Fury_ A Novel Part 5

Such creative rethinking turned out to be a feature of life in Lilliput-Blefuscu. Professor Solanka walked into the Blefuscu Aerodrome's customs hall and at once heads began to turn, for reasons that, flight-exhausted and stupid with heartache though he was, he had antic.i.p.ated and immediately understood. An Indo-Lilly customs officer in dazzling whites bore down on him, staring hard. "Not possible. Not possible. No notification was received. You are who? Your goodname, please?" he said suspiciously, holding out his hand for Solanka's pa.s.sport. "As I thought," the officer finally said. "You are not." This was gnomic, to say the least, but Solanka merely inclined his head in a gesture of mild a.s.sent. "It is unseemly," the officer added mysteriously, "to set out to mislead the public of a country in which you are only a guest, dependent on our famous tolerance and goodwill." He made a peremptory gesture to Solanka, who duly opened his cases. The customs officer gazed vengefully upon their contents: the neatly packed fourteen pairs each of socks and underpants, fourteen handkerchiefs, three pairs of shoes, seven pairs of pants, seven s.h.i.+rts, seven bush-s.h.i.+rts, seven polo s.h.i.+rts, three ties, three folded and tissued linen suits, and one raincoat, just in case. After a judicious pause, he smiled broadly, revealing a set of perfect teeth that filled Solanka with envy. "Heavy duty payable," the officer beamed. "So many dutiable items are there." Solanka frowned. "It's just my clothes. Surely you don't make people pay to bring in what they need to cover their nakedness." The customs officer stopped smiling, and frowned far more ferociously than Solanka. "Avoid obscene utterance, please, Mr. Trickster," he instructed. "Here is much that is not clothe. Video camera is here, also wrist.w.a.tches, cameras, jewelry. Heavy duty payable. If you wish to lodge protest, that is of course your democratic privilege. This is Free Indian Lilliput-Blefuscu: Filbistan! Naturally, if protest is desired, you will be welcome to take a seat in interview room and discuss all points with my boss. He will be free very soon. Twenty-four, thirty-six hours." Solanka got the point. "How much?" he asked, and paid up. In the local sprugs it sounded like a lot, but it translated into American as eighteen dollars and fifty cents. With a great flourish, the customs officer made a large chalk X X on Solanka's bags. "You come at great historical moment," he told Solanka portentously. "Indian people of Lilliput-Blefuscu have finally standed up for our right. Our culture is ancient and superior and will henceforth prevail. Let the fittest survive, isn't it. For one hundred years good-for-nothing Elbee cannibals drank grog-kava, glimigrim, flunec, Jack Daniel's and c.o.ke, every kind of G.o.dless booze-and made us eat their s.h.i.+t. Now they can eat ours instead. Please: enjoy your stay." on Solanka's bags. "You come at great historical moment," he told Solanka portentously. "Indian people of Lilliput-Blefuscu have finally standed up for our right. Our culture is ancient and superior and will henceforth prevail. Let the fittest survive, isn't it. For one hundred years good-for-nothing Elbee cannibals drank grog-kava, glimigrim, flunec, Jack Daniel's and c.o.ke, every kind of G.o.dless booze-and made us eat their s.h.i.+t. Now they can eat ours instead. Please: enjoy your stay."

In the helicopter shuttle to Mildendo on the island of Lilliput, the other pa.s.sengers stared at Professor Solanka as incredulously as the customs officer had. He decided to ignore their behavior and turned his attention instead to the countryside below. As they flew over the sugarcane farms of Blefuscu, he noted the high piles of black igneous boulders near the center of each field. Once indentured Indian laborers, identified only by numbers, had broken their backs to clear this land, building these rock piles under the stony supervision of Australian Coolumbers and storing in their hearts the deep resentment born of their sweat and the cancellation of their names. The rocks were icons of acc.u.mulated volcanic wrath, prophecies from the past of the eruption of Indo-Lilly fury, whose effects were everywhere to be seen. The rickety LB Air helicopter made its landing, to Solanka's immense relief, on the still-intact ap.r.o.n of the ruined Golbasto Gue Intercontinental Airport, and the first thing he saw was a giant cardboard representation of "Commander Akasz," that is to say of the FRM leader Babur in his Akasz Kronos mask and cloak. Contemplating this image, Solanka wondered with a pounding heart whether, in making his transglobal journey, he had acted as a lovelorn fool and political naif. For the dominant image in Lilliput-Blefuscu-a country close to civil war, in which the president himself was still being held hostage, and a high-tension state of siege existed, and unpredictable developments could occur at any moment-was, as he had known it must be, a close likeness of himself. The face looking down at him from the top of the fifty-foot cutout-that face framed in long silver hair, with its wild eyes and dark-lipped Cupid's bow mouth, was his very own.

He was expected. News of the Commander's lookalike had raced ahead of the helicopter shuttle. Here in the Theater of Masks the original, the man with no mask, was perceived as the mask's imitator: the creation was real while the creator was the counterfeit! It was as though he were present at the death of G.o.d and the G.o.d who had died was himself. Masked men and women carrying automatic weapons were waiting for him outside the shuttle's door. He accompanied them without protest.

