TWELVE

The ship was called Mulligayn, a name which we could trace to neither geography, personality nor reason. Registered in Tumo, she was an elderly, coal-burning steamer, given to rolling in the mildest swell. Unpainted, uncleaned and lacking at least one of her lifeboats, the Mulligayn was typical of the hundreds of small passenger ships that linked the populous southern islands of the Archipelago. For fifteen days Seri and I sweltered in her airless cabins and companionways, grumbling at the crew because it was expected of us, although privately neither of us felt we had much to complain about.

Like my earlier voyage to Muriseay, this second leg of the journey was in part a discovery of myself. I found that I had already absorbed some island attitudes; an acceptance of crowding, and of general uncleanliness, and of late ships and unreliable telephones and corruptible officials.

I frequently remembered the saying I had heard from Seri, the first time we met: that I would never leave the islands. The longer I stayed in the Archipelago the more I understood it. I still had every intention of going back to Jethra, regardless of whether or not I took the Lotterie treatment, but with every day that passed I felt the rapture of islands grow within me.

Because I had lived all my life in Jethra I accepted its values as the norm. I never saw the city as prim, old-fashioned, conservative, over-legislated, cautious and inward-looking. I had simply grown up in it, and although I was aware of its faults as well as its virtues, its standards had become my own. Now that I had left, now that the happy-go-lucky outlook of many islanders was becoming something I liked, I wanted to experience more of the culture, become a small part of it.

As my perceptions changed, the thought of returning to Jethra became less and less attractive. I was enthralled by the Archipelago. On one level, travelling around the islands was undoubtedly a bore, but the constant knowledge that there was going to be another island, somewhere else to visit and explore, opened broad internal vistas in me.

During the long voyage to Collago, Seri told me about the effect the Covenant of Neutrality had had within the Archipelago. The Covenant was the invention of governments in the north, imposed on the islands from without. It enabled both warring factions to use the Archipelago as an economic, geographic and strategic buffer against the other side, distancing the war from their own territories by adventurism in the great empty continent to the south.

Once the Covenant had been signed, a sense of timelessness and apathy had descended on the Archipelago, sapping cultural energy. The islanders had always been racially and culturally distinct from the people in the north, although trading and political links went back as far as could be remembered. But now the islands were isolated. It affected Archipelagan life on every level Suddenly there were no new Elms from the north, no books, he cars, virtually no visitors, no steel or grain or fertilizer, no oil or coal, no newspapers or academics or expertise or industrial equipment. The same sanctions closed the islands’ only export markets. All the dairy produce of the Torqui Group, the fishing, the timber, the minerals, the hundreds of different types of arts and crafts, no longer had the mass consumer markets of the north open to them. Obsessed with its local squabble, the northern continent closed its doors to the rest of the world, and it did so because it considered itself to be the world.

The worst effects of the Covenant had been felt in the years immediately following it. Both it and the war had by now become a part of everyday life and the Archipelago was beginning to recover, both economically and socially. Seri told me there had been a noticeable change of mood in recent years, a reaction against the north.

A kind of pan-islandic nationalism was growing in the Archipelago. There had been a renewal of religious faith, for one thing, a sweeping evangelism that was taking worship to the Orthodox cathedrals as never before in the last thousand years. In step with this there had been a secular revival: a dozen new universities had been built or were in the process of construction, and more were planned. Tax revenue was being put into the new industries appearing to replace the imported goods. Major discoveries of oil and coal had been made, and counter-Covenant offers of assistance or investment from the north had been pointedly turned down. Arising with this was a new emphasis on the arts md agriculture and the sciences; investment and grant money was obtainable with a minimum of bureaucratic delay. Seri said she knew of dozens of new settlements on previously uninhabited islands, each pursuing a way of life centred on their own interpretation of what cultural independence really meant. For some it was an artists’ colony, for others, subsistence farming; others, an opportunity to experiment with lifestyles, educational programmes or social structures. All were united, though, by the renaissance spirit, and by a common instinct to prove to themselves, and to anyone else who cared to inquire, that the old hegemony of the north was at an end.

Seri and I intended to become two of those who would inquire. Our plan, after Collago, was to go island-hopping for a long time. Before all this, standing in the way, was Collago. The island where living was bestowed, where life was denied. I had still not decided what to do.

