Web of Everywhere

by John Brunner

The second policeman to arrive identified himself as Chief Inspector Vanzetti; he was a portly man with tired eyes, his summerweight uniform patched with sweat although it was locally winter.

  ‘Tell me exactly what happened,’ he invited.

  Hans licked his lips. ‘I – uh – I guess I found her about two or three minutes before I was able to call up. I had to go in the bathroom and vomit. The shock, you understand. And … Well, I wasn’t feeling too good in any case. You may have heard Chaim Aleuker held a treasure-hunt party?’

  Vanzetti’s eyes widened. ‘You were at it? Hmm! How come you got away with a whole skin?’

  ‘Did it turn out to be bad?’

  ‘Twelve deaths that we’ve heard about, most of his house destroyed … How did you get away?’

  Hans felt his cheeks start to burn. He wasn’t sorry. A little visible embarrassment would support his story well.

  ‘I hate to admit it, but … Well, you see, I’d been there three hours, maybe four, and I’d drunk a lot, and – and when the shooting started I just plain ran like hell. I’m not sure, but I think I was probably the first person to think of making for the skelter.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Vanzetti muttered. He consulted the watch on his wrist: no ordinary watch, as Hans’s expert eyes informed him, but a classic Seiko Worldtime, the like of which had not been built since the Blowup. ‘That means you must have left New Zealand at least an hour and a half ago, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t come straight here.’

  ‘Why not? And where did you go?’

  ‘I didn’t come here because Dany and I had had a row. I’m a photographer in my spare time. She was going to this treasure-hunt party – she didn’t tell me who the host was, and I’d assumed it was one of her abominable friends and preferred to stay at home and develop some film I was specially proud of. She barged into my darkroom and ruined the film, and I decided … ’ He hesitated. ‘I decided I’d take the clue-card and go to the party myself, to even things up. Now I’m terribly ashamed of myself. But I swear I never dreamed she might do this!’

  He gestured at the corpse, around which the doctor and the photographer were prowling like carrion-crows, poised to dart in and dash back again.

  ‘You had no idea at all?’ Vanzetti probed.

  ‘She had threatened to kill herself,’ Hans muttered. ‘But never tried it. I consulted Karl Bonetti about her, and he said – Oh, that’s where I went. That’s why I didn’t come straight home. My wife’s mental condition had been on my mind during the party, and like I say I was rather drunk when I left, and – well, for no real conscious reason it struck me as a good idea to go to Gozo. I know the code for the public outlet there nearly as well as I know my own; Dr Bonetti is an old friend of mine.’

  ‘Did you actually see him?’

  ‘No, I wandered around brooding for a while and eventually decided it was worth making one more try to patch up the row. So I came home and – and I found her.’

  ‘Chief,’ the sergeant said, ‘it’s suicide. Not a shred of doubt. She used this.’ He held up a bright oblong partly smeared with dry blood. ‘An old-fashioned double-edged razor-blade. She cut her thumb and finger with it while she was slashing her wrists.’

  Vanzetti nodded. ‘Doc, do you agree?’

  The doctor grunted what might have been an affirmative, and went on studying the corpse with instruments from his kit.

  ‘How long since she died, would you say?’ Vanzetti probed.

  ‘Oh … Not less than three hours, not more than five. I’m just checking to see what she took beforehand: a stimulant pill or two, I imagine, and possibly some liquor too … Ah, here we are.’ He straightened, holding up a little glass tube with a trace of blood on the lower end, containing a thread of some whitish chemical mixture that had turned color at two levels, blue and green respectively.

  ‘Yes, she was both drunk and doped. A mix that could have done awful things to her head.’

  ‘You said,’ Vanzetti went on, turning to Hans again, ‘you’d consulted Dr Bonetti about your wife?’

  ‘Ah … Yes, more than once. He said her suicide threats were so much noise, an attempt to make me pay more attention to her.’ Hans hesitated. ‘It’s – uh – it’s not much of a secret among our friends that there’d been friction between us this past year. I’d better make a clean breast of that. You’re bound to be told sooner or later.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t believe our inquiries need be very extensive, given what you just heard. Naturally there must be an inquest, but there’s no call to worry overmuch about that. It’ll be largely a formal matter.’ Vanzetti shook his head dolefully. ‘A terrible thing, this. Terrible! Now, about Aleuker’s party: who can confirm you were there at the relevant time?’