He was led to a chairless "holding room," whose single piece of furniture was a battered wooden table, watched by the unflinching eyes of lizards, with thirsty flies buzzing at the moisture in the corners of his eyes. His pa.s.sport, watch, and airline ticket were taken from him by a woman whose face was concealed behind a mask bearing the face of the woman he loved. Deafened by the strident martial music that was incessantly being played throughout the airport at high volume on a primitive sound system, he could still hear the elated terror in the young voices of his guards-for guerrillas weighted down with weapons were all around him-and he could also see evidence of the situation's extreme instability in the s.h.i.+fting eyes of the unmasked civilians in the terminal building and in the jumpy bodies of the masked combatants. All this brought vividly home to Solanka that he had stepped a long way out of his element, leaving behind all the signs and codes by which his life's meaning and form had been established. Here "Professor Malik Solanka" had no existence as a self, as a man with a past and future and people who cared about his fate. He was merely an inconvenient n.o.body with a face that everyone knew, and unless he could rapidly parlay that startling physiognomy into an advantage, his position would deteriorate, resulting, at the very best, in his early deportation. The very worst was something he refused to contemplate. The thought of being expelled without having come close to Neela was upsetting enough. I'm naked again, Solanka thought. Naked and stupid. Walking right into the approaching knockout punch.

After an hour or more, an Australian Holden station wagon drove up to the shed in which he had been detained and Solanka was invited, not tenderly, but without undue roughness, to get in the back. Guerrillas in combat fatigues pushed in on either side of him; two more got into the baggage hold and sat facing the rear, their guns sticking out of the raised back-window hatch. On the drive through Mildendo, Malik Solanka had a strong sense of deja vu, and it took him a moment to work out that he was being reminded of India. Of, to be specific, Chandni Chowk, Old Delhi's troubled heart, where the traders crowded together in this same hugger-mugger style, where the shop fronts were as brightly colored and the interiors as crudely lit, where the roadway was even more densely thronged with walking, cycling, jostling, shouting life, where animals and human beings fought for s.p.a.ce, and where ma.s.sed car horns performed the daily unvarying symphony of the street. Solanka had not expected such crowds. Easier to predict but unnerving nonetheless was the palpable distrust between the communities, the muttering clumps of Elbee and Indo-Lilly men eyeing each other unpleasantly, the sense of living in a tinderbox and waiting for a flash. This was the paradox and the curse of communal trouble: when it came, it was your friends and neighbors who came to kill you, the very same people who had helped you, a few days earlier, start your spluttering motor scooter, who had accepted the sweetmeats you distributed when your daughter became engaged to a decent, well-educated man. The shoe-shop manager next to whose premises your tobacco store had operated for ten years or more: this was the man who would put the boot in, who would lead the men with torches to your door and fill the air with sweet Virginia smoke.

There were no tourists to be seen. (The flight to Blefuscu had been more than two thirds empty.) Few women were on the street, apart from the surprisingly large number of female FRM cadres, and no children. Many stores were closed and barricaded; others remained warily open, and people-men-were still going about their daily tasks. Guns, however, were everywhere to be seen, and in the distance, from time to time, sporadic shooting could be heard. The police force was collaborating with the FRM personnel to maintain a measure of law and order; the Ruritanian joke of an army remained in its barracks, although the leading generals were involved in the complex negotiations taking place behind the scenes for long hours every day. FRM negotiators were meeting with the ethnic Elbee chiefs, as well as religious and business leaders. "Commander Akasz" was at least trying to give the impression of a man looking for a peaceful resolution to the crisis. But civil war bubbled just beneath the surface. Skyresh Bolgolam may have been defeated and captured, but the large proportion of Elbee youths who had backed the failed Bolgolamite coup were licking their wounds and no doubt plotting their next move. Meanwhile, the international community was moving quickly toward declaring Lilliput-Blefuscu the world's smallest pariah state, suspending trade agreements and freezing aid programs. In these moves Solanka had seen his opportunity.

Motorcycle outriders surrounded the station wagon, escorting it to the heavily defended perimeter walls of the parliamentary compound. The gates opened and the vehicle pa.s.sed through, proceeding to a service entrance at the rear of the central complex. The kitchen entrance, thought Solanka with a wry private smile, was the true gate of power. Many people, functionaries or supplicants, could enter the great houses of power through their front doors. But to get into a service elevator, watched by white-hatted chefs and sous-chefs, to be borne slowly upward in an unornamented box with silent masked men and women all around you: that really was important. To emerge into an undistinguished bureaucratic corridor and be led through a series of increasingly unpretentious rooms was to walk down the true pathway to the center. Not bad for a dollmaker, he told himself. You're in. Let's see if you get out with what you want. In fact, let's see if you manage to get out at all.

At the end of the sequence of interconnecting, blank backrooms came a room with a single door. Inside were the now-familiar spartan furnis.h.i.+ngs: a desk, two canvas chairs, a ceiling light, a filing cabinet, a telephone. He was left alone to wait. He picked up the phone; there was a dial tone, and a small label on the instrument told him to dial 9 for an outside line. As a precaution, he had researched and memorized several numbers: that of a local newspaper, the American, British, and Indian emba.s.sies, a legal practice. He tried dialing these, but each time heard a woman's recorded voice saying, in English, Hindi, and Lilliputian, "That number cannot be dialed from this telephone." He tried dialing the emergency services. No luck. "That number cannot be dialed." What we have here, he told himself, is not a telephone at all but only the outward appearance or mask of a telephone. Just as this room is only wearing the costume of an office but is in fact a prison cell. No doork.n.o.b on the inside of the door. The single window: small and barred. He went over to the filing cabinet and pulled at a drawer. Empty. Yes, this was a stage set, and he had been cast in a play, but n.o.body had given him the script.

