“‘Pakeha’?”
“It’s the Maori word for anyone who isn’t Maori. Specifically it’s come to mean a white person, but I feel it applies just as well to the golden giants.”
“And you regard the golden giants as ‘insidious and destructive’. Some might find that a somewhat ... unusual view.”
“Not at all. As a matter of fact, I think you’ll find it’s quite a common and widely-held view. Not everyone is prepared to come out and say it as we Xenophobes are, but most people in their heart of hearts know it’s wrong the way we’ve let the Pakeha take over and dominate our world. It’s wrong that we invest so much time and effort in ensuring that they’re happy. It’s wrong that we’ve focused so much of our culture around them that, in our eagerness to please them, we’ve lost sight of our own best interests, and even of our own humanity. All of us, if we’re being honest with ourselves, feel that the adoration of Foreigners and all things Foreign-related has got out of hand, but because that’s an unfashionable sentiment, most of us are reluctant to voice it. What I’m saying is, there’s a huge silent majority out there who agree with the basic tenets of the Xenophobe movement, and in that respect, I feel that with my opinions I am merely the spokesperson for a vast, unseen legion. An ‘anti-Foreign legion’, if you will.”
“‘Dominate our world’. You think that’s something the Foreigners have set out to do deliberately?”
“Can you say that they haven’t?”
“They seem benevolent.”
“They do. Perhaps they themselves even think they’re benevolent. But then that’s the way with all colonialists. White Europeans in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries believed they were helping the ‘savages’ of the New World by making them wear clothing and learn the Bible. They probably even believed they were helping them by turning them into slaves and stealing their land and slaughtering them when they rebelled.”
“I take your point, but the comparison isn’t strictly accurate, is it? The Foreigners haven’t forced us to do anything we don’t want to do. No one makes Sirens sing for them. No one ordered us to build resort-cities.”
“Which merely renders our enslavement all the more shameful. We voluntarily put our necks in the collars. We held up our hands and asked for them to be manacled. Or should that be – ha ha – manufolded?”
“Then what about the obvious improvements the Foreigners have brought?”
“What about them?”
“We have endlessly renewable, non-polluting power sources.”
“Comp-res? Non-polluting? Noise is pollution. Besides, who knows if comp-res cells don’t have harmful by-products that we just don’t know about yet? We could be irreparably damaging our bodies every time we get in a vehicle or turn on a portable radio. Remember the saying about Greeks bearing gifts, Calliope.”
“I’ll choose not to take that as an insult.”
“Oh, it really wasn’t intended as one.”
“Anyway, I doubt you could disagree with the fact that the world now has an international political consensus of a kind that would have inconceivable before the Debut.”
“You know, someone else tried out that argument on me recently. Someone who’s utterly, unthinkingly in thrall to the Pakeha. And I’ll tell you what I told him. It’s not a consensus. We’ve just lulled ourselves into a false sense of security.”
“Meaning?”
“Some people claim that we’re living in a Golden Age. We aren’t. At best this is an Indian summer. Throughout history there have been eras like this. Uneventful interregnums. Outbreaks of peace and order and prosperity. Camelots. They never last. This one won’t, either. Soon enough, you mark my words, things will return to how they used to be.”
“And you’d be happy about that? You’d be happy to see the human race lapse back into its old ways – international hostility, corporate greed, systematic destruction of the environment?”
“I’m not saying any of those things are desirable, but they are human, and that’s what’s important. They’re natural, inevitable consequences of the human condition. Just as crime is a natural, inevitable consequence of the human condition. All crime, including murder, which is, don’t forget, as old as Cain. These things are a part of us, and by pretending the urge to steal or kill no longer exists we are limiting ourselves as human beings. We are limiting our spirit and making ourselves less than men.”
“Or more.”
