Scales

by Anthony G Williams

  I looked at Richards, who had a slight, ironic smile on his face. 'All right, what's this all about?'

  He shrugged. 'Pretty much what he said. Of course, they're not being entirely altruistic. They're hoping that having you on board would add greatly to the prestige and influence of the UN in general, and the Secretary-General in particular.'

  'So what would they expect me to do?'

  'You'd have to discuss that with them. However, I suspect that they'd like you to endorse some of their favoured policies, get public opinion on the side of the UN – especially in countries where the governments aren't being very co-operative – maybe bring pressure on some of the less desirable regimes to mend their ways.'

  I sighed heavily and tried to think about the implications. My travelling days suddenly seemed intensely appealing in their simplicity. 'I'll have to think about it over the next few days. For now, I'll carry on as I am.'

  So I carried on running. But it was not the same. Always at the back of my mind – and frequently at the front – was Mr Yamamoto's request. As I neared the Spanish border I realised that I couldn't put it off any longer. In Biarritz early one morning, I swam ashore, walked up the beach and into the lobby of a seafront hotel and requested permission to use their phone. The receptionist nodded shakily, too stunned to speak. I dialled the number and an operator instantly put me in contact with Richards. 'All right, I'm prepared to discuss Mr Yamamoto's offer in more detail. Can you put me in touch?'

  'I'll do that. I expect they'll want you to travel to New York to meet him.'

  I grunted in annoyance. I suddenly realised that although I had flown many times in the past, I no longer wanted to seal myself up with hundreds of others in a metal container being hurtled through the atmosphere. 'In that case, they'd better lay on a ship. I'll only go by sea.'

  To my astonishment, a Spanish warship was waiting in Santander to collect me. I was politely welcomed aboard the Santa Maria class frigate, which promptly set sail for New York. I gathered from the Captain that a visit to the USA for a joint training exercise had been planned anyway, so I wasn't being given quite such favoured treatment as I had first thought.

  A cabin was provided for my use and there were exercise machines to keep myself in shape, but there was of course no swimming pool. The Captain was under orders to get to his destination as quickly as possible, so I had some difficulty in persuading him to stop for an hour to let me swim.

  When I plunged into the Atlantic it felt both familiar and strange. Familiar in the sensual freedom of planing down through the water, the salt taste in my mouth. Strange in the vast scale that I sensed; the great depths beneath me, with glimmers of life like lights flickering in the dark. A huge sperm whale thrust its body forwards a thousand metres below, a rising chirrup of sound as its sonar pinned the giant squid it fed on. Around it all there was a sense of slow movement and I realised that I was detecting the north-east flow of the Gulf Stream and, just at the edge of detection far below, the cold return flow from the Arctic to the Caribbean. My mind slowed to match the long rhythms of the ocean and I hung there, just absorbing.

  When I reluctantly returned to the ship the efficient bustle of naval life seemed frantic and mechanical, irritating me and jarring my thoughts. I went to my cabin and spooled up my mind again, feeling a mixture of curiosity and concern about the effect the deep ocean had on me. It was like a drug that slowed my thoughts but expanded my perceptions, as if to match its own vast scale and huge, slow, rhythms.

  I lay on my bunk, aware of all of the life around me. With a little concentration, I found I could locate and identify every member of the ship's crew. They hung in my mind like little lights, some stationary, some moving, some asleep and dreaming, coloured by their various moods and emotions. I felt that I held them all cupped in my mental hands. The memory of the contorted bodies behind the sea wall jumped into focus and I hastily dismissed the thought and returned my mind to the everyday.

  I had become conscious of the power which hummed through the ship, and with some effort was able to focus on it. The electrical circuits were raw energy, running like arteries and veins throughout the ship, powerful far beyond my ability to influence. I felt a severe headache building and quickly turned my mind away. With careful retuning, I found I could block out the power supplies and select only electronic circuitry. This was much weaker and more delicate, and I discovered I could trace its patterns, even influence its flow, although this took considerable effort and left me tired and with a dull throbbing in my head.

