Happiness: A Planet (26 page)

While he was eating Awen noticed that the two lines of buoys were now slightly curved. He asked Tevor what was happening.

“A miscalculation,” Tevor ruefully admitted. “Always one simple oversight. I calculated the sitings on the old tidal charts. But, of course, no moon equals no tides. Some of the buoys motors have been running since we first dropped them. Mostly those in the main current of the channel. Those too in the stronger local eddies to the side. Should still be good for another week though. Then I’ll re-site them.”

Tevor Cade, however, continued to look worried. Awen decided that he liked him better than the man who had been so certain of exactly what would happen next.

Later that evening Awen ran the day’s film through his editors, reloaded his cameras. And he sat with Tevor Cade, speculated with him about the apes, and waited.  

On their third day on the planet Hambro Harrap and Awen Mendawer accompanied the Senate Member for South Five to yet another Extraordinary Meeting of the Happiness Senate.

Awen Mendawer hadn’t wanted to go: Senate meetings were not, no matter what the topic under discussion, original footage. Nautili were. Hambro Harrap, however, had interpreted Awen’s presence on the planet as being to record his, Hambro Harrap’s, meeting with the Nautili; and Hambro Harrap was a friend of Anton Singh, who was for the moment Awen’s sole employer.

Loathe to make an enemy of the powerful, and assured by Tevor Cade that nothing was likely to happen for at least another twelve hours, Awen took his bleeper with him and boarded the Senate Member for South Five’s small silver plane.

For the first twenty minutes of the flight Awen stayed by a fuselage window filming first the wilderness shrinking below them, then a coffee plantation’s high boundary fence, a straight line which rose and fell over the contours of the continent below, chaotic wilderness on the one side, regimented coffee bushes on the other. He soon tired of the lack of variety, took himself forward to sit beside the Senate Member for South Five. Hambro remained in his seat, absorbed in the case open on his lap.

Awen asked the Senate Member how much longer the flight would take. The Senate Member pointed ahead to a wall of white cloud,

“That lays over the coastline. An hour over the sea, another half hour after that.” Awen filmed the approaching cloud.

“What do people here make of events so far?” he aimed his camera at the Senate Miember’s profile.

“Worried, naturally.” The Senate Member smiled, “The missing moon’s led to a few bizarre theories. Quite a few cults of the irrational have gained substantial credence.” Aware of the impression that he might be making upon Space watchers, the Senate Member added, “Some have tried to work it out logically; logic, though, depends on information.”

“Cults of the irrational?” Awen said. “Such as?”

“Usual thing,” the Senate Member reluctantly admitted. “Feel they’re undergoing punishment for some unspecified misdeed. As Doctor Tevor Cade would say, externalising their own anxieties. Can’t say I blame them; it’s always more comforting to come up with a reason — no matter how implausible — than to say you don’t know. And don’t go away with the idea that this is peculiar to planets. It isn’t. Because, now that natural phenomena and human behaviour can be increasingly explained in rational terms, people everywhere, including Space, are seeking out the irrational, the inexplicable, the mystical. They want to demonstrate mankind’s ignorance on some matters so that they may, willy-nilly, hold onto their ragbag of primitive prejudices. And, like everywhere else, including Space, we’ve always had our share of blind prejudices here.”

Before their arrival in the capital Awen returned to his seat. Hambro had closed his case.

“What you going to tell them?” Awen asked him.

“Enough,” Hambro favoured him with a smile, preparing himself for his coming audience. “‘Attempt the truth,” he quoted, “‘and men mock you for a fool. Tell lies and men praise you for being wise.’  I will attempt the middle road.”

They landed beside the other small planes on the Senate Building’s apron. The interior of this building being a facsimile of all Senates, Hambro knew his way around and, for the first time since he had left the city, he seemed to exude his usual air of benevolent complacency.

In the vestibule the Senate Member for South Five effected the first introductions to the other Senate Members, then the Spokesman took over. While Hambro was thus gladhanding Awen made his way up to the gallery, began setting up his equipment alongside the other reporters. Hambro joined him there a few minutes before the meeting convened.

