Lindley noted with lazy contempt, ‘Catastrophes take their time about going away; this one hasn’t got round to gracious living yet.’
Jackson opened an eye. ‘A matter of definition. We know more than you did about necessity and waste and the meaning of luxury.’
Raft estimated the distance of the mountains he could see to the east, recognising the Dandenongs. ‘What’s happened to Melbourne? We should be near the centre by now.’
Jackson said calmly, ‘In minutes we shall be. Your Melbourne is gone. There is only Melbourne Town.’
‘How? Why? Campion said there wasn’t much damage here.’
‘If he meant the Five Days, there wasn’t. As for Melbourne, we tore it down, along with all the other useless monster cities. We needed a world people could live in.’ In their stunned silence he knew he had chopped the past away more effectively than anything so far in their reception. ‘We preserved what we felt had historical or architectural value, and some buildings for what they contained in the way of records because we couldn’t waste time or materials on new storage space. The rest we destroyed.’
Lindley was bent on insolence. ‘Cultural spite? Couldn’t you just build elsewhere?’
Jackson cut him down bluntly. ‘By 1992, just two years after your departure, we had little transport, no petrol, no electricity and only what food we could grow for ourselves. The factory civilisation was dead and you can’t live in a city whose facilities have ceased to operate unless you like the purlieus of plague and the stink of ordure. Though it’s surprising how fast you get used to the smell of shit. At first we moved away from the cities to grow food; then, as we got the transport back into operation we needed the city sites because of their road complexes and railways and airports; we didn’t have the manpower to rebuild those things and still pursue livable lives. We didn’t need the cities themselves; we couldn’t service such huge complexes; but we did need the bricks and timber and steel and copper and water-pipes and bathtubs and glass and fittings. So we built the core of Melbourne Town out of the guts of old Melbourne. We didn’t knock the place down overnight with mauls and pickaxes; it took time to repair bulldozers and manufacture gelignite. In fact a large part of it is still untouched, simply falling into ruin, but we don’t use those areas; they stay overgrown and out of sight until we are ready to attack them. There’s no hurry for that; Melbourne Town is big enough now.’
‘How big?’
‘About eighty thousand people.’
Raft asked, predicting the answer, ‘What happened to the rest of the three million?’
‘They died. Plague loves cities.’
‘Honest plague or bacteriological warfare?’
Jackson’s eyes snapped. ‘Yes, that also happened. I know you have no love for biologists, Commander, and neither have I. Most of them now work behind barbed wire; but the wire is for their protection, not to keep the secrets in but to keep the long knives out. “Molecular biology” is a dirty phrase in many countries. Things are not so drastic here yet; the government keeps them under reasonable control. But your Heathcote, dead or alive, may change that.’
Streich and Kulayev, Raft thought, might find their new knowledge a chilly gift.
Lindley, silently weeping for England, asked, ‘What is world population?’
‘About four hundred million. Excluding China. We don’t know much about what happens there.’
‘Closed frontiers?’
‘After a fashion. China asked for privacy, a time of withdrawal; she wanted no part of our rebuilding programmes. There are hints of a resurgence of old philosophies – Mencius, Confucius and the rest – and the emergence of a culture based on art, but I have my doubts. However, the world respects their privacy.’
‘That’, Lindley said, ‘is the most astounding thing I have heard yet. Do you mean to tell me the world’s yahoos aren’t trying to prise the country open and exploit it?’
‘They might, if Security let them. The China Branch of Security is the only group with real knowledge, and it doesn’t talk.’
‘In heaven’s name, is Security the voice of God or the ultimate nursemaid, or what?’
‘Call it according to your point of view – an interfering clutch of do-gooders – the candlestick of the political seesaw – the protectors of the ruled against their rulers and of the rulers against the ruled – or a force of intelligent young men dedicated to maintaining the status quo until humanity works out some sensible procedure for cultural stability. We Ombudsmen created them but they no longer need us; we’re on our way out; they’ll let us die and that will have been that. Eventually they’ll rule the world. Then the world will have to get rid of them for its own good; meanwhile it must preserve them for its own good. The classic dilemmas of history haven’t changed.’
