J. G. Ballard - War Fever

Ryan's dream of a ceasefire first came to him during the battle for the Beirut Hilton. At the time he was scarcely aware of the strange vision of a city at peace that had slipped uninvited into a corner of his head. All day the battle had moved from floor to floor of the ruined hotel, and Ryan had been too busy defending the barricade of restaurant tables in the mezzanine to think of anything else. By the end, when Arkady and Mikhail crept forward to silence the last Royalist sniper in the atrium, Ryan stood up and gave them covering fire, praying all the while for his sister Louisa, who was fighting in another unit of the Christian militia.

Then the firing ceased, and Captain Gomez signalled Ryan to make his way down the staircase to the reception area. Ryan watched the dust falling through the roof of the, atrium fifteen floors above him. Illuminated by the sunlight, the pulverised cement formed a fleeting halo that cascaded towards the replica of a tropical island in the centre of the atrium. The miniature lagoon was filled with rubble, but a few tamarinds and exotic ferns survived among the furniture thrown down from the upper balconies. For a moment this derelict paradise was lit by the dust, like a stage set miraculously preserved in the debris of a bombed theatre. Ryan gazed at the fading halo, thinking that one day, perhaps, all the dust of Beirut would descend like the dove, and at last silence the guns.

But the halo served a more practical purpose. As Ryan followed Captain Gomez down the staircase he saw the two enemy militia men scrambling across the floor of the lagoon, their wet uniforms clearly visible against the chalky cement. Then he and Gomez were firing at the trapped soldiers, shredding the tamarinds into matchwood long after the two youths lay bloodily together in the shallow water. Possibly they had been trying to surrender, but the newsreels of Royalist atrocities shown on television the previous evening put paid to that hope. Like the other young fighters, Ryan killed with a will.

Even so, as after all the battles in Beirut that summer, Ryan felt dazed and numbed when it was over. He could almost believe that he too had died. The other members of his platoon were propping the five bodies against the reception counter, where they could be photographed for the propaganda leaflets to be scattered over the Royalist strongholds in South Beirut. Trying to focus his eyes, Ryan stared at the roof of the atrium, where the last wisps of dust were still falling from the steel girders.

'Ryan! What is it?' Dr Edwards, the United Nations medical observer, took Ryan's arm and tried to steady him. 'Did you see someone move up there?'

'No - there's nothing. I'm okay, doctor. There was a strange light..

'Probably one of those new phosphorus shells the Royalists are using. A fiendish weapon, we're hoping to get them banned.'

With a grimace of anger, Dr Edwards put on his battered UN helmet. Ryan was glad to see this brave, if slightly na*ve man, in some ways more like an earnest young priest than a doctor, who spent as much time in the Beirut front line as any of the combatants. Dr Edwards could easily have returned to his comfortable New England practice, but he chose to devote himself to the men and women dying in a forgotten civil war half a world away. The seventeen-year-old Ryan had struck up a close friendship with Dr Edwards, and brought to him all his worries about his sister and aunt, and even his one-sided passion for Lieutenant Valentina, the strong-willed commander of the Christian guard-post at the telephone exchange.

Dr Edwards was always caring and sympathetic, and Ryan often exploited the physician's good nature, milking him for advance news of any shift in military alliances which the UN peacekeeping force had detected. Sometimes Ryan worried that Dr Edwards had spent too long in Beirut. He had become curiously addicted to the violence and death, as if tending the wounded and dying satisfied some defeatist strain in his character.

'Let's have a look at the poor devils.' He led Ryan towards the soldiers propped against the reception counter, their weapons and personal letters arranged at their feet in a grim tableau. 'With any luck, we'll find their next of kin.'

Ryan pushed past Captain Gomez, who was muttering over his uncooperative camera. He knelt beside the youngest of the dead soldiers, a teenager with dark eyes and cherubic face, wearing the bulky camouflage jacket of the International Brigade.