  ‘Well, Aleuker himself –’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. He’s dead.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He was shot. The first of the dead to be identified. The news had just come in by satellite when I left headquarters. A terrible loss for us all!’

  Hans folded his hands into fists and stood shaking for a moment, until Vanzetti prompted him: ‘Anybody else?’

  ‘Uh … ’ Hans forced his hands open again and rubbed his forehead giddily. ‘Well, Dr Satamori, and Dr Pech, and I also had a few words with Dr Ingrid Castelnuovo, and – ’

  ‘That’ll do very well. I shall have to ask for a word of confirmation, just for the record, but nothing more.’

  ‘All done,’ the doctor said, putting away his gear. ‘We can finish the job at the morgue.’

  ‘Good, thank you.’ Vanzetti hesitated. ‘Mr Dykstra, would you rather come with us now and make a statement, or wait until you’ve recovered a bit from the shock?’

  ‘Oh, I’d rather get it out of the way,’ Hans sighed. ‘I wouldn’t want to try and catch some sleep, the state I’m in. I’d have nightmares, I’m sure of it.’

  It went smoothly, click-click as designed. Make the statement; agree to attend the inquest tomorrow morning; call in to his headquarters office, saying he wouldn’t be available for work; hear that Boris Pech had been among the lucky ones who survived the bloodbath at Aleuker’s, and was in hospital but conscious and willing to confirm that Hans had been present …

  No least hint from anybody of anything but genuine sympathy for a man who had tragically lost that ultra-precious commodity, a legally-married wife.

  ‘And will you go back home now?’ Vanzetti asked solicitously. ‘Or would you rather spend some time elsewhere, with friends perhaps?’

  Hans shook his head. ‘I’d rather be alone. I guess maybe I shall go call on one or two people who knew Dany particularly well, break the news to them personally … If you can’t reach me at home, that’s what I’ll be doing, but I shan’t stay away for more than a few hours at a time.’

  ‘Oh, it’s most unlikely we shall want to contact you,’ Vanzetti said with a casual wave. ‘Just so long as you’re on time at the inquest … Goodbye for the moment, then.’

  Hans forced a mechanical smile and headed for the skelter. At its threshold he stopped dead.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ Vanzetti called.

  ‘I – I … Yes, I just realized something is horribly wrong. It’s getting through to me. I felt all numb at first – I guess maybe I threw up my emotions, in a weird kind of way … But I shall have to move house. I mean, if next month, or next year, I suddenly think: I punched this code and there was – was Dany … ’ He swallowed loudly. ‘Do you know anything about what turns people into stucks? Because I just got this flash about becoming one myself, if I don’t move away from Valletta.’

  ‘Hmm! Yes, I can well believe it,’ Vanzetti said. ‘You ought to talk to your friend Dr Bonetti about that, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, you’re quite right, and I shall.’

  But not right now. Not today. Today was for being at Anneliese’s side when she awoke, symbol of the stability and reassurance she craved and had not received from Chaim Aleuker.r />
  Also it would be for figuring out where to make his new home, out of all the thousands of places the skelter could take him to.

  With his new wife.

  INTERFACE M

  It was no cynical creator who forbade us

  to water the deserts and feed the hungry mouths.

  You stood with a loaf and a bomb in either hand

  and kept the loaf and gave the bomb away.

  You chose to have more and even drier deserts

  and many mouths will not again taste hunger.

  – MUSTAPHA SHARIF

  Chapter 13

  Drowsing at last after thinking long and hard about what he had said concerning Aleuker’s plan, Mustapha woke to the frantic shout of Ali at his bedroom door.

  ‘Effendi! It is Dr Satamori who came back! His head is cut and he is bleeding!’