"Commander Akasz" swept in four hours later. By this time Solanka's remaining confidence had all but evaporated. "Akasz" was accompanied by two young Fremen too lowly to be in costume, and followed into the room by a Steadicam operator, a boom-carrying sound recordist and-Solanka's heart bounded with excitement-a woman wearing camouflage fatigues and a "Zameen of Rijk" mask: concealing her face behind an imitation of itself.

"That body," Solanka greeted her, striving for lightness. "I'd know it again anywhere." This didn't go down especially well. "What are you here for?" Neela burst out, then disciplined herself. "Excuse me, Commander. I apologize." Babur, in the "Akasz Kronos" outfit, was no longer the crestfallen, abashed young man Solanka remembered from Was.h.i.+ngton Square. He spoke in a barking voice that did not expect disagreements. The mask acts The mask acts, Solanka remembered. "Commander Akasz," the great man-mountain, had become a big man in this very small pond, and was acting the part. Not so big, Solanka noted, as to be immune from the Neela effect. Babur walked with a long, sweeping stride, but after every dozen steps or so, his foot somehow managed to come down on the hem of his swirling cloak, forcing his neck to jerk awkwardly back. He also managed to collide, within a minute of entering Solanka's cell, with the table and both the chairs. This, even when her face was hidden by a mask! She never failed to exceed Solanka's expectations. He, however, had disappointed hers. Now he must see if he could surprise her.

Babur had already acquired the royal we. "We are familiar with you, naturally," he said without preamble. "Who right now is not cognizant of the creator of the Puppet Kings? No doubt you have good reasons for presenting yourself," he said, with a half turn of his body toward Neela Mahendra. No fool, then, Solanka thought. No point denying what he already knows to be true. "Our conundrum is, what shall we do with you? Sister Zameen? Something to say?" Neela shrugged. "Send him home," she said in a dull, uninterested voice that shook Solanka. "I've got no use for him." Babur laughed. "The sister says you are useless, Professor Sahib. Are you so? Jolly good! Shall we throw you in the bin?"

Solanka launched into his prepared spiel. "My proposal," he said, "which I have come a long way to make, is this: allow me to be your intermediary. Your connection with my project needs no comment from me. We can give you a link to a ma.s.s global audience, to win hearts and minds. This you urgently need to do. The tourist industry is already as dead as your legendary Hurgo bird. If you lose your export markets and the support of the major regional powers, this country will be bankrupt within weeks, certainly within months. You need to persuade people that your cause is just, that you are fighting for democratic principles, not against them. For the repudiated Golbasto const.i.tution, I mean. You need to give that mask a human face. Let Neela and me work on this with my New York people, on a complimentary basis. Consider it pro bono work on a freedom movement's behalf." This is how far he was prepared to go for love, his unspoken thoughts said to Neela. Her cause was his. If she forgave him, he would be the servant of all her desires.

"Commander Akasz" waved the idea away. "The situation has developed," he said. "Other parties-bad eggs, the lot of them!-have been intransigent. As a result we also have hardened our stance." Solanka didn't follow. "We have demanded total executive authority," he said. "No more nambying or pambying. What is needed in Filbistan is for a real chap to take charge. Isn't that so, sister?" Neela was silent. "Sister?" repeated Babur, turning to face her and raising his voice; and she, lowering her head, answered almost inaudibly, "Yes." Babur nodded. "A period of discipline," he said. "If we say the moon is made of cheese, then of what, sister, is it made?" "Cheese," said Neela in the same low voice. "And if we tell you the world is flat? What shape is it?" "Flat, Commander." "And if tomorrow we decree that the sun goes round the earth?" "Then, Commander, the sun it will be that goes around." Babur nodded with satisfaction. "Jolly good! That is the message for the world to grasp," he said. "A leader has arisen in Filbistan, and it is for everyone to follow, or suffer the needful consequences. Oh, by the by, Professor, you have studied ideas at the University of Cambridge in England, isn't it. Therefore be so good as to enlighten us on a vexed point: is it better to be loved or feared?" Solanka did not answer. "Come, come, Professor," Babur urged. "Make your good effort! You can do better than that." The FRM cadres accompanying "Commander Akasz" began to fiddle meaningfully with their Uzis. In an expressionless voice, Solanka quoted Machiavelli. "'Men are less hesitant about harming someone who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared.'" He began to speak with greater animation, and looked directly at Neela Mahendra. "'Because love is held together by a chain of obligation which, since men are a sorry lot, is broken on every occasion in which their own self-interest is concerned; but fear is held together by a dread of punishment which will never abandon you.'" Babur brightened. "Good egg," he cried, thumping Solanka on the back. "You aren't useless after all! So, so. We'll think about your proposal. Jolly good! Stay awhile. Be our guest. We already have the president and Mr. Bolgolam in residence. You, too, will witness these first bright hours of our beloved Filbistan, upon which the sun never sets. Sister, be so kind as to confirm. How often does the sun go down?" And Neela Mahendra, who had always carried herself like a queen, bowed her head like a slave and said, "Commander, it never does."

