John Brunner - The Squares of the City

He whispered as I, dutifully circulating with the Angerses— the Seixases had got left behind—came up. The presidential hand beckoned me. I excused myself to my companions and went forward.

“Delighted to have this chance of meeting you, Senor Hakluyt,” said Vados in excellent unaccented English. “I have seen you before, of course—on the television—but not in the flesh, as they say.”

“There I have the advantage,” I said. “I have seen you, and Your Excellency’s lady, in the Plaza del Norte the other day.” I gave a slight bow toward Senora Vados; she really was very beautiful. But apparently she didn’t speak English, and was paying no attention.

“Ah, but such a fleeting glimpse is not a meeting,” Vados said.

“But I’ve met Ciudad de Vados,” I countered. “And I’ve been extremely impressed by it.”

“So you said on the television,” Vados answered, and smiled. “It is always a pleasure to me when someone says that, even after ten years. I regard it almost as my child, you know. To have founded a city, though, is better than having a son, for a son is only an individual as oneself is, while a city—a city is the finest offspring a man can have.” He gave a sudden sigh. “But, as with human children, sometimes it does not grow up quite as one would have wished. Well, that is of no matter at the moment—I will not spoil your afternoon by discussing professional matters. I hope you enjoy your stay in Aguazul, senor.”

He inclined his head, and I said, “Senor presidente — Senora—Senor Garcia,” and backed away. I was glad I’d added the last two words, for the nervous-looking man was having nothing to do but stare at the passing people. At my addressing him, even to say good-bye, he lit up like a lamp being switched on and echoed, “Senor!” with as much enthusiasm as a small boy accepting an offer of candy.

“You were honored, senor,” said a voice I recognized as I rejoined the circular procession. Isabela Cortes was parading past the President on the arm of a distinguished man of about sixty who wore pince-nez in the old-fashioned manner. I acknowledged the remark.

This was a fortunate meeting, of course, because I had a question burning in the back of my mind—a question about the use of subliminal perception.

“Leon,” Senora Cortes said to her companion, “this is Senor Hakluyt whom you saw on my program the other evening. My husband, senor—the professor of the department of social sciences in the university.”

The professor gave me an uncomprehending but beaming smile and shook my hand warmly; then he gave his wife a reproving stare, and she laughed. “Please excuse him, senor,” she explained. “He speaks English less well than I.”

“Please speak Spanish,” I said, since it appeared to be expected of me, and she explained to her husband who I was. Before she had finished, he seized my hand again and told me he was overjoyed to meet me. Senora Cortes looked on indulgently.

“I suppose you know rather few of the people here?” she suggested.

I nodded.

“Suppose. we go over to the refreshment table and take advantage of this carousel to point out some of the notables for you. Thank you again, by the way, for the performance you put on on my program the other night.”

“It was very interesting,” I said guardedly. We were both talking Spanish now, for the professor’s benefit, and I was afraid I might not get the chance to ask my burning question—I probably couldn’t be sufficiently tactful in Spanish.

A waiter offered us another tray of drinks as we stepped aside from the circular flow, and the professor raised his glass to me, beaming again.

“To a successful conclusion of your difficult task, senor,” he toasted.

“If you don’t mind,” I said feelingly, “I’ll drink to that myself.”

We drank; then Senora Cortes moved close to me and began to name prominent personalities in a low tone.

“Over there, do you see?—it is General Molinas”—she was back to English, rather to my relief—”who is the… oh, I don’t know the word: the man in charge of all the forces.”

“Minister of War?” I suggested, and she laughed.

“War, senor? We don’t fight wars any longer! No, he is —ah, I have it! Commander in chief. And there, of course, is our Minister of Information, Dr. Mayor, whom you know— and that is another minister to whom he is talking at the moment: Senor Diaz, Minister of the Interior.”

This time I took considerable note. Diaz was a large, ungainly man—what they call in Spanish an hombrazo —with huge hands and a coarse-boned face revealing more than a trace of Indian ancestry. He wore a well-cut tropical suit which he contrived to make look like a flour sack, and he made sweeping gestures as he spoke; people stood well back even when they were being directly addressed by him. One of the group around him was Miguel Dominguez.

“And there—next to Senor Dominguez—is another minister: Secretary of Justice Gonzales, the stout one with the dark glasses. Then there is Senor Castaldo, who is deputy chief of the Ministry of the Interior, a close colleague of Diaz, naturally… I think all the ministers of the cabinet will be here—yes, there is our director of health and hygiene, Dr. Ruiz.”

Ruiz, a small and excitable-seeming man, was talking to Caldwell, the stammering man from the city health department whom I had met in Angers’ office.

“There are many people here, and I do not recognize them all,” Senora Cortes said with an air of vague apology, as though I had expressed perfect faith in her universal knowledge. “But there are many well-known business persons here, too—ah, you see, talking to Andres Lucas, that is Senor Arrio, whose name you will have seen on big stores here in the city.”

Lucas was in full mourning and was trying to look as if he had only come to this garden party out of a sense of duty to his President. I didn’t look very hard at Senor Arrio; the flow of names was beginning to make me dizzy.

Senora Cortes was looking around, at a momentary loss for another notable to point out. I seized the opportunity to break in. “And who is Senor Garcia?” I asked. “I mean, aside from being a chess champion.”

“Oh, he is a chess champion, and that is all. Formerly, I believe, he was a teacher of mathematics at a small school in Puerto Joaquin, but now he is the director of the national chess school here in Vados.”

“You really take the game seriously in this country, don’t you?” I said.

Professor Cortes said something to his wife, which I failed to catch; be heard the answer and turned to me almost belligerently.

“And why not take it seriously, senor? It is a finer game than your football or your baseball, no? It trains the mind to think with clarity and never to move in haste without thought; it is always new and always stimulating.”

“You play yourself?” I asked, and Senora Cortes explained, while her husband looked modest, that he had himself been in the finals of the national championship some years ago.

I made appropriately impressed sounds and took another drink off a passing tray.

Since the professor had now joined the conversation again, I had to stick to Spanish for politeness. I lined up my first couple of sentences.

“I was very interested to visit your television center,” I began, hoping I wouldn’t put my foot in my mouth straight away. “Particularly to find that a minister of the government was—uh—directly in charge of the service.”

“Very rightly!” said Cortes energetically. “I fully support Dr. Mayor in his view that television is one of the most useful organs of modern government. For example”—he waved down a budding protest from his wife—”for example, let us take this business in which you are involved. There are many things we could not possibly publish in print, for example, and which the public nonetheless ought to know about. With apologies to yourself, ‘Belita, you know as well as I do that we’d have the bishop thundering at us if we ever attempted to put into Liberdad half the things you manage to get across on television.”