“No, we can never be more than what we are. That’s an illusion, just as this whole ‘Golden Age’ is an illusion. An illusion like Christmas, with all the tinsel enthusiasm and artificial goodwill and camouflaged greed that that entails. Consensus and kindliness and orderliness, you see, Calliope, are simply not the human way. The absence of a necessary element of chaos in our lives causes tension, and since the Debut that tension has been bubbling away beneath the surface, buried, suppressed, unexpressed. The pressure has been building. The cracks, as we are seeing in this very city, are starting to show. And very soon, I feel, this whole charade of good behaviour we’ve been putting on is going to collapse and all manner of pent-up frustrations and desires and angers are going to emerge.”
“But this is my point, Toroa. You would welcome that?”
“I’d welcome it as a restoration of the proper order of things. Of course, given that nature’s way is for a situation to swing from one extreme to the other before equilibrium is achieved, I suspect that the transition back to our former state will be a difficult one, a violent one even, and not everyone will survive it. But in the long run, once the transitional state is over, life will be better for us all. Better as in more human.”
“That’s a very pessimistic outlook.”
“I disagree. I regard it as positive. Pessimism, anyway, is just another word for realism, and I’d rather be a realist than an optimist. The optimist is destined always to be disappointed.”
“And on that note, perhaps we can turn to the issue we’re concentrating on in this edition of Calliope. If you’ve just joined us, I’m talking to Toroa MacLeod, head of the New Venice Xenophobes, about the shinju murders that have rocked this city during the past week. Toroa, it’s become apparent that Triple-Xers –”
“If I can just stop you there a moment, Calliope. I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t use that word.”
“Which word?”
“Shinju. I know everyone’s using it as a convenient shorthand, but it’s racist, patronising, socially divisive, and strictly speaking inaccurate.”
“I see. What would you suggest I say instead?”
“You could call them ‘statements’. Or maybe ‘gestures’.”
“I take it you condone them, then.”
“Did I say that?”
“‘Statements’ would seem to imply that your regard them as a legitimate form of protest.”
“That, Calliope, is your view.”
“But Triple-X has traditionally been regarded as an adjunct of the Xenophobe movement, its militant wing. It stands to reason that you might not disapprove of what they get up to.”
“How so?”
“Well, Triple-X is sort of the hammer of the movement, isn’t it? The blunt tool that gets results when fine words don’t.”
“Not a description I would necessarily agree with.”
“Have you ever met a Triple-Xer?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“But you might have.”
“You know, Calliope, if I wasn’t such a fan of your show and didn’t know better, I’d say you were working your way towards accusing me of being an accessory to these acts.”
“Not at all.”
“I should hope not. In fact, while I’m here, I’d like to state for the record that neither I nor any Xenophobe resident in this city has any knowledge of the identities or whereabouts of the perpetrators of these deeds. A fact the Foreign Policy Police seemed unable to grasp yesterday when they unceremoniously and unConstitutionally arrested us and held us in t
heir cells.”
“Yes, I understand you’ve lodged a complaint with the FPP Council. Why the Council? Why not Commissioner Quesnel?”
“Quesnel sanctioned the arrests. I can only assume she also sanctioned the way we were treated by her officers in the cells – subjected to an intense interrogation and exposed to abuse and violence. So what good would complaining to her do?”
“Abuse and violence? A lot of people would have a hard time believing that of the FPP.”
“A lot of people underestimate the depth of resentment among FPP officers towards Xenophobes.”
“But don’t you feel the FPP had some justification for bringing you in?”
“What justification? Because Triple-X has some notional affiliation with Xenophobia? No, the way I see it, harassing Xenophobes has become an accepted FPP tactic. It happened at Koh Farang, now it’s happened here. If there’s trouble in a resort-city, blame the Xenophobes. And that’s victimisation, pure and simple.”
“But why would the FPP wish to victimise you?”
