Stand on Zanzibar (79 page)

“He is,” Oldham said shortly. “But you’ll see for yourself whether news like that is any use.”

*   *   *

For a while after that call, Norman was bewildered. No effort of imagination could explain convincingly how Donald could have been driven out of his skull. He had always seemed a stable, balanced codder, perhaps lacking in emotion, even. Was that what betrayed him—excessive self-control?

No good guessing.

With a start, Norman realised that for months past he had not taken in a news bulletin to digest it properly; he had sat in front of the screen and his mind had invariably wandered to something that directly concerned him. He recalled a few major items like the diplomatic breach with Yatakang, but he had no clear idea either what had caused it or what had ironed it out. There had been this tremendous row over the charge that Sugaiguntung had been lying—or someone had lied in Sugaiguntung’s name, he wasn’t sure which—and the genetic optimisation programme had been called a fake and now there was some sort of revolution going on with islands defecting to a rebel army led by a man with a funny name which made him think of horse’s hooves clopping, and the Chinese were accusing the Americans of fomenting it and retaliating by shipping arms to … where was it they searched a ship and found nuclear missiles hidden in the hold? Not Chile, but …

He stopped himself and told somebody to prepare a digest of the events relating to Yatakang over the past half-year, after which he was able to return to work.

*   *   *

When Donald did eventually arrive in Port Mey, Norman’s first reaction was shock. He had lost at least thirty pounds, and his cheeks were sunken under dark-circled eyes. Also there were patches of grey in his hair. Behind him, emerging from the same car, was a large young man with a watchful air who somehow made Norman think of bodyguards.

But he covered himself well and extended his hand, uttering a warm greeting. Donald let his own fingers rest laxly in Norman’s for a moment and answered with disconcerting directness.

“You’re wondering what’s made the change in me, aren’t you? Oh, don’t bother being polite—we shared an apt for years, didn’t we? I mean, the
other
Donald Hogan did.”

Norman’s heart sank. What was this about “the other” Donald? Was it a symptom of his mental derangement?

He looked past Donald at the man who had accompanied him, who gave a shrug and pursed his lips.

“That’s Tony,” Donald said. “They wouldn’t let me come without him. He’s not much of a nuisance except when I feel I’d like a shiggy and somehow with him watching me all the time I can’t persuade any girls to—never mind, though.” His manner reverted to something approaching the normal.

“Good to see you again! You’re turning into quite a public figure, know that? All the TV channels seem to be talking about you day and night. So I thought I’d like to come and see what it is that’s getting everyone so worked up.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Norman said. “I’ve laid on a tour of the kind we reserve for HIP’s.”

“I hope it includes the people I know here, which isn’t many, but they said Chad was here, and of course I suppose Elihu is?”

“I fixed for you to call on Elihu this afternoon—I thought you might want to say hullo. Of course, he’s pretty busy, but there’ll be time for a drink together, at least. As for Chad, though, he’s off up-country on the trail of an idea one of his study groups produced. I’ll do my best to get you together with him, but talk about trying to catch a fish with your bare hands…”

Chatting away, Norman ushered Donald into the dome.

*   *   *

The tour on which he escorted his visitor was a nightmare of tension for him. He hadn’t envisaged a change like this, and every second found him expecting another outburst of irrationality. It never materialised. Yet, without knowing exactly what form the disorder took, he couldn’t give up preparing for it. He was almost exhausted by the time they were due to call at the Embassy and see Elihu.

Gideon Horsfall was with him, and this was a relief; it meant there were two other people to carry the burden of conversation and he could rest until the subject reverted to something directly affecting him. For a while the talk was casual, concerning such public matters as President Obomi’s failing health and the good progress being made with the project, but it was inevitable that Donald should raise the name of Chad Mulligan again, and at that point Elihu glanced at Norman.

“I’m afraid I have no very clear idea what he’s doing,” the ambassador said. “Norman, you’re nominally his boss—can you explain?”

“Well, he’s conducting a tremendous social study of the country,” Norman shrugged. “He’s convinced that when he told Shalmaneser there was some unknown force operating among the people here he was speaking the truth, and he’s off looking for it.”

