The Butt

12

The following morning, Tom had just returned from the concession stand and was at the sink in the bathroom, applying arnica ointment to his cheek — which had been badly bruised by the rifle’s recoil — when there was a knock on the door.

He admitted Adams, who walked past him and crossed at once to the far side of the room. Tom moved his discarded clothes from the easy-chair to the floor and invited the Consul to sit.

‘Good trip?’ Adams asked, crossing one thin shank over the other. He wore his habitual tan seersucker suit, and Tom was underwhelmed by the clocks on his red socks.

‘Don’t be facetious,’ Tom replied, and, heading back to the bathroom, called over his shoulder, ‘How the hell did you get here?’

Adams took a while answering. Then Tom heard the flat chink of hotel china and the bubbling of the dwarf kettle. Adams was making himself a cup of Nescafé. Tom concentrated on flossing his teeth, then pulling the hairs from his nostrils with a pair of tweezers. The sharp little twinges were reminders: You’re here! You’re here!

Eventually, he heard a slurping intake, followed by: ‘Don’t get snippy with me.’

‘I’m sorry?’ Tom went back into the bedroom. Adams was bent over the three-panelled mirror on the vanity table, examining the back of his head. He looked round. ‘I said, don’t get snippy with me. I’ve had a, ah, hard-enough morning already.’

The Consul set his coffee cup down on the carpet and peered at Tom through his increasingly pellucid spectacles. Clearly, like a batty old hypochondriac, he was soliciting sympathy.

Tom obliged. ‘Oh, why’s that?’

‘Fellow countryman of ours called Weiss — he was caught smoking in the john of a flight coming into Amherst—’

‘My, my. That does sound serious.’

‘Serious enough.’ Adams glared at him with eyes now entirely visible. ‘He’s doing ninety days at Kellippi, and even after a month he’s not in very good, ah, shape.

‘Have you ever seen a bauxite mine, Brodzinski? The convicts get the worst jobs. It’s very brutal, ah, extraction — huge machines, a lot of highly toxic dust. The Belgian outfit that operates the mine isn’t overly concerned with safety, given that the workforce consists of convict labour, native, desperate, or all three.’

‘What’re you trying to say, Adams? That I’ve gotten off lightly? And anyway’ — Tom sat down opposite him on the end of the bed — ‘how did you get here?’

The Consul took another slurp of his Nescafé before answering. ‘Miss Swai-Phillips and I flew to Amherst, then drove along Route 2. The mine people did offer us a light aircraft, but, as I’m sure you, ah, appreciate, I have to keep my distance. .’

He fell silent. He was staring past Tom’s shoulder — not at the Andrew Wyeth reproduction that hung above the bed, but the fifth of whisky that stood, half empty, on the beside table.

‘I kinduv assumed your, uh, jurisdiction wouldn’t extend this far,’ Tom said. He was trying deliberately to nettle the Consul. ‘I mean, isn’t this the Western Province?’

Adams was unperturbed. ‘Yes, but I’m a servant not of the national government, Brodzinski, but of our own. It’s in that capacity that I’ve driven another thousand kilometres through the Tontines to come and, ah, liaise with you.’

‘I’m not sure who it is you goddam serve, Adams,’ Tom said bemusedly. ‘But tell me this much: if you could fly clear across to Amherst, then drive only a thousand klicks — why the hell did I have to come overland for three and a half, nearly getting my goddamn ass shot to pieces in the process?’

‘I can see you’re upset,’ Adams said, and Tom had the gnawing insight that this was all diplomacy ever consisted of: the understatement of the obvious. ‘Have you spoken to your family yet? You’ll find that you can dial them direct from here without the country code — a little, ah, quirk of the Tontine Governmental Sector.’

He stood up and set his stained cup down on the vanity table. ‘Paradoxically,’ he added, ‘if you want to phone someone in the actual Tontines, it’s an international call.’

‘What about Gloria?’ Tom had meant to say ‘Martha’ — the two women were, once again, confused in his mind.

‘I’m sorry?’ Adams fastidiously detached Tom’s hand from his arm — a hand Tom hadn’t been aware of laying on him.

‘W-What’s she doing here?’

‘I thought Miss Swai-Phillips explained that to you back in Vance? She’s responsible for running orphanages here in the Tontines; she’s a well-respected charity worker and philanthropist. I believe her charity is holding a function this evening, here in the hotel. No doubt you can be invited if you’d like to find out more.’

