Web of Everywhere

by John Brunner

  ‘Either way it hurts like hell,’ Hans said. ‘I vaguely remember a quotation: “The bell tolls for thee”.’

  ‘A favorite of mine, too,’ Vanzetti said with a nod. ‘I suppose I wound up in police work for that kind of reason. We’re all diminished by the stupidity and brutality of any given person, including us. Very well, Mr Dykstra, I’ll be glad to ensure you get safely into the skelter system, and we’ll keep watch for anybody trying to pester you by using the code for your home until that’s revised.’

  ‘Oh, don’t go to that much trouble, please!’

  ‘No trouble, none at all!’ With an airy wave. ‘Code-breakers are among the worst criminals of all, aren’t they? And the offense is compounded if what they’re trying to do is sneak past the privateer of someone recently bereaved.’

  It was getting worse all the time, even when it appeared to be going best! Life was cram-jam-full of lunatic paradoxes all of a sudden, and Hans felt himself being squeezed into new hateful painful shapes as a result, because there was no room in the world for both him and them.

  His plea to Vanzetti had succeeded at once … but now he was faced with an even worse problem. Believing he was persecuted by madmen, Vanzetti was bringing to bear the force of the law on Hans’s predicament …

  And who had more to fear from the law than himself, the man who had broken code after code for years not by his own skills but by bribing somebody else? It was bribery, the kind of arrangement he’d made with Mustapha; it was conspiracy too, and there were other and even nastier names he shut away to the side of his mind.

  It seemed hideously certain that very soon he was going to be – to be somewhere, at some random location on the face of the planet, staring at a new neat shiny metal bracelet and thinking how much of his life had been destroyed.

  Unless he contrived to salvage something from the wreck.

  The image came readily to mind; had he not spent most of his working adulthood salvaging things that other people were then allowed to make use of? Was it not high time that he take advantage of a salvage operation performed by someone else? Was that not the clear incontestable definition of what he in fact was doing?

  All these thoughts rushed through his mind as he was whisked away from the court building to the nearby police headquarters and politely invited to step into a secure skelter there, one where no camera or detector could note and record the code punched by a person departing. It was forbidden by law to record that.

  Poising his fingers, he spent a final second on confirming his opinion of what he was committed to. Yes, he was acting in accordance with the ideals of a recuperator. His salvage happened to be a living human being; there was no other difference.

  He punched for the Way of Life refuge in Bali.

  INTERFACE Q

  Today is today but

  Where is here when it can be

  Everywhere?

  Then was then and

  Why is now if it can be

  Any time?

  I live next to no time and no time

  Is an extremely disconcerting neighbor.

  – MUSTAPHA SHARIF

  Chapter 17

  He found Anneliese in a plain small room which might have been the twin of the one in which he himself had slept during his sole vacation here, before he met Dany. One of its walls was covered with dark green creeper growing up a wooden trellis from a shallow pottery tray containing earth. There was no other decoration.

  The girl was dozing on a heap of cushions, partly covered by a soft pink quilt which on his entrance she gathered around her body in alarm … but not so quickly that he was unable to glimpse more of her skin than he had so far seen.

  He was briefly astonished to notice that it was sickly-pallid, white as dough. But of course that wasn’t to be wondered at in view of her upbringing. She had probably never shown her body to the sun. How different from Dany, who had always assumed that sitting on a beach in the altogether would instantly conjure up a horde of admiring men from the sand-dunes.

  ‘Hans, is that you?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He bent to kiss her cheek; her first impulse was to flinch away, but she restrained it and suffered his lips to brush her skin. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Uh … ’ She sat up cautiously, making certain that the quilt was tightly wrapped about her. ‘Yes, they have been kind. They gave me food and drink and took my dress to be laundered.’ She hesitated, searching his face with her dark eyes. ‘And you? Is everything all right?’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Oh, God! What’s gone wrong this time?’

  ‘I think I must have been right about the code-breaker having confederates. The man escaped – and before leaving he set my home on fire.’

