The Sea and Summer

by George Turner

  She waved her teacup in mockery. ‘The attitude of an artist, self-absorbed and using his vanity for the delectation of audiences.’ Quickly she hurried across his resentful astonishment: ‘Keep up as well as you can with the scientific information and you could he able to think usefully if the time for action should arrive. Otherwise, live as suits you. Be like the Swill, aware but unworried.’

  She thought he stared into his teacup with a silent vengefulness, irritated by her mockery. In fact he was preoccupied by a technical consideration that historical knowledge would not resolve: the removal of the nuclear threat would make dramatic flow in his projected play easier to manage with one less pervasive concern to reckon with – but modern understanding of the period, fed by romantics, had it otherwise. How, then, explain it to an audience in a snatch of dialogue taken on the run, unemphasized, not projecting from the action as an explanatory pimple but arising naturally from a passing scene?

  He muttered, ‘It needs thinking over.’

  ‘Your attitude?’

  With most of his attention removed from her he said, ‘No, theirs,’ put down his cup and stood to leave. ‘I’ll do some more reading and see what suggests itself. Goodnight, Lenna.’

  His going was not uncivil, merely sudden. He was already removed when the moment of thought closed in; the rest was only the body trailing after it.

  She wondered, did she behave like that when immersed in her work? She probably did. It was mildly unnerving to see it in somebody else.

  THE SEA AND SUMMER

  2

  7

  Teddy Conway

  AD 2044–2045

  1

  They tested me, written and oral, all through two days. Easy questions! Easy for me because I was confident. Others stammered and wondered if the obvious answers hid traps, hesitated and made wrong choices. Teddy wasn’t other kids.

  Being Extra wasn’t the thing – I had always known I was that. What counted was getting away to the Special Schools where I could forget my family existed. Other kids had fathers and brothers but I had a Second Grade Design Engineer and Francis. Dad was as weak as piss, whining about the way things were going wrong while he threw our money away on that useless car; Mum couldn’t stop him though she had twice his guts and brains. And Francis! Lying, snivelling, pilfering little shit, sucking up to Dad as if that could get him anywhere! When he discovered his tiny talent – how to count without using his fingers – you’d have thought he was Einstein, when in fact he was so clumsy he could punch wrong answers on a cally.

  I didn’t hate them. You don’t hate what you’ve got used to, you put up with it, but I knew I’d get nowhere until I left them behind me.

  Mum wasn’t so bad. Wasn’t bad, that is, until the night Dad cut his throat and she showed that when the chips were down she was as hopeless as Francis. She grieved for the man who had ruined us because he couldn’t hold a job, and when I let fly with the cold truth she hit me.

  I said nothing while we made the shift to Newport and settled into our slum, because I knew my Test report would come soon. Then – away!

  What finally killed goodwill in me was Kovacs. He was something new in low bastards, a fleshless animal under a face sharp enough to bore holes in you, with soft brown eyes pretending that what looked out of them wasn’t the soul of a rat. Blackmail, murder, theft, extortion – you could back him to be the local champion. He was cheap from his second-hand clothes to the Swill voice that he tried to curl around human speech as if that disguised the accent of the gutter.

  Mum didn’t even pretend to resist him; when it came to the trial she was as weak as Dad. Kovacs walked into the place and sat down and purred and she let him. As for Francis, he took a crush on the man that soured my stomach, following him around with eyes like swooning stars.

  I refused to speak to the Swill animal when I didn’t absolutely have to and he never tried to make friends or stand over me. He was the kind without real guts but I just wasn’t big enough to take him on.

  You can see what they were like and why I had to get away.

  The pity is that you can see also what I was like.

  Bastard Kovacs tried to sneer down my success, unable to bear the idea of anybody being out of his class. He had the sense to stay away the morning I left.

  I felt, after all, a tug at leaving Mum, but there was nothing else for it. What could she offer that Kovacs would not drag down and degrade? Francis, I didn’t think about.

