. She imagined them saying, ‘She’s Jewish and she’s entering a Christian cathedral — how come?’

  Inside the noble space there was much coming and going. Tourists mixed with local people; some had backpacks, some had children; some had both, and arms full of teddy bears to boot. Some wandered about rather dazedly, gaping at the saints in their solemn stone niches or the rafters high above their heads. Some bought postcards or candles, some prayed.

  It was the kind of scene, Rebecca reflected, which had prevailed for many centuries, long before railways were built.

  Distantly, at the altar, a service was being conducted. She moved slowly towards it, scanning the pews as she went, hoping to light on the man she had come to meet.

  He was now advancing towards her. She was startled to recognise him, hidden as he was behind dark glasses so as to avoid recognition. He came up to her and clutched her hand.

  ‘Becky!’

  ‘Olduvai!’

  ‘Thank you so much for coming.’

  ‘I was afraid you would not be here.’

  ‘There’s a good sermon being preached. Come and hear a little of it. The preacher is a friend of your father’s, I believe — the so-called Black Archbishop, Jones-Simms. I’ve become quite keen on sermons recently.’

  He did not add that with the suicide of his sister he had left Roberta Bargane and gone away to live in purgative solitude on the Baltic coast. While he was there news came of the suicide of his father.

  Both Olduvai and Rebecca were troubled in their spiritual life. The typescript of Olduvai’s short book,Who Do We Call Father?, had come into Rebecca’s editorial hands. It had struck a chord in her heart; their ensuing correspondence had resulted in their meeting.

  As they walked down one of the side aisles, he ventured to take her hand, feeling its slenderness, its tenderness.

  They seated themselves in an empty pew, very aware of their nearness to each other, he so broad, she so slim.

  The Archbishop was not in the pulpit but standing by the altar, down from the steps, speaking simply to a small congregation He was talking about the war and the inequalities in the world. ‘Twenty per cent of the population are consuming eighty-five per cent of the globe’s natural resources. It represents a greed bordering on madness — our greed. Our lifetimes are highly energy-consuming and wasteful. And nothing consumes more and wastes more than warfare. Future generations will certainly condemn our attack on the small nation of Tebarou — if not on moral grounds, then on conservationist grounds. We are plundering our planet to the point of no return. Already we see the elements taking their revenge.’

  Olduvai said quietly to Rebecca, ’Oh, sorry, as civilised beings we know all this, don’t we?’

  ‘We need to hear it over and over. And when even the church speaks of it . . .’

  ‘Everyone speaks of it, yet does nothing.’

  ‘My father does something. And now his funding is in question.’

  ‘Believe me, I honour him for his work. You have spoken of your father in your letters. Now I wish I had loved — been able to love—my father as you do yours. I believe you are in love with him?’

  ‘That’s not the case. I love him
— love him intensely. I’m not in love with him. That’s different. I think I am in love with you.’

  Olduvai seized Rebecca in his arms and kissed her lips.

  A man in the pew behind them leant over and tapped Olduvai on his shoulder. ‘We don’t want that kind of thing in here, please. This is God’s house.’

  ‘God would envy me,’ said Olduvai.