Ati took his head in his hands and burst into tears. He was angry with himself, it was all his fault, he realized he had had a bad influence on Koa and yet had never even tried to curb his natural enthusiasm. Worse still, he had taken advantage of Koa’s naïveté, he’d encouraged him with all his speeches about good and evil, like some recruiting sergeant, like some dispenser of justice on a quest for truth. How could Koa have resisted? He was a born rebel, all he had needed was to find a cause.
Ati paced feverishly in the warehouse. He had located all the holes and interstices in the building’s sidings and at the slightest sound he would run from one to the other to try to see what was going on outside, ready to go to his hiding place if need be. On peering through the fanlight he saw a shadow behind the window of the little house across the way, the silhouette of a rather large woman. He got a shock because she was looking at him and pointing him out to someone standing behind her. He leapt back. He did what he could to put his mind at rest: it was just an impression, an optical illusion, he thought, the good mother was innocence made woman, she was going about her household chores, a reflection on the window of the fanlight had attracted her attention, or she was showing something to her baby to distract him, a funny cloud, a lizard running along the wall, a pigeon gently preening in a gutter on the warehouse.
Ati went back downstairs and locked himself in the storage room, trying to breathe deeply in order to still the pounding of his heart and overcome his fear. His spirits were aching and his body was a raw wound. Before long his breathing slowed, and he foundered in a deep lethargy.
And so he spent the day between nervous sleep, deep oblivion, and semi consciousness.
He woke as the day was ending, taking on the sad colors of twilight, and as the cracking sounds in the warehouse were turning sinister and getting louder. He tried to get up but his limbs would not obey him; he felt pins and needles all over, and his mind was blank, anesthetized by pain.
The moments ticked slowly by while in his head a faraway voice said over and over, tirelessly, Get up . . . get up . . . get up . . . get . . . Eventually it managed to touch a sensitive nerve and make contact, he opened his eyes slightly, and a bit of light entered his brain. A sharp, shooting pain radiated through his body, while the voice spoke ever more urgently: Get up . . . You’re alive, dammit . . . get ready.
With a jolt of determination he got up and began limping from one end of the warehouse to the other to rid his legs of the pins and needles and clear his head.
He filled his mind with nervous excitement by swallowing the entire jug of coffee left over from the night before all in one go. He needed to think; there was something fishy going on. Even several things.
He went back over the film of events. And for a start he saw how careless he and Koa had been. Of course it was obvious, after the fact—the Square of Supreme Faith was under high surveillance, with cameras everywhere and legions of guards and hyperattentive spies, what else did they expect, the site was hypersensitive. When, in addition, you got into the habit of living outside religion and the law, in a world that was steeped in tyranny and the most archaic forms of piety, you were bound to appear a little abnormal in the way you walked or spoke, it would be plain to see, plain to hear, it would disturb people, and from that point of view the two friends were as heretical as they came, and not at all law-abiding. And if on top of it you showed an interest in someone like Nas, whom special laws had placed among Abistan’s prime enemies, you were bound to appear suspect, and to find yourself branded as a great enemy of Abistan. That was the whole problem: was it because they looked exotic that the vendor of goods had noticed them and pointed them out to the patrol, to be on the safe side, so to speak, or had he denounced them because they were interested in Nas? In that case, there was a very significant question: how could a poor devil who lived off petty trafficking at the expense of the stupefying, sheeplike crowds who haunted the periphery of the City of God know about Nas? There weren’t many archeologists, and Nas was one civil servant among a hundred and fifty thousand agents in the Abigov. And what was even stranger: how could the vendor know that Nas was mixed up in a top-secret matter of State that might have had him arrested, killed, deported? Was the petty trafficker actually a top-ranking policeman or the head of something—a specialized cell of the Apparatus, an agency connected to some clan or other of the Just Brotherhood? Did he give an order to the patrol when he pointed out Ati and Koa, or did the guy act the flunkey to get some sort of favor from them? Or maybe he’d even been trailing them for a long time. Yes, he probably had . . . from the moment they left the warehouse . . . or even before, when they arrived at Toz’s place. Or when they were asking about Nas at the market by the mousehole . . . or before that, maybe others had spotted them, as they crossed Qodsabad, shadows had been relaying each other from neighborhood to neighborhood, all the way to the trafficker . . . Or even before then . . . for a very long time . . . since the time they went to the ghetto, they’d have been denounced by some auxiliary from the Guild or a Reg who occasionally worked for the AntiRegs . . . Or before that: where Ati was concerned, ever since he left the sanatorium and arrived back in Qodsabad . . . which might explain why he’d been given a position as a subsidiary civil servant and a lodging in a solid building . . . He remembered perfectly, the doctor had written, “Keep under close scrutiny,” and underlined it twice, at the bottom of his discharge papers. But the real question would not go away: who was Ati, in their opinion, to deserve so much surveillance, and why?
