Equilateral: A Novel Part 4

Yet the astronomer and his secretary exhaust their conversation once the reports have been discussed. They're aware again of the quiet beyond the tent, where the regular hum of Point A's thousands has been stilled. Thayer and Miss Keaton may well have been abandoned. They have yet to address their chess pieces, which remain where they left them weeks ago, ranged across the board, each fixed within the plane of its allowable motion.

Thayer says at last, "I don't think there are any dervishes."

"No, probably not."

"Ballard believes in them," Thayer observes.

"He needs to. He thinks they must lurk there beyond the glare of our fires, beyond our mortal ken, watching us-either for good or for ill."

"For ill, he's confirmed it."

Miss Keaton says, "That's because he's never built anything without opposition from the native population. He believes he's excavating against the forces of backwardness, paganism, and unreason as much as he's countering ..."

"The weight of loosely packed sand."

"Exactly," Miss Keaton says, followed by a brief, arid laugh.

The gaslight has infused itself into her hair, incandescing the dried, inflexible filaments. Miss Keaton's eyes seem to be lit as well, though this must be an illusion, for the lamp stands behind her. The pleasure Thayer took in completing her thought lasts for only a moment, for then he recalls grievous instances of backwardness, paganism, and unreason from each end of the Equilateral to the other two.

"Yes, it's always difficult to make the locals comprehend what you've come for," he murmurs. Unsettled by the rebellion, wearied, and perhaps overcome by his familiar weaknesses, he permits himself another long look at her. She's surrounded by a nimbus of gold, like the icons in the Coptic monastery a few miles from the triangle's northern apex. "Dee," he says lazily, "don't you remember the porters in the Atacama? They were resolute in their noncomprehension."

Thayer realizes at once that he's trespa.s.sed. She freezes. The Chilean porters: they were red Indians and half-breeds, either impa.s.sive or sullen, draped in gaudy wool ponchos. They were convinced the visitors were prospectors, in a region well known to be worthless in minerals. They would bring Thayer rock samples every few hours, claiming they were of surpa.s.sing value. Once Thayer erected his telescope in the direction of the heavens, they refused to look through it, knowing there were no rocks there. Thayer and Miss Keaton have not spoken of the porters before, nor of anything that happened during the weeks of the expedition, save for its most important result: the paper in Astronomische Nachrichten, confirming that star formation can be witnessed in the Southern Hemisphere nebulae. Now he d.a.m.ns himself for his tactlessness.

She tentatively relaxes her expression. She looks at him carefully, wondering for what purpose he has directed her thoughts back to Chile. The time of night has affected her too. She says, "Chile." The beginning of a smile is raised at the vertices of her mouth.

But now something's changed in the night air. A new sound, m.u.f.fled and slithering, has been introduced. For a moment Thayer and Miss Keaton have been keenly, almost predatorily, aware of each other; now their vigilance turns outward. Miss Keaton's smile deliquesces. Before their alarm can resolve itself, a rustle at the entrance turns into a form and the form becomes real, small, girlish, and familiar. It's Bint, who may come at all hours of the day and night but usually makes her presence known only in stages.

She's visibly frightened. The rumors have reached the dormitory somewhat heightened, accompanied by stories of abduction and rape. The whites a.s.sume that they themselves are the targets of the insurrection, but in a lawless place a female of whatever race or nation is just as vulnerable as her Christian sisters. Bint sees safety here. She stands in expectation, her eyes wide, begging to be protected.

For want of anything to say in a language that she may comprehend, Thayer motions that she should pour the tea.

They're relieved. A question was posed, but it no longer has to be answered. Thayer realizes that his heart is pumping unusually fast, as if the fever has returned. The heart will slow. The heat that coursed through him was probably the fever all along. Miss Keaton removes one of his p.a.w.ns from the board.

They expect that Bint will now disappear into the shadows, but she remains at the side of the table, waiting to pour another cup of tea. She's afraid to leave. She shows no surprise that Thayer and Miss Keaton are alone in Thayer's quarters so late. She wouldn't be able to imagine what the Europeans do when she's not attending them. In any event, she may suppose that Miss Keaton is one of Thayer's wives.