  The rest of the journey was uneventful, the weather pleasant and the sea relatively calm, with only a long swell, the memory of a distant storm, to disturb the ship. I felt withdrawn from human contact, speaking to the crew only when necessary. At night my dreams were dominated by visions of the dark ocean depths, a vastness from which I slowly surfaced each morning.

  New York was torture, of course. Long before the ship arrived I became aware of the thunderous mental roar gradually building up over the horizon. I had not felt comfortable in cities since my accident, and my recently enhanced sensitivity made the assault on my senses that much harder to bear. On top of that, the city's mental signature seemed harsher, more frenetic than London's. I spent the last hour of the journey building defences, shutting down as much of my mind as I could, so that I sensed only people close to me. By the time the ship docked I felt like an invalid, half deaf, half blind, and noticed nothing of the journey to the United Nations headquarters.

  I was given some clothing; trainers, jogging pants and a soft, zip-up jacket, before being ushered into the presence.

  The Secretary-General was courtesy itself, only his mental signature reflecting his intense curiosity. After some diplomatic pleasantries and generalities we agreed that I would explore with his staff possible ways in which I might be able to contribute to the work of the UN. He had nominated a liaison officer to work closely with me, and brought her in to introduce her before leaving. Her name was Freya Torsdottir, an Icelander. She was tall and lean, with a crop of short white-gold hair and the kind of uneven tan which is acquired the hard way, by spending much time out of doors. The laughter-wrinkles around her eyes crinkled up as we met. I judged her age to be around forty, though I find it very difficult to tell women's ages these days.

  'A follower of the old religion?' I teased.

  She smiled slightly. 'Not really, but my parents like the traditional names.'

  'Can we go somewhere else to talk?'

  'Where would you like?'

  'Iceland?'

  She laughed. 'That would be nice, but a sea trip might take a little time to arrange.'

  'Then I'd like to take a boat to somewhere quiet, away from the city.'

  'That we can do, today. If you'll excuse me, I will go and arrange the details.'

  "Somewhere quiet" turned out to be a secluded beach-front house on Long Island near Sands Point, facing west across Long Island Sound. There was a jetty for the fast motor cruiser which had brought us from Manhattan. It was early autumn but still hot, and sailboats skimmed past in the distance as we relaxed on the wooden veranda of the deceptively plain brick-built house which Freya told me was regularly used by the UN. Inside, it was considerably larger and more luxurious than it had first seemed.

  Fruit, nuts and bottled water had all been in place by the time we arrived, and as I satisfied my hunger I found the mental tension caused by the raucous city easing, like a knot slowly unravelling. Only a handful of people were in close range, and I could allow my sensitivity to expand until it covered a wide area in detail. The security guard I detected by the front gate and the housekeeper inside the building had kept discreetly out of the way. The nearest neighbour was at least a hundred metres away, and New York was a distant murmur over the south-western horizon.

  Freya finished demolishing her cold platter with enthusiastic thoroughness and raised a glass of mixed fruit juices. 'Better?'

  'Much! You can book me in here whenever I
have to visit the UN. I don't want to go near New York again.'

  She grinned. 'I sympathise. I'd like to work out here too.'

  'So what comes next? What miracles am I supposed to perform?'

  'As you can imagine, we've given some thought to that, but didn't want to come to any firm conclusions before seeing you.' She settled back in the chair, bringing her hands together under her chin in what I was soon to realise was a characteristic posture whenever she was thinking carefully. 'Basically, there are several different fields in which we are active, as is well known. Conflict resolution is one, humanitarian aid another, human rights a third. Of course, these are often interlinked; a conflict in Africa, for example, may lead to human rights abuses and result in famine and a huge refugee problem. We try to avoid or end such problems using diplomacy, sometimes send in troops to stabilise situations, and organise aid where it's needed.'

