“Sir Bernard mentioned a spaceship.” I was not looking forward to her reply.
“Oh, dear, yes,” she said. “The flying-saucer people. I think one day they will bring us peace, don’t you? I mean one way or another. This is better than death for me, at any rate, Paul. But perhaps they have a purpose for us. Perhaps an unpleasant one. I don’t think anybody would rule that out. What could we do if that were the case? Introduce a spy? That has not proved a successful strategy. We know that much, sadly. It’s as if all that’s left of Time is here. A few shreds from a few ages.”
Again I was completely nonplussed and said nothing.
“I think you share Sir B’s streak of pessimism. Or realism is it?”
“Well, we’re rather different, actually . . .” I began to feel foolish.
“He was happier as Ambassador, you know. Before the U.N. And then we were both content to retire here. We’d always loved it. The Fayeds had us out here lots of times, for those odd parties. We were much younger. You probably think we’re both barking mad.” When I produced an awkward reply she was sympathetic. “There is something happening here. It’s a centre. You can feel it everywhere. It’s an ideal place. Possibly we shall be the ones left to witness the birth of the New Age.”
At that moment all I wished to do was save my sister from that atmosphere of half-baked mysticism and desperate faith, to get her back to the relative reality of London and a doctor who would know what was wrong with her and be able to treat it.
“Bea was never happier than when she was in Aswan, you know,” said Lady Roper.
“She wrote and told me as much.”
“Perhaps she risked a bit more than was wise. We all admire her for it. What I don’t understand is why she was so thick with Lallah Zenobia. The woman’s psychic, of course, but very unsophisticated.”
“You heard about the witness? About the purse?”
“Naturally.”
“And you, too, are sure it was a purse?”
“I suppose so. It’s Cairo slang, isn’t it, for a lot of money? The way the Greeks always say ‘seven years’ when they mean a long time has passed. Bernie’s actually ill, you realise? He’s coherent much of the time. A form of P.D., we were told. From the water when we were in Washington. He’s determined to make the best of it. He’s sweet, isn’t he?”
“He’s an impressive man. You don’t miss England?”
She offered me her hand. “Not a bit. You’re always welcome to stay if you are bored over there. Or the carping materialism of the Old Country gets to you. Simplicity’s the keynote at the Rose House. Bernie says the British have been sulking for years, like the Lost Boys deprived of their right to go a-hunting and a-pirating at will. I’m afraid, Paul, that we don’t think very much of home any more.”
8 And All These in Their Helpless Days . . .
The great Egyptian sun was dropping away to the horizon as, in the company of some forty blue-cowled Islamic schoolgirls and a bird-catcher, I sailed back to the East. Reflected in the Nile the sky was the colour of blood and saffron against every tone of dusty blue; the rocks, houses and palms dark violet silhouettes, sparkling here and there as lamps were lit, signalling the start of Aswan’s somewhat orderly nightlife. Near the landing stage I ate some mulakhiya, rice and an antique salad at Mahommeds’ Cafetria, drank some mint tea and went back to the Osiris, half expecting to find that my sister had left word, but the Hindu woman had no messages and handed me my key with a quick smile of encouragement.
I slept poorly, kept awake by the constant cracking of a chemical “equaliser” in the basement and the creak of the all but useless wind-generator on the roof. It was ironic that Aswan, so close to the source of enormous quantities of electricity, was as cruelly rationed as everyone.
I refused to believe that my sister, who was as sane as I was and twice as intelligent, had become entangled with a black-magic flying-saucer cult. Her only purpose for associating with such people would be curiosity, perhaps in pursuit of some anthropological research connected with her work. I was, however, puzzled by her secrecy. Clearly, she was deliberately hiding her whereabouts. I hoped that, when I returned the next day, I would know where she was.
