'Well, I haven't quite decided yet--'
'Then read this.'
I took the file from her and glanced through the contents. There were several glossily printed pages of photographs, presumably of the athanasia clinic, and further on a series of questions and answers printed out. Going through the sheets gave me the chance to look away from her. What had happened? Was I seeing Mathilde in her? Unsuccessful with one woman, I find another who happens to look rather like her, and so transfer my attention?
With Mathilde I had always felt I was making a mistake, yet I went on with the pursuit; she, nobody's fool, had deflected me. But suppose I _had_
been making a mistake, that I had mistaken Mathilde for someone else? In a reversal of causality, I had thought Mathilde was this girl, the Lotterie rep?
While I had been ostensibly going through the photographs, Seri Fulten had opened what I presumed was the Lotterie file on me.
She said: 'I see you're from Faiandland. Jethra.'
'Yes.'
'My family came from there originally. What's it like?'
'Parts of it are very beautiful. The centre, round the Seignior's Palace. But they've built a lot of factories in the last few years, and they're ugly.' I had no idea what to say. Until I left Jethra I had never really thought about it, except as the place I lived in and took for granted.
I said, after a pause: 'I've already forgotten it. For the last few days all I've been aware of is the islands. I'd no idea there were so many.'
'You'll never leave the islands.'
She said it in the same colourless way she had recited the company speech, but I sensed that this was a different kind of slogan.
'Why do you say that?'
'It's just a saying. There's always somewhere new to go, another island.'
The short fair hair, the skin that showed pale through the superficiality of tan. I suddenly remembered finding Mathilde on the boat deck, sunbathing with her chin turned up to avoid a shadow on her neck.
'Can I get you a drink?' Seri said.
'Yes, please. What have you got?'
'I'll have to look. The cabinet's usually locked.' She opened another drawer, looking for a key. 'Or we could check you into your hotel, and have a drink there.'
'I'd prefer that,' I said. I had been travelling too long; I wanted to dump my luggage.
'I'll have to check the reservation. We were expecting you two days ago.'
She picked up the phone, listened to the receiver then worked the rest up and down a few times. She frowned, and drew in her breath sharply. After a few seconds I heard the line click, and she started dialling.
The number at the other end was a long time answering, and she sat with the receiver against her ear, staring across the desk at me.
I said: 'Do you work here alone?'
'There's usually the manager and two other girls. We're supposed to be closed today. It's a public holiday-- Hello!' I heard a voice at the other end, sounding tinnily across the quiet showroom. 'Lotterie-Collago. I'm checking the reservation for Robert Sinclair. Do you still have it?'
She grimaced at me, and stared out of the window with that vacant expression worn by people waiting on the phone.
I got up and sauntened about the office. Hanging on the walls were a number of colour photographs of the Lotterie's clinic on Collago; I recognized some of the pictures from my glance through the brochure. I saw clean modern buildings, a number of white-painted chalets set out on a lawn, flowerbeds, jagged mountains in the distance behind. Everyone seemed to be smiling.
Several photographs were of lottery winners arriving at or leaving the island, handshakes and smiles, arms around shoulders. Slots of the interiors revealed the antiseptic cleanliness of a hospital with the luxurious appointments of an hotel.
I was reminded of the sort of photographs you sometimes saw in brochures for holidays. One I remembered in particular: a skiresort in the mountains of northern Faiandland. It had exactly the same overstated atmosphere of jollity and friendship, the same garish colours from a salesman's samples book.
At the far end of the office was a waiting area, with several comfortable chairs surrounding a low, glass-topped table. On this there was a package of lottery tickets, placed there to be found and looked at. I picked them up and flicked through them. Each one had been neatly defaced with an overprinted legend (SAMPLE, NOT FOR SALE), but in every other respect they were the same as the one that had won the prize for me.
At that moment I managed to identify at last the vague feeling of unease I had had ever since winning.
The lottery was something that existed for other people. I was the wrong person to have won.
Lotterie-Collago gave athanasia treatment as its principal prize: genuine immortality, medically guaranteed. The clinic claimed a success rate of 100 per cent; no one who ever received the treatment had yet died. The oldest recipient was said to be one hundred and sixty-nine years old, had the physical appearance of a woman in her mid- forties, and, it was claimed, was in full possession of all her faculties. She was often featured in the Lotterie's television advertising: playing tennis, dancing, solving crosswords.
Before all this I had sometimes made the sardonic comment that if eternal life meant a century and a half of crossword puzzles, I was content to die of natural causes.