  'And how effective do you think all that is?'

  She grimaced, wrinkling her nose. 'Not as good as it should be. We are often hindered by countries which have their own agendas and reasons for wanting us to move slowly or not at all. And we are perpetually short of money and other resources, because many countries are reluctant to provide what they are supposed to.' She sighed. 'And, if I am honest, we are like any other big, long-established bureaucracy. We are often slow to move, and much of our energy is absorbed by internal politics and careerism.'

  'So should I sort out the UN first?'

  She gave a startled laugh. ''I'm not sure that's what the Secretary-General has in mind. It might be interesting, though I fear you would be a – how do you put it? – a fox in a hen coop.'

  I grinned. 'I can imagine much clucking, flapping and flying of feathers, yes.'

  She turned and looked at me thoughtfully. 'You are not what I expected.'

  'Do tell.'

  She hesitated. 'I saw all of those TV reports showing you always running, expressionless, and I thought how alien you were, what a strange being you must be.'

  'Oh I am, I am all of that.' I looked out to sea and saw a large sailboat with, I sensed, a family on board. I felt the sparks of their individual lives, their carefree joy together, and perversely a grim, harsh mood suddenly swept over me. 'What would you say if I told you that I could kill everyone on that sailboat, this instant, without moving a muscle? And that I have done such a thing before?'

  She was shocked into silence and sat staring at me. After a while she spoke, slowly. 'I would say that you must have had very good cause. That you would not harm anyone as innocent as those.' She gestured out to sea.

  I relaxed a little, not aware until then how tense I had become. 'You are right of course, I could not hurt them. You are also right that I had good cause.' The desperate fury I had felt in that remote Essex lane came back to me then, and Freya gasped. I glanced down and saw that my skin was flaring crimson, as if I pulsed with rage. I consciously calmed myself down and the colour faded back to my normal dark purplish-green. I felt suddenly tired. 'I'm sorry, I don't know why I'm inflicting this on you.'

  She looked levelly at me. 'When was the last time you sat and talked to someone, just for the sake of it?'

  I fought my mind away from that Essex chalet. 'Not since I left England.'

  'Everyone needs to talk. It's what stops us all from going mad. It's also what keeps the UN in existence.'

  I laughed rather shakily. 'I suppose you're right. It's just that sometimes I'm scared by what I can do, what it might all be for. Well, if nothing else, you can be my counsellor!'

  She laughed. 'Tell me, have you ever been to Iceland?'

  A timely change of topic and mood, I noted; she was good at her job. 'Once, several years ago. There was a conference on geothermal power. But I had time to get out and see the usual touristy bits, at least those within easy reach of Reykjavik.'

  'That's where I'm from. What did you think of it?'

  'Very neat and clean. The freshest air I've ever known in a city. Although I couldn't get over all those four-by-fours trundling through the streets, with jacked-up suspensions and vast balloon tyres. They make Land Rovers look like shopping trolleys.'

  'Our national form of transport. They may look silly in town, but they're essential to travel around the countryside in winter. They can even travel over deep snow, as long as it's not too soft; nearly all the air is let out of those tyres so they spread out over the ground to reduce the pressure.'

  I sighed. 'Just what I feel like doing, sometimes.' Our conversation turned back to the UN and its business and we talked until the sun set over the Sound, sending glittering reflections through the house.

  Very early the next morning I ran to the sea and plunged in, swimming out as strongly as I could. My urge to exercise, to tire out my muscles had returned. At first, the water was shallow and disturbed, but after a while the floor fell away into deeper water. I slowed my stroke and angled down into the pre-dawn darkness, seeking out the slowing of consciousness which brought the calm of the deep. But the water depth was only thirty metres or so, and the ocean was too far away for me to sense, no more than a hint of it penetrating into the Sound. Disappointed, I turned for the shore and burned off my frustration at racing speed.

  When I walked off the beach onto the lawn in front of the house, the sun was already warming my face and Freya was sitting on the terrace, polishing off her breakfast with evident relish.