“The FPP can’t stand us because we’re a dissenting voice, because we upset the consensus that they’re so keen to maintain and that they, more than anyone else, represent. So if they have an opportunity to make us look like villains, they take it. They round us up and then later they release us. ‘Oh sorry, our mistake.’ Meanwhile, the damage to our reputation has been done. But the thing is, the public at large are cleverer than that. They know that if the authorities are trying to smear you, then what you have to say must be worth listening to.”
“You mentioned Koh Farang. Do you see other parallels between that situation and this one?”
“Of course. Here, as there, someone wants the Pakeha to leave. And their plan – these people, whoever they are – appears to be working. What was the percentage drop recorded on Sunday? It was on the news this morning.”
“Thirteen per cent.”
“And on Saturday it was ten. Word is spreading among the Pakeha.”
“And if the shinjus – forgive me, if the ‘statements’ stop, do you think Foreigners will start coming back?”
“Who knows? Though if Koh Farang is anything to go by, the answer is no.”
“You don’t seem entirely displeased.”
“I’m a Xenophobe. One day I hope to see the world completely liberated from the influence of the Pakeha. If they abandon New Venice, as they may well, then I can hardly look at it as anything other than a step in the right direction, can I?”
“And I’m afraid that’s where we’re going to have to leave it for now. A controversial viewpoint. Some might say a pragmatic one as well. Toroa MacLeod, thank you very much.”
“A pleasure, Calliope.”
“After the break, a vox pop from the plazas, and then an expert on the Foreign Policy Constitution gives us his verdict on how the FPP is handling the crisis and what steps they might take to bring it to a speedy resolution. Calliope – in tune with public opinion. We’ll be back in just a few short minutes. Keep watching!”
And most viewers did as Calliope commanded, but Parry was not among them. He stabbed the remote control’s Off button in disgust and sat there staring at the pearlescent blankness of the wallscreen, upon which an afterimage of MacLeod’s face hovered, picked out in retinal shades of red and yellow, riven with tattoo lines like the visage of some gloating, scarified demon.
He felt sick. Sick and resentful. Granted, Calliope had tackled MacLeod with, for her, an unaccustomed incisiveness. Normally she spent her interviews agreeing with her guests and offering them gentle, leading questions that allowed them to say nothing more than they had come there to say. With MacLeod, apart from that initial compliment, she had been atypically challenging (hinting, perhaps, at a certain depth of dislike on her part). Yet it had not been enough. A more stringent interviewer would have torn holes in MacLeod’s arguments. Calliope, for all her best efforts, had allowed him to emerge looking justified and – worse – plausible. He had done damage. He knew it. Parry knew it. The wound inflicted on New Venice by the shinjus had just been aggravated.
But was it a mortal wound?
Parry’s father, that builder of cars, that mender of musical boxes, that occasional dancer of deliriously daft dances, used to have a saying: “There’s nothing that isn’t fixable.” It was a motto the old man had been able to apply to almost anything, from a rust-locked mainspring to a boy’s broken collarbone to a hostile international dispute, and it was the closest he ever came to an expression of life-philosophy. Whatever went wrong was never irreparably wrong. Right up until his death, this belief had kept him cheerful in spite of any obstacles fate had put in his way, and after he was gone Parry had felt that the onus was now on him, as though a mantle were being passed on between the generations, to keep the paternal flame of optimism burning. This had not been easy at first, since he was innately of a cynical disposition (something that suited him for, and was fostered by, a career in the police, since it brought him repeatedly into contact with the worst elements of society). Not only that but the death of his father was in itself the ultimate disproof of the old man’s upbeat creed, for here was something that was resolutely not fixable. Here was an absence in Parry’s life that would not be filled in. Here was a pain of grief that would not, it seemed, ever mend.
His mother’s illness and death, following on so soon after, did little to change his mind. During that embattled, embittered year, which fell between the year of the Hunger Riots and the year of the Debut, Parry became convinced that his father had been mistaken, perhaps even deluded. Nothing was fixable. Life was a series of accumulating losses which could never be recovered, which could only be adjusted to and tolerated. The future was decay. Humankind was damned.