The cell-he had stopped thinking of it as a room-did not contain a bed, and lacked even the most rudimentary toilet facilities. Humiliation was the stock-in-trade of "Commander Akasz," as his treatment of Neela had amply demonstrated. Solanka perceived that he was to be humiliated, too. Time pa.s.sed; he lacked a watch by which to measure it. The breeze faded and died. Night, the ideologically incorrect, nonexistent night, grew humid, thickened and stretched. He had been given a bowl of unidentifiable mush to eat and a jug of suspect water. He tried to resist both, but hunger and thirst were tyrants, and in the end he did eat and drink. After that he wrestled with nature until the inevitable moment of defeat. When he could no longer contain himself, he p.i.s.sed and shat wretchedly in a corner, taking off his s.h.i.+rt and wiping himself with it as best he could. It was hard not to fall into solipsism, hard not to see these degradations as a punishment for a clumsy, hurtful life. Lilliput-Blefuscu had reinvented itself in his image. Its streets were his biography, patrolled by figments of his imagination and altered versions of people he had known: Dubdub and Perry Pincus were here in their sci-fi versions, also mask-and-costume incarnations of Sara Lear and Eleanor Masters, Jack Rhinehart and Sky Schuyler, and Morgen Franz. There were even s.p.a.ce-age Wislawas and Schlinks walking the Mildendo streets, as well as Mila and Neela and himself. The masks of his life circled him sternly, judging him. He closed his eyes and the masks were still there, whirling. He bowed his head before their verdict. He had wished to be a good man, to lead a good man's life, but the truth was he hadn't been able to hack it. As Eleanor had said, he had betrayed those whose only crime was to have loved him. When he had attempted to retreat from his darker self, the self of his dangerous fury, hoping to overcome his faults by a process of renunciation, of giving up giving up, he had merely fallen into new, more grievous error. Seeking his redemption in creation, offering up an imagined world, he had seen its denizens move out into the world and grow monstrous; and the greatest monster of them all wore his own guilty face. Yes, deranged Babur was a mirror of himself. Seeking to right a grave injustice, to be a servant of the Good, "Commander Akasz" had come off at the hinges and become grotesque.

Malik Solanka told himself he deserved no better than this. Let the worst befall. In the midst of the collective fury of these unhappy isles, a fury far greater, running far deeper than his own pitiful rage, he had discovered a personal h.e.l.l. So be it. Of course Neela would never return to him. He was not worthy of happiness. When she came to see him, she had hidden her lovely face.

It was still dark when help came. The cell door opened and a young Indo-Lilly man entered, bare-faced, wearing rubber gloves and carrying a roll of plastic refuse sacks as well as a bucket, pan, and mop. He cleaned up Solanka's mess unflinchingly and with great delicacy, never seeking to catch the perpetrator's eye. When he had finished, he returned with clean clothes-a pale green kurta and white pantaloon pajamas-as well as a clean towel, two new buckets, one empty, one full of water, and a bar of soap. "Please," he said, and, "I am sorry," and then left. Solanka washed and changed and felt a little more himself. Then Neela arrived, alone, unmasked, in a mustard-colored dress, with a blue iris in her hair.

It obviously preyed on her mind that Solanka had witnessed her timorous responses to her treatment by Babur. "Everything I've done, everything I'm doing, is for the story," she said. "Wearing the mask was a gesture of solidarity, a way of earning the fighters' trust. Also, you know, I'm here to look at what they're doing, not to have them look at me. I could see you thought I was hiding from you behind it. That wasn't so. Similarly with Babur. I'm not here to argue. I'm making a film." She sounded defensive, taut. "Malik," she said abruptly, "I don't want to talk about us, okay? I'm caught up in something big right now. My attention has to be there."