As for Koa, he must have been under surveillance from the day he left the family fold; his name made him an icon, a collector’s piece. He was a child of the System, and the System looks after its own. The guardian angels were all the more careful to cocoon him in that they knew he was turbulent, and full of fury against his family, while they all prospered from the reputation of the famous mockbi Kho.
It was all so patently clear, if only you opened your eyes; everything fit together perfectly.
Then suddenly an even more troubling question sprang to mind: how did Toz find out so quickly what had happened up by the City of God, since at the time only the protagonists were present, in other words Ati and Koa, the petty trafficker who had denounced them, and the patrol who had gone after them? Who had informed Toz, then? The denouncer or the patrol? How, and why? And if the point was to catch them or to kill them, why had they waited so long? And why now?
In fact, it could all be summed up in one question: Who was Toz, really?
Once it’s been turned on, there’s no stopping the doubt machine. In no time at all Ati found himself overwhelmed with a thousand unexpected questions. And suddenly he felt a chill down his spine because he was beginning to realize what all these questions implied: he would have to take important decisions and did not know which ones, nor whether he would have the strength and the courage to go through with them. Without Koa he was lost; for months now they’d shared everything, their lives and their information; they had reflected and acted together like indestructible twins. On his own he was severely disabled, incapable of understanding or of making a move.
And suddenly his doubts took another leap forward, completely unexpectedly, showing him that nothing was sacred, there were no exemptions, no exceptions, but this was simply inconceivable, it wasn’t allowed, Ati felt like throwing up, screaming, smashing his head against the wall . . . The nasty, insidious little voice was talking about Koa, his brother, his friend, his companion, his accomplice! He could hear the voice murmuring: “Who’s to say that the brilliant young man was not commissioned to win your friendship, which he managed to do, and brilliantly . . . ” But what would be the point, dammit? I’m nothing, I’m Ati, a poor devil who has one hell of a time just trying to live in this too perfect world . . . Why should I be worthy of the State or whoever it is devoting so much time and effort into watching me? So, nothing to say? “Ah, dear Ati, you’ve become so forgetful . . . Yet y
ou know why, you thought about it a lot when you were at the sanatorium, up there on the roof of the world . . . Time immemorial has gone by since the spirit of judgment and revolt disappeared from the earth, it was eradicated, and all that remains, floating above the swamps, is the rotten soul of submission and intrigue . . . Men are sleeping sheep, and they must stay that way, you mustn’t disturb them. Yet there in that scorched desert they call Abistan a little sprout of freedom has been growing in the feverish mind of an exhausted consumptive, and it can withstand cold and solitude and the unfathomable fear of heights, and in very little time it comes up with a thousand impious questions. Mind you, that’s what’s important, the exuberant nature of doubt and its counterparts, curiosity and challenge, all those questions you went around asking, that was just it, in a manner that was elusive or unspeaking but perfectly audible to people who had never asked questions, so their virgin ears were hypersensitive, and you went asking questions left and right, interrogative words and gazes, which those patients and nurses and pilgrims and caravan drivers and all the eavesdroppers standing by overheard and reported, while the bureau of surveillance scrupulously took note . . . not to forget the Vs, who day and night were raking through your brain. And they don’t go tearing it out right away, that mad weed—on the contrary, they are fascinated, they want to know what it is, where it came from, how far it can spread . . . Those who killed freedom don’t know what freedom is; in actual fact they are not as free as the people they gag and disappear . . . but at least they understood that they would never gain any understanding of freedom unless they left you free to move around, that they would learn while watching you learn . . . Do you realize, my friend, you have been the guinea pig for an extraordinary laboratory experiment: great tyranny is learning from you—a little nonentity of a man—learning what freedom is! It’s crazy! They’ll kill you in the end, of course; in their world freedom is a path to death, it goes against the grain, it’s disturbing, a sacrilege. Even for those who have absolute power, it is impossible to go back, they are prisoners of the System and of the myths they invented to dominate the world, they made them the jealous guardians of dogma, eager servants of the totalitarian machine.