Miss Keaton declares check and observes, after Thayer blocks her queen, that he's left his surviving bishop unprotected. She takes it and after a few further desultory maneuvers his king is trapped. The board's geometry is unforgiving.

Annoyed, she studies the man, who has become inattentive. He barely looks at his pieces. He fidgets. The girl's still here.

Outside there are more sounds, some of them inexplicable. Night has fallen completely, yet most of the camp's Europeans remain awake with their guns at their sides.

Sixteen.

Thayer and Miss Keaton step from his tent when the troops arrive, the Nubians' horses snorting with pleasure at leaving the loose sand that still lies between the Points of the Equilateral. Eight ringleaders have been brought back, one for each troublesome company. For all the unease that they've engendered among the whites, the men are wretched creatures, ragged and bruised, exhausted and dehydrated. One prisoner's right temple is gashed crimson. He has to be carried from the litter.

A scaffold is being erected, a device of elegant simplicity: an elevated platform; two uprights supporting a horizontal beam braced by crosspieces; a pair of ropes; and a trapdoor cut into the platform. The door is attached to the platform by iron bolts, which will be released by application of a single lever located at the edge of the platform. It's a universal tool. Any person of any nation, at any time in human history, would understand the machine's operation.

Ballard joins them. Sensing disapproval in Thayer's clinical gaze, he says, "A mutiny in the desert is no less dangerous than aboard ship."

The astronomer responds mildly, "The men can be sent off."

"Without mounts, that would be crueler than a hanging. And we can't spare mounts."

Two workmen clamber over the rough, unpainted structure, stopping to hammer at exposed nail heads in the fresh yellow pine imported from the Levant. A carpenter tests the trapdoor. The hinges squeal above the murmurs of the a.s.sembling witnesses.

Thayer privately speculates what his colleagues on Mars will make of this appliance. Their anatomy may not include a vertebral structure connecting their heads to their bodies, but once they're appraised of the scaffold's operation and purpose, they'll likely find it barbaric.

His mind clouds at the prospect. The Equilateral was conceived to benefit the whole of humanity. It's meant to promote the global commonweal and prefigure the other great projects-waterworks, dams, the outlawing of war, industrialization, universal public education-that will eventually draw on the talents and energies of men regardless of nation. This is how, in the last decade, he has presented his vision to the world's leaders and bankers, as well as to prominent scientists, philosophers, and religious figures. This is how the enterprise was proposed to the readers of the Sunday newspaper supplements. This is how it's understood by the children who went from door to door and slid coins into their slotted "Mars tins." None of them antic.i.p.ated the scaffold, whose shadow on the sands is as black as ink.

Thayer says, half to himself, "At a time when we're plagued by the shortage of labor, we're about to give up eight workers."

Ballard scowls at Thayer's unease. "We'll hang just two, in fact. The others will be spared, allowed to return to their spades invigorated by fear. And edified, having been introduced to the concept of Christian mercy."

"Fear ..." Thayer mutters. "Is that our greatest motivating force? Is there no ideal, no greater purpose, that may appeal to the men?"

"Fear works surprisingly well. That's been my experience, from Aswan to the Punjab."

"But the fellahin may not share our dread of pain or death. How else can they live in such miserable conditions? What fear can spur them?"

The chief engineer says darkly, "The fear of being made more miserable. The Arab has no ambition save to prevent further inconvenience to himself. Hanging is a decided inconvenience. In any case, Thayer, the decision's out of your hands. I'm the one commissioned to dispose of hindrances to the excavations."

Miss Keaton, who has been involved in nearly every discussion of logistics since their first meeting with Sir Harry, has attended this exchange from a distance. Her face is soft and unfocused. Overnight, while Bint lurked in the shadows, Miss Keaton and Thayer dozed off in their armchairs. When she woke she was confused about how she came to sleep there. For a moment-or for less than a moment, say for the time it would take for a beam of light to traverse the heavily worked line between Point A and Point B-she thought she was in Chile. Then she recalled there was a message that she was meant to receive from Thayer; also one that she wished to return.

Ballard presumes she's about to object, because her lips have just pursed and her eyes have opened wide, and also because ladies always object when they learn the stern measures that have to be taken to get something accomplished. The engineer credits Miss Keaton with a certain degree of competence, but he's still wary of her femininity.