  On the instant Mustapha was wide awake, wondering whether it was time for him to admit that he believed in premonitions. He shouted orders for Satamori to receive medical attention, and minutes later joined him in the Room of Flowers where he lay stretched on a hand-carved couch, eyes closed, face a mask of pain, clothes ragged and smeared with dirt and blood.

  ‘Fred!’ Mustapha cried. ‘What happened to you?’

  Wincing now and then as a boy armed with a box bearing the sign of the Red Crescent attended to his injuries, Satamori forced out a brief account of the disaster which had overtaken Aleuker’s party. Mustapha hissed in dismay.

  ‘You think Chaim himself is among the dead?’

  ‘I don’t think – I know. I saw him killed by a ricocheting slug. It tore him open and spilled his guts on the floor. Like ripping a paper sack of butcher’s meat!’

  ‘We have lost, then, a very precious man,’ Mustapha said heavily.

  ‘Oh, don’t strike poses!’ Satamori snapped. ‘I know you detested him as much as me! I know you were sure he was forever doing the absolutely wrong thing!’

  ‘No, that’s untrue,’ Mustapha said, feeling for and settling himself on a stool which he could draw close to the couch. ‘A man who had once seen the correct thing to do, and done it, must be regarded differently from those who never thought of anything new. At any moment he might have done something just as useful as inventing the privateer. Now that chance has vanished forever.’

  ‘I’m too sick and tired to bother with your doubletalk,’ Satamori sighed. ‘But – but thank you anyway, for taking me in.’

  ‘My friend, I am flattered that you came to me!’ Mustapha exclaimed. ‘Did you not have the chance to tell others they would be welcome here?’

  ‘Ah … no. No chance at all. There was panic. It started as soon as the Maoris attacked. In fact – oh, it’s ironical, in a way – the first person to arrive was the first to turn and run. I mean, apart from those who were invited to show up ahead of time, like Boris Pech and myself.’

  ‘Hmm! You mean you lost all benefit from this treasure-hunt party? You don’t know who it was who first unriddled your clues and found his way to Chaim’s house?’

  ‘Oh, no! It was a recuperator called Hans Dykstra, who lives in Valletta, I believe. I was lying flat on the floor along with everybody else because one of the first shots smashed a wall-high window and there was glass flying all over the room, but I turned my head away and that’s how I happened to see him rush for the skelter. And not by himself, either. Did you hear about this girl Chaim rescued a while ago from the wilds of Brazil? Dykstra was talking to her all by himself for most of the evening, and they were sitting right near the skelter, and he literally dragged her away with him. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so tragic.’

  There followed a long silence during which the boy with the first-aid kit completed his task and left the room.

  Eventually Mustapha said, ‘Rest now, Frederick. Stay and sleep where you are. Ali will make sure that someone watches by you until you waken. After a rest you will certainly feel better.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Satamori mumbled, and rolled on his side and passed out almost on the instant.

  It was not until he was safely clear of the Room of Flowers that Mustapha dared give way to the sense of terror which had exploded in his belly on hearing Satamori’s news.

  Hans Dykstra! First to arrive at Aleuker’s party! Singled out as though he were the chance member of a crowd on whom a brilliant spotlight fell, the computer-chosen winner of a lottery!

  Of all the billion people left on earth, no one more dangerous could have been successful in the treasure-hunt.

  Worse yet, he had escaped – started the panic, if Satamori could be believed, and dragged along with him this girl nicknamed Barbara, and …

  And something must be done at once, for security’s sake.

  Would he have gone home? Logically, yes … but to a chilly welcome. Mustapha had met and evaluated Dany. Chatting with her once, for about ten minutes, had given him a complete picture of her personality. If her husband came back from a party held by somebody as famous as Chaim Aleuker, which she would doubtless have wanted to attend herself, and brought with him a girl in her teens, allegedly very pretty, then there would be hell and all its devils let loose.

  So if he had any shred of his wits about him, Hans would not have gone back to Malta. Where else, then …?

  Ah. Yes, quite conceivably. That code, after all, would have been at the forefront of his mind, ready to hand when the attack began. And on that skelter there was no privateer, and …

  It would take only a few minutes to confirm his guess. Mustapha hastened up the staircase of his tallest minaret, entered the secret room containing his third skelter, put on his climatized clothing, and punched the code for the Eriksson house at Umeå.