“The most extraordinary thing in all this is that someday, somewhere at the heart of the Apparatus, someone—high up, obviously—while reading a report taken at random from the multitude of insignificant reports the machine receives non-stop and archives by the ton, just in case, that someone might have said, ‘Well what do you know! This is new for a change!’ By studying the commentary written by some scribbler living in dust and boredom, and by launching a quick little investigation of his own, he reached a conclusion that absolutely bowled him over. He discovered a free electron, an unthinkable thing in the cosmos of Abistan: ‘This man is a new sort of madman, or a mutant, he is the carrier of an argumentative spirit that disappeared long ago, I’ll have to take a closer look.’ As it is not against the law to wish oneself well and guard one’s own discoveries jealously, he might have gotten it into his head to baptize a new ailment of the soul with his own name, and fill a few lines in the History books about Abistan. He might have come up with something like ‘the heresy of Ati,’ or ‘the Sîn deviancy,’ since those are the two things the Apparatus fears above all, heresy and deviancy.
“This rebellious mutant, dogged by madness, the possible carrier of a new plague: that’s you, dear Ati, and I’m willing to bet that your file has traveled way up the ladder in the hierarchy of the Apparatus, even as far as the Just Brotherhood, why not. At those levels they are not unintelligent, they’re even too intelligent, it’s just that they’re a bit sleepy, they’ve never done anything but rehash what is old, rancid, and dusty, and now here’s something new that’s going to wake them up, excite them, the discovery of a revolutionary village, capable of abolishing the founding truths of Abistan—and it has taken on a very special significance in no time. Your meeting with Nas was in itself so unlikely . . . What were the chances that an insignificant man like you would meet an eminent archeologist like him, and inspire him to share such dangerous secrets? It is all the stranger for having been merely fortuitous; that would mean that it was written in the deeper process of life, which commands that like attract like and opposite attract opposite; sooner or later the little drop of water reaches the sea and the mote of dust lands in the dust—in other words, it was the explosive encounter between Liberty and Truth. Nothing like this had ever happened since Abi perfected the world through the principle of submission and worship. What the Just Brotherhood had always feared, without being able to name it, was there before them, at an embryonic stage, carried by a reclusive patient in the most isolated place in Abistan and a civil servant who was too wise for what he was supposed to be doing there.”
But thinking something doesn’t mean you believe it. Ati didn’t care about any of that, they were the thoughts of a sick mind—gratuitous theories, wild, far-fetched imaginings, too improbable to even be true. Dictatorship has no need of learning, by its very nature it knows everything it has to know and has virtually no need of a motive to hold sway; it strikes at random, that is where its strength lies, for it makes the most of the terror it inspires and the respect it garners. It is always after the fact that dictatorships conduct their trials, when the condemned confesses to his crime in advance and shows gratitude toward his judges. In this case, no need to look any further: Ati and Koa would be convicted as makoufs, nonbelievers affiliated with the contemptuous sect of Balis. Those who end up at the stadium are guilty, because the people know that God has never punished an innocent; Yölah is strong and just.
It was late. Der, Toz’s agent, had not come. Ati ate what was left from yesterday’s meal and slipped under his blanket. He did not have the faith of a believer but he prayed with all his strength to the God of victims, if he existed, to save his dear brother Koa.
The day went by in boredom and sadness. Yet another day. Ati could not stop playing and replaying the film of events from two days earlier in his mind, and every time he found more food for thought. It served no purpose but what else could he do, he had to occupy his mind; he missed Koa terribly and a bad sense of foreboding was making him queasy.
Der arrived just before the seventh prayer. The neighborhood mockbas were sounding the horn and the call to gather the faithful. There could be no dawdling about, there was a meaning to this prayer, it marked the end of the day and the beginning of the night; an entire symbol.
