The Dream Archipelago

by Christopher Priest

  Parren concurred, reluctantly it seemed to Ordier, and in a few moments they resumed their clumsy descent of the rocks. When they reached the house half an hour later, their skin burnt red wherever it had been exposed to the sun and their clothes drenched in perspiration, they found the place empty. Two unoccupied sun loungers lay beside the pool. Ordier fixed some iced drinks while Parren took a dip in the pool, then he showered and changed his clothes.

  He left Parren on the patio and went in search of the women. He located them in the rough ground behind the house, walking from the direction of the gate in the courtyard wall. He waited impatiently until they reached him.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he said to Jenessa.

  ‘You and Jacj were gone so long I took Luovi to see your folly. The gate was unlocked so we assumed it would be all right.’

  ‘You know it’s not safe up there!’ Ordier said.

  ‘What an interesting building it is,’ Luovi said to him. ‘Such eccentric architecture. All those concealed faults in the walls. And what a view there is from higher up!’

  She smiled at him patronizingly, then shifted the strap of her large leather bag on her shoulder. She walked past him towards the house. Ordier looked at Jenessa, hoping for some explanatory expression, but she would not meet his eyes.

  Parren and his wife stayed at the house for the remainder of the long, hot day, lazing in the shade beside the pool.

  Ordier was a passive listener to most of the conversation that occurred, feeling excluded from it. He found himself privately wishing that he could involve himself in Jenessa’s work to the same degree that Luovi worked with her husband, but whenever he ventured an opinion or an idea into the endless discussion of the Qataari he was either ignored or corrected. The consequence was that while Jacj was outlining his elaborate scheme – there was an aircraft to be hired and a place to be found where the scintilla decoding equipment could be installed – Ordier fell into an introspective mood and grew increasingly preoccupied with thoughts of his secret voyeuristic relationship with the young Qataari woman.

  From the summit of the ridge it had been possible to see that no ritual was taking place at that moment, which was consolation of a kind. It reinforced his inner belief that he, by acting as a silent watcher, was actually taking some kind of part in the event. The need for this burned in him, but he did not know why. But it was disturbing for other reasons to suspect that the business with the arena and the statues did not go on except when he happened to be present to see it.

  And there was the other uncertainty of what Jenessa and Luovi might have seen or done while they were in the folly.

  Guilt and curiosity, the conflicting motives of the voyeur, were rising in Ordier again.

  Towards the end of the afternoon, as the heat was starting to fade a little, Parren announced that he had another appointment in the evening. Jenessa promptly offered to drive them back to Tumo Town. Ordier, uttering the platitudes of a host to departing guests, saw it as a chance to satisfy his curiosity. He walked down with the others to Jenessa’s car and watched as they drove away. The sun was already hanging not far above the Tumoit Mountains.

  As soon as the car was out of sight Ordier hurried back to the house, collected his binoculars and a torch and set off for the folly. As Jenessa had told him, the padlock on the gate was open. He must have forgotten to close it the last time he left the folly. As he went through he made sure of locking it, as he usually did, on the inside. He did not want anyone coming up to the folly, for whatever reason, while he was there.

  The period of twilight on Tumo was virtually non-existent because of its equatorial position, the sun vanishing swiftly behind the mountains without afterglow and throwing this part of the island into sudden darkness. As Ordier went up the slope to the folly wall his shadow on the ground was spreading long. Nightfall was only minutes away.

  Once inside the hidden cell Ordier wasted no time and put his eyes to the slit. Beyond, the Qataari valley was stark with deep colours and long shadows. All was still: there was no one in sight out there, and the familiar screens across parts of the settlement were hanging motionlessly in the calm evening air. All the Qataari people had returned to their homes. It was obvious that the alarm raised when he and Parren peered over the edge of the ridge had passed.

  Extremely relieved, Ordier returned to the house in the new darkness, shining the torch across the uneven ground. He tidied up the patio, put away the loungers and took in the glasses and plates they had been using. He had just finished washing everything when Jenessa returned.

  She was looking excited and beautiful and she kissed Ordier as soon as she came in.

  ‘I’m going to work with Jacj!’ she said. ‘He wants me to be his personal assistant and adviser.’

  ‘Advise him? How?’

  ‘About the Qataari. He says he can pay me the same money as I’m getting now and that when he returns to the north there’ll be a vacant position for a research fellow in his department. He’ll want me to go with him, he says.’

  Ordier nodded, and turned away.

  ‘Aren’t you pleased for me?’ Jenessa said.

  ‘What are the strings?’

  Jenessa had followed him as he walked out on to the patio. From the doorway she turned on the coloured lights concealed amongst the grapevines hanging from the overhead trellis.

  ‘Why should you think there strings to anything I want to do on my own?’ she said.

  ‘And where’s he getting the money from? You know the situation as well as I do. He isn’t on leave of absence from a university. It’s not possible any more to make a temporary trip to the islands. There’s no way back for anyone, and so everything he’s telling you is demonstrably a lie.’

  ‘It’s really got to you, hasn’t it?’ she said.