  The hoverbus was full of kids, all strangers to each other, trying to make conversation. The girl next to me said, ‘Hello.’ I said, ‘Hello,’ and let it go at that; I wanted to be alone with my relief and my visions of the future. What did I expect? A spectacular ushering into a ceremonial hall staffed by smiling adults welcoming us into the life intellectual, a jovial welcoming speech from some dignitary followed by . . . by what?

  There was no ceremonial hall or welcoming speech. The bus didn’t so much as run through City Center but drove into a huge iron shed so old that rust was eating through the paint, with sets of parallel tracks sunk into the cement floor. One of the kids whispered that it was an old electric tram depot, but none of us could remember tracked trams.

  Other buses were there with some 300 kids. Desks lined one wall with an unsmiling adult at each, not giving a damn for our intellects, having no speech of welcome ready and wanting only to be rid of us as fast as possible. Questions, data checks and the handing over of a large, heavy carryall stamped with a number: ‘That’s your squad number and this is your bus number. Find your bus and stay with it. If you have to go to the toilet, tell your driver. Questions?’ About what?

  My squad of ninety-six bright but suddenly up-anchored brains began to settle into small groups. Inevitably there were outsiders whom no group wanted or who did not yet want a group; it suited me to stay solo. Time to pick acquaintances after casing the field.

  One of the girls approached the driver where he waited at the wheel – I suppose she wanted the toilet. We could not hear what was said but we could see that she was shocked out of her dithering wits and that she went off where he had indicated in a visible flutter. When she came back, a flurry of scandal flew through the squad as only scandal can.

  ‘She could hardly understand the driver. He’s Swill!’

  It is strange now to think of our reaction to that scrap of information, from prudish outrage to thrilled curiosity. A real Swill! Tame, one hoped.

  His presence, though, was a puzzle. A Swill with a job was a contradiction in terms; we could make nothing of it. (He was a plant, of course, an entering wedge into our ideas; the Schools did nothing without intent.)

  When finally we were herded into our seats each bus raced off in a different direction. I refused to concern myself about destination. The thing was, to accept what came with aplomb proper to an Extra mind. What came at the end of a two-hour run was a huge field of stubbly brown grass stretching away to distant canvas tents. We piled out at the driver’s Swill-voiced direction, trying to look as though we were not actually following orders from scum, and clustered in dismay under a blistering sun on an empty road through untold hectares of naked countryside.

  It turned out that not one of us had ever spent a night under canvas. What confronted us was cultural shock.

  Across the field – to us it seemed closer to scorched waste – came a solitary man, taking his time. Arriving, he waved to the driver with a friendly, ‘Take it away, Larry,’ which Larry did, carrying civilization with him. The solitary man grinned at us like a shark coming in to bite and said, ‘Welcome home.’

  We looked toward the tents and were silent.

  He said, ‘I’m your Squad Overseer – head tutor, if you prefer that. You will address me as Mr Nikopoulos and call me Nick behind my back only so long as I don’t catch you at it. Now pick up your bags and follow me.’

  This is the right place to tell something about Nick, saving complicated explanations later on.

  He was Greek,
of course, but Australia had been home to emigrant Greeks for more than a century; as a nation we had more mixed blood than was worth the trouble of sorting out. In any case, you could no longer tell the immigrant stock from the convict strain because the mixture was evening out. Nick was different in being third-generation Australian without intermarriage, pure Greek with black hair, brown eyes and the nuggety body of his peasant ancestors.

  To me, on that blazing day, he was a malevolent, over-muscled oaf with authority that must be deferred to. He was part of our transfer to a barbarous scene denying the expectations Testing had built into us and, in the way of transference, he became the focus of blame for it.