My meetings were predictably amiable and inconsequential. I had arrived a little late, having failed to anticipate the levels of security at the dam. There were police, militia and security people everywhere, both on the dam itself and in all the offices and operations areas. I had to show my pass to eleven different people. The dam was under increased threat from at least three different organisations, the chief being Green Jihad. Our main meetings were held in a large, glass-walled room overlooking the lake. I was glad to meet so many staff, though we all knew that any decisions about the dam would not be made by us but by whoever triumphed in the Geneva negotiations. It was also good to discover that earlier attitudes towards the dam were changing slightly and new thinking was being done. Breakfasted and lunched, I next found myself guest of honour at a full-scale Egyptian dinner which must have taken everyone’s rations for a month, involved several entertainments and lastly a good deal of noisy toasting, in cokes and grape juice, our various unadmired leaders.
At the Hotel Osiris, when I got back that night, there was no note for me so I decided next day to visit the old vacation villas before lunching as arranged at the Cataract with Georges Abidos, who had told me that he was retiring as Public Relations officer for the dam. I had a hunch that my sister was probably living with the neo-hippies. The following morning I ordered a calash to pick me up and sat on the board beside the skinny, cheerful driver as his equally thin horse picked her way slowly through busy Saturday streets until we were on the long, cracked concrete road with the railway yards on one side and the river on the other, flanked by dusty palms, which led past the five-storey Moorish-style vacation complex, a tumble of typical tourist architecture of the kind once found all around the Mediterranean, Adriatic and parts of the Black and Red Seas. The white stucco was patchy and the turquoise trim on window-frames and doors was peeling, but the new inhabitants, who had occupied it when the Swedish owners finally abandoned it, had put their stamp on it. Originally the place had been designed for Club Med, but had never sustained the required turnover, even with its special energy dispensations, and had been sold several times over the past ten years. Now garishly dressed young squatters from the wealthy African countries, from the Australias, North and South America, as well as Europe and the Far East, had covered the old complex with their sometimes impressive murals and decorative graffiti. I read a variety of slogans. LET THE BLOOD CONSUME THE FIRE, said one. THE TYGERS OF THE MIND RULE THE JUNGLE OF THE HEART, said another. I had no relish for such undisciplined nonsense and did not look forward to meeting the occupants of this bizarre New New Age fortress. Psychedelia, even in its historical context, had never attracted me.
As I dismounted from the calash I was greeted by a young woman energetically cleaning the old Club Med brass plate at the gate. She had those startling green eyes in a dark olive skin which one frequently comes across everywhere in Egypt and are commonly believed to be another inheritance from the Pharaonic past. Her reddish hair was braided with multicoloured ribbons and she wore a long green silk smock which complemented her eyes.
“Hi!” Her manner was promiscuously friendly. “I’m Lips. Which is short for Eclipse, to answer your question. Don’t get the wrong idea. You’re here to find a relative, right?” Her accent was Canadian with a trace of something else, possibly Ukrainian. “What’s your name?”
“Paul,” I said. “My sister’s called Bea. Are the only people who visit you trying to find relatives?”
“I just made an assumption from the way you look. I’m pretty good at sussing people out.” Then she made a noise of approving excitement. “Bea Porcupine, is it? She’s famous here. She’s a healer and an oracle. She’s special.”
“Could you take me to her apartment?” I did my best not to show impatience with the girl’s nonsense.
“Lips” answered me with a baffled smile. “No. I mean, sure I could take you to one of her rooms. But she’s not here now.”
“Do you know where she went?”
The girl was vaguely apologetic. “Mercury? Wherever the ship goes.”
My irritation grew more intense. But I controlled myself. “You’ve no idea when the ship gets back?”
“Now? Yesterday? There’s so much time-bending involved. No. You just have to hope.”
I walked past her into the complex.
9 Fast Closing Toward the Undelighted Night . . .
By the time I had spoken to a dozen or so enfants des fleurs I had found myself a guide who introduced himself as Magic Mungo and wore brilliant face-paint beneath his straw hat. He had on an old pair of glitterjeans which whispered and flashed as he walked. His jacket announced in calligraphic Arabic phonetic English: the name is the game. He was probably no older than thirteen. He asked me what I did and when I told him he said he, too, planned to become an engineer “and bring back the power.” This amused me and restored my temper. “And what will you do about the weather?” I asked.
