'All right,' I said. 'I'd like that.'
'I know it's a bit of a rush, but there's a bus in a few minutes' time.
I was hoping you would get here earlier, so we could talk about it more. Do you need to collect anything from the hotel?'
'I don't think so. You say we'll be back by this evening?'
'Yes.'
Seri finished her drink, picked up her shoulder bag, and we went down to the road. The bus station was a short walk away: a dark, cavernous building with two ancient motor buses parked in the centre. Seri led the way to one of them. It was already more than half full, and the aisle between the two double rows of seats was blocked by other passengers standing up to talk to their friends. We squeezed past, and found a pair of seats near the back.
'Where are we going?' I said.
'A village I found last year. A few visitors go there, but it's usually very quiet. You can get a good meal, and there's a river where you can swim.'
A few minutes later the driver climbed aboard, and moved down the bus taking the fares. When he reached us I offered to pay, but Seri already had a note in her hand.
'This is on the Lotterie,' she said.
The bus was soon out of the centre of the city and moving through broader streets lined with elderly and crumbling apartment buildings. The dnabness of the area was emphasized by the pure white light of the midday sun, and relieved only by a horizontal forest of brightly coloured washing, hanging on lines suspended between the buildings. Many of the windows were broken or boarded up, and children scattered in the road as the bus clanked through.
Whenever we slowed children jumped on the running hoard and clung to the side, while the driver snarled at them.
The last of the children dropped away, tumbling in the roadside dust, when we reached a steel bridge thrown high over the gorge of the river. As we crossed I could see on the clean water below the other face of Muriseay Town: the white-painted yachts of visitors, the riverside cafes and bars, the chandlers' shops, the boutiques.
On the other side of the gorge the road turned sharply inland, following the course of the river to our right. I watched this view for some minutes, until Seri touched my arm to point out what could be seen through the other windows. Here a vast shanty town existed. Hundreds on thousands of makeshift dwellings had been thrown together out of every conceivable piece of waste material: corrugated iron, crates, auto tyres, beer barrels. Many of these mean houses were open to the sky, or sheltered beneath worn-out tarpaulins or plastic sheeting. None of the houses had windows, only crude holes, and very few of them had any kind of door. Adults and children squatted by the side of the road, watching with dull eyes as the bus went by. Rusty cars and old oil drums littered every flat space. Dogs ran wild everywhere.
I watched this sordid township with a feeling of vague but painful guilt, aware that Seri and I were the only two people 011 the bus dressed in new or clean clothes, that the other passengers probably recognized this as the 'real' Muriseay, that they had 110 economic access either to my hotel or Seri's apartment. I recalled the ribbon development of luxury homes I had seen from the ship, and my thoughts about the glamorized image of the islands portrayed in the media.
I looked away, to my side of the bus, but now the road had wandered away from the river and the shanty town extended here too. I watched the tumbledown shacks as we passed and tried to imagine what it must he like to live there.
Would I even consider the Lotterie treatment, I wondered, if I lived in a place like that?
At last the bus left the township and entered open countryside. Fan ahead the mountains rose. Some of the parched land was being cultivated, but much of it lay empty.
We passed an airport on the right, surprising me. Air travel was supposed to be prohibited within the Archipelago, the airspace regulated by the Covenant of Neutrality. But to judge by the pylons of electronic sensors, and the ground-radar dishes, Muriseay Airport was as modern as any equivalent in the north. Approaching the terminal buildings I saw several large aircraft parked in the distance, but they were too far away for me to distinguish the markings.
'Is this a passenger airport?' I said quietly to Seri.
'No, purely military. Muriseay receives most of the troops from the north, but there are no camps here. The men are taken straight to ships, on the southern coast.'
Some friends of mine in Jethra were associated with a civil rights group, concerned with monitoring the Covenant. According to them, many of the larger islands were the sites of military transit- and rest-camps. These were not strictly in breach of the Covenant, but represented one of its odder aspects. Such camps were used by both sides, and sometimes by both armies at once. However, I had seen no sign of them, and guessed they must be situated a long way from the roads or regular shipping lanes.
The bus halted outside the airport, and most of the passengers climbed out, clutching their bundles and parcels. Seri said they would be the civilian staff: caterers, cleaners, and so on. Soon after we set off again, the well-paved road we had been following gave out, and became a dusty, pot-holed track instead. From here, the rest of the journey was marked by the constant lurching of the bus, the roaring of the engine in low gear and occasional bangs from the suspension. And dust: the tyres threw up clouds of dust and grit which flew in the open windows, griming our clothes, marking the tiny lines of the face and gritting between the teeth.
Seri became talkative, and as the track rose into the foothills and the countryside became greener, she told me about some of the islands she had visited and things she had seen. I discovered a few more facts about her: she had worked on ships for some time, she had learned how to weave, she had been married for a brief period.
Now that we were in rising agricultural country, the bus made frequent stops to take on or let off passengers. At each of these stops people clustered around the bus, offering things for sale. Seri and I, marked out by our clothes, were the obvious focus of attention. Sometimes we bought fruit, and once we were served lukewarm black coffee from a chipped enamel bucket; by then I was so thirsty from the heat and dust that I easily overcame fastidiousness and drank from the one cup shared by everyone.
A few minutes later the bus broke down. The driver investigated, and steam burst forth from the radiator.
Seri was smiling.
