by Patty Jansen
I had never been able to share the White-class people’s disregard for this group. Because there were so many of them, these were the people who would ultimately seal the fate of the world, I had no doubt about that. Even though they needed to prove themselves worthy before they could vote—and as a consequence most didn’t.
But it would be a lie to say that the army of unfamiliar people watching us didn’t make me a bit nervous. They weren’t hostile at all, but they weren’t overly friendly either, and we dressed and acted like White-class people even if we were not. If the White-class were indifferent to gamra, the Blue class were often openly hostile, even if only because they would never be able to afford travel off Earth.
And here they stood, mesmerised by a couple of curious Pengali.
Ynggi was still testing the drum, and Abri dragged one of her drums closer to him. Then he took off his coat. His tail came free and went up into the air. He took off his jumper, and his shirt. A couple of street lamps lit the area, and his giraffe patterns stood out in the neon light.
By now, people were calling for others to come and watch.
Lastly, Ynggi kicked off his shoes and stepped out of his trousers. He wore the traditional Pengali belt with the teeth and stones and other trophies dangling from it, with his glass-stone knife. It looked impressive, but I hoped he wasn’t going to be too cold.
He picked up a pair of drum sticks from a bag near the xylophone and, watched by everyone in the square, hit the drum in the traditional betanka rhythm: one low beat, two high, one low and one high, three—two, three—two or the other way around.
Kita added to the rhythm by beating a stick on the keys of the xylophone.
Abri produced her dyenka pipe, which was a type of wind instrument with a mellow tone, where one could play two-tone melodies by humming into the instrument. She always carried one on her tribal belt.
Apart from the vital part of the betanka leader—the one who played the drum—all betanka music was improvised. It was traditionally how Pengali unwound and processed the happenings of the day. It could be how arguments were fought out, how new people were introduced and tasks assigned. Sung betanka was more formal than instrumental parts, and they had different rhythms associated with them. Washing Stones tribe betanka was different from Thousand Island tribe betanka, and both of those were different from urban betanka, especially if non-Pengali were involved.
The Africans in the forecourt watched, and then they started clapping, and dancing.
And I hadn’t realised how much betanka and its five-beat structure was part of Barresh. Every official document, official building, every council uniform bore the five-pointed star. Nothing was symmetrical, and the three—two grouping was extremely common, from the way council committees were structured to the way houses were built.
Betanka as a form of music was everywhere in the background, like annoying muzak that you could not turn off.
One thing about betanka was that everyone took part. Idda jumped from her mother’s shoulder—dressed in her bright orange gear, and climbed on top of the big drum, where she jumped around, producing an arrhythmic thumping.
Kita plucked her off the drum—where she was at risk of being hit by Ynggi’s sticks—but she wouldn’t keep off.
“Here, give her to me.” I held out my arms.
Idda was happy to sit in the warmth under my coat, her little hands clinging onto my shirt. She was awake and alert, looking around with wide eyes at the goings-on.
Ynggi gestured for the African drummers to join him.
They took a bit to get used to the unusual asymmetric rhythm, but when they got it, others joined in, or they clapped or banged bottles and sticks together.
The group grew ever bigger. A couple of police officers came to have a look. They didn’t clap and dance, but couldn’t stand still either.
Kita gave me a big can to beat the rhythm and even Veyada took part. Idda escaped from under my jacket and danced on the rim of the fountain, her tail waving in the air. She clapped her hands. People laughed at her, and she did look silly in her orange beanie and too-big jumper. Her mother stood next to her, so I judged that she would be safe.
Without speaking a single word, the Pengali had the whole group dancing and playing.
I took the opportunity to do some sleuthing. I quietly slunk into the camp, into the darker alleys between the tents where the light from the lamps didn’t reach. Here, people sat in little pools of light cast by solar jars, which produced an eerie greenish glow similar to the light pearls in keihu houses.
The people who had stayed behind, who were not clapping and dancing, were the very old and very young and the incapable.
An African man I judged to be in his thirties sat in the entrance to a tent in a ratty old wheelchair. His trouser legs were folded under him from the knee down. It was cold, but he wore a singlet and sleeveless jacket, which showed his healthy arms—black-skinned and rippling with muscles. A poster that stood next to him said: “Have you seen my brother?”
The photo showed a young man with smiling eyes. Judging by the collar on his shirt, he was wearing a school uniform and looked sixteen or seventeen.
The man eyed me sideways, and I felt terribly awkward. Here I was, incredibly rich in his eyes, a traveller of the universe. I claimed to care about the poor people of all worlds and I didn’t believe that to be untrue, but I knew nothing about the harsh lives of these people and I was unsure of what to say to him, because I didn’t want to say anything that would sound belittling, insulting or flippant.
“How long have you been camping out here for?” That was a neutral enough question.
He counted on his fingers. The black skin on the back of his hands had big patches of pink, lacking pigment.
“Two weeks now, mister.”
