John Brunner - The Squares of the City

This time he piled it on so thick it was a wonder everyone living in Sigueiras’s slum hadn’t long ago suffocated in the foul air alleged to be there. With the three of them—Caldwell, Ruiz, and the bishop—on the job, clearing out that slum was going to have massive support.

One person whose support was less than lukewarm was I.

I made this perfectly clear to a correspondent from Roads and Streets, who’d flown down specially from New York to do a story on the redevelopment project. I took him aside into a bar and stood him a succession of whiskeys while I explained the whole sad situation.

When I was through, he looked at me sympathetically and said in a voice brimming over with emotion and straight rye, “Boy, you’re in a spot, ain’t you?”

After which he flew back to New York, intending to cancel the proposed story.

I was half-expecting Sigueiras to retaliate when Ruiz began to go for him; after all, he must know the stories that were current about Ruiz’s “successful treatment” of Vados’s first wife. Someone presumably advised him against it—which was sensible, because with Dominguez on his side and General Molinas refusing his troops for the eviction he was assured of a respite at least. All he did, in fact, was to invite half a dozen local doctors to go down into his slum and see whether there was in fact a reservoir of disease there.

“If there are sick people,” he said spiritedly, “why don’t people outside catch their diseases from them?”

The doctors found exactly what I’d seen—rickets, vitamin deficiency diseases, and a lot of skin complaints caused by the squalid conditions. But it wasn’t their findings that took the heat off Sigueiras in the end; it was a stern directive from Vados himself. Apparently one of the current items of publicity about Citidad de Vados was that it had the lowest death rate of any city of its size in Latin America, and they were worried in case Ruiz’s assertions might affect the tourist trade. Not that the recent rioting had helped any, of course. Another directive came down about the same time. The university year had ended, and accordingly Professor Corte”s was confirmed as acting Minister of Information and Communications. Having sampled his work while he was filling in, I wondered how Vados liked making do with Cortes instead of Alejandro Mayor; however, presumably he was the best available, and since there was no sign of Tiempo returning to life, after all, the government’s propaganda now had no competition.

Well, no effective competition. There were a series of inflammatory news sheets that had sprung up, which were constantly trespassing over the edge of the libel laws and being closed down in consequence—only to start up again the next day or the day after under another name. Most people were resigned to Tiempo’s fate and regarded the news sheets as the best stopgap they could expect.

But there were some others who were getting restive. They pointed out that even though Romero had been suspended from the judicial bench and looked likely to be declared incompetent, no action had been taken to reverse his committal of Cristoforo Mendoza for contempt or to release the impounded equipment belonging to his paper.

And that was not the only matter in which there had been a peculiar delay. As Manuel, the barman, had told me, at this crucial time of the chess championships television was sorely missed, and people were demanding that the arsonists be found forthwith.

It went without saying, of course, that the National Party view was expressed by every one of the succession of news sheets, and these two were the matters at which they hammered again and again: the banning of Tiempo, for obvious reasons, and the failure of O’Rourke to catch the arsonists, to stave off accusations that National Party supporters had been responsible.

It was something of a surprise to me to find out how these news sheets caught on. Surreptitiously printed and distributed, one day’s issue sometimes remained in circulation for nearly a week, being passed from hand to hand, and not only among people who had formerly read Tiempo, but also among people who merely wanted the television service back.

I had my own ideas as to who was responsible for keeping these news sheets going, of course. I’d seen no more of Maria Posador since the evening she dined with O’Rourke at the hotel, and nothing before that for some days. And she was the one who believed that an opposition press in Ciudad de Vados had to be maintained at all costs.

Maybe Vados had been premature to assume that Maria Posador was safer in Aguazul than out of it.

Manuel kept a supply of these miscellaneous news sheets under the bar for interested customers. I was going through one that I’d missed—I think it was calling itself Verdad in its current incarnation—when I found an interesting item which Cortes hadn’t seen fit to divulge on the radio or in Liberdad. I had no reason to doubt it, though. It was stated that el Jefe O’Rourke agreed with General Molinas on the question of clearing away the slums of Vados. It would be asking for worse trouble than they had already. And the much-vaunted plan of mine for redeveloping the ground below the monorail central was nothing more than a governmental pretext to kick out Sigueiras.

Well, that was perfectly true, of course. What shook me rigid was that O’Rourke had supposedly gone on, “And if they try to put this into effect, then we’ll throw Hakluyt out of the country and his plans after him.”

There is a moment in the demolition of a tower, an old-fashioned factory chimney, or a high wall, when the falling structure—weighing perhaps a hundred tons—seems to float, leaning against the air.

It lasts perhaps a small fraction of a second, but feels much longer. And in that narrow space of time the whole visible world seems to hesitate, waiting for the inevitable crash.

I was waiting for a crash now. What was worse, I appeared to be directly in the path of what was falling.

I folded the news sheet so that O’Rourke’s alleged statement was uppermost, and signaled along the bar to Manuel. He was serving another customer; when he was through, he came down to stand opposite me, his eyes a little wary.

“Have you seen this, Manuel?” I asked him.

He sighed. “Yes, senor. I thought you would have seen it also before now.”

“No, I hadn’t… What do you make of it, Manuel? What

do you think yourself about my job here?”

At first, I could see, he was not going to reply. I said, hearing my voice harsh and dry, “Say what you think, Manuel. Go ahead, for God’s sake.”

“I have no views of my own, Senor Hakluyt,” he said reluctantly. “I have a good job. I have profited much by the making of this city. Before, I was in a little hotel in Puerto Joaquin; now here I am, as you see me. Yet it seems to me that there are also people who have suffered because of the coming of the city, and it is easy to understand why they feel differently.”

“Why should el Jefe be one of those who feel differently?”

“It is this way, senor.” Manuel leaned forward with both elbows on the bar and spoke in confidential tones. “There are some of us—like myself—who are used to the great world. I have served some very rich and famous people at my bars, both here and in Puerto Joaquin when I was called to help at great receptions. I have seen how today a man can be in Aguazul, tomorrow in San Francisco or in Tokyo. To me that is good. I am the friend of all people who come to my bar.

“Then there are others, who say, ‘This is ours, let it remain always ours.’ It is like the difference between el Presidente, whom I have also served at a bar, and Senor Diaz. And I think el Jefe —whom I have also served with his liquor!—is one of the same color as Diaz. That is what I think, senor. But I am only a man behind a bar.”