Will Self - The Butt

Adams sidled up. ‘We need to have a chat,’ he said in an undertone. ‘I’m afraid we got off on the wrong, ah, foot this morning. My apologies.’

He turned and discreetly worked his way towards the exit. Tom followed.

He found the Consul in the lobby. He was sitting on a leather divan, beside a smoked-glass coffee table with a large ashtray on it. Tom sat down. There was a NO SMOKING sign inside the ashtray. There was the iconic red roundel, with its oblique bar anulling a stylized cigarette. The slogan below this read: NO IFS, NO BUTTS, STUB IT OUT.

‘Tell me,’ Adams asked, ‘have you ever heard the term “rabia”?’

Tom thought for a moment, then said: ‘Yeah, I have — the Huffermans, Dave, Daphne’s husband. He said I’d need one if I was heading down to Ralladayo, but he never told me what it was.’

‘Who it is, rather.’ Adams pulled up a fold of seersucker over each knee. He rested his elbows on these pads, then pressed his palms together and brought his fingertips up to his horsy chin in a prayerful gesture. ‘A rabia’, he intoned, ‘is an individual who can guarantee a traveller safe passage through the territories of hostile tribes, or tribal subgroups.’

Jesus! The man’s insufferable, Tom thought, while to Adams he played the good student: ‘How do they manage that?’

‘The concept is, ah, simple enough. The rabia will belong either to a tribe that isn’t enemies with the tribe whose land you wish to cross, or — and this is where it gets complex — to an allied tribe. You see’ — the Consul squirmed with enthusiasm — ‘even if this more distant tribe is, technically, at, ah, loggerheads with the local mob, it doesn’t matter — it’s the proximate relationship that counts.’

‘And I need one of these rabia guys?’

Adams ignored the interruption. ‘The disputations concerning whether a given rabia can frank through a given traveller often become, ah, byzantine — especially where you’re headed, into the very heart of the native lands. I’ve witnessed this myself: scores of tribespeople, big men and women, powerful makkatas — all of them gathered in the remote desert for days, debating like learned statesmen!’

Adams’s face was flushed. One of his hands went up high, then came down to pat the back of his head.

Tom persisted with the practicalities. ‘How do I get the right one, then?’

Adams recovered himself. ‘Ordinarily, an Anglo traveller has to advertise here in the Tontines — there’s a message board. But it can take time, and even when you have the right rabia, they can prove costly. I should imagine your, ah, resources are rather depleted by now.’

Tom ruefully considered the Amex bill that had been forwarded to him in the TGS, Dixie’s girlish handwriting looping across the cellophane window. Tom was within a few hundred dollars of his credit limit. Prentice, naturally, had yet to pay back what he owed. Perhaps, Tom thought, I should raise this with Adams? But then he dismissed the idea. Instead, he grunted affirmatively.

Adams resumed. ‘However, I’ve managed to secure a rabia for you who doesn’t require payment, someone who urgently needs a ride down to Ralladayo.’

‘Oh, and who is this guy?’

‘Not a guy ,’ the Consul said pedantically. ‘A, ah. . girl . Miss Swai-Phillips.’

‘Gloria? How so? I mean, she doesn’t exactly look like a. .’

‘Be that as it may, Miss Swai-Phillips has all the main kinship lines — Entreati, Aval and Tayswengo, the latter through her mother’s great-uncle. She can get you through, and she’s happy to do so without charge—’

‘OK,’ Tom said, cutting him off. ‘But what’s the reason she’s going there?’

Adams’s Polaroids were clear enough; even so, he removed them, imposing — as Tom understood it — still more transparency on his next remark: ‘She wishes to help you in what you have to do — and make sure that you, ah. . do it. There’s also a small orphanage at Ralladayo; I believe she’s been called in for, ah. . consultancy. There is one other thing, though. .’

To punish Tom for his own interruptions, Adams now broke off and beckoned to a lurking waiter. ‘Nescafé, please,’ he instructed the flat-faced Tugganarong. ‘No milk or sugar. D’you want anything?’ he asked Tom, who only waved the waiter away irritatedly, before interrogating the Consul: ‘What one thing? Goddamnit, Adams!’

‘Brian Prentice,’ Adams said airily. ‘He’ll be going with you as well. Seems his business here in the Tontines hasn’t been, ah. . successfully concluded; so he will have to accompany Miss Swai-Phillips, and you, to Ralladayo.’

For a while Tom said nothing. He was getting used to the Consul’s penchant for such theatricality. Besides, he was also struck by the Consul’s ‘ahs’. These hiatuses were increasing in length, and during them the intent expression on Adams’s face suggested he was attuning himself to an inner voice.

The waiter deposited Adams’s bitter gloop on the coffee table and withdrew. Adams sipped it as if it were nectar.

It was plain that the Consul was telling Tom something that it was impossible to state directly. Tom followed a poisonous thread of speculation back along the corrugations of Route 1, across the desert, looping up and over the Great Dividing Range, threading through the cane fields, until it reached the complicated knot tied up in Vance. Could Adams even be aware that Tom had visited Endeavour Surety that very afternoon? That, unsure of his own moral outrage, he had provided himself with a baser, more legible motivation?

Tom meditated on how grossly intrusive it would be to kill another man. Even at half a mile’s distance, with a high-velocity rifle bullet, he knew it would feel as if he were slowly dabbling his hands in Prentice’s intestines. Yet it was blatantly obvious that this was what was expected of him — had been expected all along, by both Swai-Phillipses, by Adams — even by Justice Hogg. Prentice had to be terminated: his perverted consciousness stubbed out like one of his own filthy ‘fags’. And, although nothing could be said — and never would be — Tom’s own debt was to be paid in this coin: two rifles, a nest of cooking pots, $10,000 in cash and a man’s life.

Tom took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I noticed’, he said, ‘that Prentice couldn’t bring himself to attend Gloria’s charity reception.’

‘Really?’ Adams was unconcerned. ‘I expect he had to get some help to bring his stuff back to the TGS; apparently only half of it is required here; the ribavirin will go south, with you.’

Tom stood up. ‘If it’s all the same to you, Adams, I think I’ll start getting my own stuff together. I’ve gotta gas up the car, check the mechanics. I’ve also. .’ He paused and gave the Consul a meaningful look. ‘I’ve also got to get a signature off Prentice, then finalize some paperwork with a guy outside the Sector.’

For the first time that Tom could recall, Adams smiled broadly, his normally pursed lips drawing back to reveal large and sharp teeth. ‘That’s excellent, Tom,’ he grinned. ‘I’m glad to see you’re adopting such a, ah. . practical attitude. Miss Swai-Phillips asked me to tell you that unless she hears otherwise, she’ll meet you here in the lobby at six tomorrow morning, so you can get an early start.’

Adams stood, and they shook hands formally, concluding the deal.

‘And Tom. .’ Adams seemed on the verge of saying something incriminating. He shuffled his suede lace-ups, glancing round to see if anyone was within earshot. Tom assumed it would be the quid pro quo: how even if Lincoln were to die while Tom was over there, the conclusion of this other business would result in the charges against him being summarily dropped. But the Consul wasn’t such a fool. ‘That parcel Miss Swai-Phillips gave you. She said please not to forget it, whatever you do. It’s contents are most, ah. . important — vital, even.’