Adams was making for the door when Tom had a sudden intuition: ‘That’s bullshit, Winnie.’ He hadn’t used this intimacy since the night they had eaten the binturang together at Adams’s house. It pulled the Consul up short, and, when he turned, Tom saw he had lost some of his aloofness. ‘It’s to do with Prentice, isn’t it? It’s to do with. . his. . With what he did. I mean, she looks after kids — and he. .’ Tom left the insinuation hanging there: an ugly odour that the hotel’s aircon’ could never dispel.

Adams’s voice softened. ‘You know perfectly well that I can’t discuss that with you, Tom.’

‘But you’re not denying it, are you? Those drugs — the baby stuff, it’s for her orphanages, isn’t it? Jesus! I dunno what’s worse, carrying the can for my own dumb mistakes or chauffeuring that sicko.’

‘As I understand it, Tom, you have every reason to be grateful to Brian Prentice. Mrs Hufferman told me that whole story yesterday evening. I believe the technical term for what he did’ — the Consul’s long face warped into sarcasm — ‘is saving your life.’

Tom stood, cowed, as Adams reached for the door handle. Then the Consul detonated one of his deadpan devices: ‘Incidentally, Brodzinski, I think you should know this. Shortly before I left Vance I had a call from the DA’s office. Mrs Lincoln has instructed the medical staff at Vance Hospital not to resuscitate her husband if he should have a, ah, crisis. Bluntly, this means you probably haven’t got long to get down to Ralladayo and make your reparations. As I’m sure Jethro Swai-Phillips explained, all bets are off if this becomes a capital offence.’

With that, he quit the room.

Tom found Prentice smoking behind the Hilton parking lot. The sixth sense by which the local smokers always knew exactly where the sixteen-metre demarcation line ran never failed to amaze Tom. There were so many public buildings clustered in the TGS that the intersection of several lines allowed smokers only a small curvilinear plot, within which to stand, sucking and blowing.

Clustered with Prentice were seven other Anglos. Their short-pants suits, pressed shirts and flamboyant ties gave them the look of insurance salesmen — which is precisely what they were. It was tragicomic the way these men were compelled to stand, shoulder to shoulder, steeped in their own fumes, while on all sides there was the cool play of sprinkler systems on beautifully manicured lawns.

Tom stood off to one side, grinning and swinging his free hands. One after another the insurance men finished their cigarettes. They carefully extinguished them on the ground, then picked up the butts. Pocketing these, they walked over to a couple of beaten-up Japanese hatchbacks, which they piled into.

‘They’re going into the townships to work,’ Prentice explained. ‘That’s why they don’t drive anything flashy.’

‘Selling tontines to poor bastards who’re gonna kill each other for the pay-out,’ Tom spat back. ‘You call that work?’

‘Really, Tom,’ Prentice replied equably, ‘everyone’s got to make a living.’

Tom gulped. ‘And you, uh, Brian, what’s your occupation nowadays — still the Swift One, the Righter of Wrongs?’

Prentice shifted uncomfortably from one boot to the other. ‘Ah, well. . I don’t know, old chap,’ he muttered.

‘Don’t you?’ Try as he might, Tom’s voice crept up the register. ‘What exactly went on back there in the desert, Prentice? D’you understand it? Because I sure as hell don’t. And what’s it got to do with this?’ He waved the tissuey paper of the car-rental agreement that he had dug out from his document wallet. ‘I’ve read through all this goddamn corporate legalese. Turns out, that if either one of us gets killed, the other guy’s his legal heir and comes into’ — he examined the small print again — ‘a cool two hundred Gs.

‘I never figured you for such an altruist, Prentice. I mean, you could’ve hesitated for one tiny second back there and you’d’ve come outta that ambush one very wealthy man.’

Prentice puffed up his sunken chest. ‘I don’t know what you’re implying, Tom,’ ‘he blustered. ‘Whatever you may believe about me, old chap, I hope you wouldn’t think for a moment that I’d let a fellow Anglo be shot in cold blood by one of those black bastards.’

‘Black bastards — black bastards. Sheeeooo!’ Tom shook his head in disbelief. ‘You certainly do know how to coin a phrase, my friend. Oh, yes.’ Then he decided to change tack: ‘Your wife’s cousin come through for you, did he?’

‘Come through?’

‘I mean, did he wire you your funds? Seems to me a man with your high moral standards would be anxious to pay his debts.’

Suddenly, Tom felt drained by the effort of it all. The Sector may have been well irrigated, yet the air still crumpled with the desert heat. He sank down into a squat, his head spinning.

The previous night’s dream came to him. Some kind of cookout or camping trip. His daughter, Dixie, still sporting the ridiculous disc of greased hair that he had last seen heading through security at Vance Airport, but otherwise completely naked and lying in the long grass.