“Have you spoken to the people you came here to see?”
He laughed. His mouth was missing several teeth. “They don’t want to hear my story, mister. We come here so that the fancy news people hear what we got to say. That evil man is not going to end up in jail and is not going to be paying us any money unless we make a big stink, because no one here cares about us.”
“I care about you. Tell me your story, then. Sorry, what is your name?”
“Charlie, mister.”
“I’m Cory Wilson.”
His eyes widened. “You’re kidding. Mr Wilson who travels to all them planets and makes all them aliens listen to us?”
Well . . . not quite. Not quite sure where he got that idea. “I am here with some of the folk who are telling their stories of mistreatment to the court. I would like other stories to be heard as well.”
He laughed again. “We should be so lucky. If we was aliens, maybe they’d listen to us. But we got no money and no other flashy things. We’re just dirty old poor people. No one wants to know about us.”
“You can tell me why you’re here.”
“See him here, mister?” He gestured at the photo of the schoolboy. “He’s my brother. His name is Jacko. He was born with the skinny sickness and when he was ten, people came into the village and gave him medicines to make him better. You know of the skinny sickness, mister?”
I had to admit I didn’t.
“It came from monkeys, they said. Like we were monkeys. Like there even are any monkeys where we live, mister.” He gave me an angry look. “Anyway, my brother, he got better and he got to go to school, because they said he had to because they made him better. He wasn’t really better because he still needed the medicines, but they were giving him what he needed the whole time, and asking him questions about it, and making him do things. They were always these foreign men who would pick him up from home and take him to school. I was asking what they wanted, but they said nothing. I don’t know if they could even understand me. And then one day he never came home.”
He looked up at me, spreading his hands.
“He just . . . didn’t come home.” His voice wobbled.
“I’m
sure you looked for him?”
“Oh hell, yeah, mister! I knew there was a house in town where these foreign men would stay so I went there. I had to do favours for a friend who had a car because you know how hard it is to get around when you use crutches? They said at that place that they didn’t know my brother. And I told them he came here a lot, and then they said they knew no such person. And I got really angry and pushed this nurse aside and went into the building looking for him. I don’t see him anywhere, but there were lots of people in beds. They were all just sitting there, staring as if they were dumbstruck. I knew one of them, I asked what he was doing there, but he didn’t even say hello. Some were attached to machines next to the bed.”
“Like heart monitors with screens where you can see the pulse?”
“No, not like that. Big machines that had a thing that you can put on someone’s head.”
“Like a helmet?”
“Yes, like that.”
I had no idea what sort of thing he could have seen, but I couldn’t say I liked the sound of this.
“Did you see what they were using those machines for?”
“No.”
“Did those people tell you?”
“They weren’t saying anything. They were like dumbstruck, as if I wasn’t even there. But I wasn’t in there for long, because the guards threw me out. Broke my crutches and my hip, and then I had to get my legs taken off.”
That was strange. And chilling. It reminded me of another situation where I had walked through an entire ship full of people asleep. Why would they do this for any reason other than to run some sort of foul experiment on people?
“Did those foreigners ever come back?”
“They haven’t yet. I tried to go back to that house, and I took some friends because the police wouldn’t come, but I couldn’t use my crutches anymore and it’s hard to go places in the chair. Not here. This is easy.” To demonstrate, he wheeled the chair back and forth.
“Does it commonly happen that people disappear?”
“All around where I live, mister. They’re always the people that have sicknesses. The foreigners come and tell them that they can get free doctors and free medicines and that’s why they go. Because we have no medicines and no doctors. We have no money. People go with the foreigners because they’re desperate. Then they disappear. Sometimes we hear that they’ve got to other countries, but mostly they just disappear.”
While we were talking, another man had arrived. He was not African, but fairly dark-skinned, small and lean of statue. His clothes were clean and well-cut, his eyes clear and intelligent. Compared to the other people he looked, and I hated to say this, well-off and educated. Someone with a WHITE tag.
I acknowledged him with a nod.
“Mr Wilson, my name is Dharma Yuwono.” He stopped as if that name was supposed to mean something to me. It didn’t.
I was getting to the stage where I felt terribly embarrassed by these people. I was supposed to know what skinny sickness was and maybe I was supposed to recognise this man’s name. Maybe I was even supposed to know the name of Charlie’s village because it had been mentioned on the news that I never watched because I no longer belonged on this earth.
“I’m very sorry but I don’t recognise—”
“Gus’ husband.”
Oh damn, make the embarrassment complete.
He continued, “That is the tragic truth in this story. Robert Davidson and the court have made this trial about Robert Davidson. A man was killed. His family—me, his sister, his mother and father—are not allowed to attend the court, because we question the practices of the Pretoria Cartel in attempting to influence the judges.”
“I was told Gusamo’s brother is here.”
He snorted. “He let himself be bought by the cartel. It’s silence money. He asks none of the important questions. The good prosecutor got taken off the case, and now he is dead. The other people are all puppets.”
