What Lot's Wife Saw

by Ioanna Bourazopoulou

  Since the Overflow had been caused by the irresistible pressure exerted on the earth’s surface by the violet salt in its need to find an escape route, the latter was ultimately responsible for the millions of deaths, so how could mankind stand to consume it?

  “Allow me to refill your cup, Mr Book.”

  He covered the cup with his palm and shook his head. The bright lounge had released the demons of his conscience, they dragged sharp claws over his cheeks, plunged tiny sharp teeth into the lobes of his ears and seemed urgently to want to know what business it was of his to be there. When a multinational company exploits a geological catastrophe like the Dead Sea Rift, which narrowly failed to submerge three continents, it should be held responsible for the catastrophe itself.

  “Oh come, Mr Book, it’s like saying that because Noah prospered once the waters receded, he should be held responsible for the Flood.”

  They were totally guilty because they were marketing the cause of the disaster, and Book was twice as guilty since he consumed it, if not for the mere fact that he was alive. He shouldn’t have survived the Overflow and become a cowardly deserter from his own fate. He should have been under the water, like all inhabitants of the South, amongst his drowned relatives and lost friends. He did not belong to the new reality, he couldn’t accept it. That’s why he continued to be amazed that Paris was a coastal city, that Rome could not be found on any contemporary map, and he also continued to wonder what the Seventy-Five expected of him with this invitation.

  The man returned the pot to the table and leant forward in his armchair, carefully scrutinising Book.

  “What exactly is an Epistleword, Mr Book?”

  9

  Letter of Nicodeme Le Rhône

  (page 14)

  SECRETARY SICCOUANE

  … The price being isolation. The Colony is completely inaccessible – I could say, invisible. The clouds emanating from the saltworks are impenetrable to satellites so that there’s no way the Seventy-Five, who are established on another continent, could have a picture of what’s going on here. They have never set foot here, nor smelled its damp air, they don’t know how we live, and yet, they know us better than we know ourselves. We’re a construct of their intelligent minds, thus we were conceived, and thus they rule us.

  Captain Drake was forced to agree with me and he admitted that he’d never understood who or what the Seventy-Five were. Did the mysterious number imply a cooperation between individuals or companies or was it a clever cover for a single guiding mind? Priest Montenegro, while mopping up water dripping from the ice on Bera’s bed with a towel, asked what on earth I was driving at.

  I tried to convince them that we should try to work out the logic of our creators if we wanted to interpret correctly why the regulations didn’t allow for such an eventuality as the Governor lying dead in front of us.

  “Couldn’t it have been just a simple oversight on their part, Siccouane?” asked Drake hopefully.

  A gross oversight from those who have never been wrong in their estimations, who have achieved the unimaginable, daring to invest in a product horribly susceptible to damage, tricky to handle, that can only be mined in a forbidding territory. After the creation of the Rift, Africa and Asia became uninhabitable for a radius of thousands of kilometres around the salt-bearing area. The desert that surrounds it is impassable, full of dangerous craters, and the salt fumes are fatal to all but human life. Moreover, no aeroplane can fly over the areas because the pilot’s visibility is severely restricted by the thick clouds and the salt’s insane magnetism completely destabilises all instruments. In addition to that, exhaust fume poisons and most electromagnetic radiation would immediately turn the violet salt into its white, common, variety. It loses its colour, taste and aroma unless it’s handled with care from the moment it’s mined. This means that the Colony can only be approached by sea, the thick syrupy sea, on which special wind-powered vessels sail at a snail’s pace. In other words, the investors knew from the beginning that it was unfeasible to communicate directly with the production centre or to monitor it from afar using electronics. It would be easier to observe phenomena on the moon or Mars than the Colony. If the Colony got blown off the face of the earth, they would only find out after three weeks. No other multinational has had to face such a challenge in the electronic age, in which instant communication is a given. Despite that, the Seventy-Five had overcome every drawback, every threat, and had conceived and established a system of remote administration which ruled out the possibilities of mistakes, mutinies, disobedience and loss of control. Do you really expect oversights from such ingenious businessmen?

  “There is something to what Siccouane is saying,” agreed the Doctor, and he asked me to continue.