  Hans had been so sure – so absolutely certain – that there would be no one in the Swedish house apart from Anneliese, that for the first several seconds after his return he thought only of trivia. The sun had gone down after the brief northern winter day, but it was warm, therefore the heating system must be working okay because the fire had died to embers. Beside it in the gloom a cloaked figure sat, logically Anneliese wrapped in a blanket, and he hoped she had not woken so long before he arrived that she was frightened and –

  And the last chunk of a log slipped on the hearth and uttered a spirt of bright yellow flame. The light revealed that the person waiting for him was not Anneliese.

  He exploded with mingled rage and terror.

  ‘Mustapha! What the hell are you doing here? You’ve broken our compact!’

  ‘It is not my custom to resort to the tu quoque,’ Mustapha murmured. ‘If it were, I might well say that you not only broke it, but smashed it into fragments and trampled those fragments into dust. Must I remind you that I laid it down as a condition of supplying you with illegal codes that you should never under any circumstances bring another person to one of these abandoned homes?’

  ‘What other person am I supposed to have brought?’ Hans cried, knowing even as he voiced the words that they were futile.

  Mustapha clucked with his tongue: tsk-tsk. ‘Though I’m blind I am not unaware of what goes on around me,’ he retorted. ‘You of all people should have realized that by now. I scented the girl the moment I left the skelter, over and through the smoke of the fire which doubtless you built for her. And, by the way, keep your voice down. She slept contentedly throughout my inspection of her, but she is near to waking and a loud noise may rouse her.’

  ‘Your – inspection?’ Hans forced out, advancing on Mustapha with fists clenched. ‘You’ve been feeling her?’

  ‘Oh, I was right! I sense jealousy!’ Mustapha said. ‘I was unaware that she had become your property …? I have no eyesight, man, but my fingertips – you saw – are delicate enough to stroke the full length of a spider-web and leave it unbroken. You think to touch a girl is to maul her, ravish her; I think of it as having to be lighter than a glance. She did not even turn over, let alone wake up … How old is she, this girl whom Chaim retrieved from the Brazilian sert
ão? Seventeen? Eighteen?’

  ‘Who told you …?’ Hans’s voice failed him in mid-question.

  ‘I was right again,’ Mustapha said. ‘You imagined your departure with her from Aleuker’s home was unobserved. You are too commonplace, too interchangeable a person to sense that unique recognizes unique. I am not surprised that you found your way to Chaim’s party. I am surprised that Chaim and his friends imagined that people like you could save the world, frozen as you are into the mold of the past. You’re like a vampire, one of the undead, compelled to spend half his life in a coffin.’

  Blood was roaring in Hans’s ears, and the room swayed and swirled. He said, ‘Okay, so someone saw me leave Aleuker’s with her, but I may well have saved her life by bringing her here and – ’

  ‘Here? Instead of Valletta? Most people in the grip of panic think at once of going home.’ Mustapha’s tone was gentle enough, but contempt rode the edge of his words as light may ride the sharpness of a knife-blade. ‘Not of course that you could have made it clear to your wife that your intention was simply to save the life of a poor friendless girl – ’

  Grasping at a straw, Hans rapped, ‘Of course not! You’ve met her, you can imagine what a scene she’d have created!’

  Mustapha shook his head. ‘Wrong reason, and dishonest with it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I can read you more clearly than you, with your good eyesight, can read one of the books I’ve sold you.’ Mustapha rose, reaching out one hand to the brick-built side of the chimney that swallowed the small remaining trace of smoke from the fire. ‘You could have convinced Dany you’d brought the girl home to save her life, if that had been the truth … but it was not. I can hear the processes of your imagination. I can put them into words, even into English words, though I would be more precise and crueller in Arabic. I see your whole plan laid out before me, like a map, like a carved stela from Luxor that my fingers have grown acquainted with. I say this is what you intend!’

  He drew himself bolt upright, and his blind eyes seemed to shine dazzlingly into Hans’s.