Except Lenka Trnkova. I hoped she had made it home safely.
“But you would surely want Robert in jail, which is what they want.”
“Not if it means that our concerns about the cartel’s treatment of its workers and corruption will be swept off the table and we will have to fight for years to get another cartel member to court again. That’s what they want: sacrifice Robert and get him convicted quickly. Allow him to serve his sentence as house arrest, so that everybody can go back to doing all the things they were doing before—including performing medical experiments on people in Africa and buying governments of countries that no one cares about, until they own Africa and much of southeast Asia, and they control the numbers in the Nations of Earth assembly. Who knows, that may already be the case.”
I looked from him—clean, well-spoken, healthy—to Charlie in his wheelchair and his missing teeth. My impression about Earth in one arresting image. I knew why the system of White and Blue classes had been instated: initially to help people after the war. To be given a Blue card meant that you qualified for greater levels of support services. The White card holders never qualified for any. It had gone from a simple classification to a deep rift in society. Rich and poor, divided across a deep gulf. There was no money, so the support services for the Blue card people dried up quickly. No one cared about the Blues, because they weren’t seen as contributing much to the world economy. These people were angry, and they had not been sitting at home doing nothing for the last twenty years. They had made deals with whoever wanted to help them.
Now it came back to bite Nations of Earth in the butt, and there was nothing anyone could do to fix it quickly.
Dharma continued, “The members of the cartel don’t want any of this to be revealed. Many people in affected countries don’t want to hear it. Their lives have improved, and while they care a bit about the people who go missing and other atrocities, they don’t want to go back to being poor and ill, so they’re not speaking out. Only those who have lost family members and those foolhardy enough to believe in justice speak up. That’s us, in this square here. There will be others across the city, across the world, but speaking out is dangerous, as Gus found out, as Dr Martens found out, as we could all find out at any moment.” He nodded at me. “You had better get out of here soon. They usually send in squads to shut us up and conduct a roll call every night. You don’t want to have it on your record that you were here.” He reached inside his jacket and gave me a card. “You can reach me here. Use the passcode on the back and set up your own access pass. We’re all there. Charlie and me and everyone here.”
“Thanks.” I stuck the card in my pocket.
A shout sounded behind me, and I noticed that while I had been talking, the atmosphere had changed. Where had all those police officers come from all of a sudden?
Some mingled with the crowd. Some stood in a line along the boundary between the forecourt and the street, where a handful of curious locals had come to look. It was not so much the regular police officers who worried me, but the people in armour with heavy-duty guns.
A group of them marched onto the forecourt, shouting for people to move aside. Many of the protesters grabbed their things and ran.
“I’m sorry. I’ll contact you later.” I pushed my way through the crowd to the fountain, where the music and dancing was still in full swing. I yelled, “Ynggi! Stop.”
But he didn’t hear me. Where was Veyada? Where was Evi?
One of the officers blew a whistle.
Ynggi gestured to him. Come and play!
I yelled again, “Ynggi, stop!” There were too many police here; this was going to end in trouble.
But he still didn’t hear me.
The police surrounded him and Abri, who were still playing, but who was starting to look rather alarmed. While most Africans had abandoned their drums, a few remained defiant and stuck with Ynggi. Betanka was not only improvised, it was mood music. Rather than melodic, with a melody you could sing, it reflected mood and tone, and Ynggi was hitting the giant,
noisy drum with increasing frequency and strength. The African drummers hit their bongo drums. The ground was vibrating with the thundering threat of a giant betanka orchestra.
“Ynggi, Ynggi!” I waved.
Finally, he stopped, and the Africans stopped drumming, too. They cast suspicious glances at the officers in armour, picked up their drums and took off.
A lot of other protesters had also retreated to the tents, where they formed a line of defence around their camp. Some carried sticks or brooms.
Whoa.
All of a sudden, the whole atmosphere had changed.
“Everyone calm down!” an officer called. “Line up starting here, so we can check your identification.”
I spotted Veyada in the crowd, with his hand under his jacket, where I had no doubt he carried his gun. Mine suddenly felt heavy in its harness.
I gestured to Ynggi to leave the drum. There was not much point in turning this into a bigger conflict than necessary.
“What do these people want?” Abri asked me. She sounded half-puzzled, half-outraged. One did not barge into a betanka and stop it.
“They say people have complained about the noise.”
“Pah! It’s time to play. What else do you do after dark? Work and play. These people don’t know how to live. I like the dark people.”
Kita waved her tail in agreement. Ynggi did the same. They liked the poor Africans, who were also repressed and ignored like the Pengali.
The police were now herding people back to the tents. A scuffle broke out at the edge of the camp.
Someone yelled, “Keep your hands off me, man!”
A police officer stumbled backwards. I said to Ynggi, “Careful.”
Veyada and Evi came through the crowd to join us.
Veyada said, “Devlin says there is a big group of these people in front of our accommodation.”
