FIVE

Suddenly the ship came into sunlight, and it was as if I had broken with what lay behind me.

I narrowed my eyes against the brilliant sky, and saw that the cloud was some effect of the land, for it ran in a clearly defined east-west line. Ahead, all was clear and blue, promising warmth and calm seas. We headed south, as if propelled by the cold wind blustering from astern.

I felt my senses extend, and awareness spread around me like delicate nerve-cells reaching for sensation. I became aware. I opened.

There was a smell of diesel oil, of salt, of fish. The cold wind reached me, even though I was protected by the ship’s super· structure; my city clothes felt thin and inadequate. I breathed in deeply, holding the air for several seconds, as if it might contain cleansing agents that would scrub out my system, refresh my mind, rejuvenate and re-inspire me. Beneath my feet, the deck was vibrating with the grind of engines. I felt the pitching movement of the ship in the swell, but my body was balanced and in tune with it.

I went forward to the prow of the ship, and here I turned to look back at what was behind me.

On the ship itself, a few other passengers huddled on the fore deck. Many of them were elderly couples, sitting or standing together, and most of them wore windcheaters or plastic rain proofs. They seemed to look neither forward nor back, but within. I stared past them, and beyond the ship’s superstructure and funnel, where silent sea-birds glided effortlessly, to the coast we had left. The ship had turned slightly since leaving the harbour, and much of Jethra was visible. It seemed to spread along the coast, sheltering behind its quayside cranes and warehouses, filling its broad, estuarine valley. I tried to imagine its daily life continuing without me there to see it, as if everything might cease in my absence. Already, Jethra had become an idea.

Ahead was our first port of call: Seevl, the offshore island I had never visited. It was the island of the Dream Archipelago closest to Jethra, and for all my life had merely been a part of the scenery. Dark, treeless Seevl dominated and blocked the view to the south of Jethra, yet to all but a few people with family connections, Seevl was prohibited to Jethrans. Politically it was part of the Archipelago, and while the war continued neutral territories were inaccessible. Seevl was the first, the nearest; there were ten thousand neutral islands beyond.

l wanted the ship to go faster, because while Jethra lay behind I felt I had not truly started, but the sea at the mouth of the estuary was shallow, and the ship changed course a number of times. We were approaching Stromb Head, the great broken cliffs at the eastern end of Seevl, and once we had rounded this all that lay ahead would be unknown.

I paced the deck, impatient for the journey, cold in the wind and frustrated by my fellow passengers. Before boarding I had imagined that I would be travelling with many people of my own age, but it seemed that almost everyone who was not crew was at retirement age. They appeared to be self-absorbed, heading for their new homes; one of the few methods of legal entry to the islands was by buying a house or apartment on one of a dozen or so listed islands.

At last we rounded the Head and sailed into the bay outside Seevl Town. Jethra disappeared from view.

I was eager for my first sight of an Archipelagan town, for a glimpse of what other islands might be like, but Seevl Town was a disappointment. Grey stone houses rose in uneven tiers on the hillsides surrounding the harbour, looking untidy and drab. It was easy to imagine the place in winter, with the doors and shutters closed, the rain slicking the roofs and streets, people bent against the sea wind, few lights showing. I wondered if they had electricity on Seevl, or running water, or cars. There was no traffic that I could see in the narrow streets surrounding the harbour, but the roads were paved. Seevl Town was quite similar to some of the remote hill villages in the north of Faiandland. The only obvious difference was that smoke was pouring from most of the chimneys; this was a novelty to me, because there were strict anti-pollution laws in Jethra and the rest of Faiandland.

None of the passengers disembarked at Seevl, and our arrival caused little stir in the town. A few minutes after we had tied up at the end of the quay, two uniformed men walked slowly down and boarded the ship. They were Archipelagan immigration officers, a fact which became clear when all passengers were instructed to assemble on Number One deck. To see the other passengers together gave me the opportunity to confirm that there were very few young people aboard. While we were queuing up to have our visas cheeked I was thinking that the nine days it would take to reach Muriseay, where I was leaving the ship, might turn out to be lonely. There was a youngish woman in the queue behind me—I guessed her age to be in the early thirties—but she was reading a book and seemed incurious about anyone else.

I had seen my voyage to the Dream Archipelago as a break with the past, a new beginning, but already it seemed as if the first few days, at least, would have to be spent in the same sort of half-hearted isolation I had grown used to in Jethra.