  'You had me worried there,' she said rather unconvincingly, 'I thought a torpedo had been aimed at us.'

  'It was the sight of you eating – it reeled me in.'

  'Well, I'm glad you don't eat the same food as I do. Otherwise I might have felt guilty about not leaving you any.'

  'I doubt that.'

  She grinned. 'All right, I lied.'

  'Where do you put it all?'

  'I've earned it – I had a swim, too. But you went far out of sight. If you want to get back to England, there are easier ways.'

  'I'm not that ambitious – the Azores will do.'

  Freya wiped her mouth with her napkin and settled back in her chair while I ploughed through my usual fare. She looked at me thoughtfully over the rim of her coffee cup. 'Have you come to any conclusions now you've had a chance to sleep on it?'

  'A few. First of all, I don't want to be a cog in a machine, a part of other people's operations; it would be too constraining, and I suspect very frustrating. I want to focus on clearly defined operations which I can deal with myself. And I'm not interested in joining the UN staff. I'll listen to requests but make my own decision about what to do. And all of my contacts with the UN will all be via you.'

  'Fair enough.' She smiled sunnily. No doubt that would elevate her status in the UN's turf battles. 'You are regarded as such a hero, no-one's going to argue with you.'

  I snorted. 'A much misused term. In my book, heroes are people who voluntarily put themselves at risk in order to help others. That leaves me out. Now, let’s talk about the possibilities.'

  A day of discussions followed. I learned a lot more about the troubles of the world than I had previously gathered from casual news browsing of the current international crises. It seemed such a catalogue of disaster, grief, incompetence, short-sighted selfishness, prejudice, corruption and downright malice that it was difficult to work out where to begin. Even where governments were doing their best, the problems they faced often seemed insurmountable. In the poorest parts of the world, the joint pressures of population growth and declining natural resources presented impossible dilemmas which cash aid could not solve – even if it didn't get siphoned off en route. At best, foreign aid staved off immediate famine and meant more people survived, but simultaneously developed a dependency on it, sometimes leading to farming being abandoned as unnecessary. Even those aid projects which recognised the difficulties and focused on improving agriculture sometimes brought problems of their own, such as irrigation systems using up the groundwater in an unsustainable way. And projects to remedy this by building reservoirs to t
rap more rainwater provided more breeding opportunities for malarial mosquitoes. And all of that was without taking the various forms of endemic warfare into account. It seemed to be a set of vicious circles, and I wondered what Luke thought of it all, how he maintained his motivation to do his charity work in the face of its apparent hopelessness.

  Halfway through the day I discovered that Freya was a tennis player, so we took a carefree break from the problems of the world, dashing about the outdoor court for an hour or so. My speed was much greater than Freya's but she was far more skilled than I and kept me running frantically around the court, so the match was fairly even.

  In the evening I felt stimulated but tired; I was still so used to the solitude of my running that constant contact with people was wearing, and I hadn’t yet recovered from New York. Freya left me alone in the lounge for a while and I deliberately relaxed as much as I could, allowing my mind to drift.

  After a few minutes I became conscious of an odd new sensation. It was as if someone was nudging my mind. I tried to analyse the sensation but failed. I scanned around, looking for the source for whatever had disturbed me, but could find none. It seemed to be coming from within my own mind.

  Without being very conscious of what I was doing I picked up the remote and switched on the television. The programme which came up didn’t satisfy me, so I flipped channels, and again, and again, blindly searching for something I didn’t understand. Suddenly I ran out of channels, was receiving nothing but the usual grey flickerings of static. Still I kept pressing the button, working down through the blank channel numbers in what seemed to be a pointless obsession. And then I stopped.

  A face was looking back at me from the screen.

  At first I thought it was some kind of joke, that someone had put my face up on a spare channel. Almost immediately, I realise that this wasn’t true. The face in the screen wasn’t my face.