Tom had looked wonderingly at her. She was supporting herself on one slim arm, her long legs bent sideways. It was the same posture — he had realized on waking — as that of the girl in the Wyeth reproduction over the bed. But, unlike Wyeth’s Appalachian waif, flopping on to Dixie’s lower thigh — resting there justly and weightily — was a large, perfectly formed penis.

I better not tell her, Tom had reasoned in his swoon. I better not tell her she’s gotta dick — it’ll be upsetting for a teenage girl.

‘Are you all right, Tom?’ Prentice was bending over him blowing smoke into his face.

Tom coughed. ‘Eugh — yeah, yeah, sure. It’s. .’ He pulled himself together and rose. ‘It’s just I feel so goddamn weak. It started back at the Huffermans’ camp — that’s when you started to, like, do stuff. You unloaded the car — then there was the ambush. Come to think of it, you even put your own psoriasis stuff on the night before, didn’t you?’

Tom sank back down into his squat. Grit pricked his palms. He looked up: the dark halo of Prentice’s hat eclipsed the hurtful sun. Tom said, ‘D’you believe what Hufferman said: that it’s changing between us? And what about the tontine — do the two things kind of gear into each other?’

Prentice shook his head. ‘I don’t know, Tom, but I’m keeping an open mind.’

He stubbed out his cigarette and pocketed the butt. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to meet with Ms Swai-Phillips. After that’ — he adopted a pained expression — ‘I shall visit the bank.

‘Incidentally, Tom,’ Prentice said, hurrying on — the mention of the bank had been an indelicacy — ‘Gloria told me you’re got a package for her; perhaps you should give it to me?’

This reanimated Tom. He stood. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘She entrusted that package to me, alone.’

He stalked towards the doors of the Hilton: their photoelectric cells acknowledged, then admitted him to a shushed lobby, where silk scarves, long unsold, were creatively pinned to velvet cushions. Rubbing the edge of his key card with his callused thumb, Tom rode the elevator up to the fourth floor and the peace of his room.

Which was no peace at all. The key card when he swiped it in the lock; the debris left by Adams when he had made his coffee; Tom’s own paisley-patterned washbag — all of it struck him as horribly grotesque: the corpses of objects rather than the objects themselves. Was it that the TGS was real, while he had become robotic? Or were its pocket office blocks and neat lawns only a zone of reality imposed on the ruggedly anarchic Tontines? Then again, perhaps it was the Tontines that were the mirage, and only the desert truly existed at all?

Concentric rings of mind-bending illusion rippled out from where Tom lay, stretched out like a water boatman on the surface tension of the bed. His legs weakly spasmed, his cordite-coarsened fingers felt gross against the smooth nap of the coverlet. He could hear his own breathing, the ceaseless shushing of the aircon’, the intwakka-lakka-twakka of a helicopter landing in the military base beyond the parking lot.

He was very close now to the hysteria that had courted him, politely opening door after door as he ventured further into his ordained nightmare. He was saved — by the red eye of the message light, blinking on the phone.

Tom picked up the handset and pressed it to his ear. ‘One. New. Message. . Hi, yeah. . It’s Gloria Swai-Phillips here, Mr Brod — Tom. Lissen, that package of mine. Thing is, I’ve had a frantic day, so we’ll have to meet up later, right? I’m hosting a little reception thing — soirée I s’pose you’d say. .’ She giggled girlishly. Soirée, Tom thought. No one says that, not even Adams. ‘Anyway, maybe you could drop by, yeah? It’s downstairs at around six. It’ll be full of dull charity and guvvie types, but there’ll be a raw bar.’

Tom replaced the handset, then roused himself. Now she had called, now that he had a liaison with Gloria, he could entertain the thought of further intimacy. After all, why not? He was a free man.

He looked over at her parcel, which was sitting on the easy-chair. Caught in the beams that shone through the blinds, the columns of the newsprint it was wrapped in seemed to form the contours of a face. A desert tribesman’s face. Tom broke from its hollow stare and called the concierge. ‘I, uh, wondered. .’

‘Sir?’

‘I’d like to go out — out of the Sector, that is, and have a look round. Is this possible?’

‘There’s a walking tour at three this afternoon, sir. Shall I put your name down for it?’

‘Walking? You mean, like, a hike?’

‘Oh, no,’ the concierge laughed. ‘It’s more of a stroll — even our elderly guests manage it, so no worries there.’