  “Well, I for one, fail to be impressed by the genius of a Green Box and a single, isolated Governor,” commented Lady Regina.

  The simplicity of this complete concentration is exactly why it is ingenious. Reducing the recipients of its commands to one, they’ve eliminated the possibility of misunderstanding, of corruption or of tampering with the message, despite the lack of feedback and direct control. The rest of us are condemned to hear commands without knowledge of their origin or purpose; we have no choice but to obey. Facing the remote central power and its omnipotent local representative, we are totally enslaved and, at the same time, relieved, because this beguiling servitude has been set up so cleverly that there isn’t the slightest chink in which to drive the wedge of doubt.

  “Your reasoning is leading us to a paranoid conclusion,” Lady Regina complained. “Are you suggesting that the Seventy-Five ordered the death of Bera? Do you expect me to believe that?”

  I explained to her that she, for one, should agree with the theory I’d been proposing, that the Governor had been ordered to commit suicide. Did anyone doubt his complete devotion to the Consortium, given that he’d forced his wife to sleep in a separate room so as not to expose the key that hung around his neck to danger? She herself has maintained that Bera had always been unapproachable, as befitted a man on a mission. What we see as a gap in the regulations is, in reality, a well-thought-out step in the evolution of the administration of this Colony.

  “But why should the Seventy-Five kill him?” puzzled Judge Bateau.

  “I would rather say ‘withdraw’ him,” I explained. “It must be that every Governor has a predetermined useful tenure. Whoever is made party to the secrets of the Consortium cannot be put out to pasture and draw a pension like an employee. By accepting such a position, you accept your fate as well.”

  “And now what do we do?”

  “I’m sure we are mostly doing what the Seventy-Five expect of us. We’re wondering, we’re frightened and we’re waiting.”

  Judge Bateau stood up in a panic and started to circle around the room, shouting that this means that the Seventy-Five are everywhere, they can see us and hear us, they’ve foreseen everything, they’ve even foreseen the ice that we brought up to preserve the body. He hopped about and declared shrilly, “I’m innocent, I’m innocent,” for the benefit of the invisible eyes of the Seventy-Five. We worried that he might be heard all the way to the basement, where we’d banished the staff. Montenegro rushed over and gagged him, Captain Drake managed to immobilise him and Dr Fabrizio gave him a tranquillising injection that he’d found in his bag, to stop him thrashing. Briefly, peace reigned, while we all tried to digest the idea that Bera had obeyed a termination order. In any case, we’d rejected all the other possibilities.

  “It’s a fact that the Seventy-Five would’ve rushed to protect him had they thought that he’d been in any danger from aspiring murderers. The Seventy-Five don’t leave anything to chance – who disagrees with that?” mused Dr Fabrizio.

  But a simple glance at the body would suffice to convince one that death had not come upon him either violently or uninvited. He had been in his official uniform, his arms ceremonially crossed on his chest, and he appeared calm and smiling. I had witnessed him myse
lf the previous night, in his pyjamas, on the veranda. Why would he have dressed up like that at night, if not to meet his death? Obviously, the Green Box that we delivered last night had contained a phial of colourless poison and the instructions that he should take it that same night.

  “I fail to see any logic in these orders from the Seventy-Five,” disagreed Captain Drake.

  “Can we really expect to be able to fathom – ignorant mental midgets that we are – the administrative methods of our superhuman employers!” I shouted.

  “Of course, we all know what a low value the Seventy-Five place on human life, we’ve felt it in our bones,” sighed Montenegro.

  “Yes, but such a dishonourable finale?” commented Drake in disbelief.

  I, on the other hand, found the finale both noble and magnificent, worthy of the stature of the Governor and the genius of the Seventy-Five. It’s possible that Bera had known the exact date of his termination from the beginning, that it’d be two weeks before the Colony’s twentieth anniversary. In the light of this realisation, his whole stance, his behaviour towards us, could be viewed in a totally different way. I felt the need to bow low.

  Lady Regina sat on the edge of the bed, leant over her husband’s face and scrutinised it. She ascertained that Bera had shaved himself last night, despite the fact that he wouldn’t be leaving the house. He’d shaved and then dressed to die? Couldn’t he have even bothered to say goodbye or, at least, informed her of his plans?

