3.2:Just Another Victim Of The Ambient Morality
I came out stunned.I was angry at them, then.Angry at them for surprising me, touching me like that.Of course I was angry at their stupidity, their manic barbarity, their unthinking, animal obedience, their appalling cruelty; everything that the memorial evoked but what really hit me was that these people could create something that spoke so eloquently of their own ghastly actions; that they could fashion a work so humanly redolent of their own inhumanity.I hadn’t thought them capable of that, for all the things I’d read and seen, and I didn’t like to be surprised.
I left the island and walked along the right bank down towards the Louvre, and wandered through its galleries and halls, seeing but not seeing, just trying to calm down again.I glanded a little softnow [*4*] to help the process along, and by the time I came to the Mona Lisa I was quite composed again.The Giaconda was a disappointment; too small and brown and surrounded by people and cameras and security.The lady smiled serenely from behind thick glass.
I couldn’t find a seat and my feet were getting sore, so I wandered out into the Tuileries, along broad and dusty avenues between small trees, and eventually found a bench by an octagonal pond where small boys and their pères sailed model yachts.I watched them.
Love.Maybe it was love.Could that be it?Had Linter fallen for somebody, and was the ship therefore concerned he might not want to leave, if and when we had to?Just because that was the start of a thousand sentimental stories didn’t mean that it didn’t actually happen.
I sat by the octagonal pond, thinking about all this, and the same wind that ruffled my hair made the sails of the little yachts flutter and flap, and in that uncertain breeze they nosed through the choppy waters, and banged into the wall of the pond, or were caught by chubby hands and sent bobbing back out again across the waves.
I circled back via the Invalides, with more predictable trophies of war; old Panther tanks, and rows of ancient cannons like bodies stacked against a wall.I had lunch in a smoky little place near the St Sulpice Metro; you sat on high stools at a bar and they selected a piece of red meat for you and put it, dripping blood, on a grid over an open pit filled with burning charcoal.The meat sizzled on the grille right in front of you while you had your aperitif , and you told them when you felt it was ready.They kept going to take it off and serve it to me, and I kept saying, ‘ Non non; un pen plus s’il vous plait’
The man next to me ate his rare, with blood still oozing from the centre.After a few years in Contact you get used to that sort of thing, but I was still surprised I could sit there and do that, especially after the memorial.I knew so many people who’d have been outraged at the very thought.Come to think of it, there would have been millions of vegetarians on Earth who’d have been equally disgusted (would they have eaten our vat-grown meats?I wonder).
The black grill over the charcoal pit kept reminding me of the gratings in the memorial, but I just kept my head down and ate my meal, or most of it.I had a couple of glasses of rough red wine too, which I let have some effect, and by the time I was finished I was feeling reasonably together again, and quite well disposed to the locals.I even remembered to pay without being asked (I don’t think you-ever quite get used to buying ), and went out into the bright sunshine.I walked back to Linter’s, looking at shops and buildings and trying not to get knocked down in the street.I bought a paper on the way back, to see what our unsuspecting hosts thought was newsworthy.It was oil.Jimmy Carter was trying to persuade Americans to use less petrol, and the Norwegians had a blow-out in the North Sea.The ship had mentioned both items in its more recent synopses, but of course it knew Carter’s measures weren’t going to get through without drastic amendment, and that the drilling rig had had a piece of equipment fitted upside down.I selected a magazine as well, so arrived back at Linter’s clutching my copy of Stern and expecting to have to drive away.I’d already made tentative plans; going to Berlin via the First World War graves and the old battle grounds, following the theme of war, death and memorials all the way to the riven capital of the Third Reich itself.
But Linter’s car was there in the courtyard, parked beside the Volvo.His auto was a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud; the ship believed in indulging us.Anyway, it claimed that making a show was better cover than trying to stay inconspicuous; Western capitalism in particular allowed the rich just about the right amount of behavioural leeway to account for the oddities our alienness might produce.
I went up the steps and pressed the bell.I waited for a short while, hearing noises within the flat.A small notice on the far side of the courtyard caught my attention, and brought a sour smile to my face.
Linter appeared, unsmiling, at the door; he held it open for me, bowing a little.
‘Ms Sma.The ship told me you’d be coming.’
‘Hello.’ I entered.
The apartment was much larger than I’d anticipated.It smelled of leather and new wood; it was light and airy and well decorated and full of books and records, tapes and magazines, paintings and objets d’art, and it didn’t look one little bit like the place I’d had in Kensington.It felt lived in.
Linter waved me towards a black leather chair at one end of a Persian carpet covering a teak floor and went over to a drinks cabinet, turning his back to me. ‘Do you drink?’
‘Whisky,’ I said, in English. ‘With or without the e .’ I didn’t sit down, but wandered around the room, looking.
‘I have Johnny Walker Black Label.’
‘Fine.’
I watched him clamp one hand round the square bottle and pour.Dervley Linter was taller than me, and quite muscular.To an experienced eye there was something not quite right – in Earth human terms – about the set of his shoulders.He leaned over the bottles and glasses like a threat, as though he wanted to bully the drink from one to the other.
‘Anything in it?’
‘No thanks.’
He handed me the glass, bent to a small fridge, extracted a bottle and poured himself a Budweiser (the real stuff, from Czechoslovakia).Finally, this little ceremony over, he sat down.Bahaus chair, and it looked original.
His face was calm, serious.Each feature seemed to demand separate attention; the large, mobile mouth, the flared nose, the bright but deep-set eyes, the stage-villain brows and surprisingly lined forehead.I tried to recall what he’d looked like before, but could only remember vaguely, so it was impossible to tell how much of the way he looked now had been carried over from what would be classed as his ‘normal’ appearance.He rolled the beer glass around in his large hands.
‘The ship seems to think we should talk,’ he said.He drank about half the beer in one gulp and placed the glass on a small table made of polished granite.I adjusted my brooch.’You don’t think we should though, no?’
He spread his hands wide, then folded them over his chest.He was dressed in two pieces of an expensive looking black suit; trousers and waistcoat. ‘I think it might be pointless.’
‘Well I don’t know does there have to be a point to everything?I thought the ship suggested we might have a talk, that’s -‘
‘Did it?’
‘- all.Yes.’ I coughed. ‘I don’t it didn’t tell me what’s going on.’
Linter looked steadily at me, then down at his feet.Black brogues.I looked around the room as I sipped my whisky, looking for signs of female habitation, or for anything that might indicate there were two people living here.I couldn’t tell.The room was crowded with stuff; prints and oils on the walls, most of the former either Breughels or Lowrys; Tiffany lampshades, a Bang and Olafsen Hifi unit, several antique clocks, what looked like a dozen or so Dresden figurines, a Chinese cabinet of black lacquer, a large four-fold screen with peacocks sewn onto it, the myriad feathers like displayed eyes
‘What did it tell you?’ Linter asked.
I shrugged. ‘What I said.It said it wanted me to have a talk with you.’
He smiled in an unimpressed sort of way as though the whole conversation was hardly worth the effort, then looked away, through the window.He didn’t seem to be going to say anything.A flash of colour caught my eye, and I looked over at a large television, one of those with small doors that close over the screen and make it look like a cabinet when it isn’t in use.The doors weren’t fully shut, and it was switched on behind them.