We were following one of the main sea-lanes between Muriseay and Collago, and so it was inevitable that other lottery winners would be aboard. I was unaware of the others at first, preoccupied with Seri, watching the islands, but after a couple of days it was obvious who they were.

They had formed a clique, the five of them. There were two men and three women, all of an age; I judged the youngest, one of the men, to be in his late fifties. They were invulnerable in their conviviality, eating and drinking, filling the first-class lounge with jollity, often drunk but always tiresomely polite. Once I started watching them, fascinated in a rather morbid way, I kept willing them to break out, perhaps to swing a punch at one of the stewards or eat to such excess that they would be sick in public; already, though, they were superior beings, above such veniality, humble in their imminent role of demi-gods.

Seri had recognized them from the office, but she said nothing to me until I had worked it out for myself. Then she confirmed it. “I can’t remember all their names. The woman with the silver hair, she’s called Treeca. I quite liked her. One of the men is called Kerrin, I think. They’re all from Glaund.”

Glaund: the enemy country. There was enough of the north still in me to think of them as foes, but enough of the islands to recognize the instinct as irrelevant. Even so, the war had been going on for most of my life, and I had never before left Faiandland. We sometimes saw propaganda films in Jethran cinemas about the Glaundians, but I had never given them much credence. Factually, the Glaundians were a fairer-skinned race than mine, their country was more industrialized and they had a history of being territorially ambitious; less authentically, they were supposed to be ruthless businessmen, indifferent sportsmen and in competent lovers, Their political system was different from ours. While we lived under the benevolent feudalism of the Seignior, and the whole impenetrable apparatus of the Tithe Laws, the Glaundians operated a system of state socialism, and were supposed to be socialized equals.

These five appeared not to recognize me as being one of them, which suited me. I was disguised from them by my youth, and by the fact I was with Seri. To them we must have seemed to be mere drifters, island-hoppers, young and irresponsible. None of them seemed to recognize Seri without her uniform. They were wrapped up in themselves, united in their impending athanasia.

As the days passed I went through a number of different states of mind about them. For a time I simply disliked them for the vulgarity of the way they displayed their luck. Then I began to pity them: two of the women were obese, and I tried to imagine what an eternity of waddling breathlessness would be like. Then I felt sorry for them all, seeing them as plain people to whom great fortune had come late in life, and celebrating it in the only way they knew how. Soon afterwards I underwent a period of self-dislike, knowing that I was patronizing them and that I was no better than them, just younger and healthier.

Because of the link between us, because I was just like them, I several times was tempted to approach them and find out what they thought about the prize. Perhaps they had the same doubts about it as I had; I only assumed they were hurrying to salvation, and did not know for sure. But the thought of being drawn into their card-playing, good-natured drinking circle deterred me. They would be, inevitably, as interested in me as I could not help being interested in them.

I tried to understand this stand-offishness and explain it to myself. Because I was unsure of my own intentions I did not wish to have to explain myself, either to them or to me. I frequently overheard snatches of their conversations: rambling and imprecise, they often spoke of what they were going to do “afterwards”. One of the men was convinced that great wealth and influence would be his after he left Collago. The other kept repeating that he would be “set up for life”, as if he only needed enough athanasia to see him through the rest of his retirement, a nice little nest egg to tell his grandchildren about.

I knew, though, that if someone asked me what use I should put my own long life to, my answer would be equally vague. I too would utter homilies about embarking on good works in the community, or returning to university, or joining the Peace Movement. Each of these would be untrue, but they were the only things I could think of as worthwhile, as sufficient moral excuse for accepting the treatment.

The best use to which I could put a long life would be the selfish one of living for a long time, of avoiding death, of being perpetually twenty-nine years old. My only ambition for “afterwards” was to travel around the islands with Seri.