'Angel...? Angel Porrua...?' Ryan touched the spongy cheeks of the fifteen-year-old Spaniard, with whom he often went swimming at the beaches of East Beirut. Only the previous Sunday they had rigged a makeshift sail on an abandoned dory and cruised half a mile up the coast before being turned back by the UN naval patrol. He realised that he had last seen Angel scrambling through the waterlogged debris of the artificial lagoon in the atrium. Perhaps he had recognised Ryan on the mezzanine staircase, and had been trying to surrender as he and Captain Gomez opened fire.

'Ryan?' Dr Edwards squatted beside him. 'Do you know him?'

'Angel Porrua - but he's in the Brigade, doctor. They're on our side.'

'Not any more.' Clumsily, Dr Edwards pressed Ryan's shoulder in a gesture of comfort. 'Last night they did a deal with the Royalists. I'm sorry - they've been guilty of real treachery.'

'No, Angel was on our side...'

Ryan stood up and left the group of soldiers sharing a six-pack of beer.

He stepped through the dust and rubble to the ornamental island in the centre of the atrium. The bullet-riddled tamarinds still clung to their rockery, and Ryan hoped that they would survive until the first of the winter rains fell through the roof. He looked back at the Royalist dead, sitting like neglected guests who had expired at the reception counter of this hotel, weapons beside them.

But what if the living were to lay down their weapons? Suppose that all over Beirut the rival soldiers were to place their rifles at their feet, along with their identity tags and the photographs of their sisters and sweethearts, each a modest shrine to a ceasefire?

A ceasefire? The phrase scarcely existed in Beirut's vocabulary, Ryan reflected, as he sat in the rear of Captain Gomez's jeep on the return to the Christian sector of the city. Around them stretched the endless vistas of shattered apartment houses and bombed-out office buildings. Many of the stores had been converted into strongpoints, their steel grilles plastered with slogans and posters, crude photographs of murdered women and children.

During the original civil war, thirty years earlier, more than half a million people had lived in Beirut. His own grandparents had been among them, some of the many Americans who had resigned their teaching posts at the schools and university to fight with the beleaguered Christian militia. From all over the world volunteers had been drawn to Beirut, mercenaries and idealists, religious fanatics and out-of-work bodyguards, who fought and died for one or another of the rival factions.

Deep in their bunkers below the rubble they even managed to marry and raise their families. Ryan's parents had been in their teens when they were murdered during the notorious Airport Massacre - in one of the worst of many atrocities, the Nationalist militia had executed their prisoners after promising them safe passage to Cyprus. Only the kindness of an Indian soldier in the UN force had saved Ryan's life - he had found the baby boy and his sister in an abandoned apartment building, and then tracked down their adolescent aunt.

However tragic, Beirut had been worth fighting for, a city with street markets, stores and restaurants. There were churches and mosques filled with real congregations, not heaps of roof-tiles under an open sky. Now the civilian population had gone, leaving a few thousand armed combatants and their families hiding in the ruins. They were fed and supplied by the UN peacekeeping force, who turned a blind eye to the clandestine shipments of arms and ammunition, for fear of favouring one or another side in the conflict.

So a futile war dragged on, so pointless that the world's news media had long since lost interest. Sometimes, in a ruined basement, Ryan came acoss a tattered copy of Time or Paris Match, filled with photographs of street-fighting and graphic reports on the agony of Beirut, a city then at the centre of the world's concern. Now no one cared, and only the hereditary militias fought on, grappling across their empires of rubble.

But there was nothing pointless about the bullets. As they passed the shell of the old pro-government radio station there was a single shot from the ground-floor window.

'Pull over, corporal! Get off the road!' Pistol in hand, Gomez wrenched the steering wheel from Arkady and slewed the jeep into the shelter of a derelict bus.

Kneeling beside the flattened rear tyres, Ryan watched the UN spotter plane circle overhead. He waited for Gomez to flush out the sniper, probably a Nationalist fanatic trying to avenge the death of a brother or cousin. The Nationalist militia were based at Beirut Airport, a wilderness of weed-grown concrete on which no plane had landed for ten years, and rarely ventured into the centre of the city.