“And when he’s found it, what’s he going to do with it?” Donald demanded in a suddenly hostile tone. Norman’s scalp crawled, and he tried to make his answer as peaceable as possible.

“Well, I think you’d have to ask him about that.”

“Is he going to use it to change people?”

There was a blank silence. At length Elihu said, “Certainly Chad’s changed, himself, since I first met him. He struck me on first acquaintance as a loud-mouthed alcoholic, but now I know him better I think he was only embittered by rejection, and out here with a job that fully engages his attention he’s been transformed.”

“I was transformed, too,” Donald said loudly. “Did I tell you about that?”

From the corner in which he was sitting silently on his own, Tony said, “Now, Mr. Hogan, if you go on I shall have to—”

“Give me a trank and take me away!” Donald interrupted. “Fasten it, will you? Why they thought it would help me to recover having a stupid bleeder like you looking over my shoulder … Anyway, so what if I do talk about it? This is a Yew-Nigh-Ted States ambassador, remember?” He went on, addressing Elihu, without pausing for breath. “You know about being eptified, I guess. They did it to me, the drecky bleeders. They took me and trained me and when they’d finished I wasn’t Donald Hogan any more though I feel I’m entitled to use the name because he’s dead now. You see—”

As Elihu and Gideon were exchanging astonished glances, there was a sudden commotion outside. Relieved, Elihu said, “Excuse me, Donald! Gideon, see what that is, will you?”

Losing his audience, Donald fell to staring at his palms, both hands upturned on his lap, his head cocking first to one side, then the other.

Through the door, which Gideon had left ajar, there roared a familiar voice.

“I don’t care if he’s entertaining the Queen of sheeting Sheba! I want to talk to Norman House!”

“That’s Chad!” Donald raised his head.

“Right,” Norman muttered, and went to the door. In the foyer beyond, Chad was confronting two junior officials with an overdeveloped sense of protocol. On seeing Norman he pushed them out of his way and stormed into the room.

“Hi, Elihu—
Donald!
Christ, where did you spring from? Never mind, tell me in a minute. Norman, I had to find you and tell you at once.”

He put both hands triumphantly on his hips and planted his feet apart on the floor.

“Norman me old beddy, it looks as if we finally solved it!”

“What?” Norman was half out of his chair. “You—”

“I so testify. At least on present evidence. Elihu, can you ask one of your lackeys to bring me a good big drink? I think this deserves celebrating!”

He kicked around a vacant chair and plumped himself into it with a broad grin.

“So what is it?” Norman urged.

“It’s a mutation.”

*   *   *

They thought that over in silence for a second or two. Donald, annoyed at losing the attention he had been attracting when Chad interrupted, said, “That means change. I was going to tell you what they did to change me. They—”

“Donald, fasten it, will you?” Chad grunted. “I’m bursting to tell Norman the good news. I think maybe it’ll tickle his sense of humour.”

Astonished, Donald stared at him. He appeared to be out of the habit of being told to shut up. However, he shrugged and fell obediently silent.

“Ah, thanks!” Chad accepted the drink he was offered and took a healthy swig. “Well, you see, what happened was essentially this—for the benefit of Donald and Elihu and maybe Gideon if you haven’t been keeping in touch. Have you?”

Headshakes.

“I started off with these teams of sociologists and psychologists and anthropologists and none of them could tell me more than I already knew. So I said hell, maybe it’s in the food, and got Norman to hire me some dieticians and while I was at it I thought metabolic environment as well as external environment and insisted on some geneticists and—”

“And single-handed managed to upset my staffing budget for the entire year,” Norman sighed.

“A few months ago you were saying there was nothing more important in the world. If you’re back to penny-pinching I don’t want to know. As I was saying: way, way back at the beginning I decided I wasn’t going to be capable of co-ordinating all these people myself, so I asked for synthesists to link ’em together, but it wasn’t until just the other day that Norman got me one. Count him, one. When I could have used half a dozen and cut this business short—”

“Prophet’s beard, Chad! I did my best for you. I told you I—”

“Fasten it, Norman. Don’t be so touchy! I’m not blaming you for anything, just recounting what happened. So anyhow, the moment I got this codder I put him together with the geneticist we’d got hold of who had most offended his academic mentors in college, and they had a marvellous bull-session the whole of one night. I sat on it—wouldn’t have missed it for worlds. And they reached a conclusion.