  “Speak!” she ordered. She raised her hand and slapped his face. “Talk, you bastard! I was a widow-in-waiting and no one bothered to tell me? What other plans did you and your depraved Seventy-Five have in store for me?”

  Montenegro pulled her back off the bed but she angrily twisted free and started to rove around the room, inspecting each corner carefully. She could see that Bera had left it uncharacteristically tidy, surely for the first time in his life. Even the ashtray on the dresser, which normally would have borne witness to the cigars he had smoked at night, was washed and dried. The unblemished tidiness of the room made her hair stand on end.

  “This is no bedroom, it’s a mausoleum! And we, willingly, locked ourselves in with him without having the slightest clue why!”

  Drake worried whether the Governor’s death meant that the Colony was in grave danger, perhaps from a full-blown attack by the Suez Mamelukes or from an eruption from the Rift. Perhaps the Seventy-Five judged that they couldn’t evacuate the Colony in time and so informed Bera, who chose to die peacefully, with decorum.

  Montenegro griped that if the Colony were destroyed, the Seventy-Five wouldn’t have to account to anyone. “We are so isolated that they could offer any theory they want to world opinion, without there being anyone in a position to check up on them.” Should we all embark on Cortez’s boat and escape while we still could?

  Fabrizio maintained that if some catastrophe was expected, we would’ve heard about it. Drake reminded him that we’re three weeks behind as far as world news was concerned so in that he wasn’t wrong. Bateau suggested that we ask Bianca if she’d read anything, as she’s the only one who reads the world press. We cannot stand the sight of newspapers, we have no wish to learn anything that occurs in the world we left behind, but Bateau’s daughter pores over them, cover to cover. She has no experience of the outside world and might well not understand all that she reads, but our group seemed more willing to put their trust in her rather than in common logic.

  I pleaded with them to consider the possibility that should the Colony remain unaffected and intact but without Secretary, Judge, Captain of the Guard, Doctor, Priest and Governor’s widow, on our arrival in Paris fines and handcuffs would await us. Our contracts are perfectly clear on the matter of abandoning our posts, criminal neglect and dereliction of duty. The Colony would paralyse in our wake, resulting in incalculable loss of income for the Seventy-Five, and it would take us over thirty lifetimes to work off our debt. Thankfully, Dr Fabrizio agreed with me.

  “Can’t we stop continuously thinking of the worst possible scenarios? Couldn’t it be that Bera simply failed to meet some criteria and as punishment was instructed by the Seventy-Five to take his own life?”

  “How can you all be so sure that this was a suicide?” Judge Bateau screamed.

  “Because if it isn’t a suicide, and an enforced suicide at that, it means that for the first time the Seventy-Five have got it very wrong, since the Colony will remain ungoverned for a minimum of six weeks. They either failed to protect a sane Bera should he have been murdered or, equally miserably, protect the Colony from him since he must have been an unbalanced, schizophrenic suicide. Are you ready to live with such tragic fallibility in the Seventy-Five, for I am not!” Montenegro stated emphatically.

  No one could make the mistake of underestimating the wise Seventy-Five, but also, no one could come up with a logical explanation. We were at our wits’ end, trying to imagine what our employers would be expecting of us. Were we being tested? Were we being punished? What in the world did they want us to do?

  10

  Letter of Dusan Zehta Danilovitz

  (page 18)

  PRIEST MONTENEGRO

  … I was looking at the dead Governor and I felt the sabre-toothed tiger coming back to life in my memory. The prehistoric feline which had injured my youth and transformed me from a paleontologist into a fossil thief, just as the Overflow had transformed me from a smuggler of antiquities into a priest. Would this smiling cadaver transform me yet again?

  A lifetime ago, when Europe had a south and I hadn’t yet learnt how ephemeral reality was, I was enthralled by exploring the caves of lower Africa, with the ink not yet dry on my anthropology degree. I believed that there’d always be time to return to my homeland, Danilovgrad, where my grandmother was waiting, because science, unlike her, couldn’t wait.