I had been lucky. Everyone I knew said it about me, and I even believed it myself. At first there had been parties, but as we all began to appreciate what had happened to me, I found myself more and more cut off from them. When finally the time had come to leave Jethra, to travel to the Dream Archipelago to collect my prize, I was glad to go. I was eager for travel, for the heat of the tropics, for the sound of different languages and a sight of different customs. Yet now it had started I knew that it would be more enjoyable in company.

I said something to the woman behind me, but she merely replied, smiled politely and returned to her book.

I reached the head of the queue and handed over my passport. I had already opened it at the page where the Archipelagan High Commission in Jethra had stamped the visa, but the officer closed it and examined it from the front. The other sat beside him, staring at my face.

The officer looked at my photograph and personal details. “Robert Peter Sinclair,” he said, looking up at me for the first time.

I confirmed this, but was distracted by the fact that his was the first authentic island accent I had ever heard. He pronounced the name I usually used with a lengthened vowel; “Peyter”. The only time I had heard the accent before was when actors used it in films; hearing it used naturally gave me the odd feeling that he was putting on the accent to amuse me.

“Where are you travelling to, Mr Sinclair?”

“Muriseay, at first.”

“And where are you going after that?”

“Collago,” I said, and waited for his reaction.

He gave no obvious sign that he had heard. “May I see your ticket, Mr Sinclair?”

I reached into an inner pocket and produced the sheaf of flimsy dockets issued by the shipping company, but he waved them away.

“Not those. The lottery ticket.”

“Of course,” I said, feeling embarrassed that I had misunderstood, although it was a natural error. I put the shipping tickets away and found my wallet. “The number has been printed on the visa.”

“I want to see the ticket itself.”

I had sealed it up inside an envelope which was folded into the deepest pocket of my wallet, and it took a few seconds of fumbling to retrieve it. I had been keeping it as a souvenir, and no one had warned me it would be inspected.

I passed it over, and the two immigration officers looked closely at it, painstakingly comparing the serial number with the one inked into my passport. After what seemed like an overzealous inspection they passed hack the ticket and I returned it to the safety of my wallet.

“What are your intentions after leaving Collago?”

“I don’t know yet. I understand there is a long convalescence. I thought I’d make my plans then.”

“Are you intending to return to Jethra?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right, Mr. Sinclair.” He pressed a rubber date-stamp in the space beneath the visa, closed the passport and slid it back across the desk to me. “You’re a lucky man.”

“I know,” I said conventionally, although I did have my doubts.

The woman behind me stepped forward to the desk, and I walked through to the bar on the same deck. Many of the passengers I had seen in the queue in front of me were already there. I bought myself a large whisky, and stood with the others. I soon struck up a tentative conversation with two people who were heading for a retirement home on Muriseay. Their names were Thorrin and Dellidua Sineham. They came from the university town of Old Haydl in the north of Faiandland. They had bought a luxury apartment overlooking the sea in a village just outside Muriseay Town, and they promised to show me a picture of it when they next came back from their cabin.

They seemed pleasant, ordinary people, who were at pains to explain that a luxury flat in the Archipelago cost no more to buy than a small house at home.

I had been speaking to them for a few minutes when the woman behind me in the queue came into the bar. She glanced briefly in my direction, then went and bought herself a drink. She came to stand near me, and as soon as the Sinehams said they were going down to their cabin, she turned and spoke to me.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said. “I couldn’t help overhearing. Have you really won the lottery?”

I felt myself going on the defensive. “Yes.”

“I’ve never known anyone who’s won before.”

“Neither have I,” I said.

“I didn’t believe it was genuine. I’ve been buying the tickets for years, but the winning numbers are always so different from mine that I thought it must be crooked.”

“I’ve only ever bought one ticket. I won straight away. I can still hardly believe it.”

Could l see the ticket?”

In the weeks since the news that I had won the big prize, innumerable people had asked to see the ticket, as if by looking at it or touching it some of my luck might rub off on them. It was now well thumbed and slightly frayed, but I took it out of my wallet again and showed it to her.

“And you bought this in the ordinary way?”

“Just one of those booths in the park.”

A fine day in late summer; I had been waiting to meet a friend in Seigniory Park, and while I walked up and down I noticed one of the Lotterie-Collago booths. These little makeshift franchise stands were a common sight in Jethra and the other big cities, and presumably also in other parts of the world. The franchises were normally granted to the disabled, or to wounded ex-servicemen. Hundreds of thousands of the lottery tickets were sold every month, yet the odd thing was that you rarely saw anyone ever go to the stands and buy one. Nor did people talk openly about buying the tickets, although almost everyone I knew had bought a few tickets at one time or another, and the day the winners were announced you always saw people standing in the streets checking the list in the newspapers.

