Super-State

by By Brian Aldiss

  Sir Thomas Squire was sitting in a wicker chair in the conservatory, a rug over his knees. The peel of an orange lay on a plate at a side table nearby. He was more or less watching the big ambient wall screen, on which a soap opera was playing. His nurse sat a discreet distance away Nurse Gibbs had set little aromatic candles burning here and there, so that the room was filled with the scent of rosemary.

  ‘There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance,’ Jane murmured, half aloud. At fifty years of age, she found herself increasingly burdened by remembrances. The grand old house was stocked with them. As it was with shadows, debt, dry rot, damp and empty fireplaces. She loved it intensely, and thought of it as the old galleon in which her life sailed.

  ‘I am well enough, thank you,’ said Sir Tom, responding to his daughter’s enquiry. ‘Just a little tired. I was watching a cormorant, I think it was, sitting on the sea wall.’

  Jane looked with compassion at his lined face, blotched with liver marks. She stooped in front of him.

  ‘You’ve been all right while I was away?’

  ‘Of course, my dear. Nurse Gibbs has looked after me. I’ve been watching the ambo quite a lot. It seems as if our super-state is determined to go to war with Tebarou. The President has much to say about it. I never trusted that man. It must be mistaken policy, just when the world seemed to be settling at last for peace. Surely we are too prosperous to go to war. What can we gain from it?’

  ‘Experience? Prowess?’

  ‘Misery? Death? Civic unrest?’

  ‘Perhaps it won’t happen, Father. Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘Someone’s got to worry about it. Not that my worrying will do any good. It’s madness . . .’ He fell silent, starting up suddenly to speak again. ‘Remind me of the name of that general who came here once when you were quite small. Made a pass at your mother, I seem to remember.’

  Jane thought. ‘Oh, you mean General Fairstepps? Funny name. He was at the de Bourcey wedding. I caught sight of him once.’

  ‘Yes, of course. Fairstepps. Funny name. Gary Fairstepps. Well, he’s in charge of the Rapid Reaction Force. They were saying on the Today programme that he is to fly out to Tebarou with his force.’

  Tom’s shaky voice carried further information and complaint about the folly of war. Jane half listened, staring out at the new sea wall and the grey-blue of the waters beyond. In her childhood, Hartisham had remained a quiet little Norfolk village, three miles inland from the North Sea. But what her father liked to call ‘global storming’ had caused the sea to burst over the Stiffkey Freshes, to overwhelm the marshes and Stiffkey itself, and its little river, and to sweep inland.

  Sir Thomas Squire, combining with other landowners, had had a sea wall built, stretching from Binham to the east to Walsingham in the west. The waves were held back, at least for the time being. Now as Jane gazed, the sea was calm, and a dinghy sailed where Stiffkey Valley had been, where Stiffkey cattle had grazed. At low tide, the tower of Warham St Mary church could still be seen above the flood.

  ‘I’ll be getting Sir Tom his tea now,’ Nurse Gibbs said, quietly. She took charge of the plate with the orange peel on it.

  It seemed that Sir Tom had fallen asleep. Jane followed the nurse from the room.

  ‘I shall give him his next injection in twenty-five minutes,’ the nurse said confidentially, as she headed for the kitchen area. ’Don’t worry about him, Jane. His condition at present is stable.’

  Never before had Jane loved Pippet Hall as much as she did now, knowing it to be threatened by the elements. At least her father would not live to see the day when the swollen sea overwhelmed it. The Hall was situated on a small eminence. When it went, the nearby church of St Swithin’s, and its cemetery in which her mother, Teresa Squire, lay buried, would be swept away — and with them something valuable of English history

  She called to her daughter and Remy that it was teatime.

  * * * *

  It was night when Paulus Stromeyer arrived by plane at Toulouse Air Base, straight from the wedding ceremony. There was in the super-state what commentators on the ambient described as ‘war fever’. This Paulus had publicly denied, saying that phrases such as ‘war fever’ were in themselves inflammatory. He had been contradicted by Air Chief Marshal Pedro Souto on a popular ambient channel. It happened that Stromeyer and Souto had been at university together. And so it was that Stromeyer had gained permission to meet Souto, face to face.

  A buggy arrived promptly as his plane taxied to a parking slot. Two uniformed men stood respectfully by as Paulus stepped briskly from one vehicle to the other. The buggy, headlights blazing, moved slowly to a distant part of the base. Uniformed men with slung carbines were everywhere.

  Paulus stared from his window. Outlines shining in the dark, ranks of the new supersonic SS20 fighter-bombers with VTO facilities stood on damp tarmac, hard to discern clearly against a blaze of lights in the background. Their long noses, their svelte shapes, suggested the evolved grace of predatory animals — some kind of new animal — crouching, waiting to go for the kill.

  Despite himself, Paulus felt a thrill of excitement. To be in one of those superb machines, screaming through the stratosphere across the globe . . .

