by Brian Aldiss
‘But?’ Soames prompted curiously.
Queen Louise sighed.
‘I feel as our people feel. Though we have anger with Dumayami, he has the ju-ju, and always in the end he is right.’
‘That’s nonsense,’ Soames said. ‘It’s just luck; after all, he had a fifty-fifty chance of being right about Jimpo; it wasn’t very long odds against him. You’re educated, Queen Louise, you know a man can’t foretell the future and all that sort of stuff.’
She picked up her lamp, creating shadows that turned her face into meaningless planes through which highlights seemed to twinkle.
‘No?’ she said sombrely. ‘I have not the great faith in education which I should be having. For me, education only means a system in logic. Your machine works by another system in logic. Dumayami works by a third system. His system is not bounded – binded? – by common sense, which is a limitation; so he gets farther than we can. This is difficult to explain to a non-African. You must become African, Mr Soames. Goodnight.’
As she closed the door behind her, Soames thought, ‘And believing this of Dumayami, she believes I shall stay here, because he said I should not leave Africa. Well, perhaps I shan’t.’
And instantly he fell deeply asleep. It was like dropping down a tall cliff face.
Soames, in the morning, was up betimes. After breakfast, he went to hunt out Ted Timpleton, whom he found in the computer room, sitting on a crate and enjoying a smoke. L’Panto and Gumboi were already at work, pumping problems through the Apostle. They had rapidly mastered the idea of breaking questions down into a form the machine could digest, and were now practising on some of the queries the local government offices had sent in to them. These were mainly questions of the order of ‘Would it be profitable to pay our school teachers one extra more per month, if we cut down their numbers by five per cent?’ All that was required was to telephone to the Mayor’s educational department to find out how many school teachers were being paid how much already, and the result was a sum so simple that the Apostle Mk II seemed to snigger as it spat out the answer. Yet L’Panto and Gumboi grew more and more impressed. Timpleton had already realised that in this operation the phone would really be more important than the computer, and was having additional lines run into the room.
He greeted Soames equably, and they talked of Jimpo for a while before drifting on to the subject of the computer.
‘My boys say,’ he remarked, nodding to the two black operators, ‘that if private clients were allowed to submit problems for the Apostle at the rate of two mores a time, they could easily make a profit by flogging the answer slips in the market as charms for three mores a time! Crazy world, isn’t it? We’d better fix up something with old M’Grassi, legalise the racket, and make ourselves a fortune. What do you say, Soames?’
‘Sounds reasonable,’ Soames agreed and, taking the engineer to a corner of the room, began to tell him a little of what he had learnt at Picket’s bungalow the night before.
‘So it looks,’ he finished, ‘as if this old bowler hat proves Dumayami was responsible for the runaway engine; it must have been one of his men, wearing the bowler in order to look like an Englishman, who leaped from the footplate at the last moment. But as well as this circumstantial evidence, I think we now have a motive.’
‘Dumayami has plenty of motive for knocking you off,’ Timpleton said. ‘You’re the big white god of the machine; that’s quite ruddy sufficient.’
‘That’s what I thought once,’ Soames said. ‘And meanwhile everyone else believed the Portuguese caused the accident for their own dark reasons. Suppose we are all wrong. Suppose the whole object of the affair was to kill Jimpo?’
Timpleton mulled this over, then shook his head.
‘Nobody knew Jimpo was in the go-down with you until after the smash-up,’ he objected.
‘I told myself that until last night, when I ran into Turdilal Ghosti up on Stranger’s Hill,’ Soames said, ‘and then I suddenly remembered: as I came out of Jimpo’s room after fixing up the details of our proposed robbery with him, I banged into Ghosti. He had some excuse or other that I thought at the time was a bit pat, but I wouldn’t mind betting he had been listening at the door to what we were saying. He’s a little snake. What’s the betting he didn’t sell that information to Dumayami?’
‘Sure. Sounds likely enough. But what had Dumayami got against Jimpo particularly?’
‘You’ve already told me, Ted. If he was against me, just because I came out with the machine, how much more would he be against Jimpo, who brought me and the machine into the country?’