  ‘Oh, how horrible! How horrible!’

  ‘Yes, it is … But perhaps not so horrible as you think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He kicked around a cushion and sat down beside her, frowning.

  ‘It’s very hard to explain. It’s a sort of paradox. I feel – I feel as though I’ve been set free from something. You remember, when we arrived at my home, I said I’d kept everything as it used to be for far too long?’

  ‘Yes, of course I remember.’

  ‘Now the whole of my past has been so to speak lifted off me. There’s nothing I can do about it. It’s simply gone. Now, I’m in the same state you were in when you found that Festeburg had been burned.’

  ‘You poor man!’ Impulsively, she clasped his nearer hand, almost losing her grip on the quilt … but not quite. He curled his fingers around hers, thinking how large and clumsy they were compared to her small cool ones.

  ‘Is it a dreadfully bad thing to have to start one’s life again? Isn’t it a chance to forget your mistakes and this time get everything right?’

  ‘I … ’ She bit her lip. ‘I suppose if you have a very strong personality, you can look at it that way.’

  ‘I don’t think I have a strong personality. But that’s the way I’m trying to look at it. Would you like to …?’ He hesitated.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Would you like to help me, as I’m helping you? Shall we go together in search of a new place to live, a new life for both of us?’

  It was a long moment before she answered. It was like a foretaste of eternity.

  But in the end she gave a nod and was able to force a smile.

  ‘Wonderful!’ Hans cried, and leaned toward her and put his free arm around her shoulders. ‘Oh, I thought when I found myself face to face with that inferno I’d die of rage and misery! And here all of a sudden you’ve made me happier than I imagined possible!’

  ‘Was the house beyond saving when you arrived there?’ she whispered.

  ‘Oh, yes. I almost walked into a wall of flames.’

  ‘You didn’t hurt yourself?’ She released his hand and made to feel his face. ‘If it was burning so fiercely – ’

  ‘No, I was very quick,’ he interrupted. ‘I don’t believe I even singed my hair. I stayed just long enough to take in the sight, and then I got away at once. I was afraid the skelter might break down with the heat, and strand me. Maybe that was what the criminal intended!’

  He felt her shudder, and added hastily, ‘Don’t distress yourself … darling! It’s over, over and done with. Let’s make our fresh start together right away, and in a few days it will all be as though it never happened. Any idea where you’d like to go? Somewhere sunny and safe, that’s what I’d like: the Caribbean, or the Azores, or Polynesia!’

  ‘I – I don’t know,’ she muttered. ‘Those are just noises to me, those names.’

  ‘Then we’ll begin by looking them over. It’s high time you got acquainted with the planet.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I’ll go find your dress, or if it isn’t dry something else that you can wear, and we’ll leave at once.’

  ‘You are well rested?’ Mustapha inquired solicitously of Dr Satamori. ‘You are fully recovered?’

  ‘Well
enough to get back to work, certainly,’ Satamori said, gingerly touching the neat bandage around his head. ‘As for rested … I keep having nightmares.’

  ‘It’s hardly surprising,’ Mustapha murmured. ‘I too had a bad dream, concerning what might have happened if I’d gone with you to Chaim’s place.’

  They walked another few paces along the shady colonnaded pathway leading to the skelter by which Mustapha’s guests arrived and left.

  Suddenly Satamori said, ‘My dream was that the attack came through the skelter instead of – no, I recall more clearly now: as well as by land and sea. While the privateer was temporarily disconnected for the benefit of those who solved the treasure-hunt clues, it would have been easy to send in two or three armed men.’

  ‘Or simply to deliver a powerful bomb,’ Mustapha agreed gravely.

  ‘I’m glad I didn’t dream that too!’ Satamori said, with a nervous chuckle.

  Now they had almost reached the skelter; he paused and turned to face his host.

  ‘I am greatly obliged for all your help.’