He says quickly, to the astronomer, "We've already conceded that we won't be done by June the seventeenth. The Flare will be delayed. Most of the Equilateral may be excavated this summer, but I can a.s.sure you, Sanford, that for there to be any possibility of completing it at all, by any date, then stoppages and sabotage must be put down."

Thayer objects: "We haven't conceded June the seventeenth." Ballard waves at his declaration. "For all intents and purposes-"

"It's six weeks away!"

Ballard welcomes the opportunity to speak bluntly. "None of the sides are more than three-quarters excavated, Thayer, and less than half the area has been surfaced. You've been out to the sites. You're aware of the obstacles. As for Side AB-you can see from here that we've made progress on the line segment radiating from the Vertex, but the excavations around mile one hundred haven't begun yet. Taking this into account, I'd say that the entire undertaking is hardly more than fifty percent complete."

"Fifty percent!" Thayer cries. Miss Keaton flinches, suddenly aware of the argument.

Thayer has known there were delays, but he never believed the Equilateral was this far behind schedule. "How can it be? What have the men been doing for the last two years? We won't be done for maximum elongation."

"As I've said, Sanford."

Thayer tries to collect himself. He turns his back from the scaffold, past Miss Keaton, deliberately not looking at her. He recalculates the problem: the current progress of the excavations, the number of men required, the amount of material needed.

"So ..." the astronomer begins, speaking into the vacant air. "We have to increase pitch output. Let's have new manufactories built at the side midpoints. We'll a.s.sign fresh crews to Side AB, at miles one hundred, one-twenty, and one-sixty; men should be dispatched from Point B as well."

Ballard replies, "If only we had them. If only they'd work like honest English navvies."

Thayer nods and gazes again into the plain as the new men arrive at Point A from unmarked points, aspiring to apply their muscle to the soft, liquid sands. But no, it's a desert mirage. The Equilateral's being s.n.a.t.c.hed from his grasp by thuggery, by illiteracy, by superst.i.tion, and by indolence.

He levels a hard stare at Miss Keaton.

The secretary quickly responds: "There were problems while you were ill. I've tried to keep you informed."

She has in fact been scrupulous in her accounting of the excavations. Nothing was withheld, though he was often insensible when she read him the reports.

Ballard waits a moment, to let Thayer's anger ripen.

Then the engineer says, "The forces arrayed against us have strengthened themselves, in the ranks of the fellahin and beyond. The mullah of Jerusalem has issued an edict against the Equilateral. It's haraam. Parliament's angry about the delays. They've threatened an investigation into the Concession's finances. That's why we're taking desperate measures."

"No, of course, I understand," Thayer says, his face gone pale. "But I won't give up June the seventeenth, not at any cost. When would we set off the Flare if not on the seventeenth, when it will mean the most and be most unambiguously observed? Do whatever is necessary."

The ca.n.a.l-builders, in the course of their history, must have also contended with brutes who would have scuttled their race's progress. The construction of the water transport system on which life on the Red Planet depends would have required fierce determination. It would not have been put off by bourgeois morality. Rebellions would have been subdued, perhaps with force. Vast wars would have roiled the globe's surface. They would have included the mechanized butchery that has accompanied our own military strife, augmented by more advanced and more gruesome weaponry. So Mars will not judge us harshly. The planet's history will show that conflict was ended only through the application of the universal laws of evolution and natural selection, when the superior and inferior specimens of the Martian race diverged into separate species, as is inevitable on Earth. A race of savants and a race of slaves, with breakable necks or not.

The fellahin are a.s.sembled. On this occasion no one speaks to them. The men know they've come for the hangings, and the reasons for the hangings are no more mysterious than their spades, the sun, or their thirst. The condemned stand above the crowd, at the edge of the platform, not looking at the fellahin, nor paying attention to each other. Perhaps they resent sharing the stage. In the minute before the nooses are drawn tight, their swarthy faces darken further. The lights in their eyes have already gone out when the empty sacks, which once contained flour, the wholesome odor of which occupies their nostrils, are lowered.