If a ceasefire was ever to take hold it would be here, somewhere along the old Green Line that divided Beirut, in this no-man's-land between the main power bases - the Christians in north-east Beirut, the Nationalists and Fundamentalists in the south and west, the Royalists and Republicans in the south-east, with the International Brigade clinging to the fringes. But the real map of the city was endlessly redrawn by opportunist deals struck among the local commanders - a jeep bartered for a truckload of tomatoes, six rocket launchers for a video-recorder.

What ransom could buy a ceasefire?

'Wake up, Ryan! Let's move!' Gomez emerged from the radio station with his prisoner, a jittery twelve-year-old in a hand-me-down Nationalist uniform. Gomez held the boy by his matted hair, then flung him into the back of the jeep. 'Ryan, keep an eye on this animal - he bites. We'll take him to interrogation.'

'Right, captain. And if there's anything left we'll trade him for some new videos.'

Hands bound, the boy knelt on the floor of the jeep, weeping openly from fear and rage. Jabbing him with his rifle stock, Ryan was surprised by his own emotions. For all his hopes of a ceasefire, he felt a reflex of real hate for this overgrown child. Hate was what kept the war going. Even Dr Edwards had been infected by it, and he wasn't alone. Ryan had seen the shining eyes of the UN observers as they photographed the latest atrocity victims, or debriefed the survivors of a cruel revenge attack, like prurient priests at confession. How could they put an end to the hate that was corrupting them all? Good God, he himself had begun to resent Angel Porrua for fighting with the Nationalists...

That evening Ryan rested on the balcony of Aunt Vera's apartment overlooking the harbour in East Beirut. He watched the riding lights of the UN patrol craft out at sea, and thought about his plans for a ceasefire. Trying to forget the day's fighting and Angel's death, he listened to Louisa chattering in the kitchen over the sounds of pop music broadcast by a local radio station.

The balcony was virtually Ryan's bedroom - he slept there in a hammock shielded from public view by the washing line and the plywood hutch he had built as a boy for his Dutch rabbit. Ryan could easily have moved to any one of the dozen empty apartments in the building, but he liked the intimacy of family life. The two rooms and kitchen were the only home he had ever known.

A young couple in an apartment across the street had recently adopted an orphan boy, and the sounds of his crying reminded Ryan that he at least was related by blood to the members of his family. In Beirut such blood ties were rare. Few of the young women soldiers ever conceived, and most children were war-orphans, though it puzzled Ryan where all these youngsters came from - somehow a secret family life survived in the basements and shantytowns on the outskirts of the city.

'That's the Rentons' new little son.' His sister strolled onto the balcony, brushing out the waist-long hair that spent its days in a military bun. 'It's a pity he cries a lot.'

'At least he laughs more than he cries.' An intriguing thought occurred to Ryan. 'Tell me, Louisa - will Lieutenant Valentina and I have a child?'

'A child? Did you hear that, Aunty? So what does Valentina think?'

'I've no idea. As it happens, I've never spoken to her.'

'Well, dear, I think you should ask her. She might lose something of her elegant composure.'

'Only for a few seconds. She's very regal.'

'It only takes a few seconds to conceive a child. Or is she so special that she won't even spare you those few seconds?'

'She is very special.'

'Who's this?' Aunt Vera hung their combat jackets over the balcony, gazing at them with almost maternal pride. 'Are you talking about me, Ryan, or your sister?'

'Someone far more special,' Louisa rejoined. 'His dream woman.'

'You two are my dream women.'

This was literally the truth. The possibility that anything might happen to them appalled Ryan. In the street below the balcony a night-commando patrol had lined up and were checking their equipment - machine-pistols, grenades, packs loaded with booby-traps and detonators. They would crawl into the darkness of West Beirut, each a killing machine out to murder some aunt or sister on a balcony.