He went for it, gathered himself and made his play. All or nothing, Hollywood or bust: he would never get another chance. He might not have much of one anyway, but at least she had come to see him, had actually dressed up for it, and that was a good sign. "This has become much more than a doc.u.mentary film project for you," he said. "This really goes to the heart. There's a lot riding on it-your uprooted roots are pulling hard. Your paradoxical desire to be a part of what you left. And, no, I didn't really think you were wearing the mask to hide your face from me, or at least that wasn't the only thing I thought. I also thought you were hiding from yourself, from the decision you've made somewhere along the line to cross a line and become a partic.i.p.ant in this thing. You don't look like an observer to me. You're in too deep. Maybe it started out with a personal feeling about Babur-and don't worry, this isn't jealousy speaking, at least I'm trying hard not to let it be-but my guess is that whatever your feelings about 'Commander Akasz' were, they're a lot more ambiguous now. Your problem is that you're an idealist trying to be an extremist. You are convinced that your people, if I can use so antiquated a term, have been done down by history, that they deserve what Babur has been fighting for-voting rights, the right to own property, the whole slate of legitimate human demands. You thought this was a struggle for human dignity, a just cause, and you were actually proud of Babur for teaching your pa.s.sive kinsmen and kinswomen how to fight their own battles. In consequence you were willing to overlook a certain amount of, what shall we call it, illiberalism. War is tough and so on. Certain niceties get trampled. All this you told yourself, and all the while there was another voice in your head telling you in a whisper you didn't want to hear that you were turning into history's wh.o.r.e. You know how it is. Once you've sold yourself, all you have left is a limited ability to negotiate the price. How much would you put up with? How much authoritarian c.r.a.p in the name of justice? How much bathwater could you lose without losing the baby?-So now you're caught up, as you say, in something big, and you're right, it deserves your attention, but so does this: that you only went this far because of the fury that possessed you all of a sudden in my bedroom in another city in another dimension of the universe. I can't articulate exactly what happened that night, but I do know that some sort of psychic feedback loop established itself between you and Mila and Eleanor, the fury went round and round, doubling and redoubling. It made Morgen punch me out and it blew you clean across the planet into the arms of a little Napoleon who will oppress 'your people' if he comes out of this on top, even more than the ethnic Elbees, who have been, at least in your eyes, the villains of this piece. Or he'll oppress them just as much but in a different way. Please don't misunderstand.-I know that when people pull apart, they usually employ misunderstanding as a weapon, deliberately getting hold of the stick's wrong end, impaling themselves on its point in order to prove the perfidy of the other.-I'm not saying that you came here because of me. You were coming anyway, right? It was our big farewell night, and as I remember, it had gone pretty well until my bedroom turned into Grand Central Station. So you'd have been here, and the pulls and pushes of being here would have worked on you whether I existed or not. But I think that what pushed you over the edge was disappointed love. You were disappointed in me and by me, which is to say by love, by the great untrammeled love you were just allowing yourself to begin to feel for me. You had just begun to trust me enough, to trust yourself enough, to let yourself go, and then suddenly the prince turns out to be a fat old toad. What happened is that the love you'd poured out went bad, it curdled, and now you're using that sourness, that disenchantment and cynicism, to push you down Babur's dead-end road. Why not, eh? If goodness is a fantasy and love is a magazine dream, why not? Nice guys finish second, to the victor go the spoils, et cetera. Your system is fighting itself, the bruised love is turning on the idealism and battering it into submission. And guess what? That puts you in an impossible situation, where you're risking more even than your life. You're risking your honor and self-respect. Here it is, Neela, your Galileo moment. Does the earth move? Don't tell me. I already know the answer. But it's the most important question you're ever going to be asked, except for the one I'm going to ask you now: Neela, do you still love me? Because if you don't, then please leave, go meet your fate and I'll wait here for mine, but I don't think you can do that. Because I do love you as you need to be loved. You choose: in the right corner there's your handsome Prince Charming, who also, by a small mischance, turns out to be a psychotic megalomaniacal swine. In the wrong corner there's the fat old toad, who knows how to give you what you need and who needs, so very badly, what you in turn know how to give him. Can right be wrong? Is the wrong thing right for you? I believe you came here tonight to find out the answer, to see if you could conquer your fury as you helped me conquer mine, to find out if you could find a way of coming back from the edge. Stay with Babur and he'll fill you up with hatred. But you and me: we just might have a shot. I know it's stupid to make this kind of declaration when just an hour ago I was stinking of my own s.h.i.+t and I still don't have a room with a doork.n.o.b on the inside, but there it is, that's what I crossed the world to say."

"Wow," she said, after allowing a suitably respectful moment of silence to elapse. "And I thought I was the big mouth on this team."

She fished a heat-softened Toblerone bar out of her purse and Solanka fell upon it greedily. "He's losing the men's confidence," she told Solanka. "The boy who helped you out tonight? There are plenty more like him, maybe as many as half the total, and for some reason they whisper to me. Khuss-puss, khuss-puss Khuss-puss, khuss-puss. It's so sad. 'Madam, we are decent persons.' Khuss-puss Khuss-puss. 'Madam, Commander Sahib is acting strange, isn't it?' Khuss-puss Khuss-puss. 'Please, madam, do not mention my thoughts to anyone.' I'm not the only idealist around here. These kids didn't think they were going to war to flatten the earth or abolish the hours of darkness. They're fighting for their families, and all this green-cheese material unnerves them. So they come to me and complain, and that puts me in a very dangerous place. It doesn't really matter what advice I give-being a second focal point, a rival center, is quite dangerous enough. One rat-one mole-is all it would take, and speaking of toads, yes, I do love you, very much. Meanwhile, what I saw on the outside before I brought the team in here was an army that's pretty sick of being a laughingstock. My information is they've been talking to the Americans and the British. The rumor says that the marines and the SAS may already be in Mildendo, in fact, I've been feeling pretty foolish for weeks about running out on you like that. There's a British aircraft carrier just outside territorial waters, and Babur doesn't control the military airfields on Blefuscu, either. The truth is I've been thinking for a while now that it's time to leave, but I don't know how Babur will take it. Half of him wants to f.u.c.k me on national television and the other half wants to beat me up for making him feel that way. So now you know the real reason why I've been wearing the mask: it's the next best thing to putting my head in a paper bag, and you came all this way for me and walked into the lion's den. I guess you must really dig me too, huh. I'm working on an out. If I can get the right Fremen in the right places, I think it can be done, and I have contacts in the army that can at least get us out to the British boat or maybe a military plane. In the meanwhile I'll make sure you get looked after. I still don't know about Babur, how far gone he is. Maybe he thinks you're a valuable hostage, even though I keep telling him you're not worth the trouble, you're just a civilian who blundered into something he didn't understand, a little fish he should throw back into the sea. If you don't kiss me soon, I'll be forced to kill you with my own bare hands. Okay, that's good. Now stay put. I'll be back."