* * *

Promptly at three, Tom went down to the lobby, only to discover that he was the sole taker for the excursion. A massive Tugganarong man, wearing a bullet-proof vest and holding a sign with BRODZINSKI written on it, was standing by the concierge’s desk. His name, he informed Tom with great solemnity, was Valldolloppollou — although he was happy to be addressed as Val.

Val went with Tom to get one of his rifles from the hotel armoury. Here, Tom was also issued with his own vest and a helmet with the Hilton logo on it.

‘Is all this strictly necessary?’ he asked.

‘Not really, sir,’ Val replied. ‘There’s no real action, yeah, until the end of the week, when the miners, yeah, come in from Kellippi. Then all kinds of shit happens.

‘Besides,’ he continued, snapping a magazine into his own rifle as they strolled towards the first of the checkpoints, ‘when you checked in, you signed a tontine transfer.’

‘Meaning?’

‘That if some pissed bing-bong drops you while we’re out, the balance of your tontine is assigned to Hilton International. So the flak jacket and helmet are only a courtesy, yeah.’

Tom reflected on this as the cop at the barrier stamped his laissez-passer, then waved them through. Perhaps this was why, with each step he took out of the TGS, Tom felt his strength returning: he was no longer in thrall to Prentice.

By the time they had negotiated the third checkpoint the fresh greens of the TGS had been filmed over: the atmosphere was saturated with gritty particles, and Tom could taste the ferrous crud. Then there were the flies. How could he, even for a few short hours, have abandoned them? They made straight for the corners of his mouth and clustered there to engage in interspecific French kissing.

Outside the final blast wall, Val quartered the empty, dusty maidan with his rifle. Tom, not wanting to appear a wuss, did the same.

‘Sir, yeah, I’d keep your safety on — if you shoot someone, the paperwork’s a nightmare, yeah,’ the tour guide gently advised him.

Tom was digesting this when they were mobbed by a crowd of native women who materialized from nowhere. They wore dirty shift dresses and T-shirts with cartoon characters on them: Hello Kitty. They crowded round Tom and Val — yet didn’t touch them. The women’s hands jerked up and down in front of their faces, while their cheeks bulged spasmodically. It took a few moments, then Tom realized: they were miming fellatio.

As the two men proceeded across the maidan, then down the main bouleward, still more prostitutes debouched from the trash-choked alleys, skipping over open drains running with raw sewage. They all importuned Tom and his guide with this obscene pantomime, but they never touched them. It was too eerie to comment on; so it was in silence that the men moved from window to window of the containerized offices that Tom had noticed the previous evening. Inside they were kitted out with desks, chairs and plexiglas holders full of brightly coloured leaflets.

Tom halted outside Endeavour Surety. ‘Can we go in?’ he asked.

‘Sure,’ said the big Tugganarong. ‘Press the buzzer — all the tourists check it out, yeah.’

Responding to the rasp, an armed guard rose up from behind a seating area. He unlocked the door, and, as he ushered them in, a thin, harried-looking Anglo came out from the back office, then carefully shut and locked the door behind him.

‘Are you selling, buying or only bloody gawping?’ was his salutation, and, when Tom failed to reply immediately, he went on: ‘I see, another bloody gawper, right.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said. ‘I didn’t mean to—’

‘It’s OK, mate.’ The insurance salesman waved away the apology. ‘I understand, you’ve blown into town and you wanna know what’s what, right. Well, here’s the listing.’

He reached under the counter and pulled up a pegboard with rows of letters and numbers stuck to it. ‘If you’ve gotta car-rental policy rider, I can give you 12.2 percent on it, seeing that it’s midweek. If you’re buying outright, there’s not a lot happening, though this here is interesting.’ He indicated a quotation with a nicotine-stained finger. ‘These blokes, right, they’re down to seven now; tontine’s been running for twenty-two months, pay-out’s in the region of eighty-eight K, and’ — he paused for emphasis — ‘they bought right at the bottom of the market, so the premiums are low. There are two blokes who want to sell right now, or the entire tontine is offering a randomized spread bet of threes.’

The Anglo may have been grumpy to begin with, but he started to be taken in by his own spiel. ‘These blokes,’ he laughed, rubbing his crew cut with the knuckles of one hand, ‘they’re miners out at Kellippi, Inssessitti mob — never thought they’d last this long, right. Sold ’em the policy myself.’

The salesman finished his pitch, and, with a note of childlike wonderment, Tom asked him: ‘You mean I can buy someone else’s tontine, and if the other policy holders. .’