  Looking back at her he saw the multi-coloured lights glowing on the olive skin of her face, like the reflection from flower petals of sunlight. He always found her lovely to look at, never more so than now. He said nothing, wishing the exchange had not started.

  ‘Let’s have a drink,’ he said.

  ‘We’ve had enough.’

  She apparently wanted it to go on. He said, ‘Why don’t you tell me more about going north with him?’

  ‘Jacj has a way.’

  ‘I doubt it. Why haven’t you told me this was going on?’

  ‘I’m telling you now. The first opportunity I have. Nothing’s been agreed definitely. I can still pull out if I want to.’

  ‘But you don’t want to.’

  ‘Don’t I?’ Jenessa said. ‘And, by the way, nothing’s going on, as you put it.’

  ‘You’re making me wonder.’

  ‘Why do you say that? Do you think I’m having an affair with him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s just a job, just the work I’ve always done. You know how I feel about what we’re doing in the department! It’s a dead end. We haven’t made any measurable progress since the Qataari were first settled.’

  ‘It’s always the bloody Qataari, isn’t it?’ Ordier said. ‘That’s what it is. You’re as obsessed with them as he is.’

  ‘I can’t deny it. From a career point of view—’

  She took his arm then. He snatched it away angrily and turned from her, but she persisted and grabbed hold of his arm again. She held his hand in hers. He stood there, feeling as if he was being treated like a petulant adolescent; he also had a feeling that perhaps he deserved it.

  He was angry, though, and it usually took time for his moods to subside. Jenessa knew him well. It was irrational, of course, these things invariably were. Parren and his wife, ever since their arrival, had seemed set on changing the settled, placid way of life he enjoyed, guilty conscience and all. The thought of Jenessa going over to them, collaborating with them, was just one more intrusion. Ordier was incapable of dealing with it in any way other than emotionally.

  Much later, when they had made some supper and were drinking wine together on t
he patio, enjoying the warmth of the dark and insect-loud night, Jenessa said, ‘Don’t fly off the handle again, but I think Jacj would like you to join his team as well.’

  ‘Me?’ He had mellowed as the evening progressed and his laugh now was not a sardonic one. ‘I doubt if there’s much I could do for him.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. He seems to like you.’

  ‘He can’t be all bad, then.’

  ‘He said he would like to rent the folly from you.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ Ordier said, taken by surprise.

  ‘It overlooks the Qataari valley. Jacj wants to build a hide in the wall. Set up some cameras there, or something like that.’

  ‘Tell him it’s not available,’ Ordier said abruptly. ‘It’s structurally unsound.’

  Jenessa was regarding him with a thoughtful expression.

  ‘It seemed safe enough to me,’ she said. ‘We climbed as far as the battlements without any problem.’

  ‘I thought I told you about the folly—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Ordier said, sensing another row on the way. He lifted the wine bottle to see how much was left. ‘Want me to open another bottle?’

  Jenessa yawned, but she did it in an affected, exaggerated way, as if she too had seen the way the conversation was going and welcomed the chance to drop the subject.

  ‘Let’s finish the bottle, then go to bed,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll stay the night, then?’

  ‘If you want me to.’

  Four more days passed. Although Ordier stayed away from his cell in the folly wall his curiosity about the young Qataari woman would not leave him. He was also growing more uncertain about what the ritual signified, and it was compounded by the unwelcome presence of Parren and his wife.

  The morning after their last visit, Ordier had been waiting for Jenessa to leave when a disquieting thought came to him. It was what Parren had said to him on the ridge, about the unknown origins of the unmarked, unidentified scintillas. Parren had linked them to the Qataari, construing their presence to mean that someone else was trying to observe them.

  Ordier, listening to Jenessa’s movements in the spraying water of the shower cubicle, suddenly realized that there could be an altogether different explanation.

  It was possible, as Parren suggested, that someone else might be spying on the Qataari. But what if it were the Qataari themselves who were watching?

  With their obsessive desire for privacy, it would be in their interests to observe the movements of those people outside their community. If they had access to scintilla equipment – or had been somehow able to manufacture it themselves – then it would be one way of building a defence against the outside world.

  It was not impossible. As Parren had said, no one who had contact with the Qataari made the mistake of thinking they were tribal primitives. The Qataari men and women who had in the past travelled to the northern nations had revealed a brilliant inductive understanding of science and technology. Parren himself had said that Qataari science was sophisticated. If so, they could have discovered how to duplicate the scintillas.

  If the Qataari were watching anyone they would be watching Ordier. He was their closest neighbour, with property that directly overlooked their settlement. He remembered the unmarked scintillas he kept finding in his house.

  Later that day, when Jenessa had departed, Ordier took his detector and scoured every room of the house. He found another ten or so around the rooms, but when he went outside and searched the patio, pool area and garden he turned up literally hundreds more. He put them all into the quiet-case, closing the lid quickly. The space inside was now more than two-thirds filled.

  He had spent most of that day in thought, troubled that this conjecture, if accurate, led to the conclusion that the Qataari knew he was spying on them from inside the folly.

  If that was so, then it would account for something he found naggingly strange: his unshakeable inner conviction that the ritual was being put on for his exclusive benefit.