Der was not the talkative kind. Mou before him had not been, either. No sooner had he come in than he set about picking up everything that might indicate someone had been staying in the warehouse. He wiped away every trace, as if covering someone’s tracks. He filled a bag with potential clues, tied it firmly, tossed it over his shoulder, and then, after one last inspection, told Ati to follow him, as if it were nothing special, and to stay a distance of fifteen to twenty siccas behind him.
They set out, walking briskly for a long time, avoiding the vicinity of any mockbas, which were constantly crowded with idle people only too eager to call out to passersby and ask them to join in their fine conversations. Along the way, Der tossed the bag onto one of those piles of garbage that adorned the city in the less salubrious neighborhoods. Once they reached a paved road, Der and Ati took shelter in a doorway and waited in silence. To their left cats were meowing, dogs barking to their right. Above them the moon shone without much conviction; they could see, but indistinctly. Odors of hir and hot pancakes wafted from the houses, perfuming the streets. What lucky people.
One hour later, two headlights on the horizon penetrated the night. As it drew nearer, the vehicle flashed its lights, and Der replied, waving his arms and standing in the middle of the road. The vehicle stopped short right in front of him. Silent, spacious, majestic, it was an official car, green with pennant bearers on the front fenders, displaying an Honorable’s coat of arms. Imperious, too: who would have dared stand in its way? The driver opened t
he door and told Ati to get in. What an honor, what an incomprehensible honor! Der’s mission was complete, he turned on his heels and went off into the night without saying a word. The car took off in a squeal of tires and quickly gained speed. It was the first time in his life that Ati had been in a car, and this was one of the best there was. He smiled to himself with pride; in his unfathomable misery he had suddenly attained that more than perfect happiness reserved for the very privileged, the high life, but very quickly he ordered himself to remain calm and humble. Only top-ranking officials in the hierarchy owned such marvelous vehicles, or fabulously wealthy tradesmen whose acquaintances with the synarchy were unquestionable. No one ever knew where these dream machines came from, who manufactured them, who sold them: the secret was inviolate. For lack of information, people said they came from another world, that there must be a channel; they still spoke of invisible borders. The purr of the engine was so gentle, the seats so comfortable, the whole car smelled so good, and the bumps in the road were so sweetly cadenced that before long Ati felt quite drowsy. He resisted as best he could but not for long; he slipped into a blissful sleep despite the anxiety gnawing at him. Where were they taking him, what was awaiting him there? Toz was as secretive as he was strange.
When Ati awoke, somewhat surprised to find himself flying in a state of weightlessness, the car was still moving, like an arrow of love piercing the air with grace and luxurious pleasure. Ati reckoned they must have gone about a hundred chabirs.
In the distance he saw lights, a geyser that reached as high as the clouds, setting them ablaze, a veritable riot of light, something that was rare in Qodsabad. Electricity was rationed and so expensive that only top leaders and rich merchants could afford it; the former did not pay for it and the latter made their clients pay. The air was moist, and there was a cloying odor, a mixture of salt and something else that was cool and fresh. From the depths of the night came the sound of a mass of water breaking against rocks or a wall. Was this the sea—did it really exist, did it come this far, was it true you could approach it without being carried away or engulfed? The road went no further. The car went through a gigantic gate, guarded by an entire army, and into a vast park with majestic trees, romantic copses, charming flower beds, dreamy arbors, lawns, and ponds as far as the eye could see. Along the way magnificent lampposts, regularly spaced, cast a gentle light onto the shadows. The car tires crunched on the gravel (in daylight, he would discover it was pink). The house, lit by huge spotlights cleverly arranged, was enormous, filling the horizon from one end to the other. It actually consisted of one main building, a royal palace of symmetry and harmony, and on either side, at a certain distance however, numerous outbuildings, both large and small, tall and low, round and square. Among them was a magnificent mockba, embellished with green marble and finely worked stucco. Everywhere in the park, on terraces and roofs, or perched on watchtowers, were heavily armed guards, soldiers in armor, and civilians wearing the clerk’s burni covered with a coat of mail. Dog handlers patrolled with terrifying mastiffs of an unknown race, half bulldog, half lion. In the distance, on a mound enclosed by barbed wire, stood a pylon thirty siccas high or more, supporting impressive hardware consisting of some sort of drum, satellite dishes facing all four directions, and an enormous rotating metallic structure.
2084 Page 16