In Athens the Furies were thought to be Aphrodite's sisters. Beauty and vengeful wrath, as Homer knew, sprang from the self-same source. That was one story. Hesiod, however, said that the Furies were born of Earth and Air, and that their siblings included Terror, Strife, Lies, Vengeance, Intemperance, Altercation, Fear, and Battle. In those days they avenged blood crimes, pursuing those who harmed (especially) their mothers-Orestes, long pursued by them after he killed b.l.o.o.d.y-handed Clytemnestra, knew all about that. The leirion leirion, or blue iris, sometimes placated the Furies, but Orestes wore no flowers in his hair. Even the bow of horn that the Pythoness, the Delphic Oracle, gave him to repel their a.s.saults proved to be of little use. "Serpent-haired, dog-headed, bat-winged," the Erinnyes hounded him for the rest of his life, denying him peace.

These days the G.o.ddesses, less regarded, were hungrier, wilder, casting their nets more widely. As the bonds of family weakened, so the Furies began to intervene in all of human life. From New York to Lilliput-Blefuscu there was no escape from the beating of their wings.

She didn't come back. Young men and women attended to Solanka's daily needs. These were some of the weary, immured fighters who, fearing their own leader, Babur, as much as the enemy outside the compound walls, had gone to their dark Aphrodite for advice; but when Solanka asked about Neela, they made dumb don't-know gestures and went away. "Commander Akasz" didn't show up, either. Professor Solanka, forgotten, washed up on the edge of things, dozed, talked aloud to himself, drifted into unreality, lurching between daydreams and panic attacks. Through the small barred window he heard the noise of battle, growing more frequent, coming closer. Pillars of smoke rose high into the air. Solanka thought of Little Brain. I'd have set his house on fire. I'd have burned his city down I'd have set his house on fire. I'd have burned his city down.

Violent action is unclear to most of those who get caught up in it. Experience is fragmentary; cause and effect, why and how, are torn apart. Only sequence exists. First this then that. And afterward, for those who survive, a lifetime of trying to understand. The a.s.sault came on Solanka's fourth day in Mildendo. At dawn the door of his cell was opened. There stood the same taciturn young man-now carrying an automatic weapon, and with two knives stuck in his belt-who had so uncomplainingly cleaned up his mess a few days earlier. "Come quickly, please," he said. Solanka followed him, and then it was into the labyrinth again, the bleak interconnecting rooms with masked fighters guarding the way, approaching each door as if it were b.o.o.by-trapped, turning each corner as if an ambush lurked just beyond; and in the distance Solanka heard the inarticulate conversation of battle, the chatter of automatic rifles, the grunts of heavy artillery, and, high above it all, the leathery beating of bat-wings and the screeches of the dog-headed Three. Then he was enclosed in the service elevator, manhandled through the ruined kitchens, and pushed into an unmarked, windowless van; after which, for a long time, nothing. High-speed motion, alarming halts, raised voices, the motion renewed. Noise. Where was that shrieking coming from? Who was dying, who was killing? What was the story here? What was the story here? To know so little was to feel insignificant, even a little insane. Thrown this way and that in the hurtling, swerving van, Malik Solanka howled aloud. But this, after all, was a rescue. Somebody-Neela?-had decreed him worthy. War erases the individual, but he was being saved from the war. To know so little was to feel insignificant, even a little insane. Thrown this way and that in the hurtling, swerving van, Malik Solanka howled aloud. But this, after all, was a rescue. Somebody-Neela?-had decreed him worthy. War erases the individual, but he was being saved from the war.

The door opened; he squinted into the blinding daylight. An officer saluted him-an exotically mustachioed ethnic Elbee wearing the absurdly braided uniform of the Lilliputian army. "Professor. So happy to see you safe, sir." He reminded Solanka of Sergius, the stiff-backed officer in Shaw's Arms and the Man Arms and the Man. Sergius, who never apologized. This fellow had plainly been a.s.signed to chaperone Solanka, a task he fulfilled briskly, marching ahead like an overwound toy. He led Solanka into a building bearing the insignia of the International Red Cross. Later there was food. A British military aircraft was waiting to carry him, along with a group of other foreign pa.s.sport-holders, back to London. "My pa.s.sport was taken," Solanka told Sergius. "None of that matters now, sir," the officer replied. "I can't leave without Neela," Solanka went on. "I don't know anything about that, sir," Sergius said. "My orders are to get you on board that aircraft double-quick."