Jackson’s answers were only the stuff of further questions, and he had his own problems. ‘You mentioned brotherly love; Doctor Doronin understood you but I’m not sure I do.’
‘We were discussing a theory, in verbal shorthand if you like. I threw out a line of investigation which Ivan approved. That was all.’
‘And the line?’
‘I told you I have not chosen a loyalty. My ideas remain mine.’
Jackson sucked his lips. ‘We can drug the answer out of you in minutes. This is done only in cases of special need – such as this.’
‘You would get only theory, untested.’
‘I am not threatening at this stage, only warning you not to carry natural spite too far, for you can refuse nothing the administration needs. Think with your head rather than your heart.’
‘Just another damned police state.’
‘Already you know better than that.’
Raft said, ‘Nevertheless, Mister Jackson, you are not really a nice, fatherly old gent, are you?’
Jackson stared at him. ‘Is there anything you would die for, Commander?’
Raft replied slowly, ‘I think so. One or two things.’
‘Then you will realise that I find it simple to be any required type of infamous old bastard in defence of the world it is my life’s meaning to preserve.’
‘I heard you accused of destroying a world.’
‘You heard my generation accused. It was your generation also; remember it. Some rewriting of history has been done for that clone-brother’s education.’ He thought, shrugged, said, ‘Still, there is truth in it; it isn’t a simple thing …’ Perhaps the thought continued in his mind.
The bus, travelling now through a built-up area of the same dreary houses interspersed with small shops whose designs were little more diverse, swept up a hill. From the crest they looked down a wide, straight, tree-lined road at whose other extremity rose another hill on whose summit, two miles away, an old familiarity rose like a lump in the throat.
Raft cried out, ‘For God’s sake, we’re in St Kilda Road! That’s the old Shrine. That one was a bit too solid even for bulldozers, eh, Mister Jackson?’
Jackson smiled wanly. ‘Throughout the world we have preserved the more immense war memorials – to remind us that there are two sides to glory and that the builders commemorated the wrong one. Our young people have never experienced war as we knew it; why should they have to?’
The huge neo-Grecian temple grew as they raced towards it; the bus sped round the base of the hill and the heart of the new city was displayed before them, not where the old one had been but on the nearer side of the river.
To Raft it looked like a country town, with a few four-or five-storey buildings at its centre and the rest a spread of low structures among trees and gardens. The sight neither depressed nor pleased; it was simply another place. His mind did not yet really comprehend that a great city had disappeared.
The bus curved off the road into a courtyard. The block surrounding it on three sides was five floors tall but had the same air of swift-built impermanence as every other structure he had seen.
Jackson told them, ‘A Security Headquarters building. A barrack.�
��
Plain, ugly, efficient and temporary, it was uncompromisingly an administrative block. Like the rest, like this entire civilisation if he understood Jackson correctly, it was there only to serve a passing purpose and be torn down. It symbolised with repellent neatness a world with an immutable past and a hopefully solid future but only a ramshackle, disposable present.
5
Jackson’s office was large, gadgeted and bleak, a place fit only to work in. Raft admired a three-metre TV screen – stereo, 3 D and super colour, no doubt – and three smaller screens which might belong to closed-circuit systems. Various types of recorders formed a bank around the central desk and one of them, he decided, could only be a voice-operated typewriter. He wondered if it spelled phonetically; perhaps everybody did by now; a sensible idea and one repulsive to every person with a feeling for language. The office was uniformly functional, lending a modicum of austere, charmless technician’s beauty.
The wide front window looked across to the mass of the Shrine, its heavy harmonies brooding grotesquely over the angular geometry of the town. On impulse he asked, ‘Are the Botanical Gardens still there, behind that hill?’