Like most people I was tempted by the prize, even though the odds against winning were so long that I had never seriously thought about taking part. But on that particular day, idling in the park, I had noticed one of the vendors. He was a soldier, probably ten years younger than me, sitting stiffly and proudly in his wooden booth, wearing a dress uniform. He was badly disfigured by wounds: he was lacking an eye and an arm, and his neck was in a brace. Taken by compassion—the guilty, helpless compassion of a civilian who managed to avoid the draft—I went across and bought one of his tickets. The transaction was conducted quickly and, for my part, furtively, as if it were pornography I was buying, or illegal drugs.

Two weeks later I discovered I had won the major prize. I would receive the athanasia treatment, and afterwards live for ever. Shock and surprise, disbelief, extreme jubilation… these were a part of my reactions, and even now, a few weeks after the news, I had still not entirely adjusted to the prospect.

It was part of the lore of the Lotterie that winners, even those who won the subsidiary cash prizes, returned to the place where they had bought the winning ticket and gave a present or tribute to the vendor. I did this at once, even before going to register my claim, but the little stall in the park had gone and the other vendors knew nothing about him. Later, I was able to make inquiries through the Lotterie, and discovered that he had died a few days after my purchase; the missing eye, the arm, the broken neck, were just the wounds that showed.

The Lotterie claimed that twenty major prizes were awarded every month, yet one heard remarkably little about the winners. I discovered part of the reason when I registered my claim. The Lotterie counselled utmost discretion in what I said about the prize, and warned me not to talk to the media. Although Lotterie Collago welcomed the publicity, experience had shown that it put the winners in danger. They told me several cases of publicized winners who had been attacked in the streets; three of them had been killed.

Another reason was that because the lottery was international, only a small proportion of winners came from Faiandland. The tickets were on sale in every country of the northern continent, and throughout the Dream Archipelago.

The Lotterie staff plied me with documents and information sheets, urging me to sign over my affairs to them. I considered for a few days the mountain of business I should have to undertake on my own, then did as they suggested. From that time I had been completely in their hands. They helped me wind up my affairs in Jethra, my job, my flat, the few investments I had, they obtained the visa for me and they booked the passage on the ship. They would continue to manage my affairs until I returned. I had become a helpless functionary of their organization, swept irresistibly towards the athanasia clinic on the island of Collago.

The young woman passed me back my ticket, and I folded it away again inside its envelope, inside my wallet.

“So when will you start the treatment?” she said.

“I don’t know. Presumably as soon as I arrive on Collago. But I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“But surely… there’s no question?”

“No, but I’m just not sure yet.”

I was beginning to feel self-conscious, talking about this in a crowded bar with someone I hardly knew. In the last few weeks I had grown tired of other people’s assumptions about the prize, and because I was not as sure about it as they were I had grown equally tired of being defensive.

I had imagined that the long slow voyage through the islands would be time for contemplation, and I was looking forward to having enough solitude to think. The islands would give me space. Yet the ship was still tied up in Seevl Town, and Jethra was just an hour away.

Perhaps the woman sensed my reservedness, because she introduced herself to me. Her name was Mathilde Englen, and she had a doctorate in biochemistry. She had secured a two-year attachment to the agricultural research station on the island of Semell, and she talked for some time about the problems in the islands. Because of the war, food was in short supply in some parts of the Archipelago. Now, though, several previously uninhabited islands were being cleared, and farms established. They were short of many commodities: seed-stock, implements, manpower. Her own speciality was in hybrid cereals, and several were being developed for use in the islands. She was doubtful whether two years would be long enough for the research she had to do, but under the terms of her attachment it could be renewed for a second two-year period.

The bar was filling up as more people were cleared by the immigration officers, and as we had both finished our drinks I suggested that we go for lunch. We were the first to arrive in the dining saloon, but the service was slow and the food was indifferent. The main dish was paqua-leaves stuffed with a spiced mince; hot in flavour it was only lukewarm in temperature. I had eaten in Archipelagan-style restaurants in Jethra, so I was used to the food, but in the city the restaurants had to offer competitive service. On the ship there was no competition. At first disappointed, we saw no point in ruining the day by complaining, and concentrated instead on talking to each other.

By the time we had finished the ship was under way. I went up to the afterdeck and stood by the rail in the sunshine, watching dark Seevl and the distant mainland slipping away behind us.

That night I had a vivid dream about Mathilde, and when I met her in the morning my perception of her had undergone a subtle change.