“One: Shinkas don’t think killing each other is a good idea, under any circumstances.

“Two: everybody else, practically, does. They say they don’t and then they lose their tempers and smash in a few heads.

“Three: the situation here is a classic example of the overpopulation syndrome—poverty, influx of strangers who take a fat chunk of a small cake, lack of privacy, lack of property,
et caetera.
Port Mey is the only really big city in the country, I grant, but on the most favourable estimate it’s twenty per cent too large to escape violence and vandalism with its present standards of living.

“Four—am I keeping count? The hole with it! My tame synthesist explained to the geneticist all about releasers. Catch? I see a blank expression over there. A releaser is anything that triggers off a violent emotional outburst. It can be an insult, or it can be the sight of a shiggy taking off her clothes, or a fetish, or the areola provoking the nursing response—lots of things. Also, and far more important, it can be
something we don’t consciously notice.

“Ever graphed the increasing sales of deodorants against those of commercial aphrodisiacs? A friend of mine once did. The lines ran virtually parallel. Pubic hair is there for a purpose—to concentrate a sexually exciting odour and provoke a reflex response.

“But we couldn’t manage without deodorants, because other body odours are
also
releasers. The scent of another male who’s been indulging in violent physical exertion is a releaser for the territorial-aggression response. Crudely, here’s a rival who’s come far and fast and I ought to send him back where he belongs. Every single densely populated urban community I can find has used disguising perfumes to counteract this, and then put on top erotic aromas like musk to restore the reflexes that the artificial scents have suppressed.

“Men in battle wear the same clothes for weeks or months on end and don’t get the chance to wash or scent themselves. If they’re penned up under siege they begin to crack, not through fear and despair alone but because they’re surrounded by other males whom they are not supposed to fight. The odour accumulates and
pow!

“All this is a disgustingly simplified rehash of what my new beddy was telling this geneticist codder. So the latter says well, this is obviously a factor that’s been selected for on a perfectly conventional basis, which means it must be assignable to some part of the human genetic map we haven’t yet managed to analyse, so let’s go see what part and whether there’s an identifiable gene carrying the right secretions. We had to go up north and run a lot of comparative tests on immigrants who’d intermarried with the Shinka, and brothers, today, this very morning, we got it.”

He beamed around and gulped the rest of his drink.

“There’s a dominant mutation among the Shinka. I can’t see it, but my geneticists say it stands out a mile if you put a genotype from someone of pure Inoko blood alongside somebody’s who’s half Inoko and half Shinka. It makes the Shinka secrete, along with all their other bodily odours, a specific suppressant for the territorial-aggression reaction! You just walk into a nice, crowded, insanitary hut full of Shinkas, armed to the teeth and dead set on getting level with your rival males, and take a deep breath. You’ll be a happy, lazy, inoffensive slob inside the hour. It falleth as the gentle dew from— Excuse me. I’m a trifle manic at the moment.”

“Prophet’s beard,” Norman said. “Then they weren’t so wrong when they used to say Shinkas could steal a warrior’s heart out of his body.”

“Sheeting right they weren’t! And if anyone had taken that folk-saying seriously, I’d have been saved half a year of work!”

“Just a moment,” Elihu put in, frowning. “Are you saying a Shinka carries about with him—exudes—a sort of tranquilliser?”

“I guess you could say that,” Chad nodded.

“Well, why hasn’t this been noticed before? I mean, it must be a pretty conspicuous difference between—”

“It has. It has! Norman knew about it and
you
did for pity’s sake, and it went into Shalmaneser along with the rest of the data and he rejected it because he saw the significance of it and you hadn’t. I thought I’d only outwitted him when I put him back in orbit for the Beninia programmes, but he was smarter than me after all.”

“But if the geneticist said it showed up so clearly,” Norman objected, “then surely—”