But something is wrong with the mechanism or the way one of the nooses has been tied or placed, and though the door drops cleanly, punctuated by a dramatic concussion when it hits the underside of the platform, the man on the right dangles alive from his rope for a full minute. His companion has obediently gone slack, his toes pointing to the ground, but the second man kicks his feet with force and precise direction, as if at a stubborn mule, while he suffocates. The carpenter-executioner looks on helplessly and turns to Thayer for guidance. Thayer can only glance away, embarra.s.sed.

The fellahin don't object to the hangings and they've brought a certain holiday antic.i.p.ation to the affair. The doomed man's struggle, however, commences a low-pitched humming within the audience. The murmurs spread among the fellahin and build as the prisoner audibly chokes. Thayer recognizes the hum as kin to the protesting drone that has accompanied the excavations from the insertion of the first spade. He hasn't identified it before. After making one last violent exertion, which twists his body as if he's trying to slip it through a closing doorway, the man finally expires. Justice has been done, but not without recalling the failures of equipment and personnel that have compromised the Equilateral so far.

The Earth is an elusive subject for the telescopes of Mars, showing phases just as Venus, Mercury, and the moon exhibit in ours. When the full daylit face of the Earth is visible, our planet always lies on the other side of the sun, a tiny object lost in the solar glare. As the Earth catches up with Mars, increasing its apparent size, our sphere shows the Red Planet more and more of its nighttime side. At maximum elongation, June the seventeenth, the portion of the Earth facing Mars will be half lit; only for a few of the following weeks, after the minutes in which the Flare blazed from Egypt's night shadows, will the daytime lands be sufficiently well placed to show their new equal-sided triangle. By October, when the two planets are closest, the surface of the Earth will not be visible to Mars at all.

Each civilization must wait its turn to view the other.

Seventeen.

No one conveys the order to have the gallows removed and it remains in place after the fellahin return to work. By chance the device has been installed in the single un.o.bstructed location where it may be seen from anywhere in Point A, from the door to the hammam, from the pitch factory, from the mosque, from the windows of the commissary, from the dormitories, and from the observatory. Thayer finds it several hundred yards before him, at the end of a long allee of tents, the moment he exits his quarters.

The astronomer listens to the camp at work. Machines are being fired up and men perform their a.s.signed labors, but this afternoon, several days after the hangings, their reverberations reach him subdued. They're accompanied by an undertone, the same distant strain of discontent that he recognized several days ago.

He wonders again how the inhabitants of Mars will read the Equilateral's difficult history. With their moral development so far advanced, the severe measures taken against the laborers may remind them of their own vanishingly remote, shamefully medieval past. They may judge man too savage to conceive of friendship with him, nor imagine any sort of profitable exchange at all.

Apparent size and phases of the Earth as seen from Mars, 1894.

The sun's forced march toward its solstice point brings longer days and greater heat, shattering records that were set in the desert the first summer of operations. The fellahin demonstrate commensurately amplified la.s.situde. There are more cases of sunstroke, or at least claims of sunstroke, the excavators dropping their spades and falling to the ground theatrically. Thayer receives daily accounts from the work sites. Crews employing hundreds of fellahin seem to be immobilized at mile 105 on Side AB, digging out the same sand every day.

"What's wrong with them?" Thayer cries in frustration, dropping his fist on Ballard's latest report. "Do they want to remain at mile one hundred five? Do they believe they've found Paradise there?"

"Yes, the desert is strewn with figs and virgins." The engineer grimaces. "We offer the men instruction. We carefully translate. We account for differences in culture and national development. Still they refuse the lessons."

Eighteen.

Nearly every day brings news of another fatality. Today's death occurs inside the pitch manufactory: a scaffolding gives way. Six men are trapped in the debris. Besides the fatality, one of the men loses a foot, another an eye, and two claim internal injuries of an unspecified nature. Thayer wonders why there is still scaffolding within the building, which began operation nine months ago. He wonders too how a man can so easily lose a foot; specifically what did the man fall against or into that caused his foot to be severed? In the last two years the Arabs have proven to be as p.r.o.ne to injuries as a circle of elderly society matrons.

Thayer rides to the factory, a three-story brick structure close to the actual Vertex of Sides AB and AC, a confluence of uniformly paved pitch nearly as large as the Point A encampment itself. Inside the building the collapse has left an amount of debris that seems far greater than the ma.s.s of the scaffolding and whatever it supported could be. Workers pick through the rubble, choose items, examine them casually, and then return them to the piles. The foreman says it will be a week before the factory is again operational.