As the voyage progressed I therefore slipped into a more introspective mood than ever before, feeling unaccountably sad about what I had become involved in. I concentrated on Seri, I watched the ever-changing islands. The names slipped by—Tumo, Lanna, Winho, Salay, Ia, Lillen-cay, Paneron, Junno—some of them names I had heard, some of them not. We were a long way south now, and for a time we could see the distant coast of the wild southern continent: here the Qataari Peninsula reached north wards into the islands, stacked high behind rocky cliffs, but be yond this the land receded southwards and the illusion of endless sea returned, more temperate in this latitude. After the barren appearance of some of the islands in the tropics, the scenery here was soothing to the eye; it was greener and more forested, with tidy towns rising up the hills from the sea, and domestic farm animals grazing, and cultivated crops and orchards. The cargoes we loaded and unloaded also revealed the gradual southwards progress; we carried bulk food and oils and machinery in the equatorial seas, later we carried grapes and pomegranates and beer, later still it was cheese and apples and books.

Once I said to Seri: “Let’s get off. I want to see this place.”

The island was Ia, a large, wooded island with sawmills and shipyards. Watching from the deck I liked the way Ia Town was laid out, and I admired the unhurried efficiency of the docks. Ia was an island I wanted to walk in, and sit on grass and smell the earth. From the look of the place you could visualize cold springs and wild flowers and whitewashed farmhouses.

Seri, suntanned from her long idle hours on deck, was beside me as I leaned on the rail.

“We’ll never get to Collago if we do.”

“No more ships?”

“No more resolution. We can always come back here.”

Seri had the will to get me to Collago. She remained something of a mystery to me, however much time we spent together. We never talked together very much, and so we argued rarely; by the same token, though, we reached a level of intimacy beyond which it seemed we would never proceed. The plans for island hopping were hers. I was included in them, and included to the extent that when once I revealed a hesitancy about them she was prepared to abandon them, but I felt I was incidental to them. Her interest in lovemaking was disconcertingly sporadic. Sometimes we would crawl into our tiny bunk in the cramped cabin, and she would say she was too tired or too hot, and that would be the end of it; at other times she would exhaust me with her passions. She was sometimes intensely caring and affectionate, and I liked that. When we talked she asked me all sorts of questions about myself and my past life, yet about herself she was uncommunicative.

Throughout the long voyage, as my doubts about the athanasia treatment remained, the relationship with Seri was dogged by a growing feeling of my own inadequacy. When I was apart from her—when she sunbathed alone, or I was in the bar or was speculating about my fellow would-be immortals—I could not help but wonder what she saw in me, I obviously fulfilled some need in her, but it seemed an unselective need. I sometimes had a suspicion that if someone else came along she would leave me for him. But no one else appeared, and in general I judged it better not to question what was in many ways an ideal, casual friendship. Towards the end I unpacked my long-neglected manuscript, and took it to the bar, intending to read it through.

It was now two years since I had finished work on it, and it was strange to hold the loose pages again and remember the period I had been writing them. I wondered if I had left it too long, if I had grown away from the person who had tried to resolve a temporary crisis by committing himself to the permanence of the written word. As we grow we do not see ourselves changing—there is the apparent continuity of the mirror, the daily awareness of immediate past—and it takes the reminders of old photo graphs or old friends to point out the differences. Two years was a substantial period, yet for all that time I had been in a sort of stasis.

In that sense, my attempt to define myself had been a success. By describing my past I had intended to shape my future. If I believed that my true identity was contained in the pages, then I had never left them.

The manuscript was yellowing and the corners of the pages were curled. I slipped off the elastic band that held them all together, and started to read.

The first thing I noticed came as a surprise. In the first two or three lines I had written that I was twenty-nine years old, noting it as one of the few certainties in my life.

Yet this must have been a conceit, a falsification. I had written the manuscript two years ago.

At first this confused me, and I tried to remember what I had had in mind. Then I saw that it was perhaps a clue to understanding the rest of the text. In a sense, it helped account for the two years of stagnation that had followed: my writing had already taken itself into account, disallowing further progress.

I read on, trying to identify with the mind that had produced the manuscript and finding, against initial expectations, that I could do so with ease. After I had read only a few chapters, much of which dealt with my relationship with my sister, I felt I needed to read no more. The manuscript confirmed what I had known all along, that my attempt to reach a higher, better truth had been successful. The metaphors lived, and my identity was defined amongst them.

I was alone in the bar, Seri had gone early to our cabin. I sat by myself for another hour, thinking over my uncertainties and reflecting on the irony that the only thing in the world I knew for sure was a rather tattered stack of typewritten pages. Then, exhausted with myself and tired of my endless inner concerns, I went below to sleep.

The next morning, at last, we came to Collago.