  ‘Now . . .’ he told himself, ‘really, you are not a schoolboy any more, in love with hardware.’

  The buggy drew up before a large building. Sentries stood at its portals. Stromeyer was identified at the door and allowed to pass, still escorted, into the air-conditioned interior. Here brilliant lighting was the order of the day. Stromeyer was taken to a cubicle and searched for weapons.

  ‘Just routine, sir,’ said the searcher.

  ‘I have never in my life carried a gun.’

  ‘It’s just routine, sir.’

  He was shown to a desk where a retina print was taken and he submitted to having an identity tag pinned on him.

  Still escorted, he ascended by elevator to the third floor. More checks before they were permitted to quit the elevator. Here an armed guard took over from the escort. His highly polished boots slammed against the highly polished floor. Down the corridor, a code was entered into a doorfone. They entered an anteroom. A pleasant young blond woman in uniform came forward to tell Stromeyer that the Air Chief Marshal would be with him as soon as possible, and to offer him a cup of coffee.

  When the coffee came, he tried to strike up a conversation with the woman, but she was not having any.

  Fourteen minutes later, he was shown into the presence of the Air Chief Marshal. Souto was standing by a window, over which a metal blind had been drawn. With him were three other men and a uniformed woman.

  Souto came forward and shook Stromeyer’s hand. He was a big man, with a leathery face and a cold grey stare. He looked older than his forty years. Even when offering his visitor something of a smile, his hauteur remained undiminished, his manner unbending.

  ‘We have not met since you were awarded the Nobel Prize. My belated congratulations,’ he said, stiffly.

  ‘Our career paths are somewhat divergent nowadays.’

  ‘Very divergent. You have become a pacifist.’

  Stromeyer smiled one of his gentlest smiles. ’Not quite that. I suffered a conversion some years ago, becoming persuaded, like the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, that love and tenderness alone are of real value.’

  ‘For love and tenderness to survive, they need the protection of a strong arm. All here would agree, I think. We are ready to strike. We dedicate our lives to providing the state with a strong arm.’

  Murmurs of agreement came from the company. The woman in the party said, ‘You quote Russell, Dr Stromeyer. He was a supporter of unilateral disarmament. That has never been an option for us.’

  Looking her in the eye, Stromeyer told her that he was not here to ask for disarmament but for restraint. ‘Are you or are you not planning to bomb Tebarou?’

  Taking over the conversation, Souto said, ‘I shall not discuss military tactics with you, nor b
andy words. More important matters claim my attention. I am not for speeches but actions. Since you are here, Paulus, we shall give you a practical demonstration of the strategic situation as it is at present. Masters, please!’

  This last command was directed at the most junior officer present. In response, Masters crossed briskly to a desk, where he activated a large ambient wall screen. As he ran his fingers over the keyboard, Souto said, in a heavy plodding voice, ‘The ambient ... so useful . . . The American bio-electronic network . . .How it holds our culture together. In some ways it is the making of our state. It has superseded personal language. But you are against technology, Paulus?’

  Souto’s heavy skull swivelled round to glance at a CCTV monitor showing his fighter-bombers waiting on the tarmac outside.

  ‘Our state was not made by technology but by the dispensations of nature,’ Paulus told him. ’It’s easy to forget that, when you look at your gleaming warplanes outside. Our climates, our soils, have much to do with Europe’s favoured place among nations.

  ‘And have you ever considered that we probably owe our civilisation to grass? You no doubt recall the old carol we sing at Christmas — “While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night”? There would never have been any flocks were it not for the curious botanical fact that grass grows from its roots, not from its tips, as do most plants. So when sheep graze the grass, the grass continues to grow. No grass would mean no sheep, no herbivores, no wool, no clothes . . . No, in fact, progress.

  ‘We owe most of the things we are to the grass under our feet. Doesn’t that thought induce humility? Of course, you have nothing but tarmac here at the base.’

  A slight flush registered on Souto’s stern countenance.

  ‘I will not be lectured, not even on botanical matters, not even by a Nobel Prize-winner. As I always suspected, Nobel Prize-winners are fatally naive. What has grass, of all things, to do with today? You’re a man whose son is well on his way to Jupiter, and yet you despise technology! Just attend to this picture Masters has brought up.’

  The wall screen showed Europe photographed from a satellite. It was a live picture. Cloud cover parting, Europe was disclosed as a prone and emaciated figure, with the Alps as backbone and the Iberian peninsula as a head. The Greek Peloponnese served as a spatulate and bony foot. The glistening Mediterranean Sea showed up as the couch on which this strange creature was resting.

  Captain Masters came forward with an electronic pointer. He indicated the southern shores of what he called Fortress Europe, from the Straits of Gibraltar in the west to the Aegean with its scatter of islands in the east. Speaking in a dry voice, he said that this entire region had to be continuously patrolled by ship and plane. It was under constant surveillance by satellite.

  ‘The deterioration of climate in Africa has meant a mass invasion — or attempted invasion — of our shores by the luckless and unskilled. We cannot afford to house a million refugees per year. They attempt to cross the Med by various unseaworthy boats. We have to deter them.’