‘Kark it, you get the lot. That’s right, mate. You’re from overseas, aren’t you? I s’pose you don’t have tontines in your neck of the woods. Yeah.’ He warmed still more, his pinched nostrils flared, sniffing out the prospect of a sale. ‘We’ll sell you a tontine. We’ll sell you tontine options or futures. We can even sell you a weighted basket of high-performing tontines. You may’ve been gawping, my friend, but it so happens that here at Endeavour we specialize in tontine derivatives. A lot of the fancier ones are designed by our financial engineers down south.’

‘When you say high performing,’ Tom said, choosing his words carefully, ‘you mean that the original tontine holders are, uh, dying pretty. . fast?’

The salesman was delighted. ‘That’s bang-on. ’Course, the beauty of it is that the longer the tontine runs, the less able these blokes are to keep up their premiums. They start out thinking it’ll all be cushty, right.’ He shook his head amusedly. ‘That once a few of their mates’ve been done in, they’ll have the incentive to keep off the grog — but it never happens that way. Your tontine holder — specially your bing-bong — basically comes in two types: killer or be killed. Once the tontine’s up and running, both types give in to paranoia; they’re always looking over their shoulder to see who’s creeping up on them. Can’t stand the tension — so they drink. Then they can’t keep up the payments — so they sell out.’

Despite the salesman’s sly face, Tom had to admit to himself that he was becoming a prospect.

‘But if I buy out only some of the policy holders,’ he said, ‘what’s to stop the rest of them coming after me?’

The salesman laughed. ‘Ha! Do you think they’ll get it together, my friend? You’re a blow-through — they’re stuck right here. All you gotta do is make it home, then you can sit by the pool with a tinnie and wait for your investment to mature, yeah.’

Tom leaned forward and placed his sunburned arms on the counter. He glanced over his shoulder to see if Val was listening, but he was over by the window chatting with the guard.

‘What about my, uh, tontine? I thought that was only valid while I and my, er, fellow policy holder were actually here, in the Tontines?’

The salesman gave a broad grin; gold crowns gleamed in the cave of his mouth. He picked up the phone and punched a button. ‘Darlin’,’ he drawled, ‘would you bring me out a couple of glasses of that Volsted Pinot Noir?’ He replaced the handset and said to Tom: ‘That’s true, but not a lot of carpet-baggers know what I’m about to tell you, my friend. You can convert the car-rental tontine to a standard one, then there’s no limit on its territory. You can be bushed in the middle of Aval country, you can be at the bottom of Eyre’s-bloody-Pit; hell, you can be boogying the night away at a disco in Capital City, but if your fellow policy holder gets it, you’re his beneficiary.’

He stopped, while a desert tribeswoman, incongruous in a neat navy two-piece, emerged from the back office and handed them both glasses of white wine filmed with condensation. The salesman took a sip, put his glass down, listened for the click of the door closing, then added with a wink: ‘Or hers.’

Later, Tom dressed for Gloria Swai-Phillips’s charity reception.

‘I am the Swift One,’ he said aloud, as he used the tiny hotel iron to press the short pants of his absurd suit. ‘I am the Righter of Wrongs.’

He checked himself in the mirror. The tie he had worn in court was speckled with stains; never the less, he dutifully knotted it. He looked, he thought, OK. Was it his imagination or had the long journey with its violent incidents mysteriously agreed with him? The Tom Brodzinski in the mirror was fitter and leaner — younger even.

There was a knock at the door. Prentice stood in the dimly lit corridor, his head tilted back, his scrawny neck exposed. ‘It’s a beastly fag, Tom.’ He held up the tube of psoriasis ointment. ‘But I just don’t seem able to do this again. I was all right last night and this morning. . Would you mind awfully?’

Tom said: ‘It’ll be my pleasure.’

Then, after it was done and Tom had washed his hands, they took the elevator together down to the lobby. Tom carried Gloria’s parcel, and, of course, the muzak never stopped.

It wasn’t until they were almost in the function room, and level with a sign on an easel that said, the three rivers childhood development agency welcomes tgs employees, that Prentice hurriedly excused himself, claiming he had to ‘buy some fags’. Tom, who had noticed the usual oblong bulge in his shirt pocket, snorted and turned on his heel.

Gloria had been right — the reception was insufferably dull. Shortie-suited bureaucrats stood here and there on the pinkish carpet, holding plates with wine glasses clipped to them — a buffet accessory Tom hadn’t seen in decades. The conversations he overheard as he made his way across the large room, with its oppressively low polystyrene ceiling, were banal to the point of being surreal. One man’s gutters were choked with leaves; a second was having difficulty getting his car serviced. A woman in a frumpy dress with puffed sleeves was telling another woman — in an equally frumpy outfit — that she suspected the super’ in her apartment building of having ‘a tiddly prob’ with the grog’.

