There was one advantage to the fact that Williams and the others were no longer with me. It meant that I could do whatever the hell I wanted. I didn’t need to worry about coordinating with the others, and I could act far more boldly than I would have been able to do in a group.
There was a full moon in the sky and it was dazzlingly bright. High visibility, nothing doing. I upped my nanocoating camouflage to the max. It couldn’t quite turn me into the Invisible Man, but provided I stayed flat on the ground, I would be able to creep in pretty close without anyone being able to distinguish me from my surroundings.
I inched forward from the jungle clearing toward the guesthouse. The only thing that would really throw a wrench in the works at this point would be trained war dogs. Fortunately, I saw no signs of any.
The world’s developed nations supported an independent Lake Victoria state because they wanted to secure a stable supply of artificial flesh. It was much easier to deal with one country than it was with three.
Maybe “supported” wasn’t even strong enough a word. The war of independence wasn’t so much an organic grassroots movement that had eventually borne fruit as it was a plan that had been devised and executed. The shores of Lake Victoria were by a long way the richest regions of Kenya, Uganda, or Tanzania—naturally, because the artificial flesh industry was far more profitable than anything else the countries had to offer the world. The businessmen who grew rich from the lake found themselves increasingly averse to their respective governments squeezing them for taxes as bribes all the time. They made their dissatisfaction known by grumbling to their European bankers, and in return they were met with gentle, seductive insinuations that they might just be better off if they decided to get together and go it alone, without their so-called rulers or countries squeezing them dry.
When the US waged her wars in the Middle East, she had hardly been able to just come out with it and say “I’m doing this for the oil” even if it was true. Any modern-day national army needed at least a pretext for war before it could be mobilized. But here in Africa, causes that were fashionable elsewhere in the world—justice, stability, basic human rights—were not quite so indispensable. Scratch the surface and the medieval mindset of conquest and plunder was still very much alive.
Anyone who knew the region well, then, was hardly surprised that all it took was a cold appeal to their greed before the wealthy inhabitants of Lake Victoria declared independence.
In terms of game theory, betrayal was still the dominant paradigm in this part of the world. In the early stages of any game theory simulation, the betrayers would always get an early advantage over the cooperators. On an individual level, the decision to betray the other players would yield short-term gains. Of course, after a number of iterations and after additional complexities were introduced, the cooperators would always gain the upper hand in the long run. But on this continent, life was still simple. The game had not yet evolved that far.
No, it had, but then the ethical code had somehow been reset, returned to its primordial stages, and the game had yet to regain its former complexity.
I finally made it across the lawn and merged into one of the guesthouse walls. I traversed the passageway that led to the inner courtyard and entered the guesthouse. The atrium courtyard acted as a conduit between the rooms all around it. Its centerpiece was a small fountain surrounded by palm trees.
I walked boldly toward the centerpiece, nanocamouflage on full blast, to scope out the corridors. Occasionally one of the guards passed through the courtyard in the course of his patrols, but even when he passed within a meter of me he showed no sign of noticing me.
“Good evening, Madam Paul.” I went for my knife reflexively when one of the soldiers started speaking. But I immediately realized that he wasn’t speaking to me, but rather someone behind me on the second floor.
“Good evening, Mugabe.”
A voice I knew well.
A voice that had told me about the Holocaust. A voice that had lectured me about the inevitability of the evolutionary development of the conscience. A voice permeated with regret about her past.
Lucia Sukrova.
“How are you today, madam?”
“Well, thank you. I’m starting to get used to this place. Although it is still difficult for me whenever I see the hardships of the people on the outside …”
“Try not to let it bother you too much, madam. We are all so grateful to you both for taking the trouble to come all the way from America to help us improve our living standards.”
“I hope we will be able to help.”
“Has your husband—forgive me—has the deputy minister for culture retired for the evening yet?” the soldier asked.
It seemed that the story here was that John Paul and Lucia were a married couple. Of course, it was always possible that they actually had married since arriving here.
“No. He rarely sleeps. He’s hard at work in his room.”
“I do so admire his dedication to his work, madam. I hope one day to become a fine politician just like him.”
“I think he’s just an insomniac, really.”
“But your husband is doing so much for us. When I listen to the radio speeches he writes, my heart is lifted up. He makes me feel that if only we could all pull together we could raise this country out of poverty and get rid of AIDS once and for all. He makes me believe that the fish will come back soon. That we can carry on exporting meat to make money and at the same time live off the fish that used to swim in the lake. He makes me believe that we can have it all again. That the girls who work and sleep in the factories will soon be able to go to school instead, and that children won’t have to scavenge anymore through scrap heaps of offal and bones just to find enough to eat. He makes me believe in his dream that tomorrow will be a better day than today. Any person who can write speeches like that must be a fine human being, madam.”
There was silence. Lucia had nothing to say in response to the soldier’s words.
Sorry. Actually, my husband is here to make you hate each other.
Sorry. Actually, the only dream that my husband has is the dream that your skulls will be added to those scrap heaps of offal and bones.
I imagined those thoughts running through Lucia’s head.
Dost thou, peasant scum, truly believe we come here to spread peace? Nay, villein, we command thee to fight for our own amusement!
But no. In all probability, Lucia was still oblivious to what John Paul was doing.
“That’s … very touching. Very touching of you to say so. Good night, Mugabe.”
“Good night, madam.”
I watched Lucia retire into her room. The central room.
I waited for the soldier to continue his patrol and checked that he had left the building before dashing up the stairs. The soles of my boots automatically adapted to the flooring, helping me make a silent ascent. I felt like a ghost. These noise-canceling boots made you forget the fact that you had two feet planted firmly on the ground.
The door was open. I readied my gun and charged inside.
But Lucia was nowhere to be seen.
There was only moonlight, scattered and diffuse, shining in through the windows.
I quickly scouted the empty room. There was a desk, and it looked like someone had been working at it until a moment ago. There was a paper notebook and what looked like some sort of manuscript, and a fountain pen. The manuscript was titled The Federation, and on closer inspection it looked like a handwritten draft of a presidential speech. John Paul evidently did his writing longhand.
The notebook next to the manuscript was filled with code and strange words, far removed from ordinary English. It was evidently some sort of shorthand key that described the characteristics of certain words—their gender and connotations, looked like—logic symbols that described word and sentence orders and patterns of incidence. The linguistic jargon and code were all crammed densely together, and I couldn’t imagine ever being able to truly understand what was written there.
Then I heard the sound of a safety lock unclicking behind my back.
“Hello again, assassin.”
I spun around.
It was John Paul, smiling sadly and holding a pistol to my face.
✦ ✦ ✦
4