by Sam Smith
The Spokesman’s children went in awe of Jorge’s age, his height, his thinness, his baldness, his wrinkled pallor and his preoccupied solemnity; though he did occasionally rouse himself to converse with their parents, interesting them in horticultural and agricultural methods he had seen employed on other planets.
The report, as was to be expected from Jorge Arbatov, was minutely detailed, closely argued, and lengthy. In it he traced events from the disappearance of the moon, the loss of radio communication and the disappearance of the first ship — Halk Fint’s — up to the building of the road. For every turn in the events he referred to a Service record, police record or Happiness Senate Record — see H/7/T4332 p4 IP5, etcetera. And having told the history he proceeded to state what the road hoped to achieve. He then appended his recommendations, which exceeded the length of the history.
First he recommended, in order not to put at risk any more lives, that every inhabited planet likely to be colonised by the Nautili — and he gave a list of all such planets within the next eighty year spread of the Nautili — be equipped with two unmanned mailships each to supplement their radio transmissions. Those unmanned mailships would keep up a continuous and direct shuttle service between the planet and its station, thereby curtailing the period of warning of any Nautili blockade.
In light of the expense of this recommendation, he suggested that those planets most at risk of Nautili colonisation should first be given the unmanned mailships; and he appended a list of those planets.
He also recommended the setting up of a Service Bureau to deal exclusively with the Nautili. He suggested that this Bureau should be given the means to recruit all authorities on Nautili, people such as Tevor Cade. With the assistance of those experts the Bureau would then assemble a body of information concerning Nautili, which would be dispatched to all Departments. He also suggested the creation of a team, or teams, who could be called on by any planet which suspected that it was being colonised by Nautili. So that, in Jorge Arbatov’s words, ‘we would not in future have to depend on the inspired guesswork of an itinerant astrophysicist.’
With regard to Happiness, Jorge suggested, having had the planet’s technicians take some meteorological measurements, that as an immediate measure certain badly affected farms have their boundaries temporarily changed. And, in light of Constable Drin Ligure’s interview with Belid Keal, for which he commended him, Jorge suggested an objective screening of planetary children to weed out the minority like Belid Keal who do not benefit from a Space education, to whom it is in fact harmful, occasionally fatal; and whom it unbalances to such an extent that their testimony is immediately viewed as being unreliable.
(Due to pressure from many planets this proposal of Jorge Arbatov’s is, at the time of writing, under serious consideration by the Legislature. Because, due to the size of our civilisation, and even though those children are a distinct minority, we are nevertheless every day inflicting needless pain on several thousand individuals. The difficulty lies in determining, before they are sent, which children will not benefit from a Space education. Which is why the proposal is still under consideration. Because all planetary children are initially homesick; that homesickness, however, is soon overtaken by the majority’s excitement in their new surroundings. To formulate an objective test to distinguish those few who remain homesick more research is required. The stumbling block so far in the formulation of any acceptable test is that it has to measure the emotional dependency of the children on their parents against their drive to achievement. Although there may yet prove to be other factors involved.)
Jorge Arbatov made many other recommendations, chiefly concerning Service reaction to the unfolding of events on Happiness, subtle points of emphasis which need not concern us here. Though he did earnestly recommend a radical reappraisal of one Service policy — in light of Petre Fanne’s part in these events — the policy regarding bereaved consorts.
His report, however, remained incomplete, had to await developments on the road. And, in this period of waiting, on the road itself, we have a romantic interlude.
* * * * *
The day the road was finished the transport planes came thundering back. The tractors, the cutters, and all but four of the cabins, were removed. Awen Mendawer scrounged a lift off the weary engineer into the capital, where he spent the day shopping. In the afternoon he took his cabful of packages to the supply depot from where he had arranged to be given a lift back to the road on a transport plane. That same transport plane moved his and Tulla Yorke’s cabins to a hollow near the centre of the road. Tulla rode inside her cabin. The transport plane then deposited Awen and his many packages beside his cabin, collected the last two cabins from the base camp, and departed.