He seemed to have jolted a dormant connection in Jackson’s memory. ‘They were there, weren’t they? I think that during the crisis years they were sown with vegetables. There’s not much left for nostalgia. Will you all please sit down?’
Chairs ringed the walls, each with writing arm, pad and ball-point pencil; it was conference room as well as office.
Not Jackson but the two-bar Security man began without preamble. ‘I know these people need massive briefing but immediate business comes first, whether they follow it or not. What’s your reading of the significance of Ian’s abduction?’
‘Probably what it seemed, an attempt to place a proxy in a key post. They may want him also, if he is alive, for deep questioning on Security’s reactions and opinions so far. He had hoped to discover their aims without overt clash; that is no longer advisable. We need urgently to know what they want.’
‘Power!’ Lindley said. ‘What’s up with you, Mister Ombudsman? Has memory gone to seed? What does violence want but change and power? They’ve decided that Security is on the way out and some other form of brute-powered sweetness and light is coming in.’
In 1990, Raft thought, he would have been told to mind his own business, but the Security man followed him with angry interest and appealed to Jackson. ‘Is that possible? Why can’t they put a case to Experimental Life Style? What can seizure gain them? Is a totally paranoid group a possibility?’
‘Yes.’ Lindley again, enjoying ruthlessness, salving private wounds. ‘We remember totally paranoid nations. You babies in your nursery world! If you don’t want your toys broken and your picturebooks torn up you’d better act fast. So help me, you didn’t even make an arrest at the landing field.’
‘Unnecessary,’ Jackson said. ‘Those uniforms are walking cameras. Every person within range was photographed and can be taken at need.’ He asked the Security man, ‘What have you done about Ian?’
‘I’ve set up an A-grade emergency network; I don’t think they can get him out of the country. You have some advice, sir?’
‘Yes. You won’t like it.’ He swivelled his radiation-ruined head. ‘Will he, Doctor Lindley?’
‘I couldn’t care less about your primitive politics. He means, Sergeant or whatever you are, that you’ve got to get off your arse and be violent. The new order changes, giving place to old. Apologies to Tennyson. Chaos is come again to the nursery floor and we star children bring not peace but a sword. End of quotes. You’re going to be hit where it hurts and the Ombudsman, who still remembers how to savage up a gutter brawl, is about to tell you to get your blow in first, low and dirty. And I am about to laugh my head off while you make a ham-handed mess of it.’
The Tech matched his contempt. ‘We don’t think much of your period and its methods either. As for violence, that’s already decided. The clone-dummy is in deep question; every person at the landing field will be questioned and every elone-member we can locate in this country. Or any other. World Security has been alerted for that. We will place the Commander under shadow watch – and Doctor Lindley also, since his bias is hostile; they will be guarded, bugged and scrutinised every second until this crisis is resolved. Does that cover it, Mister Jackson?’
‘Well enough for the moment.’
‘Then can we assume your override as cancelled?’ Jackson nodded. ‘It was justified while we suffered personal confusion and for that Security thanks you. Doctor Lindley’s diagnosis of our organisational attitudes and shortcomings is to the point, but there will be no more hesitation. Will you make the preliminary governmental report, sir? It will save us time.’
‘I will report directly to the Prime Minister. At this stage I will recommend that Security handle the affair alone.’
‘Thank you.’ He made the rapid, sketchy hand-to-heart gesture and left.
Raft asked, ‘Does he carry higher rank than I imagine? He assumes wide powers.’
Jackson answered absently, thinking of other things. ‘He’s the man on the spot, so he acts. The Security definition of authority is very fluid.’
The integrity involved in such a system was awe-inspiring; in Raft’s experience a committee running a children’s picnic could not have operated so.
Jackson said abruptly, ‘I must see the PM. People have been made available to look after you.’
As simply as that he left them.
From behind them a voice – female, low, cool, impersonal – said, ‘My name is Alice White.’