The only person Tom recognized was Daphne Hufferman, who was over by the raw bar, defiantly out of place in her canary-yellow towelling babygro, and with a hessian sack lying on the carpet by her big booted feet.

‘Wow,’ Tom exclaimed as he joined her. ‘What’s all this?’

‘Yeah,’ Daphne replied, then paused to suck up a large shelled shrimp, as a child might a spaghetti string, before adding, ‘It’s quite a thing, right enough.’

The raw bar stretched the entire length of the room: a vast trough of galvanized zinc heaped with ice chips, upon which were piled shrimp, clams, crayfish, lobster tails, whole softshell crabs, oysters and still more Crustacea that Tom didn’t recognize — spidery arthropods, the spindly basketry of their legs as big as a football; tiger-striped shellfish with the flat, coiled aspect of ammonites; and some sort of sea bug like a giant woodlouse. This dead reef was fringed with bowls of salad, sauces, and tumblers stuffed with celery stalks and whole carrots.

‘Tom,’ Daphne said, ‘this is Jean Lejeune. He’s the child protection officer for Tontine 901, out towards Kellippi. Jean — Tom.’

Tom turned to this man, muttering an apology for having interrupted, then recoiled. Lejeune was a six-footer with a bear-like build. He wore spectacles with round frames and combed his black hair straight back; yet this was all beside the point — mere details, because surrounding Lejeune’s full-lipped mouth was a lustrous goatee of Sangat clams.

Tom’s eyes involuntarily slid to the raw bar, then back to this extraordinary sight. Lejeune was unperturbed. ‘You’re taken by my infestation, yeah,’ he stated.

‘Uh, yeah, well. .’ Tom demurred.

‘Don’t be embarrassed — it’s in yer face, yeah.’

Daphne Hufferman snorted with merriment and, grasping Lejune’s arm, bent to pick up the sack. ‘Got the part, right,’ she said, hefting it. ‘Soon as this is done I’m back over there.’ A jerk of her thumb. ‘Gotta seat with a Tuggie patrol.’

Lejeune pursed his lips, and the clams crepitated. Tom wondered if the man had been making a move on Daphne; it wouldn’t have been a bad bet, given her own interest in child protection. He addressed Tom: ‘The lady here tells me you’re from overseas; some of you blokes are a bit critical of the way we do things here.’

‘No, not really — not at all.’

He felt awkward with the newspaper-wrapped parcel in his arms, but there was nowhere he could set it down.

Lejeune resumed at an odd tangent: ‘I’m from Amherst myself, yeah — so’s the rest of the seafood here. You might think it a waste of resources, freighting all this stuff thousands of clicks over here, but lemme tellya, yeah’ — he crowded Tom with his clams — ‘the interior of the entire bloody continent was once under water. That’s right, mate, if we were standing here millions of years ago there’d be sea over our bloody heads. So what I say is. .’ He leaned in still further, and Tom could see rotting kelp between the shells. ‘What goes around bloody comes around. It’s a measure of Anglo civilization, yeah, that we can do such marvellous things.’

Tom was struggling to digest this when the man offered him another tid-bit: ‘Besides, I was going to grow a beard anyway, yeah. Can’t stand bloody shaving.’

Searching for a pretext to break from this repellent fellow, Tom spotted Adams skulking behind a trough of shrubbery. Tom was making his excuses, when there was a sudden ‘thwock-thwock-thwock!’ Gloria Swai-Phillips was standing on a small rostrum tapping a mic’. The desultory hubbub died away altogether, and she addressed the throng. ‘TRCDA is pleased to welcome you all to this gala reception, right?’ she began. ‘It’s a great honour to have such distinguished company here to meet our staff and field workers, yeah? I’d like to extend an especial welcome to the Proconsul’ — she inclined her head towards a hefty blond man in a Mao tunic — ‘Mr Fabien Renard, CEO of Endeavour Surety’ — this one had salt-and-pepper hair, a shiny suit — ‘and, of course, Commander Ellanoppolloppolou, for without the cooperation of him and his men, our work here would be impossible, yeah?’

The police commander’s hair was so sharply sculpted that it sat on his round head like one of the angular caps worn by his men. He withdrew a swagger stick from under his arm and conducted himself in a curt bow.