By this time it was almost night. Tulla helped Awen cart his packages into his cabin. They heard the last police plane of the day fly overhead. Just after dusk that police plane reported to Tulla that no Nautili trails had yet been sighted. She passed on the report to Jorge Arbatov at the Spokesman’s farm. Then, seeking company in the wind-whispering quiet of that rocky landscape, Tulla and Awen ate together. After the meal Awen began unpacking his purchases and assembling screens. Tulla, feeling that she was in his way, took herself off to her own cabin.
When Tulla emerged from her cabin in the morning she found attached to her door handle a soft white hat such as some of the technicians and tractor drivers had worn. Pinned to the hat was a note. The note told her that the hat had been bought yesterday, that she was to wear it to protect her head from the sun. In a postscript Awen said that he had gone to the Northern end of the road to set up some cameras and that if she wished to contact him he had taken a handphone with him. The phone’s number was scrawled unevenly across the bottom of the page.
Tulla donned the white hat, collected her own handphone from inside the cabin and walked up the embankment to the road. Far in the distance, through the wavering heat lines, she could make out a small dark figure. It too was wearing a white hat. Or was it a wave on the sea? Smiling she tapped Awen’s number.
“Thanks for the hat,” she said.
“Forgot to give it you last night,” he said. “Thanks for breaking the monotony.”
“What exactly are you doing?”
“I bought a couple of photoelectric cells yesterday. Don’t want to depend on some bleary-eyed constable missing the beginnings of the trail. And I’ve got a couple of remote control cameras. Which are getting heavier by the kilometre.”
“You’re not using lights?”
“No. That Senate Member on the estuary told me that the Nautili might be averse to light. So I got ultra-violet photoelectrics, and one camera with night lenses and night film.”
Awen gasping, paused for breath.
“How much further to the end?” Tulla asked him.
“I’ve been trying not to look. Seems I’ve been almost there ever since I started.”
“I don’t wish to alarm you,” Tulla smiled, “but what if they start the other end?”
“Where d’you think I’m going this afternoon?”
Awen went on to ask if she would help him test the remote control when he reached the end of the road. She agreed, and rang off. The first of that day’s three police patrols then reported to her, and she relayed the report to Jorge, who told her that he was just about to visit her.
Tulla breakfasted.
Before Jorge arrived Awen phoned to ask her to check his cameras. She went into his cabin, picked her way through the debris of his packages and, following his instructions, adjusted the screens. Behind his voice she could hear the slow beat of the waves.
Awen pronounced himself satisfied.
“How near the end of the road have you got your cameras?” she asked him. “About 10 metres from the water’s edge,” he told her, “Technician said they get waves sometimes 8 metres high. Here should be far enough away not to set off the cells.”
Using a camera Awen then showed her where he had set the cells — on eit
her side of the road — and tested them by standing between them. A buzzer sounded in the cabin. Down the end of the road the two cameras simultaneously aligned themselves on the cells.
Awen asked Tulla to switch off the screens, said that he was going to try walking back above the road.
“Because, not only is the road interminable, the scenery is so damn boring.”
Tulla sat awhile in the cabin looking around at the mess, then hearing a plane approaching, she went outside. The engineer had left a beacon on a flat area of rubble above the cabins. Tulla walked up to greet Jorge and the Spokesman. The Spokesman approved of her hat.
Together Jorge, the Spokesman and Tulla once more inspected the road, and Tulla told them what Awen was doing.
“Seems everyone has their uses,” Jorge said.
On returning to the plane the Spokesman presented Tulla with a pile of planet-made clothes his wife had sent,
“She said you’d be cooler in these.” Though of different proportions the Spokesman’s wife and Tulla were about the same size. She had also sent Tulla some insect repellent.