  He was authority without explanation or reason. We had read of the old military juntas, the Nazis, the Red Kremlin and the rumours of such systems still at work in our modern world; they formed the undercurrent of suspicion that divided nation from nation and made patriotism the necessary defense of freedom. (You don’t question that sort of thing at age twelve.) Nikopoulos’ assumption of unquestionable authority stirred these in our minds; his mild order translated as, I’m the boss and I tell you, move! We had never been treated so in our psychologically sanitized schools.

  He was, though we did not discover it until much later, a Police Intelligence Officer who resented these comfortless tutoring secondments as much as we did.

  I disliked him on sight, disliked his dark face, his animal physique and his neutral, tell-nothing Australian voice; so obvious a Greek had no business to sound like one of us. Dislike turned quickly to animosity.

  That changed in time, but it was a slow process.

  The tents were a long kilometer from the road, a kilometer of peculiar hell. Remember that none of us was over twelve, that we were toting heavy bags given to us at the depot as well as our own luggage and that our private luggage contained in nearly every instance about twice what had been recommended in the written instruction. Outraged mothers saw only ineptitude in an instruction stipulating one change of socks and underwear and no extra shirts and shoes and stating that toiletries would be provided. One kid actually had a blanket roll; several carried portable trivs. Many had two suitcases instead of the required one, so the depot carryall made a serious encumbrance.

  There was a general move to pile the carryalls in a heap with the idea of returning for them later, but Nikopoulos scotched that. He said, very courteously, as though it were not a sick joke, ‘I realize that a conscientious parent can be troublesome, but now you must resolve the trouble, out here and alone with your baggage. Remember that the carryall contains overalls and basic clothing and that no time has been allotted for a return trip. You must make your decisions at once. Follow me.’

  He started off and never once looked back.

  So there we were – case in hand, smaller case clamped uncomfortably under left armpit, carryall in right hand and other matters dependent on ingenuity – staggering over the pathless stubble. Under a furious sun.

  The bunch shook itself out into ninety-six sweltering units covering 100 meters from stumbling leaders to complaining tail. I was lucky in having only one suitcase – though it was heavy enough with gadgetry I fancied as necessities – and in being strong for my age. I knew I would make the trek, however uncomfortably.

  Early on I passed the girl I had snubbed in the bus. She had her cases open and was trying to cram the contents of both into one. She was plain, cheaply dressed, probably no better off than the Conways, and I said, ‘I can stuff some of that in my pockets if you like.’

  She squealed furiously without looking at me, ‘Stuff yourself! I don’t need any help.’

  She was close to tears and obstinate with frustration, so I left her to it.

  The trek became a trail of discarded belongings, entire suitcases as well as two portable trivs, the blanket roll, items of clothing and a small golliwog.

  Nikopoulos strolled, aware of jettison and distress but not turning his head. He waited by the first group of tents, until we were all assembled. It took some time. Then he said, ‘Those who discarded what could be done without showed decision in a situation of necessary choice. Those who struggled to bring all they had showed determination. In an unreasonable world the Extra needs both.’

  One among the ninety-six, a girl, said quietly but clearly, ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Now that’s no language for a lady! Would she care to declare herself or would she prefer the anonymity dictated by good sense?’

  Get you coming or going.

  ‘I said it.’ It was the girl who had told me to stuff myself. She was raging and had been crying. Her voice, her accent, was different from what I had been accustomed to; I could not place it.

  Nikopoulos gave her his shark’s grin. ‘You prefer courage to good sense?’

  ‘It don’t take courage to talk back to you.’

  ‘It doesn’t take courage.’ The correction galled her as it let me place her socially. Declassé, the Sweet would say, a long-term Fringer with standards slipping. ‘It does, though,’ he said, ‘take more anger than logic. Cowardice, properly judged, may be a survival trait.’ Then, confrontation suavely turned to profit, he said, ‘You will sort yourselves out, four to a tent. For that you have five minutes, which should obviate unnecessary fiddling over who shares with whom. At the end of that time a siren will sound and your stomachs will warn you of another survival trait.’ He pointed out a marquee some distance away. (Everything, we discovered, was some distance away.) ‘Questions?’

