Chapter Thirty-One Merchant People #3
Dilyara shrugged and wrapped it up again. “Merchant person. Dr. Bryn don’ know. Now you go, unnerstan? You leave now.”
Pan said, “Yes, I will. Thank you. I hope Dr. Bryn gets well soon.”
She began to put her apparatus away, and pointed at the corner of the laboratory, saying, “You go that way. No one see you.”
He found a fallen section of wall behind a cabinet, and slipped out into the corridor.
Moving quickly and silently, listening first before turning a corner, Pan crept through the building looking for a way out.
He saw no soldiers, but once he found a group of the merchant people blocking his way.
They were talking in what he thought was Russian, in a way that made him think they were preparing for a meeting; they carried papers and files and briefcases, and they were standing outside a large double door.
As he came close to them he moved more cautiously, but it was like his experience the evening before: no one seemed to see him.
And their daemons were passive, in pockets or on shoulders or at their feet, looking at him with sly eyes before looking away in silence.
One of the merchant people opened the door, and they went in and left the corridor empty. Pan moved on and found a broken wall, and climbed over the smashed bricks and twisted girders into the open air of the morning.
He took several breaths of the desert-scented air. High in the glaring blue sky a gryphon was flying steadily towards the east.
—
In the morning sunlight coming through the open flap of his tent, Marcel Delamare sat at the mahogany campaign chest that had accompanied him all the way from Geneva.
It was a handsome piece of furniture that contained, as well as drawers for his clothes, an escritoire whose writing slope was backed by a mirror that acted as a shaving glass, and various small drawers for pens, or ink, or documents, or cuff links, or medicines, or money, or eau de cologne.
It was transported in a packing case that needed two strong men to lift.
Olivier Bonneville stood nearby. He would have been sitting, but the only other chair was occupied by Abdel Ionides. Delamare looked cautious, but otherwise inscrutable; Bonneville looked haggard. He kept shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“And what are you offering?” said Delamare.
“Collaboration,” said Ionides. “You asked us for this before, if you remember, with my colleagues in Constantinople. We listened, but heard no more from you. Now circumstances have changed, and so might your view of them. If we pool our knowledge and our resources, we shall have a better chance of dealing with this phenomenon.”
“I don’t need your knowledge, or your help,” said Delamare, “and as for resources—all you seem to have is a rabble of semi-savage fighters and some weaponry that is out of date and poorly maintained. What do you mean by ‘this phenomenon,’ anyway? Which phenomenon are you talking about?”
“Dust. The Rusakov particle and its field.”
“Well, you see, we’re ahead of you there too. We already understand it, and what we are going to do is destroy it.”
“What do you understand about it?” said Ionides.
Delamare was intrigued by this man: he looked like a beggar, but spoke like a scholar, and his confidence was unshakable. It was easy enough to believe that he was speaking for the men from the mountains, and only a pity that the woman Pervani had not come instead of him.
“We understand enough,” said Delamare, “to know more than we once did. We thought the trade might be controlled, but circumstances have developed, and we know now that everything about it must be destroyed, for the safety of humankind.”
“I see,” said Ionides.
“And you, I believe, have similar—shall we say, ‘doctrinal misgivings’ about the matter.”
“You propose to begin, I understand, by blowing up the opening through which the rose trade has been carried on for so many years. And you have a new kind of bomb with which to do it. Correct so far?”
Delamare made no response, audible or visible.
“Correct, then,” said Ionides. “One might wonder, if that is your sole aim, why you have gathered an entire army and invaded a continent. One might think you had something in mind other than merely closing a hole.”
Delamare was conscious that Olivier Bonneville was still standing nearby, listening to them. The boy’s cheeks were red; he was either tired or embarrassed by something, though Delamare could not think what.
“Olivier,” said the President, “go and wait for General Pollock to finish the report he is writing. Then go to your tent and make a précis of it on one side of a piece of paper and bring that, and the full report, to me.”
Bonneville swallowed hard and left without a word. Delamare turned back to Ionides. “How do you know that young man?” he said.
“We met near Aleppo. There was a slight misunderstanding, which we solved to our mutual satisfaction. I haven’t seen him since. Again, Monsieur le Président, may I ask the question: Why have you gathered an army large enough to invade another world?”
“For the glory of the Authority. Why do you talk about ‘another world’?”
“Shall we talk plainly? You know as well as we do that these openings reveal other worlds. You want to close them permanently, because you have—in your phrase—doctrinal misgivings about such things. So far, I can understand you. What I don’t understand is taking an army to do what one platoon of soldiers could do in five minutes with a single bomb.
The only possible reason for your expedition is to invade the other world through that particular opening.
I mean, the world, for the sake of completeness and clarity, where the roses come from. ”
“How does that concern you?” Delamare asked.
“I have a colleague, Dr. Leila Pervani, with whom I conducted research into the roses and the oil extracted from them. We are interested in the roses for reasons of experimental theology, or science, as they are now calling it. We have taken the chance of talking to you frankly, and you will respect that, because our friends the men from the mountains have a different view. They want, for reasons that seem good to them, to close the opening to that world permanently, as you say you do. They are not interested in exploration and discovery, in speculation, in science at all. We are.”
Delamare sat back. Of all the things he might have expected this man to say, this was the last. He watched Ionides with narrowed eyes, but said nothing.
Ionides went on. “I have come to you, Monsieur le Président, with a simple request. My colleague and I want to enter that other world without being prevented by you. That’s all. Once we have gone through the opening, we shall stay out of your way and pursue our own interests entirely.”
“But why should I let you do that?”
“Simple,” replied Ionides. “I can show you the only safe path through the wandering lake of Lop Nor.”
“The wandering lake…Do people still believe in that?”
“They do. With good reason. When the Tarim River changes course, the lake changes with it, since the Tarim is its only source. Varying rainfall from season to season, earth movements, irrigation and other human activity—all these things shake the course of the river like a whip. The old lake drains into a new one as new channels are cut by the changing currents. The result is a region of salt flats and marshes, unexpected deep water, invisible and fathomless bogs. Any traveler who tries to cross the lake region had better have a reliable guide. It seems to me, Monsieur Delamare, that by coming this way round the Tien Shan mountains, you have committed your army to a death march. You need a guide.”
Before he was sent away, Olivier Bonneville had noticed a strange expression on Delamare’s face.
He did something with his eyes; Bonneville had seen it more than once in recent days, and it had appeared as soon as this visitor began talking.
Without frowning or raising his eyelids, he seemed to make his eyes larger.
The pupils seemed darker, the whites almost glowed.
He looked scarcely human, more like a mask or a picture drawn by a clinical specialist to illustrate an extremity of obsessional madness.
Bonneville marveled at how Delamare could look like that and yet remain in control of his smooth and courteous voice.
Did he know, and do it on purpose to frighten and dominate?
Or did he have no idea what his face was giving away?
At any rate, he was looking at his visitor with just that expression.
Ionides was interested to see it, but he remained calm, cool, at ease. A few seconds passed. Delamare looked away; he turned to his desk and shifted through some papers. He picked one up and studied it, before turning back.
Finally he said, “You have painted a dramatic picture, Professor Xenakis. Oh, yes, I know who you are. Why should I believe that a failed mathematician and would-be expert on the cultivation of roses could guide anyone across dangerous territory? Even with the dangers clearly exaggerated to impress the credulous?”