Tulla thanked the Spokesman: the day was already unbearably hot, the perspiration prickling from her skin, and she had been bitten on both ankles. The Spokesman declined her invitation to lunch, said that now he had his tractor back he wanted to press on with his harvesting.
Tulla asked for some of her machines to be brought over the next day, with her records, so that she could do some more research. But, for the moment, with nothing else to do, she had her second shower of the day, anointed herself with insect repellent, and, in the cool of the cabin, she tried on the clothes she had been given. Deciding finally on a loose white ankle-length robe, she went out to look for Awen.
He was trudging head-bowed along the road about, as far as she could judge, a kilometre away. On impulse she decided to walk down to meet him. Descending the shale embankment, her white robe lifted, she took down with her several loose stones. The surface of the road was hot under her feet and, after a hundred meters, painful.
Awen had not yet looked up, had not by the slightest gesture signified that he was aware of her presence. She wondered if he was walking with his eyes closed. Far behind him, in the blunt wedge of the road, was the blue triangle of the inland sea. Around his shoulders, and across his chest, his tunic was dark with sweat. The cameras hanging about him swung with his every relentless step.
Slowly he raised his head, a smile below the camera at his face.
“Such dedication,” Tulla smiled. “My feet hurt walking just this far.”
“Mine went numb on the way there.”
He didn’t break his pace. Tulla turned and walked with him.
“The top no good?” she asked.
“Too uneven. Kept tripping up.” With a grimace of distaste he indicated the smooth road, “Boring but quicker.”
As they mounted the embankment to their cabins Tulla asked if he was really going to set up the other cameras this day, “Why not leave it till tomorrow?”
“And what,” he asked by way of answer, “if they start tonight?”
“Why take all those cameras as well?” she said. “There’s nothing to film down there.”
“Bound to be if I don’t take my cameras,” Awen grinned at her, camera to his face. “Besides I’ve got this ambition to film my own death. Terrified I’ll miss it.”
On entering his cabin Awen first tested the remote control of the cameras he had already installed. Then he liberally slapped some insect repellent about the back of his neck, made himself something to eat and, while eating, made a bundle of the cameras he was to use at the Southern end of the road.
“At least sit down for a minute,” Tulla said.
“No,” Awen, still chewing, made for the door. “My feet and legs might come back to life.”
Tulla watched him slither down the embankment, settle his load on his back, push his white hat up on his head, and start walking. She watched him until the heat, reflected up off the yellow rocks, drove her into her cabin. The second police patrol reported in soon after. They asked if she knew there was someone on the road.
“Yes,” she said. “I know.”
Idleness irked Tulla. Wandering over to Awen’s cabin she tidied up the discarded packaging. Before returning to her own cabin she had a look down the road. Unable to see Awen through the distorting heat haze she phoned him.
“It’s my knees,” he greeted her. “They don’t like this at all.”
“How much further?” she asked him.
“Another hour,” he said. “I’ll call you.”
It was an hour and a half before he called her. As before she followed his instructions in adjusting the screens, in testing the photoelectric cells.
“See you later,” his begrimed face smiled out of a screen. Manoeuvring the camera Tulla watched him go sliding down the embankment, push his white hat off his forehead and begin his head-bowed trek back up the road. She listened, could hear no waves this end. Directing the camera towards the sea she saw that hardly a ripple disturbed its azure sheen. When she turned the camera back to the road Awen was but a small distant figure stepping jerkily through the heat lines.
Tevor Cade had made his daily report, the Nautili’s hourly transmission continuing as before; the police’s third patrol of that day had made their similarly negative report; night had come and still Awen had not returned. Worried that he might, in the almost total darkness of the planet’s night, walk past the cabins, Tulla sat on the warm stones of the embankment to await him.
She alternately gazed up at the flickering stars, peered down the dark gully of the road. Eventually the grey shadow of Awen’s white hat came at a steady nod up that road.
