'Well,' he says with a tight smile, 'so you've decided to let us stay another year have you? Very good of you. And everyone is happy about it?... Is there anyone who isn't happy about it?' Soldiers in jeeps sweep mounted machine-guns back and forth across the crowd with a slow, searching movement.
'Everybody happy. Well that's fine.' He turns jovially to the prostrate President. 'I'll keep your papers in case I get caught short. Haw Haw Haw.' His loud, metallic laugh rings out across the dump, and the crowd laughs with him under the searching guns.
The forms of democracy are scrupulously enforced on the Island. There is a Senate and a Congress who carry on endless sessions discussing garbage disposal and outhouse inspection, the only two questions over which they have jurisdiction. For a brief period in the mid-nineteenth century, they had been allowed to control the dept. of Baboon Maintenance but this privilege had been withdrawn owing to absenteeism in the Senate.
The purple-assed Tripoli baboons had been brought to the Island by pirates in the 17th century. There was a legend that when the baboons left the Island it would fall. To whom or in what way is not specified, and it is a capital offense to kill a baboon, though the noxious behaviour of these animals harries the citizens almost beyond endurance. Occasionally someone goes berserk, kills several baboons and himself.
The post of President is always forced on some particularly noxious and unpopular citizen. To be elected President is the greatest misfortune and disgrace that can befall an Islander. The humiliations and ignominy are such that few Presidents live out their full term of office, usually dying of a broken spirit after a year or two. The Expeditor had once been President and served the full five years of his term. Subsequently he changed his name and underwent plastic surgery, to blot out, as far as possible, the memory of his disgrace.
'Yes of course... we'll pay you,' Marvie was saying to the Expeditor.
'But take it easy. It may be a little while yet....'
'Take it easy? A little while!... Listen.'
'Yes I know it all. The finance company is repossessing your wife's artificial kidney.... They are evicting your grandmother from her iron lung.'
'That's in rather bad taste, old boy.... Frankly I wish I had never involved myself in this uh matter. That bloody grease has too much carbolic in it. I was down to customs one day last week. Stuck a broom handle into a drum of it, and the grease ate the end off straight away. Besides, the stink is enough to knock a man on his bloody ass. You should take a walk down by the port.'
'I'll do no such thing,' Marvie screeched. It is a mark of caste in the Zone never to touch or even go near what you are selling. To do so gives rise to suspicion of retailing, that is of being a common peddler. A good part of the merchandise in the Zone is sold through street peddlers.
'Why do you tell me all this? It's too sordid! Let the retailers worry about it.' 91
'Oh it's all very well for you chaps, you can scud out from under. But I have a reputation to maintain.... There'll be a spot of bother about this.'
'Do you suggest there is something illegitimate in this operation?'
'Not
'Oh go back to your Island before it falls! We knew you when you were peddling your purple ass in the Plaza pissoirs for five pesetas.'
'And not many takers either,' Leif put in. He pronounced it ither. This reference to his Island origin was more than the Expeditor could stand.... He was drawing himself up, mobilizing his most frigid impersonation of an English aristocrat, preparing to deliver an icy, clipped 'crusher,' but instead, a whining, whimpering, kicked dog snarl broke from his mouth. His presurgery face emerged in an arc-light of incandescent hate.... He began to spit curses in the hideous, strangled gutturals of the Island dialect.
The Islanders all profess ignorance of the dialect or flatly deny its existence. 'We are Breetish,' they say. 'We don't got no bloody dealect.'
Froth gathered at the corners of the Expeditor's mouth. He was spitting little balls of saliva like pieces of cotton. The stench of spiritual vileness hung in the airs about him like a green cloud. Marvie and Leif fell back twittering in alarm.
'He's gone
THE EXAMINATION
Carl Peterson found a postcard in his box requesting him to report for a ten o'clock appointment with Doctor Benway in the Ministry of Mental Hygiene and Prophylaxis....
'What on earth could they want with me?' he thought irritably.... 'A mistake most likely.' But he knew they didn't