A UN medical orderly moved down the line, issuing morphine ampoules. For all the lives they saved, Ryan sometimes resented the blue helmets. They nursed the wounded, gave cash and comfort to the bereaved, arranged foster-parents for the orphans, but they were too nervous of taking sides. They ringed the city, preventing anyone from entering or leaving, and in a sense controlled everything that went on in Beirut. They could virtually bring the war to a halt, but Dr Edwards repeatedly told Ryan that any attempt by the peacekeeping force to live up to its name would lead the world's powers to intervene militarily, for fear of destabilising the whole Middle East. So the fighting went on.

The night-commandos moved away, six soldiers on either side of the street, heading towards the intermittent clatter of gunfire.

'They're off now,' Aunt Vera said. 'Wish them luck.'

'Why?' Ryan asked quietly. 'What for?'

'What do you mean? You're always trying to shock us, Ryan. Don't you want them to come back?'

'Of course. But why leave in the first place? They could stay here.'

'That's crazy talk.' His sister placed a hand on Ryan's forehead, feeling for a temperature. 'You had a hard time in the Hilton, Arkady told me. Remember what we're fighting for.'

'I'm trying. Today I helped to kill Angel Porrua. What was he fighting for?'

'Are you serious? We're fighting for what we believe.'

'But nobody believes anything! Think about it, Louisa. The Royalists don't want the king, the Nationalists secretly hope for partition, the Republicans want to do a deal with the Crown Prince of Monaco, the Christians are mostly atheists, and the Fundamentalists can't agree on a single fundamental. We're fighting and dying for nothing.'

'So?' Louisa pointed with her brush to the UN observers by their post. 'That just leaves them. What do they believe in?'

'Peace. World harmony. An end to fighting everywhere.'

'Then maybe you should join them.'

'Yes... ' Ryan pushed aside his combat jacket and stared through the balcony railings. Each of the blue helmets was a pale lantern in the dusk. 'Maybe we should all join the UN. Yes, Louisa, everyone should wear the blue helmet.'

And so a dream was born.

During the next days Ryan began to explore this simple but revolutionary idea. Though gripped by the notion, he knew that it was difficult to put into practice. His sister was sceptical, and the fellow-members of his platoon were merely baffled by the concept.

'I see what you're getting at,' Arkady admitted as they shared a cigarette in the Green Line command bunker. 'But if everyone joins the UN who will be left to do the fighting?'

'Arkady, that's the whole point...' Ryan was tempted to give up. 'Just think of it. Everything will be neat and clean again. There'll be no more patrols, no parades or weapons drills. We'll lie around in the McDonald's eating hamburgers; there'll be discos every night. People will be walking around the streets, going into stores, sitting in cafs..

'That sounds really weird,' Arkady commented.

'It isn't weird. Life will start again. It's how it used to be, like it is now in other places around the world.'

'Where?'

'Well...'This was a difficult one. Like the other fighters in Beirut, Ryan knew next to nothing about the outside world. No newspapers came in, and foreign TV and radio broadcasts were jammed by the signals teams of the rival groups to prevent any foreign connivance in a military coup. Ryan had spent a few years in the UN school in East Beirut, but his main source of information about the larger world was the forty-year-old news magazines that he found in abandoned buildings. These presented a picture of a world at strife, of bitter fighting in Vietnam, Angola and Iran. Presumably these vast conflicts, greater versions of the fighting in Beirut, were still going on.

Perhaps the whole world should wear the blue helmet? This thought excited Ryan. If he could bring about a ceasefire in Beirut the peace movement might spread to Asia and Africa, everyone would lay down their arms Despite numerous rebuffs Ryan pressed on, arguing his case with any soldiers he met. Always there was an unvoiced interest, but one obstacle was the constant barrage of propaganda - the atrocity posters, the TV newsreels of vandalised churches that played on an ever-ready sense of religious outrage, and a medley of racial and anti-monarchist slanders.

To break this propaganda stranglehold was far beyond Ryan's powers, but by chance he found an unexpectedly potent weapon - humour.