“Who are they?” he whispered to Awen.

“Locals.”

“Should they be here? They could syndicate it.”

“Don’t
worry,” Awen adjusted a lens. “Anton’ll have it sewn up.”

The custom is that the most junior Senate Member vacates his or her seat for the guest speaker. In the case of Happiness’s Senate this was the lot of the Member for North One. She joined the reporters in the circular gallery, watched the Members move to their places.

No sooner was the last Member seated than the Spokesman called the meeting to order. He formally introduced the guest speaker. The orb moved across to Hambro. With a cultivated elegance Hambro casually laid his fingertips upon the orb.

How Members lay claim to the orb is often seen as indicative of their personality, of their temperament, even of their politics. Some jealously pounce upon the orb, others negligently stroke it, some clutch at it as if the head of an adventurous small child about to slip their grasp, while others roll it indifferently under their flattened palm, while yet others appear to regard it as an erotic artefact and absentmindedly caress it. Hambro Harrap though, his wrist arched, his fingers spread, almost disdainfully deigned to touch it.

Including the assembled Senate Members in his confidential smile, he began.

Like all politicians and popular entertainers he began by first obliquely flattering his audience,

“I must confess that the fine sensibilities of us fastidious Spacers are offended by the rawness of planetary life. A
consequence of that is that there exists in Space a low opinion of those who choose to live on planets. You are seen as regressive. I, however, do not share that opinion. I believe you to be pioneers. Yes, pioneers. It is not open to all of us to venture out beyond the edges of civilisation, to expand our frontiers. So, frustrated pioneers that you are, you have come here, armed with all the advances of Space, to refight the battles of our intrepid ancestors. A necessary fight. Because you are indispensable to our civilisation. You are worthy members of it. Your troubles are our troubles. Your concerns are our concerns. City, station or planet; we are indivisible.

“Senate Members of Happiness,” Hambro paused so long Awen thought, for a moment, he had forgotten what he was going to say next. But continue he did, “We are about to make history. On this day, here on this aptly named planet, we are about to communicate with the Nautili.”

The lack of response from the Senate Members surprised and puzzled Hambro. He had anticipated gasps of shock, at least a raising of eyebrows, possibly even involuntary cries of alarm breaching the discipline of the orb, for which he would, with wise understanding, have forgiven them. Instead, as if they were hearing what they had expected to hear, a few merely nodded. While the remainder waited expressionlessly for him to continue.

Like all City Senate Members Hambro had the open sesame code to every Service file. He had seen that the record of his meeting with XE2’s Director had not been put on file prior to his departure from XE2. When he had left XE2 that meeting had still been in progress, had yet to be closed and indexed. Tevor Cade’s ship, therefore, had not carried a record of that meeting. It followed that Happiness’s Senate Members could not have found out about the Nautili from official records.

What Hambro hadn’t allowed for was a Senate Member who, having little else to do, was an avid reader of science papers and who had immediately recognised Tevor Cade. Nor, with his customary arrogance, had Hambro allowed for the deductive powers of Happiness’s inhabitants. Because the Senate Member for South Five, following Hambro’s instructions, hadn’t mentioned Nautili to the Spokesman, had simply informed him that Tevor Cade had been dropping sonar buoys in the ocean. The Spokesman had called only four of his fellow Senate Members, had imparted that same information to them. Those four Senate Members had relayed their own conclusions to their colleagues. By the time Hambro came to speak the initial idea had already been digested by the Senate, its implications considered.

“I realise that this may come as a shock to you,” Hambro, putting his puzzlement and his suspicions of treachery aside, pressed on with his prepared speech. “I realise that some of you have lost loved ones. I realise that you may be concerned for your own safety. But I believe that, now that we know why your ships and your moon have disappeared, no further harm will come to any on this planet. I believe that the Nautili did not know fully what they were doing. I believe that once we explain to them the consequences of their actions then they will immediately desist. Because, and let us not overlook this, the Nautili are intelligent and civilised beings too.”