  ‘There’s no need to leave even now if you’re not really up to it,’ Mustapha said. ‘Stay longer, as long as you wish.’

  ‘No, really, I must go. I have work to do, remember. And among the first of my tasks must be to check on what’s become of the people who won the treasure-hunt. We are now even shorter of valuable people than we were before. I hope I don’t sound cynical, but one must make the best of things.’

  ‘You have a list of some kind?’ Mustapha probed.

  ‘One was compiled by Chaim’s chief footman, but it was probably destroyed. No matter. I have a good memory, and I was introduced to virtually all of them. I’ll start with the recuperator who showed such presence of mind in escaping with the Brazilian girl. Perhaps he’s a coward, but the important thing is that he could react so quickly even when he was rather drunk. It shouldn’t be hard to locate him; he’s bound to show up some time at a public skelter, even if he doesn’t feel much inclined to come forward voluntarily for fear of becoming involved in another disaster like that attack on Chaim’s house.’

  He sighed heavily.

  ‘Oh, Mustapha, I so often find myself wishing that you’d accept a responsible post! You administer this place so skilfully, so tactfully … If anybody alive is developing the aesthetic of government which might replace our outworn ideologies, it must be you.’

  ‘I have my roots too deep in the old world to achieve that goal,’ Mustapha said. ‘I have not yet finished identifying and cleansing away the foul psychological poisons which are the inheritance of us all. Perhaps we shall never succeed, or perhaps your treasure-hunt party, which I’ve spoken of so scathingly, has already found you the person we need, or perhaps he was among the dead. One cannot tell.’

  There was a brief silence; then they embraced and Satamori entered the skelter.

  The moment the scientist was gone, Mustapha clapped his hands loudly, and Ali appeared as though materializing from the air.

  ‘Has Dykstra not been found yet?’

  ‘Effendi, we are searching the whole planet! But when he appealed to the police for the use of a secure skelter he slipped through our fingers.’

  ‘He must be found! Dr Satamori is about to turn loose the whole resources of the Skelter Authority to locate him. Before I decided to start selling codes to him, I prepared the most exhaustive dossier I could about his life and habits. There is a recorded summary of it in my safe labeled HD. Bring it to me at once. I must refresh my memory and see whether I have any other clues to his probable behavior.’

  When the cassette was delivered to him he dropped it into his own specially modified player-recorder, which had an ultra-fast playback attachment; much practice had made him able to follow speech at up to ten times its original speed. It was only a matter of minutes before he clapped his hands again, this time in high excitement, and issued fresh instructions which impressed Ali mightily.

  ‘The effendi indeed deserves that official rank which Dr Satamori offered,’ he said. ‘One could almost believe him capable of reading men’s secret thoughts.’

  ‘Don’t waste time flattering me,’ Mustapha snapped. ‘Go find out whether I’ve read his thoughts right!’

  Anneliese’s dress was not yet nearly dry when by a combination of pidgin-English and gestures Hans located it pegged out along with scores of other and much smaller garments on a pole overhanging a shallow stream that ran past the south side of the refuge. Appealing to a helpful young monk who spoke a little more English than most of the staff obtained him a couple of alternatives: a sort of sarong left behind by a visitor from Sri Lanka, the same size as Anneliese, and a suit of pyjama-like jacket and trousers rather too large, which he seized on eagerly since it would cover her completely and he expected that to be the crucial problem.

  To his dismay Anneliese cast a single glance at what he had found and shook her head, wrapping her quilt more tightly around her than ever.

  ‘That is for a man,’ she said flatly.

  ‘What? But I don’t understand.’

  ‘Perhaps you would not have thought of it. I know many women do go around in trousers. But I have always been taught that it is sinful for women to wear men’s clothes, or men to wear women’s.’

  ‘My dear girl, surely –!’

  ‘Hans, I’m sorry, but I want my dress. It is decently long and it’s proper women’s clothing. Surely if we have to wait a little while longer, until it’s completely dry, that won’t matter very much?’