“It’s not the weather,” he told me, “not Nature—it’s the ships. And it’s not the dam, or the lake, that’s causing the storms and stuff. It’s the Reens.”
I misheard him. I thought he was blaming the Greens. Then I realised, belatedly, that he was expressing a popular notion amongst the New New Agers, which by the time I had heard it several times more had actually begun to improve my mood. The Reens, the flying-saucer people, were used by the hippies as an explanation for everything they couldn’t understand. In rejecting Science, they had substituted only a banal myth. Essentially, I was being told that the gods had taken my sister. In other words they did not know where she was. At last, after several further short but keen conversations, in various rug-strewn galleries and cushion-heavy chambers smelling strongly of kif, incense and patchouli, I met a somewhat older woman, with grey streaks in her long black hair and a face the colour and texture of well-preserved leather.
“This is Ayesha.” Mungo gulped comically. “She-who-must-be-obeyed!” He ran to the woman who smiled a perfectly ordinary smile as she embraced him. “We encourage their imaginations,” she said. “They read books here and everything. Are you looking for Bea?”
Warily expecting more Reen talk, I admitted that I was trying to find my sister.
“She went back to Aswan. I think she was at the medrassah for a bit—you know, with the Sufi—but after that she returned to town. If she’s not there, she’s in the desert again. She goes there to meditate, I’m told. If she’s not there, she’s not anywhere. Around here, I mean.”
I was relieved by the straightforward nature of her answer. “I’m greatly obliged. I thought you, too, were going to tell me she was taken into space by aliens!”
Ayesha joined in my amusement. “Oh, no, of course not. That was more than a year ago!”
10 Thoughts of Too Old a Colour Nurse My Brain
I decided to have a note delivered to the Sufi, El Haj Ibrahim Abu Halil, telling him that I planned to visit him next day, then, with a little time to spare before my appointment, I strolled up the corniche, past the boat-ghetto at the upper end, and along the more fashionable stretches where some sporadic attempt was made to give the railings fresh coats of white paint and where a kiosk, closed since my first time here, advertised in bleached Latin type the Daily Telegraph, Le Monde and the New York Herald-Tribune. A few thin strands of white smoke rose from the villages on Elephantine Island; and from Gazirat-al-Bustan, Plantation Island, whose botanical gardens, begun by Lord Kitchener, had long since mutated into marvellously exotic jungle, came the laughter of the children and teenagers who habitually spent their free days there.
Outside the kiosk stood an old man holding a bunch of faded and ragged international newspapers under one arm and El Misr under the other. “All today!” he called vigorously in English, much as a London coster shouted “All fresh!” A professional cry rather than any sort of promise. I bought an El Misr, only a day old, and glanced at the headlines as I walked up to the park. There seemed nothing unusually alarming in the paper. Even the E.C. rate had not risen in the last month. As I tried to open the sheet a gust came off the river and the yellow-grey paper began to shred in my hands. It was low-density recyke, unbulked by the sophisticated methods of the West. Before I gave up and dumped the crumpled mess into the nearest reclamation bin I had glimpsed references to the UNEC conference in Madagascar and something about examples of mass hysteria in Old Paris and Bombay, where a group called Reincarnation was claiming its leader to be a newly born John Lennon. There were now about as many reincarnated Lennons abroad as there had been freshly risen Christs in the early Middle Ages.
I stopped in the park to watch the gardeners carefully tending the unsweet soil of the flower-beds, coaxing marigolds and nasturtiums to bloom at least for a few days in the winter, when the sun would not burn them immediately they emerged. The little municipal café was unchanged since British days and still served only ice creams, tea, coffee or soft-drinks, all of them made with non-rationed ingredients and all equally tasteless. Pigeons wandered hopelessly amongst the débris left by customers, occasionally pecking at a piece of wrapping or a sliver of Sustenance left behind by some poor devil who had been unable to force his stomach to accept the high-concentrate nutrients we had developed at UNEC for his benefit.