Like all politicians Hambro Harrap used words for their effect rather than for their meaning. Referring often to the pioneering spirit, to the breaking of new ground, presenting his Senate audience with a loquacious mix of the familiar and the strange, he continued, as was his intention, to woo them.

“Viewed positively,” he said, “because of the Nautili this planet, if it is approached in the right spirit, could become a tourist attraction. Nor do I see it adversely affecting your recruitment of new settlers. If they are the kind of people I believe them to be, then I can see them readily rising to the challenge.”

In order not to frighten them too much with the new, Hambro drew their attention to other colonised planets whose inhabitants already co-existed peacefully with the Nautili in their seas. Here, however, he said, they would be at a distinct advantage in being able to talk to them. He also pointed out that the inhabitants of Happiness themselves already co-existed with several species of predatory carnivores in their wildernesses; and the Nautili weren’t known to eat people.

“As to the immediate future I intend personally overseeing the payment of compensation to those of you who have lost loved ones. While, here on the planet, I propose that we hold memorial services for the lost children, give what dignity we can to the indignity of death. I will also personally hasten along the redrawing of farm boundaries.”

Having thus pledged himself and, he hoped, placated the inhabitants’ fears, Hambro proceeded to address himself more to Awen’s cameras than to the Senate, more to history than to his contemporaries. Presenting himself as a man of vision he talked of the need for a meeting of intelligences, of the cross-fertilisation that could occur, of learning humbly from each other, of harmony in the universe, et cetera, et cetera. And, as usual, with men and women subject to such grand vanities, history will no doubt overlook him. While his contemporaries he merely mildly puzzled — what had this to do with them?

To round off his speech Hambro reverted to trying to enthuse the Happiness Senate with a sense of the opportunity offered them.

He failed.

When he released the orb the Spokesman thanked him for his address, invited questions from the Members. None called the orb to them. Hambro rose. The Senate Member for North One returned to her seat.

In the meeting that followed the Senate matter-of-factly decided that, as soon as it was ascertained that it was safe to leave the planet, a delegation be sent to two other Nautili colonised planets to see how they had coped with the presence of Nautili. The closest any came to a direct reference to Hambro’s speech was when the Senate Member for North Two said,

“We have lost sons, daughters. It’s asking a lot of us to simply accept their killers.”

Although those Senate Members might have fervently wished that the Nautili had not come to their planet, not one of them considered abandoning the planet. Their first loyalty was to their bits of land, be it in some cases only a few square meters of garden. And at least now they knew who had stolen their moon, who had destroyed their ships. And knowing was better than not knowing. The planet had been like someone with an undiagnosed illness: ignorance and imagination had been a recipe for fear. Now they knew exactly what they were up against they could grapple realistically with the problem.

Hambro had been shrewdly correct when he had likened the Nautili to the other predatory species who shared their planet. Planet dwellers are far less daunted by the idea of Nautili than are us Spacers. And those Senate Members, because it was a problem they had known they might be likely to face, another planetary hazard they had subconsciously accepted if not openly acknowledged, had already made it their business to know about Nautili. They also, occupying as they did the same living space, probably had more natural sympathy for the Nautili than do those of us who live in Space.

The remainder of that Extraordinary Meeting of the Happiness Senate was taken up with discussions on how to attract new settlers, whether they should emphasise or play down the presence of Nautili in their seas. Further than that they made no decisions, except to agree to await events. No public criticism of Hambro Harrap was voiced. Because, although Happiness’s Senate Members included farmers, traders, technicians and one scientist, while they sat in the Senate Chamber they were all first and foremost politicians; and those Senate Members, those politicians, had a vested interest in giving Hambro Harrap’s position all due respect. They knew that if they were to publicly mock his principally political reason for being there their own could prove as easily false. Hambro, therefore, won their tacit acquiescence, if not their open approval.