Timpleton whistled a few bars of ‘The Policeman’s Holiday’, lit a new cigarette from the butt of his old one, and said, ‘Soames, my boy, forgive me if I’ve sometimes had my doubts about you. I reckon you’ve hit it there, smack on target. And of course if Doctor Dum-Dum knocked you off at the same time, so much the nicer, eh? Two birds with one stone. You know, it’s a wonder I haven’t had snakes in my bed; after all, I put the Apostle together. Still, my turn may come. Well, where, do we go from here?’
‘You’ve seen how the law works here, Ted,’ Soames said. ‘“Every man his own bobby” is the motto. I think we ought to go and see if the chappie with the bowler is still lying up, licking his wounds in Dumayami’s hut; if he hurt himself badly, jumping from the engine, he should be there. If he is, we’ll collect him and bring him back here to M’Grassi for questioning.’
‘Fair enough. And if he isn’t there any longer?’
‘Well, we’ll have to tell M’Grassi what we suspect. But obviously it’ll look better if we have some evidence.’
‘Too bloody true,’ Timpleton said. ‘Righto, then. Do you want us to go now?’
‘The sooner the better, I think,’ Soames replied.
‘Then I’ll just get my two boys, L’Panto and Gumboi, in on this. They can come along in case there’s any trouble. You never know, you know!’
He went over to the two negroes and began talking to them in his extraordinary brew of pidgin and blasphemy, with gestures thrown in. Soames walked up and down outside the room, along the cloister which faced out across the garden to the Uiui; tension piled steadily up inside him, he could scarcely say why; no doubt it was something else he had inherited. After some while, Timpleton came out to him.
‘The boys aren’t happy,’ the engineer announced. ‘They say it’s safer in the palace just at present. Odd patches of trouble keep breaking out outside. Old Dum-Dum has stirred up plenty trouble for himself, predicting Jimbo’s death. Seems like his faction and the royalist faction are clashing. L’Panto thinks we might get stuck in the middle of a clash. Can we hang on for a bit?’
‘We aren’t going more than a mile,’ Soames protested. ‘It should be quiet enough by the river, surely. Let’s get it over with, Ted.’
‘I’ll fetch ’em out,’ the engineer said.
He went, returning almost at once with the two negroes, looking sheepish.
‘These two boys’ll lose their cushy bloody job on the Apostle if they don’t come along us pretty chop-chop, won’t they, Soames?’ Timpleton said, winking at his fellow Englishman. They set off at once.
They strode silently through the gardens, turned left, and followed the path upstream. Nothing moved. The sunshine was as solid and silent as felt. Such noises as they could hear were distant. Twice, L’Panto halted, begging them to go back, whereupon the engineer cursed him and hustled them on.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ he said irritably to Soames. ‘I’m getting jittery myself, damn it.’
At length, round a bend of the track, the thatched hut came into sight. This was where Soames and Dumayami had first come face to face. The place looked innocent enough, half-buried in the shadow of the trees beneath which it stood. Only for an instant did Soames suffer the illusion he had first experienced in the Chinese café, sitting looking out at the oleander bushes: that the sunlight was just a flimsy façade overlying impenetrable blackness. Then the
four of them moved forward and came level with the entrance.
The wounded man still lay at the back of the hut on his pile of skins. He was just visible between the legs of a dozen warriors, standing there quietly in battle array. These men were bedaubed with ochre and white and held spears. Dumayami, a pair of great eland horns on his head, stood in their midst.
For a long, entrail-twisting moment, the two parties faced each other without movement. Then L’Panto turned with a cry and began to run back down the path the way they had come.
Everyone was in movement immediately.
The warriors shouted like one man, rushing to get first through the doorway. Soames swore to think he had not brought the revolver de Duidos sold him. The first man out on to the trail raised his spear and hurled it past Soames’ ear at the fleeing figure of L’Panto. Timpleton jumped on him. As they went down together, rolling in the dust, half a dozen men piled on top of them, spears ready to strike when they got the chance. From the middle of the mêlée, Timpleton gave a high scream like a wounded horse.