  All the peoples of the Balkans secretly love Africa, their hearts bleed when they dream of it, and even though they might never have seen it on a map, they smell it on their fingertips, they can sense it in the throbbing of their veins, they breathe it in the twilight, but my boundless curiosity, with a sprinkling of the magic spells of the science of illusions, hypnotised me and led me to this continent from where life began, and where, one day, it will end. The hardships of the jungle invigorated me: sleeping under the rain, the foul drinking water, the deadly snakes, and even the endless arguments with local anthropologists with whom I was in perpetual disagreement. Whoever seeks to illuminate the secrets of man’s evolutionary history must be prepared to sink into the mud up to his chin, expose his blood to all sorts of infectious insect bites and to break his fingernails hanging off cliff walls. The more I suffered, the more momentous would be the discovery that awaited me in the end.

  When, after an exhausting expedition and several unproductive excavations, we unearthed the paleontological skeleton from the depths of the cave, I nearly went mad with delight. There was no doubt that it was an Australopithecus, a hominid, a kind of pre-human. The stalagmites in the cave could be dated back to three million years of age. The recovered skeleton was almost complete. In height, it was no taller than today’s Pygmies and its bones displayed many of the characteristics of apes. However, if you studied the spinal column, the pelvis with the thigh bones, and the occipital section in the base of the skull, you would conclude that this being walked upright and not on all fours. The canines were of medium size, and the curved set of teeth bore witness more to the teeth of a human than an ape. We’d come face to face with an astonishing relic of that transitional period when man’s ancestors branched off from the primates and began taking their first tentative steps on the ladder of evolution.

  I was overwhelmed with emotion as I gazed at my remote ancestor. I, who had dedicated my life to filling in the gaps in the story of man’s long march along the road from fish through amphibian to ape, was in nirvana. The transformations of this small animal with its unbelievable potential enabled it to fulfil its destiny to conquer the ear
th.

  I knelt and reverently studied the skull bones, which appeared capable of encasing a brain larger than that of an ape. The larger brain was the only weapon in my ancestor’s armoury from all the way back to the time that it was a scrawny tree shrew but still blessed with more grey matter than the dim-witted mighty dinosaurs. After millions of years it evolved to take the shape of this Australopithecine which, although disadvantaged and defenceless, was still able to survive in a jungle dominated by monstrous felines with canines of up to half a metre in length which protruded below their lower jaw. Small and naked, with jokes for nails and stubs for teeth, the Australopithecine must have secretively stared out from behind the wet leaves at the sabre-toothed cats and felt intensely jealous of their armament while little realising that they were condemned to extinction, whereas he was destined to emerge from prehistory in increasing numbers. His line would comprehensively out-trump his lethal adversary, which not only became extinct, but faded from memory.

  The team encamped near the discovery and set to work. We carefully cleared the cave from the layers of soil that had covered the stratum that contained the skeleton in order to recreate the scene and allow it to tell its own story. Usually, next to such remains you can find a refuse heap of the scraps of the occupants’ meals and of their discarded tools. I was sure that Australopithecines were tool users, something that I’d argued in my university thesis, and had sworn that I’d find evidence to prove it. The local anthropologists vehemently disagreed, citing the numerous Australopithecine digs in the limestone caves of this region. Not one of them had revealed a single tool, not even a shaped stone which had displayed signs of having been purposefully worked. In the cave we’d explored, however, we found plenty of bones of large mammals, wild pigs, ancestors of giraffes and antelopes. Their skeletons revealed that they’d been attacked from the side and had borne the scars of a sharp implement that had torn into them, suggesting a single, right-handed attacker. We found baboon skulls as well that’d been cracked open by a sharp tool. These animals must’ve been the prey of the anthropoid, which had hunted them down and had dragged them into its cave to eat in safety. Bones had been tossed about after the meal and so, three million years later, we could collect them and admire his protein-rich diet. Our ancestor may have been short of stature, and possibly incapable of fashioning tools, but he must’ve used sharp sticks and stones. How else could he have brought down animals larger, faster and better armed than himself? The fact that the Australopithecus had hunted baboons for food, although they were his distant kin, meant that he was already aware of his superiority and had completed his conscious split from them. In addition, his skeleton, with most of the bones unbroken, was more intact than the other ones, which indicated that he’d been the hunter who died of natural causes, while the others had been torn to pieces and their bones gnawed.