  Someone asked, ‘When can we pick up the stuff we dropped?’

  ‘Threw away. Why should you want what you threw away?’

  By that time he had irritated me so much that I stepped forward to say, ‘We don’t have to give reasons for wanting our property.’

  He nodded affably. ‘No, you don’t. But when will you find time? Your day is closely scheduled.’ He glanced at the sky. ‘It hasn’t rained here for two years and surely won’t today, and no wind is forecast, so the gear can stay there until you find time, make time, scrounge time to fetch it. I assure you none will be stolen. You have now four minutes in which to choose your tents.’

  Bedlam. After four minutes of chaos a siren cried like something dying and hunger hit like a blow below the belt, but everybody had thrown his or her gear in somewhere.

  They gave us a civilized meal and plenty of it, and when we got back to the tents all the dropped gear had been collected and laid out for easy identification. First the lesson, then the dollop of jam. Basic stuff. Nobody was mollified.

  Much, much later I concluded that the purpose of the morning’s exercise was mental preparation for all sorts of seeming unreasonableness which would eventually make reason. We were being told: the world isn’t the place you think it is; it is neither rational nor just.

  2

  We spent twelve months in that camp. The training and schooling seemed like helter-skelter hard work but was in fact a sorting out of potentials. It was much like military training, without weapons, on the physical side. We turned out daily with the sparrows and washed in a creek five minutes’ trot away; during the day we did as much physical training as schoolwork, with emphasis on team games. On some nights there was, surprisingly, dramatic study. If I detested the days I loved the nights of Shakespeare, Ibsen, Brecht (no moderns, you notice), the arguing over character and meaning and techniques. It seemed irrelevant but was not.

  Our tutors, both men and women, took us in groups of six, so learning was intensive and personal. They were friendly but remote; they gave out the conventional come-to-me-if-you-have-problems, but their tents were pitched so far off that the matter had to be damned urgent for you to sacrifice the time needed to find them.

  Out of syllabus hours we were left to ourselves. Really to ourselves. Nobody inspected tents or read lectures on behaviour or called ‘lights out’ or cared if we missed a morning dip in the creek.

  The result was at first tumultuous. We were Extra, superior and aware of it. The tents w
ere hotbeds of tension with everybody trying to be top brain, the weakest driven to fits of self-pity. Yelling matches flourished night and day, with kids flouncing out of their tents to sleep on the ground rather than associate with pseudo-intelligent pigs, tears of rage and a few fights. Sometimes we stopped the fights, sometimes we egged the warriors on, the girls as bad as the boys. I was no better or worse than the rest.

  For ten days we saw nothing of Nikopoulos – the tutors seemed uninterested in how we behaved out of class. Lateness and inattention were the only crimes.

  On the tenth day the squads assembled at the tutorial area (most of the teaching was open air) and were left to wait; when we talked we were told to shut up. We waited for half an hour.

  Nikopoulos turned up, strolling, all the time in the world on his hands, looked us over and said, ‘I have seen your tents. You live like animals. I have heard your noise at night. Animals display more social conscience. You behave like your own idea of the Swill you despise. There is some excuse for them.’

  Then he strolled away and the day proceeded as usual.

  No threats, only a sneering blow at the snobberies and fears we had been reared in. Our social studies had begun with self-examination.

  From then on Nikopoulos took to wandering around the tutorial groups, listening a while and then taking over with his personal injection of the unexpected, tying one or other of us in knots and wandering off again, destruction accomplished.

  He picked on me one day and what happened was extraordinary, though only I knew how much so. He caught me in one of those moments when my mind was astray on an excursus of its own and when he called my name I came to with a rush but had not heard the question.

  He said quite mildly, ‘Pay some attention, lad. I asked why the twentieth-century engineers laid down such a fine system of roads and then let them fall into disrepair.’