Soames’ wrist was grabbed. He was dragged backwards. Someone was bellowing at him, the words indistinguishable. He was running back down the trail, still firmly held. Gumboi was leading him, yelling like a maniac in his native tongue.
‘Stop, you fool!’ Soames shouted. A spear hurtled between them. They nearly tripped over it as it quivered angrily in the dust. Shedding all instincts bar self-preservation, Soames bounded down the track with Gumboi beside him. The bushes whipped past them, the earth thudded to their steps. Behind them, all too close, came the shouts of the pursuing party.
His mouth open, Soames ran for his life. Another spear slashed by overhead, impaling a low branch. Another whipped waspishly into the thicket.
‘God!’ Soames was afterwards aware he had muttered, ‘God! God!’ Nothing more: his own god, Picket’s god, an African god, any god, any god that would grant him breath and speed and get him out of there.
Gumboi suddenly screamed and stopped still. A spear had pierced his upper arm, hanging there now as he struggled with it, muttering savagely at it.
‘Come on!’ Soames gasped. ‘Run, man!’ He did not pause. He had one glimpse of the greasy eyeballs of Dumayami’s party a few yards away and redoubled his speed. Gumboi dropped behind; a roar of delight announced that the warriors had got him.
Another glance over his shoulder told Soames he was still being pursued by about half the party; the others were flocking round Gumboi. He ran on, his heart knocking, his head bursting, sure every step would be his last.
So he burst into the palace back gardens, cursing the fact that there was no guard here by day. Under the full morning heat, the grounds lay empty of shade or people. Bounding madly across flower beds, Soames ran up the shallow stone steps, into the computing room and across it, like a hunted fox, to the inner door; he dragged at the handle. It was locked. Hopelessly, he recalled this was Timpleton’s idea, to prevent disturbance now that Apostle was functioning; Timpleton would have the key.
Outside, clearly outlined against the Uiui, the witch doctor’s posse burst from the trail and into the gardens, still in pursuit. Soames had a minute left at the most. Irate shouts told him that people in the palace had seen this invasion – but they would be too late to save him now the warriors’ blood was up. They would tear him to chops before help came.
Frantically, he dashed behind the bulk of the computer. An inspection panel behind the control column stood ajar. Without pausing to think, Soames flung himself into the concealment so offered; tearing wires and relays madly away with his hands, he made enough room to turn round and slam the door shut behind him.
Heat and fatigue rolled over him, encasing him in a snowball of fire. Soames leant against a panel, cooling his forehead, gasping painfully for breath. Never, never, never had he run like that before. All the spunk went out of him; he began to tremble and feel sick.
Above the knocking of his own heart, he heard Dumayami’s posse burst into the computer room. They beat about the place, shouting their frustration at having lost him, angrily, loudly calling his name, ‘Soom! Soom!’ Nobody even thought of touching the mighty red machine; it was tabu.
Soames lost interest in what was going on outside until his circulation slowed and he recovered some of his normal senses. Then he realised simultaneously that it was very hot inside the Apostle Mk II and that a considerable argument was going on outside. Just in front of him was a narrow slit of light through which outgoing messages left the computer. Peering through this aperture, Soames saw that Dumayami and his party were being confronted by a group of palace guards with M’Grassi Landor voluble in their midst. He settled down to watch without being able to understand a word, irritably wishing they would all leave so that he could get out.
What was in fact happening was ominously simple. M’Grassi, thunderously, railed against Dumayami for breaking into the palace. The sweating witch doctor, almost as thunderously, declared that he had come merely to protect the august body of his King and President from the white man Noyes. This white man, he declared, was the author of all past evils, including the death of Jimpo – and would be the author of many more, were he not destroyed. His life spelt ruin for Goya.
M’Grassi denied this. Condemning the witch doctor for a mischief-maker, he asserted that Soames was merely the servant of the machine. But, said Dumayami, the machine was evil, therefore its agent also was evil. Arrant nonsense, M’Grassi declared roundly. Very well, Dumayami said craftily, aware he could not gamble on the royal patience lasting much longer, let there be a test. He was asked to describe the test.