They swung in their chairs so swiftly, so intently, that she left the introduction afloat in silence, disconcerted and only with difficulty realising the effect she had created.
They saw a woman of perhaps twenty-five, moderately good-looking, moderately well-shaped, not clothed in the peacock colours of the world outside but in a workingdress blouse and skirt.
The Old Adam in them, eight years sleeping (restlessly), bypassed facts to see a beautiful girl, youthfully radiant, full coloured and fine figured, nostalgically clothed as one he might have yesterday farewelled on Earth.
Under silent fire she said hesitantly, ‘I am Ombudsman Jackson’s private secretary.’
The scraping of chairs was the sound of the manners of an earlier civilisation, of gentlemen rising at the entrance of a lady. Not understanding, she drew back a pace, startled.
Matthews advanced on her grinning, preening, splashing words. ‘I’m sure we’re all very pleased to meet you, Miss White.’ His hand stabbed, groping in an absurd hurry to be first to touch her.
She drew further back, no longer startled but upset by a reaction that should have been predicted and had not been. Matthews froze, realising three things simultaneously:
That, leaning against the wall behind her, a Security Tech watched with undisguised amusement –
That he felt a damned fool alone in mid-floor, dithering in a half-gesture that would never be completed –
And that he was behaving like a brash teenager who might earn a social lesson for his pains.
The laugh that diverted attention from him was only part salvation. It was Lindley’s, derisive, unfriendly and piercing. He alone was still seated, eaten with his savageries, uninterested in the more obvious aspects of Miss White.
‘Forgive the boys for being boys, but eight years is a long time in the company of imperfect suppressive techniques.’ The jibe was crude, the tone open insult. ‘It looks as though present needs must be satisfied before the massive briefing will be appreciated.’
The tone generated in her a control apology might have shaken. She asked, secretarially, ‘Shall I regard that as an official request?’
‘Why not? If the procedure hasn’t vanished into history I suppose it’s still a matter of demand and supply.’
She smiled at last, and it was a warning. ‘To a degree, Doctor – Lindley, I think? There is the quest
ion of the willingness of partners; there could be difficulties about the provision of complaisant therapeutic meat. It isn’t as though you are famous people who can pick and choose among admirers.’
The Security man said, ‘Forget it, Alice. If that’s what they need, it can be arranged.’
Lindley, undaunted, jeered at him. ‘Pimping still a sideline of international politics?’
The Tech said tranquilly, ‘On your performance so far, Doctor, it’s hard to think of anyone who’d put up with you. You can masturbate without my arranging it.’
It got a moment’s quiet, enough for Raft to say, ‘You asked for it, Jim,’ and ask the girl, ‘What were you going to tell us?’
She was reservedly official now. ‘Only that quarters have been prepared for you in this building where you can bathe and eat and rest. Clothing will be made available. You will have questions and we will obtain expert reference for you. Or you may wish to see Melbourne Town; if so, Security will provide guides. If you have immediate questions I will try to answer them.’
‘Money,’ Raft said at once. ‘Can we get some and if so, where?’
For the second time she was disconcerted by a question that should have been foreseen. ‘The Ombudsman has a small emergency fund which can be drawn on. I could authorise immediate expenses, I think.’
‘And then?’
‘I don’t know, Commander. It will be a question of employment and the manner of life you decide on.’
‘And you don’t use secondhand astronauts. When we left Earth trust funds were set up which guaranteed each of us a solid income for life. Will all records of this have vanished along with the memory of us? During the Five Days, whatever they were?’
She answered crisply, assuming official armour to make the telling easier. ‘Your own personal documents have been recovered, Commander, from Canberra Archives. Those belonging to you other gentlemen will possibly be in your own countries, if they exist at all. But they will mean nothing. Not only the funds disappeared but the entire financial system which supported them; the web of money and exchange and economics had to be recreated. Arrangements made before the Collapse have no meaning.’
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