The astronomer says, "Make it three days and that'll be twenty pounds for you, placed directly in your account."

The foreman doesn't respond to the challenge.

Thayer climbs a still-intact staircase to the fourth floor, where there's an open porch. He steps out and sharply draws in his breath. For the first time from that elevation, he views the Equilateral's pitch-filled lines glistening wetly as they diverge from the Point A Vertex. They vanish toward points exactly sixty degrees apart on the level horizon. The foreman stands beside him, unseeing and indifferent, but Thayer is suddenly electrified, forgetting the haphazard labors going on beneath his feet. Here is the Equilateral made tangible. The pitch's blackness is stark against the luminosity of sand and sky, the Vertex pavement like a vast hole about to swallow the Earth itself.

When Thayer finally descends, he's inspired to return to his quarters on foot. He turns his back on the factory shambles and enters the ever-changing city invigorated. Flat stones have been laid down some of the pathways, forming rough streets and boulevards. Despite the standstill in the excavations, Point A seems to have increased in size and in the complexity of its layout, with new neighborhoods tucked into or adjacent to the original industrial sections, proliferating ad hoc alleys and plazas where they were not foreseen. Hovels and low gray tents sprawl into the distance, across the sands. There are men he doesn't know, Englishmen and Europeans, who are startled to encounter him on the paths, and who bow once they recover themselves. The distinctive music of the closing century resonates throughout the encampment: the steam engine's roar and the clash of heavy machine parts. A visitor can very well imagine that the Concession was established for no other purpose than the founding of Point A as a desert metropolis. Minutes after taking his pleasure in the Vertex, Thayer is stirred by the sight of the settlement that has been engendered by his vision, his advocacy, and his unceasing labors.

Yet he's aware that there's been further violence. This includes blatant acts of insurrection leveled directly at the Equilateral; as well as strife traveling circuitously from abstruse causes toward obscure ends. Men are slain with pickaxes, with spades, and with knives in close fighting. Perhaps the sun, now penetrating Thayer's helmet, has something to do with it. Meanwhile, quinine is in short supply at the infirmary and several more water tankers have gone missing. Bedouins are said to be responsible, or looters from the Sudan. Ballard has raised the prospect of water rationing, though consumption among the fellahin is already closely guarded.

In response to the growing disorder, the chief engineer has designated a mud-brick building on Point A's outskirts as a lockup, according to terms set by the Concession with the Egyptian government. Thayer believes that it's in another part of the city, but his uncertain footsteps lead him there anyway and, despite his growing fatigue in the heat, he stops to look in. Just inside the doorway, on a straight-backed chair absent a desk, he finds an Egyptian policeman, a Concession employee, smoking a long red-clay chibouk. Upon the astronomer's entrance, the man abruptly stands at attention, the burning pipe still in his hands. His tunic is unb.u.t.toned. Thayer announces that he wants to view the prisoners. For a moment the policeman remains confused and then, alarmed, he leads him to the back of the jail.

Thayer expects the criminals to be languishing in cells. In fact they're unbound and unmonitored, out-of-doors behind the building in an open lot that attenuates into scrub. The policeman blows a whistle and they a.s.semble in a single sullen row, about a dozen of them with their arms at their sides, as prescribed.

The men are distinctly Arab-more Arab-looking, it seems to Thayer, than his more reliable excavators: blacker faces, beakier noses, more profoundly mournful eyes. Yes: he finds a profound mournfulness in their eyes, reflecting the tragic fatalism intrinsic to their faith and culture. He walks along the line. The fellahin avert their eyes, or focus them at a point in the impossible distance. He inspects their filthy shirts and long, loose trousers.

He stops at one of the prisoners, among the most disheveled of them. A mean scar runs above his right eyebrow. The fellah looks past the astronomer, ignoring him. Thayer addresses the policeman.

"Why is this man being held?"

"He's a very low sort, Effendi."

"I can see that, but what's his offense? Why isn't he at the excavations? We're feeding him and giving him water, yet the man lies about the yard day and night."

"The Guards brought him. I don't know the particulars. He was refusing to work, I believe."