‘As you all know,’ Gloria resumed, ‘this is the fifth anniversary of our project being up and running in the Tontine Townships, yeah? During that time, we’ve helped some 700 tontine orphans to find new domiciles, yeah? These can be state facilities or private institutions, yeah? Other children stay in our own homes, and in several cases we’ve even managed to secure adoptions, yeah?’

Tom heard everything that Gloria said as a question. For weeks now he had ignored the locals’ nonsensical interrogatives — but she seemed genuinely to be querying reality, rather than simply affirming it.

There was a polite scattering of applause, and Gloria blushed. When she began speaking again, Tom found he couldn’t concentrate on her words. He stared at the flapping red slot of her mouth. It was no longer her resemblance to Martha that made him feel he knew Gloria intimately; it was an overpowering sense of déjà vu. He had been in this function room before, with these people and those chairs. He had been with a woman exactly like Gloria, who nurtured him, cuddled him, loved him as a mother loves her child.

She was saying. ‘There are real signs of change and progress, yeah?’ when Tom began to cry. The tears ran down the inside of his eyes, smearing this commonplace: the middle-aged woman giving a halting speech.

Adams sidled up. ‘We need to have a chat,’ he said in an undertone. ‘I’m afraid we got off on the wrong, ah, foot this morning. My apologies.’

He turned and discreetly worked his way towards the exit. Tom followed.

He found the Consul in the lobby. He was sitting on a leather divan, beside a smoked-glass coffee table with a large ashtray on it. Tom sat down. There was a NO SMOKING sign inside the ashtray. There was the iconic red roundel, with its oblique bar anulling a stylized cigarette. The slogan below this read: NO IFS, NO BUTTS, STUB IT OUT.

‘Tell me,’ Adams asked, ‘have you ever heard the term “rabia”?’

Tom thought for a moment, then said: ‘Yeah, I have — the Huffermans, Dave, Daphne’s husband. He said I’d need one if I was heading down to Ralladayo, but he never told me what it was.’

‘Who it is, rather.’ Adams pulled up a fold of seersucker over each knee. He rested his elbows on these pads, then pressed his palms together and brought his fingertips up to his horsy chin in a prayerful gesture. ‘A rabia’, he intoned, ‘is an individual who can guarantee a traveller safe passage through the territories of hostile tribes, or tribal subgroups.’

Jesus! The man’s insufferable, Tom thought, while to Adams he played the good student: ‘How do they manage that?’

‘The concept is, ah, simple enough. The rabia will belong either to a tribe that isn’t enemies with the tribe whose land you wish to cross, or — and this is where it gets complex — to an allied tribe. You see’ — the Consul squirmed with enthusiasm — ‘even if this more distant tribe is, technically, at, ah, loggerheads with the local mob, it doesn’t matter — it’s the proximate relationship that counts.’

‘And I need one of these rabia guys?’

Adams ignored the interruption. ‘The disputations concerning whether a given rabia can frank through a given traveller often become, ah, byzantine — especially where you’re headed, into the very heart of the native lands. I’ve witnessed this myself: scores of tribespeople, big men and women, powerful makkatas — all of them gathered in the remote desert for days, debating like learned statesmen!’

Adams’s face was flushed. One of his hands went up high, then came down to pat the back of his head.

Tom persisted with the practicalities. ‘How do I get the right one, then?’

Adams recovered himself. ‘Ordinarily, an Anglo traveller has to advertise here in the Tontines — there’s a message board. But it can take time, and even when you have the right rabia, they can prove costly. I should imagine your, ah, resources are rather depleted by now.’

Tom ruefully considered the Amex bill that had been forwarded to him in the TGS, Dixie’s girlish handwriting looping across the cellophane window. Tom was within a few hundred dollars of his credit limit. Prentice, naturally, had yet to pay back what he owed. Perhaps, Tom thought, I should raise this with Adams? But then he dismissed the idea. Instead, he grunted affirmatively.

Adams resumed. ‘However, I’ve managed to secure a rabia for you who doesn’t require payment, someone who urgently needs a ride down to Ralladayo.’

‘Oh, and who is this guy?’

‘Not a guy,’ the Consul said pedantically. ‘A, ah. . girl. Miss Swai-Phillips.’

‘Gloria? How so? I mean, she doesn’t exactly look like a. .’

‘Be that as it may, Miss Swai-Phillips has all the main kinship lines — Entreati, Aval and Tayswengo, the latter through her mother’s great-uncle. She can get you through, and she’s happy to do so without charge—’

‘OK,’ Tom said, cutting him off. ‘But what’s the reason she’s going there?’