The arrival of the Foreigners changed all that, confirming at a stroke that his father had been correct all along. A man’s soul could be purged. An entire planet could be redeemed. Finally Parry was able to embrace his father’s creed wholeheartedly, and it felt like discovering a beaten-up old radio whose batteries should have run down years ago and switching it on and finding that yes, by God, it still worked, the music coming through loud and clear.
Quietly, without making a great fuss about it, without proselytising, he had lived thereafter by his faith in the fixability of things. And now that faith, that armour against the slings and arrows, was all but eaten away. The shinju investigation had acted on it like dripping acid, and MacLeod’s performance on Calliope provided the final corrosive trickle, penetrating through.
Going to his home board, Parry sat down, slapped on his reading spectacles, called up mail-composition mode, and set about drafting a letter of resignation.
Even as he typed in Dear Commissioner Quesnel, he could scarcely believe what he was doing. His nerves shrilled with abhorrence, but the abhorrence served only to confirm the rightness of the action. He could never have tendered his resignation casually. It was meant to be hard to do, therefore he must be doing the correct thing.
In the event, he did not get any further with the letter than those first three words. While he was deliberating over the phrasing of his opening sentence, the doorbell buzzed, announcing not only a visitor but – though Parry had no way of realising it then – the start of a process whereby his father’s dictum would prove to have some value in it yet.
35. Incidental
“YOSHI. THIS IS a bit of a surprise.”
Hosokawa bobbed his head briefly, nervously. “I would not have troubled you at home, sir, but you weren’t at HQ today and...” The sentence trailed off. Hosokawa seemed unable to meet Parry’s gaze. A minute earlier, on the condominium’s front doorstep, he had likewise been unable to meet the gaze of the entry-intercom camera.
“Well, what is it?” On any other day Parry would have been more patient. He would have waited until Hosokawa was ready to say what he had to say. On any other day.
“I shouldn’t have come.” Hosokawa manufolded APOLOGY and started back towards the apart
ment door.
Parry felt a pricking of conscience. Lack of charity, though under the present circumstances understandable, was never forgivable. “No, wait. Hold on. If there’s something you want to talk about...”
Hosokawa slowly halted. Without turning round, he said, “I was told you’re not feeling well. I’m embarrassed that I came here without calling first. This could perhaps wait till tomorrow.”
The perhaps told Parry that it could not. “No time like the present. Can I get you something to drink?”
“No, thank you.”
“Then shall we sit?” Parry steered Hosokawa by the shoulder into the centre of the living room, away from the vicinity of his home board. The words Dear Commissioner Quesnel were still onscreen, and he did not want to risk Hosokawa catching sight of them, even though the young man would probably not guess what they implied.
Seated, Hosokawa fidgeted and cogitated for a full minute before finally he spoke again. “Things are getting bad, aren’t they?”
“You mean New Venice? You could say that.”
“A week ago, this hardly seemed possible. Foreigners leaving. Sirens, too. Do you think, sir, that it’s gone too far to reverse?”
“It may have,” Parry admitted, reluctantly. “Even if by some miracle we find these Triple-Xers before they strike again, I don’t know. Once the Foreigners have got it into their heads to go, how can we stop them?” He sighed, not expecting the exhalation to sound so shaky. “But I’m sure you’ll be able to find employment elsewhere, if that’s what you’re worried about. Smart young fellow like you – shouldn’t be a problem.”
“No, sir, really, I’m not concerned about that at all. It’s just...” A kind of spasm passed across Hosokawa’s face, as though he had suffered a twinge of arthritic pain. He looked across at Parry, at last staring directly at him. “Captain, it’s not my place to say this, but I’m aware how this shinju business has been affecting you. I don’t normally pay attention to rumours, but it’s been going around at HQ that you were in a fight a couple of nights ago and that you and Captain van Wyk have clashed quite seriously.”
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