  He had invariably been scrupulously secretive about what he was doing. In ordinary circumstances he would have had no reason to suppose the Qataari had any suspicions he was there. But the young woman had become a central figure in the ritual after he had noticed her in the plantation and had watched her through his binoculars. Why should she be the one they made the focal figure? Pure chance, or by looking at her had he in effect picked her out for himself?

  Then there was the fact that the ritual itself invariably started after he went to the cell. He had never once found it in progress. And the ceremony, although staged in a circular arena, was not only within his sight, it appeared to be mounted so that he had a clear view of it. The woman, for instance, was always facing towards him. Nothing went on that he could not watch.

  Until now, Ordier had not tried to think of a rational explanation. If the Qataari were watching him, though, were waiting for him, were staging it for him …

  But all this denied one fact: the famous dislike the Qataari had of being watched. They were hardly likely to encourage someone to spy on them.

  It was this new thought, and its attendant enigmas, that had kept Ordier away from the folly for four days. In the past he had fantasized that the young woman was being readied for him, that she was a sexual lure, but that was the stuff of erotic imaginings. To convert fantasies into reality was something for which he was not ready.

  To do so would be to accept something else that had once been an element in his fantasies: that the woman knew who he was, that she desired him and that the Qataari had selected him for her.

  So the days passed.

  Jenessa was involved with Parren’s preparations and she didn’t seem to notice Ordier’s abstracted state of mind. He prowled the house by day, sorting through his books and trying to concentrate on domestic matters. By night he slept as usual with Jenessa, sometimes when she came to his house, sometimes when he went to her apartment, but during their lovemaking, especially in those moments just before reaching climax, Ordier’s imaginings were of the young Qataari woman. He envisaged her sprawling across the bed of scarlet petals. Her flimsy garment was torn away or crumpled beneath her naked body, her legs were spread and her knees were raised, her mouth was reaching to meet his, her eyes stared submissively at him, her body was warm and soft to the touch.

  She had been offered to him and Ordier knew that she was his for the taking.

  On the morning of the fifth day Ordier awoke to a new realization: he believed he had resolved the dilemma.

  Jenessa was still asleep beside him in his bed. As the first sunlight spread through the bedroom, Ordier watched the play of light on his walls and ceiling as it reflected from the barely shifting surface of the pool outside. He had sensed all along that the Qataari had selected him, but he had always denied it to himself. It was only now that he accepted and believed it.

  It was also only now that he realized why. He had met several Qataari in the north before he left, and at that time there had been no point in making a secret of his involvement with surveillance scintillas. They knew then who he was, so they would know now who he was; they knew where he lived; they knew everything about him.

  There was more. Until this waking moment Ordier had feared the idea because it implied that he was a prisoner of the Qataari will. But this new understanding actually freed him.

  There was no further basis for his obsessive curiosity. He need never again agonize about missing the ritualized ceremony, because, he now realized, nothing of any interest would happen until he was present to observe it. He need never again return to the airless, narcotically drenched cell in the wall, because the Qataari would wait.

  They would wait for his arrival as they would wait for the departure of others.

  Lying in his bed, staring up at the mirrored ceiling, Ordier realized that the Qataari had liberated him. The woman was an offering which he could accept or decline as he wished.

>   Then Jenessa, waking beside him, turned over and said, ‘What’s the time?’

  She was gazing at him with half-opened eyes. Ordier glanced at the clock, told her the time. She pressed herself affectionately against him, making Ordier think she wanted to make love while she was still half-asleep. It was something he knew she loved. But after a moment she moved away.

  ‘I have to hurry this morning,’ she said, kissing his chest lightly.

  ‘What’s the rush?’

  ‘Jacj’s catching the ferry to Muriseay today. The aircraft will be ready for him.’

  ‘Aircraft?’

  ‘The one he’s renting to scintillate the Qataari. It’s likely to be done today or tomorrow.’

  Ordier nodded. He watched Jenessa as she rolled sleepily from the bed and walked naked to the mirror attached to the bedroom wall. She stared into it, looking drowsily at the reflection of her face, running her fingers tentatively through her hair. Ordier stared appreciatively at her back view: the generous curve of her bare buttocks, her long shapely legs, her smooth skin, her breasts drooping forward as she leaned towards the mirror.

  When she walked into the shower he climbed out of bed and followed her. He waited outside the cubicle, imagining her voluptuous body moving sinuously through the energetic spray as she pressed her soapy hands across her limbs and chest. Later, when she had snatched a slice of dry bread for her breakfast, he walked with her to her car and watched her drive away. He returned to the house.

  Reminding himself of his newly liberated state he percolated some coffee, then took it out to the patio. The weather was sweltering again, and the vibrant scraping of the crickets seemed especially loud. A new crate of books had arrived at the house the previous day and the swimming pool looked clean and cold. He could make it another long day of pleasant idling.

  He wondered if the Qataari were watching him now; if their scintillas lay between the paving stones, in the branches of the vines, in the soil of the overgrown flowerbeds.

  ‘I’ll never spy on the Qataari again,’ he said aloud, into the imagined aural pick-ups.