Tulla pityingly watched his weary approach. His pace unaltered, he drew level with her. She called out to him, her voice a soft glow in the darkness. After several hesitant steps he stopped, turned slowly to face her. Mouth agape he looked up at her, then, lowering his head, he began climbing the embankment. He crawled the last few meters.
On reaching the top he groaning got to his feet and, reeling like a drunk, staggered down the hollow to his cabin. Following concernedly Tulla saw him, through the open door, grope his way across the cabin, shedding cameras as he went, saw him perfunctorily test the screens for night viewing. Fat-fingered he slotted in files, then dizzily tottered back onto his bunk. Tulla quietly closed his cabin door and, shaking her head, went to her own cabin.
The following morning, when Tulla looked into his cabin, Awen was still sprawled asleep, a half empty water jug beside his bunk. The Spokesman delivered her machines that day.
Glad of something to do she set about pressing on with her astrophysical research, picking up threads where she had left them when Happiness’s moon had so disconcertingly disappeared. The police patrols reported to her and, late that afternoon, she became aware of noises from the other cabin; but she was busy. At dusk Awen, in a clean tunic, banged on her cabin door and invited her to eat with him. She was wearing a. loose red robe loaned her by the Spokesman’s wife. Over the meal Awen and Tulla talked in general terms of themselves and their work. Later Awen, stiff from the previous day’s travails, rose to check the night cameras at the ends of the road. At that point Tulla left for her cabin to continue with her work.
Thereafter their days settled into a pattern — Awen in his cabin spending most of the daylight hours over his editor or swinging the remote control cameras about at either end of the road; Tulla, in her cabin, catching up on her astrophysical survey. Awen called on her to hear the police patrol reports, went with her to meet Jorge and the Spokesman. The Spokesman, or his wife, usually brought Tulla and Awen a local dish or delicacy. They discussed the merits of these novelties when they shared their evening meal. They also talked of what the road hoped to achieve, of Tulla’s dream of helping the Nautili move to planets new. They also got into the habit, after their midday meal, of sitting awhile on the embankment and staring in opposite directions
down the road.
On their fifth evening alone there, the day after Constable Drin Ligure had interviewed Belid Keal, Awen showed Tulla his film of the amphibious apes, his conversations with the Senate Member for South Five. Much that the Senate Member had said about Nautili Tulla hadn’t known. Dismayed by her ignorance, by the decisions she had made, she left Awen’s cabin thoughtful that evening. Long after she had taken herself to bed she reassured herself that the road was still viable.
After their midday meal the next day, sitting a few paces apart on the embankment, Awen looked over to Tulla and said,
“How does a man go about making love to you?” Tulla smiled beatifically on him.
“With poetry,” she said. Awen solemnly nodded, returned to looking down the road. He left soon afterwards for his cabin. That evening they again ate in his cabin.
“I’ve got something to show you,” he said after their meal, told her to make herself comfortable. “This won me a prize,” He put on a film, settled himself near her.
The film was of a city street. A dark street. Slowly a man came walking down that street. From his tread, from his posture, he looked a tired man, a man prematurely aged by cares. The man went into an apartment. The street was deserted again. A light went on in the window of another apartment block. Nothing else happened. Yet the street held a sense of excitement, of tension. The same door opened and a woman screamed. The film ended.
“Were they actors?” Tulla asked Awen.
“Real,” Awen said. “What makes it exciting is the almost inaudible row going on in that apartment. The noise is near subliminal. Fascinating eh? But,” he grinned at her, “is it poetry?”
“Dramatic,” Tulla mirrored his grin. “Poetry though...?”
“Right then, look at this.” Another film was slotted home.
Tulla was looking at a familiar door. The door is pulled open from within and Tulla was looking at herself looking anxiously around the large ginger head of Inspector Eldon Boone. The door closes. Now a plane, straggly jungle beyond its silver fuselage, herself getting out of the plane, glancing inquisitively into the camera, then purposefully ignoring it. The camera follows her. She is broad seen from behind.