‘This machine,’ Dumayami said, raising his fist to the Apostle, ‘this machine, in which you trust and in which the power of the white man resides, shall make the decision here and now, before us all, of what shall happen to Soames. By its reply I swear to abide, and you must abide too; but if its reply is inadequate, or if it fails to reply, then the man Soames shall be handed over to me as soon as he is found.’
A rumble from the crowd – the great room was now packed with people – told M’Grassi that this challenge sounded fair to them. They appreciated and understood such contests. To back out would mean, not only that he would lose their confidence, perhaps for good, but that the computer would also be discredited; they would take it that he had no faith in his machine.
For the first time, M’Grassi looked at the great bulk of the Apostle with clear eyes. Being an honest man, at least in private, he admitted to himself that its installation here had been nothing more than the vainglorious gesture of an ambitious man, a sort of grandiose attempt to keep up with the Joneses. He did not flinch for a second.
‘I accept the conditions of the test,’ he said firmly. ‘Ask the machine your question, Dumayami.’
The knot of people round the witch doctor gave way as Gumboi was dragged forward, bleeding generously and clutching his wounded arm. He was the only man present, except for the hidden Soames, who knew how to operate the machine; the sight of him dispelled M’Grassi’s hope that the test would be cancelled for lack of an operator.
Prodded from behind, rolling his eyes, Gumboi came reluctantly forward to the Apostle’s control column and switched on the power. The crowd mumbled to itself in suspense, with a sound like old women asleep. At another prod, Gumboi’s clumsy fingers began to lumber round the typewriter keyboard as he translated and typed Dumayami’s demand.
Soames, through his slot, had listened uncomprehendingly to all this, and watched a narrow section of it, with increasing curiosity. His fear that someone present would notice that the Apostle was not functioning and investigate the cause of the trouble soon passed; the only man qualified to realise the truth was Gumboi, who was in no fit state to realise anything.
When the message was typed, Soames leant forward and, working the band of typing paper manually, drew the note into the machine where he could read it. For the first time, he gained some inkling of what had transpired outside. The
slip read:
WAT IS 2 BE DON WITH SOMES
An insane desire to howl with laughter assailed Soames. What on earth did these dimwits think an electronic computer, if it were working, would make of that conundrum? But it was essential that the dimwits should suppose it to be working, in case they started to pry.
Leaning forward to the outgoing message writer, Soames disconnected the automatic impulse arm and tapped out an answer on it. As he did so, a fishy gleam came into his eye, a gleam compounded of the desire to be funny and the urge to settle Dumayami’s hash for good. When he had finished he cranked the paper roll till its tongue protruded at the crowd outside. Black hands snatched eagerly at it.
A moment later, opposing parties were staring, each with peculiarly deep feelings of his own, at the legend SOAMES FOR PRESIDENT.
Chapter Fifteen
‘Close bosom-friend …’
It was fortunate that Soames’ heart was in good working order, for the following day also brought its quota of strain.
In the morning, a double funeral was held. Close by the spot where Soames and Jimpo had recently stood to see the victims of the air crash buried, Soames now stood alone to see Jimpo and Ted Timpleton buried close together. A hot, dry wind blew in his face, rustling the garments of the multitude assembled for this ceremony. While M’Grassi delivered a farewell homily in Goyese, Soames’ thoughts wandered gloomily.
He knew now he had been right about the sunshine and the oleander bushes; light and dark lay cheek by jowl. Consciousness was the experiencing of events neither entirely tragic nor comic. It was not, as Hardy had claimed, that:
Tragedy is true guise,
Comedy lies
but rather that the two were always present, mixed as inseparably as copulating octopi; life was at once funny and frightening: what lied was consciousness itself, for it was merely the sunlight painted over the wall of blackness. It was stretched skin-thin, and through it on occasions one could, as now at the funeral, glimpse the spear-sharp shadows beneath.