Adams’s Polaroids were clear enough; even so, he removed them, imposing — as Tom understood it — still more transparency on his next remark: ‘She wishes to help you in what you have to do — and make sure that you, ah. . do it. There’s also a small orphanage at Ralladayo; I believe she’s been called in for, ah. . consultancy. There is one other thing, though. .’

To punish Tom for his own interruptions, Adams now broke off and beckoned to a lurking waiter. ‘Nescafé, please,’ he instructed the flat-faced Tugganarong. ‘No milk or sugar. D’you want anything?’ he asked Tom, who only waved the waiter away irritatedly, before interrogating the Consul: ‘What one thing? Goddamnit, Adams!’

‘Brian Prentice,’ Adams said airily. ‘He’ll be going with you as well. Seems his business here in the Tontines hasn’t been, ah. . successfully concluded; so he will have to accompany Miss Swai-Phillips, and you, to Ralladayo.’

For a while Tom said nothing. He was getting used to the Consul’s penchant for such theatricality. Besides, he was also struck by the Consul’s ‘ahs’. These hiatuses were increasing in length, and during them the intent expression on Adams’s face suggested he was attuning himself to an inner voice.

The waiter deposited Adams’s bitter gloop on the coffee table and withdrew. Adams sipped it as if it were nectar.

It was plain that the Consul was telling Tom something that it was impossible to state directly. Tom followed a poisonous thread of speculation back along the corrugations of Route 1, across the desert, looping up and over the Great Dividing Range, threading through the cane fields, until it reached the complicated knot tied up in Vance. Could Adams even be aware that Tom had visited Endeavour Surety that very afternoon? That, unsure of his own moral outrage, he had provided himself with a baser, more legible motivation?

Tom meditated on how grossly intrusive it would be to kill another man. Even at half a mile’s distance, with a high-velocity rifle bullet, he knew it would feel as if he were slowly dabbling his hands in Prentice’s intestines. Yet it was blatantly obvious that this was what was expected of him — had been expected all along, by both Swai-Phillipses, by Adams — even by Justice Hogg. Prentice had to be terminated: his perverted consciousness stubbed out like one of his own filthy ‘fags’. And, although nothing could be said — and never would be — Tom’s own debt was to be paid in this coin: two rifles, a nest of cooking pots, $10,000 in cash and a man’s life.

Tom took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I noticed’, he said, ‘that Prentice couldn’t bring himself to attend Gloria’s charity reception.’

‘Really?’ Adams was unconcerned. ‘I expect he had to get some help to bring his stuff back to the TGS; apparently only half of it is required here; the ribavirin will go south, with you.’

Tom stood up. ‘If it’s all the same to you, Adams, I think I’ll start getting my own stuff together. I’ve gotta gas up the car, check the mechanics. I’ve also. .’ He paused and gave the Consul a meaningful look. ‘I’ve also got to get a signature off Prentice, then finalize some paperwork with a guy outside the Sector.’

For the first time that Tom could recall, Adams smiled broadly, his normally pursed lips drawing back to reveal large and sharp teeth. ‘That’s excellent, Tom,’ he grinned. ‘I’m glad to see you’re adopting such a, ah. . practical attitude. Miss Swai-Phillips asked me to tell you that unless she hears otherwise, she’ll meet you here in the lobby at six tomorrow morning, so you can get an early start.’

Adams stood, and they shook hands formally, concluding the deal.

‘And Tom. .’ Adams seemed on the verge of saying something incriminating. He shuffled his suede lace-ups, glancing round to see if anyone was within earshot. Tom assumed it would be the quid pro quo: how even if Lincoln were to die while Tom was over there, the conclusion of this other business would result in the charges against him being summarily dropped. But the Consul wasn’t such a fool. ‘That parcel Miss Swai-Phillips gave you. She said please not to forget it, whatever you do. It’s contents are most, ah. . important — vital, even.’

‘Sure,’ Tom replied. ‘Absolutely, uh, Winnie. She can rely on me.’

And they parted.

Back up in his room, Tom began packing his stuff. The flimsy clothing designed for walking from poolside to lounger, the tubes of scientifically formulated skin unguents, his digital camera, cellphone and the roach motel, to which he had become sentimentally attached — all these he reverently slotted into his battered and filthy flight bag.

Once, he sat down on the bed and started to dial the familiar digits of his home phone, but halfway through he stopped, then replaced the femoral handset on its pelvic cradle. Tom put his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands. He peeked out between his fingers. Gloria’s head-shaped parcel sat on the plinth of the Von Sassers’ Songs of the Tayswengo, watching him with its newsprint eyes.