All the seats on the British plane faced toward the tail. Solanka, taking his allotted chair, recognized the men across the aisle as Neela's cameraman and sound recordist. When they stood up and embraced him, he knew the news was bad. "Unbelievable, mate," the soundman said. "She got you out, too. Amazing woman." Where is she. None of this matters, your life, mine, he thought. Will she be here soon. "She did the whole thing," the cameraman said. "Organized the Fremen who were sick of Babur, contacted the army on shortwave radio, arranged the guaranteed safe-conducts, the lot. The president's out. Bolgolam, too. That b.a.s.t.a.r.d tried to thank her, called her a national heroine. She cut him short. In her own eyes she was a traitor, betraying the only cause she ever believed in. She was helping the bad guys win, and it killed her. But she could see what Babur had become." Malik Solanka had grown very still and quiet. "The army got tired of the jokes," the sound engineer said. "They called up all reservists and dusted off a lot of old but still serviceable pieces of heavy artillery. Helicopter guns.h.i.+ps from the Vietnam era, bought secondhand from the United States years ago, ground-based mortars, a few small tanks. Last night they took back control of the compound perimeter. Still Babur wasn't worried." The cameraman indicated a silver box. "We got it all," he said. "She arranged incredible access. Just incredible. He never believed they would use the heavy stuff against the Parliament building, and certainly not while he was holding his hostages. He was wrong about the building. Underestimated their determination. But the hostages were the key, and Neela turned that lock. The four of us came out together. And then there was the whole second route, which she set up just for you." After that nothing was said. The terrible thing hung between them like a fierce light, but it was too bright to look at. The soundman began to cry. What happened, Solanka finally asked. How could you leave her. Why didn't she run with you, toward safety. Toward me. The cameraman shook his head. "What she did," he said, "it tore her apart. She betrayed him, but she couldn't run. That would have been desertion under fire." But she wasn't a soldier! Oh G.o.d. G.o.d. She was a journalist. Didn't she know that? Why did she have to cross that G.o.dd.a.m.n line? The soundman put his arm around Solanka. "There was something she had to do," he said. "The plan wouldn't have worked if she hadn't stayed behind." "To distract Babur," the cameraman said, dull-voiced, and there it was, the worst thing in the world. To distract him: how? What did that mean? Why did it have to be her? "You know how," the soundman said. "And you know what it means. And you know why it had to be her." Solanka closed his eyes. "She sent you this," the cameraman was saying. Helicopter guns.h.i.+ps and heavy mortars, authorized by the freed President Golbasto Gue, were blasting holes in the Lilliputian Parliament. A bomber shed its load. The building was exploding, crumbling, on fire. Dirty smoke and clouds of masonry dust climbed high into the sky. Three thousand reservists and frontline troops a.s.saulted the complex, taking no prisoners. Tomorrow the world would condemn this ruthless action, but today was for getting it done. Somewhere in the wreckage lay a man wearing Solanka's face and a woman wearing her own. Not even Neela Mahendra's beauty could affect the trajectory of the mortars, the bombs like deadly fishes swimming downward through the air. Come to me, she murmured to Babur, I am your a.s.sa.s.sin, the murderer of my own hopes. Come here and let me watch you die.

Malik Solanka opened his eyes and read the handwritten note. "Professor Sahib, I know the answer to your question." Neela's last words. "The earth moves. The earth goes round the sun."

18.

From a distance the boy's hair was still golden, although the new growth beneath was darker. By his approaching fourth birthday the yellow hair would have mostly gone. The sun was s.h.i.+ning as Asmaan rode his tricycle with great attack down a sloping path on the flowering springtime Heath. "Look at me!" he shouted. "I'm going really fast!" He had grown, and his diction was much clearer, but he was still clothed in childhood's radiance, that brightest of cloaks. His mother ran to keep up with him, her long hair twisted away beneath a large straw hat. It was a perfect April day at the height of the foot-and-mouth epidemic. The government was simultaneously ahead in the polls and unpopular, and the prime minister, Tony Ozymandias, seemed shocked by the paradox: what, you don't like us? But it's us us, folks, we're the good guys! People, people: it's me! Malik Solanka, a traveler from an antique land, watching his son from the privacy of a grove of oaks, uncomplainingly allowed a black Labrador to sniff at him. The dog moved on, having established that Solanka was not suitable for his purposes. The dog was right. There were few purposes for which Solanka felt suitable right now. Nothing beside remains Nothing beside remains.

Morgen Franz did not run. He didn't "do running." Beaming myopically, the publisher lumbered down the slope toward the waiting woman and child. "Did you see that, Morgen? It was very good driving, wasn't it? What would Daddy say?" Asmaan's tendency always to speak at top volume carried his words up to Solanka's hiding place. Franz's reply was inaudible, but Malik could easily write his lines. "Far out, Asmaan, man. Really nice." The old hippie s.h.i.+t. To his eternal credit, the boy frowned. "But what would Daddy say?" Solanka felt a little surge of fatherly pride. Good for you, kid. You remind that Buddhist hypocrite who's who.

Asmaan's Heath-or at least Kenwood-was studded with magical trees. A gigantic fallen oak, its roots twisting in air, was one such enchanted zone. Another tree, with a hole at the base of its trunk, housed a set of storybook creatures, with whom Asmaan carried out ritual dialogues each time he pa.s.sed this way. A third tree was the home of Winnie-the-Pooh. Nearer Kenwood House were large spreading rhododendron bushes inside which witches lived and where fallen twigs became magic wands. The Hepworth sculpture was a sacred spot, and the words "Barbara Hepworth" had been a part of Asmaan's lexicon almost from the start. Solanka knew the route Eleanor would take, and knew, too, how to follow the little group without being noticed. He wasn't sure he was ready to be noticed, wasn't certain he was ready for his life. Asmaan was asking to be carried along the next part of the path, not wanting to ride the trike uphill. This was an old laziness, entrenched by habit. Eleanor had a weak back and so Morgen hoisted the boy up on his shoulders. That had always been one of Solanka and Asmaan's special things. "Can I ride on my shoulders, Daddy?"-"Your shoulders, Asmaan. Say, 'your shoulders.'"-"My shoulders." There goes everything I love on this earth, Solanka thought. I'll just watch him awhile. I'll just watch over him from here. shoulders, Asmaan. Say, 'your shoulders.'"-"My shoulders." There goes everything I love on this earth, Solanka thought. I'll just watch him awhile. I'll just watch over him from here.