The Cataract’s entrance was between pillars which, once stately, Egyptianate and unquestionably European, were now a little the worse for wear, though the gardens on both sides of the drive were heavy with freshly planted flowers. Bougainvillaeas of every brilliant variety covered walls behind avenues of palms leading to a main building the colour of Nile clay, its shutters and ironwork a dark, dignified green, the kind of colour Thomas Cook himself would have picked to represent the security and solid good service which established him as one of the Empire’s noblest champions.
I walked into the great lobby cooled by massive carved mahogany punkahs worked on hidden ropes by screened boys. Egypt had had little trouble implementing many of the U.N.’s mandatory energy-saving regulations. She had either carried on as always or had returned, perhaps even with relief, to the days before electricity and gas had become the necessities rather than the luxuries of life.
I crossed the lobby to the wooden verandah where we were to lunch. Georges Abidos was already at our table by the rail looking directly over the empty swimming pool and, beyond that, to the river itself. He was drinking a cup of Lipton’s tea and I remarked on it, pointing to the label on the string dangling from his tiny metal pot. “Indeed!” he said. “At ten pounds the pot why shouldn’t the Cataract offer us Lipton’s, at least!” He dropped his voice. “Though my guess is the teabag has seen more than one customer through the day’s heat. Would you like a cup?”
I refused. He hadn’t, I said, exactly sold me on the idea. He laughed. He was a small, attractively ugly Greek from Alexandria. Since the flooding, he had been driven, like so many of his fellow citizens, to seek work inland. At least half the city had not been thought worth saving as the sea-level had steadily risen to cover it.
“Can’t you,” he asked, “get your American friends to do something about this new embargo? One misses the cigarettes and I could dearly use a new John B.” He indicated his stained Planter’s straw and then picked it up to show me the label on the mottled sweatband so that I might verify it was a genuine product of the Stetson Hat Co. of New Jersey. “Size seven and a quarter. But don’t get anything here. The Cairo fakes are very close. Very good. But they can’t fake the finish, you see.”
“I’ll remember,” I promised. I would send him a Stetson next time I was in the U.S.A.
I felt we had actually conducted our main business before we sat down. The rest of the lunch would be a social affair with someone I had known both professionally and as a close personal acquaintance for many years.
As our
mixed hors d’oeuvres arrived, Georges Abidos looked with a despairing movement of his mouth out towards the river. “Well, Paul, have you solved any of our problems?”
“I doubt it,” I said. “That’s all going on in Majunga now. I’m wondering if my function isn’t as some kind of minor smokescreen.”
“I thought you’d volunteered.”
“Only when they’d decided that one of us had to come. It was a good chance, I thought, to see how my sister was. I had spare relative allowance and lots of energy and travel owing, so I got her a flight out with me. It took for ever! But I grew rather worried. The last note I had from her was three months ago and very disjointed. It didn’t tell me anything. I’d guessed that her husband had turned up. It was something she said. That’s about all I know which would frighten her that much. My mistake, it’s emerged. Then I wondered if she wasn’t pregnant. I couldn’t make head nor tail of her letters. They weren’t like her at all.”
“Women are a trial,” said Georges Abidos. “My own sister has divorced, I heard. But then,” as if to explain it, “they moved to Kuwait.” He turned his eyes back to the river which seemed almost to obsess him. “Look at the Nile. An open sewer running through a desert. What has Egypt done to deserve rescue? She gave the world the ancestors who first offered Nature a serious challenge. Should we be grateful for that? From Lake Nasser to Alexandria the river remains undrinkable and frequently unusable. She once replenished the earth. Now, what with their fertilisers and sprays, she helps poison it.” It was as if all the doubts he had kept to himself as a publicity officer were now being allowed to emerge. “I listen to Blue Danube Radio from Vienna. The English station. It’s so much more reliable than the World Service. We are still doing less than we could, they say, here in Egypt.”
The tables around us had begun to fill with Saudis and wealthy French people in fashionable silk shifts, and the noise level rose so that it was hard for me to hear my acquaintance’s soft tones.
The Best of Michael Moorcock Page 41