  ‘By sinking their craft?’ enquired Stromeyer.

  ‘How we do it remains restricted information. It is certainly a very costly operation. Millions of univs every year.’

  Souto added, ‘These invasive peoples are enemies of our stability. It is beside the point that most are black, most are Muslim. There is a cultural difference between our cultures which cannot be bridged. Already many of our cities have foreign quarters where our own people fear to go. These quarters and their denizens are multiplying. Dissidence festers there. In our own interests we must draw a line.’

  He nodded at Masters and the satellite view disappeared.

  Stromeyer replied, ‘I came to talk to you about a possible war with Tebarou, Pedro, and to ask you to be pacific. Tebarou is a long way from our borders. What about the Med? Why this threat of war?’

  ‘I am talking about that serious eventuality right now, Paulus. We are not idle. I was in conference with the President two days ago, before his son’s wedding, together with other high-ups of the armed forces. The new president of Tebarou, Morbius el Fashid, is no friend of ours. He has formed a loose alliance with the African states. Two weeks back, we sank a tramp steamer off the heel of Italy. That steamer was carrying approximately four thousand illegal immigrants, all heading for the EU.

  ‘There was retaliation from Tebarou. I want you to understand that we will not, cannot, permit such intrusions on our territory.’

  Paulus asked to be told about the nature of the West’s retaliation.

  ‘Air strike,’ was the crisp answer. ‘SS20s.’

  A call came through on Souto’s mofo. When he turned away to answer it, another of the senior officers present addressed Paulus.

  ‘Sir, we have been under missile attack from Tebarou. No doubt you have seen reports of the outrage. The first missile they fired struck a town called Siebersdorf, near Graz in Austria. That missile had a nuclear warhead. The destruction and loss of life is extremely serious and requires to be answered.’

  ‘But Tebarou apologised. El Fashid has said the missile was launched by mistake.’ His remark was swept away.

  ‘Two further missiles have hit our territories, fortunately in open country. One on a hillside south of Ravensberg, the other in a forest near Vesoul, in France. You must have seen about them on the ambient.’

  ‘The suggestion being that this was a kind of range-finding exercise, each time the missiles landing farther from home. Some claim these were meteorites, not missiles. Is this sufficient provocation for a declaration of war? War always brings out the bad in people.’

  One of the officers gave a snort of contempt at this last remark. He said that war was a question of power politics; morality did not enter into it.

  ‘Then morality should do so,’ said Paulus. ‘Tebarou is a small country. We are a super-state. We should not attack poor Asian countries. You may recall history and the American offensive against Vietnam.’

  Souto came off the phone in time to catch Paulus’s remark. ‘Tebarou may be small. China is large — another super-state.’

  He said grimly that Western suspicions had been confirmed. Investigation of the shattered non-nuclear enemy weapon cases indicated that the Tebarou missiles were of Chinese manufacture.

  His fellow officers looked not displeased by this revelation.

  He added that Tebarou was a newly established state, barely fifteen years old, set up in reluctant accord with China by Chinese Muslims. The new president, Morbius el Fashid, was himself part-Chinese.

  Whether the missile strikes had Chinese backing remained debatable. The important thing was to stop the nonsense immediately, show them what was what before worse followed.

  He, Air Chief Marshal Souto, believed that it was not necessary to declare war. Ground troops were not needed.

  What was required was to get their SS20s aloft immediately. With their immense range, they could take out one or two Tebarese cities as a warning. Ninyang and Puanyo for a start. Both industrial cities.

  ‘Which will escalate hostilities,’ said Paulus.

  Souto gave a dry laugh. ‘We have no option. To my mind, these missile attacks constitute a declaration of war — but I’m only a simple air force type. As you must know, Paulus, diplomats are talking, not only in Brussels but in the Tebarou capital. I’m afraid that, like you, talk is getting them nowhere. Nowhere. Our duty is to act, not talk.’

  He gave a curt nod, turned on his heel, and marched from the room.

  The other officials looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Thank you very much for coming, Dr Stromeyer,’ said the uniformed woman, politely. ‘Captain Masters will show you out.’

  * * * *

  No one had heard of a group calling themselves ‘The Insanatics’. Their first message burst in upon a myriad ambients, interrupting the colourful commercials. It was non-pictorial, the text being printed on the screen, with a speaking voice-over.

  * * * *

  ‘Assonance! R
ogerr Laboratories present their New Pile Cure. Selling at your local pharmacy right now. Turn to Assonance! Kiss Your Haemorrhoids Goodbye!’

 
  When the sun is high we tend to lose our minds; when the moon is high, ditto. A woman’s singing reminds us there are better worlds—but not here. If only wisdom were sparkling mineral water; we might drink at the diet of life. We are sensible because we are alive; similarly, rivers are not wet. Instinct permits the handling of our affairs, but is it a hand or a glove?