Once again he had withdrawn from the world. Even checking his voice mail was hard. Mila had married, Eleanor left tight, miserable messages about lawyers. The divorce was all but done. Solanka's days began, pa.s.sed, ended. He had given up the New York sublet and taken a suite at Claridge's. Most days he only left it to allow the cleaners to get in. He contacted no friends, made no business calls, bought no newspaper. Retiring early, he lay wide-eyed and rigid in his comfortable bed, listening to the noises of distant fury, trying to hear Neela's silenced voice. On Christmas Day and New Year's Eve he ordered room service and watched brainless television. This expedition by taxi to North London was his first real outing in months. He had been far from sure he would even see the boy, but Asmaan and Eleanor were creatures of custom, and their movements were relatively easy to predict.

It was a holiday weekend, so there were funfairs on the Heath. On their way back to the house on Willow Road-it would be on the market any day now-Asmaan, Eleanor, and Morgen wandered through the usual rides and stalls. Asmaan was thawing toward Franz, Solanka observed: laughing with him, asking him questions, his hand disappearing inside Uncle Morg's great hairy-knuckled fist. They went in a b.u.mper car together while Eleanor took photographs. When Asmaan leaned his head against Morgen's sports coat, something broke in Malik Solanka's heart.

Eleanor saw him. He was lounging by a coconut shy and she looked right at him and stiffened. Then she shook her head vehemently, and her mouth silently but very emphatically made the word "no." No, this was not the right time; after such a long gap it would be too much of a shock for the lad. Call me Call me, she mouthed. Before any future meeting they ought to discuss how, when, where, and what Asmaan should be told. The little fellow needed to be prepared. This was how Solanka had known she would react. He turned away from her and saw the bouncy castle. It was bright blue, blue as an iris, with a bouncy staircase at one side. You climbed up the stairs to a bouncy ledge, slid and tumbled down a wide, bouncy slope, and then, to your heart's content, you bounced and bounced. Malik Solanka paid his money and slipped off his shoes. "'Ang about," the enormous woman attendant cried. "Kids only, guv. No adults allowed." But he was too quick for her, and with his long leather coat flying in the breeze, he leapt up on the wibbly-wobbly stairs, leaving astonished children floundering in his wake, and at the top of the stairs, standing high above the fairground on the wibbly-wobbly ledge, he began to jump and shout with all his might. The noise that emerged from him was awful and immense, a roar from the Inferno, the cry of the tormented and the lost. But grand and high was his bouncing; and he was d.a.m.ned if he was going to stop leaping or desist from yelling until that little boy looked around, until he made Asmaan Solanka hear him in spite of the enormous woman and the gathering crowd and the mouthing mother and the man holding the boy's hand and above all the lack of a golden hat, until Asmaan turned and saw his father up there, his only true father flying against the sky, asmaan asmaan, the sky, conjuring up all his lost love and hurling it high up into the sky like a white bird plucked from his sleeve. His only true father taking flight like a bird, to live in the great blue vault of the only heaven in which he had ever been able to believe. "Look at me!" shrieked Professor Malik Solanka, his leather coattails flapping like wings. "Look at me, Asmaan! I'm bouncing very well! I'm bouncing higher and higher!"

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

SALMAN R RUSHDIE is the author of nine novels: is the author of nine novels: Grimus, Midnight's Children Grimus, Midnight's Children (which was awarded the Booker Prize and the "Booker of Bookers," for the best novel to have won the prize), (which was awarded the Booker Prize and the "Booker of Bookers," for the best novel to have won the prize), Shame Shame (winner of the French Prix du Meilleur Livre etranger), (winner of the French Prix du Meilleur Livre etranger), The Satanic Verses The Satanic Verses (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel), (winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best Novel), Haroun and the Sea of Stories Haroun and the Sea of Stories (winner of the Writers Guild Award), (winner of the Writers Guild Award), The Moor's Last Sigh The Moor's Last Sigh (winner of the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature), (winner of the European Union's Aristeion Prize for Literature), The Ground Beneath Her Feet The Ground Beneath Her Feet (winner of the Eurasian section of the Commonwealth Prize), (winner of the Eurasian section of the Commonwealth Prize), Fury Fury (a (a New York Times New York Times Notable Book), and Notable Book), and Shalimar the Clown Shalimar the Clown (a (a Time Time Book of the Year). He is also the author of a book of stories, Book of the Year). He is also the author of a book of stories, East, West East, West, and three works of nonfiction-Imaginary Homelands, The Jaguar Smile, and The Wizard of Oz The Wizard of Oz. He is the co-editor of Mirrorwork Mirrorwork, an anthology of contemporary Indian writing.

A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Salman Rushdie has also been awarded Germany's Author of the Year Prize, the Budapest Grand Prize for Literature, the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and the Mantua Literary Award. He holds honorary doctorates at five European and two American universities and is an honorary professor in the humanities at M.I.T. He has been awarded the Freedom of the City Award in Mexico City, and holds the rank of Commander in the Order of Arts and Letters-France's highest artistic honor. His books have been translated into thirty-seven languages.