  Defeated, Hans turned away. ‘I’ll see if I can find something else,’ he muttered.

  ‘It’s not very likely.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have been looking through the window.’ She blushed brilliant red as she spoke. ‘I’ve seen people walking about as shameless as animals! I shall never do that – never, never!’

  Her jaw set stubbornly. For a long moment he gazed at her in disbelief, and then he went out.

  Another search of the refuge’s clothing store proved even more fruitless than the first; as the young man explained apologetically, lightweight clothing was ordinarily converted into cleaning rags or bandages, while what winter wear was kept – shut at present in closets with branches of pennyroyal and other herbs to discourage moth – would run foul of Anneliese’s prejudice against trousers. What more sensible garb, though, for one traveling to a colder climate?

  ‘Is the girl unwell in her mind?’ the monk asked at length.

  ‘You might say so,’ Hans snapped, and explained about her upbringing. The young man’s mouth rounded in amazement.

  ‘I have heard of that. Now I see it, I realize it is even sadder than I was told. Well, we shall just have to find a quick means to dry her dress, if she will put on nothing else and won’t go about naked. Perhaps in the kitchens. I shall take care of it.’

  Hans muttered a mechanical word of thanks and wandered fretfully away, intending to rejoin Anneliese and see if he could cajole her into a more reasonable attitude.

  As he rounded the corner of the corridor leading to her room, however, he heard his name called. Turning, he found the elderly nun whom he had met before hurrying toward him.

  ‘There is friend to see you,’ she said, beaming.

  ‘What?’

  ‘At the skelter. All monks and nuns try finding you in all places since half-hour. Has message for you, he say, from mostly famous poet Mustapha Sharif! And is own name of Muley Hassan.’

  For an instant the world spun crazily around Hans; then he heard his voice cry, ‘He’s lying! I don’t know anybody called that!’

  The nun stared at him, puzzled.

  ‘Is strange, then. He ask by name for you, also for girl. Is – ah – An-nah-li-zah, true? An-nah-li-zah Sen-keh!’ She looked pleased at having produced the European name in recognizable form.

  ‘Send him away!’

  ‘But he ask by name and – ’

  ‘Send him away! Or get me and Anneliese away! Anyth
ing so long as you don’t tell him where I am!’

  ‘But why, brother? Why this man so make you fear?’

  Hans drew a deep breath, and appealed to the one argument he was fairly sure might provoke results.

  ‘Do you wish a man to be murdered here at this refuge? If you don’t, you’ll do as I say!’

  ‘Murder!’ The nun’s eyes grew wide in horror. ‘He is come to kill you? Oh, then you must be sent away!’

  INTERFACE R

  Once I met a man

  who every day

  went around the planet counterclockwise.

  He said by this means

  he gained a day

  and would therefore live for ever.

  Unluckily for him

  Death measures time

  otherwise than with clocks and watches.

  – MUSTAPHA SHARIF

  Chapter 18

  ‘Hans, what in the world –?’

  ‘Here’s your dress! Put it on, since you won’t wear anything else! Hurry! Someone’s followed us here and we’ve got to get away!’

  He threw the still-damp garment at her; she caught it and clutched it to her bosom, staring wide-eyed not only at him but at the monk and nun who had also come to the door of her room, looking much disturbed at the fact of having to lie. Muley Hassan had been sent to the farthest corner of the refuge on the pretext that Hans had last been reported there; a few precious minutes had been gained, but only Hans’s intense assurance that his life was at stake had won that reprieve. It was a cardinal tenet of the Way of Life always to believe that everybody told the truth. Prince Knud had laid that down, at the very beginning, because he said – and with much justice – that the doom of the old world was inherent in its habit of hypocrisy, clear through from bluff in international relations to hard-sell exaggeration in advertising. And because his teachings were so much akin to oriental tradition, they had taken deep root among people like these, on the fringes of the greatest disaster in all of history, who were still even now hunting for clues to help them understand why the population crash called the Blowup had occurred.