While on duty with a shore patrol by the harbour, Ryan was describing his dream of a better Beirut as his unit passed the UN command post. The observers had left their helmets on the open-air map table, and without thinking Ryan pulled off his khaki forage cap and lowered the blue steel bowl over his head.

'Hey, look at Ryan!' Arkady shouted. There was some good-humoured scuffling until Mikhail and Nazar pulled them apart. 'No more wrestling now, we have our own peacekeeping force!'

Friendly cat-calls greeted Ryan as he paraded up and down in the helmet, but then everyone fell silent. The helmet had a calming effect, Ryan noticed, both on himself and his fellow-soldiers. On an impulse he set off along the beach towards the Fundamentalist sentry-post 500 yards away.

'Ryan - look out!' Mikhail ran after him, but stopped as Captain Gomez rode up in his jeep to the harbour wall. Together they watched as Ryan strode along the shore, ignoring the sniper-infested office buildings. He was halfway to the sentry-post when a Fundamentalist sergeant climbed onto the roof, waving a temporary safe-passage. Too cautious to risk his charmed life, Ryan saluted and turned back.

When he rejoined his platoon everyone gazed at him with renewed respect. Arkady and Nazar were wearing blue helmets, sheepishly ignoring Captain Gomez as he stepped in an ominous way from his jeep. Then Dr Edwards emerged from the UN post, restraining Gomez.

'I'll take care of this, captain. The UN won't press charges. I know Ryan wasn't playing the fool.'

Explaining his project to Dr Edwards was far easier than Ryan had hoped. They sat together in the observation post, as Dr Edwards encouraged him to outline his plan.

'It's a remarkable idea, Ryan.' Clearly gripped by its possibilities, Dr Edwards seemed almost lightheaded. 'I won't say it's going to work, but it deserves a try.'

'The main object is the ceasefire,' Ryan stressed. 'Joining the UN force is just a means to that end.'

'Of course. But do you think they'll wear the blue helmet?'

'A few will, but that's all we need. Little by little, more people will join up. Everyone is sick of fighting, doctor, but there's nothing else here.'

'I know that, Ryan. God knows it's a desperate place.' Dr Edwards reached across the table and held Ryan's wrists, trying to lend him something of his own strength. 'I'll have to take this up with the UN Secretariat in Damascus, so it's vital to get it right. Let's think of it as a volunteer UN force.'

'Exactly. We'll volunteer to wear the blue helmet. That way we don't have to change sides or betray our own people. Eventually, everyone will be in the volunteer force..

'... and the fighting will just fade away. It's a great idea, it's only strange that no one has ever thought of it before.' Dr Edwards was watching Ryan keenly. 'Did anyone help you? One of the wounded ex-officers, perhaps?'

'There wasn't anyone, doctor. It just came to me, out of all the death...'

Dr Edwards left Beirut for a week, consulting his superiors in Damascus, but in that time events moved more quickly than Ryan had believed possible. Everywhere the militia fighters were sporting the blue helmet. This began as a joke confined to the Christian forces, in part an irreverent gesture at the UN observers. Then, while patrolling the Green Line, Ryan spotted the driver of a Royalist jeep wearing a blue beret. Soon the more carefree spirits, the pranksters in every unit, wore the helmet or beret like a cockade.

'Ryan, look at this.' Captain Gomez called him to the command post in the lobby of the TV station. 'You've got a lot to answer for...'

Across the street, near a burnt-out Mercedes, a Royalist guerrilla in a blue beret had set up a canvas chair and card table. He sat back, feet on the table, leisurely taking the sun.

'The nerve of it...' Gomez raised Ryan's rifle and trained it at the soldier. He whistled to himself, and then handed the weapon back to Ryan. 'He's lucky, we're over-exposed here. I'll give him his suntan...'

This was a breakthrough, and not the last. Clearly there was a deep undercurrent of fatigue. By the day of Dr Edwards' return, Ryan estimated that one in ten of the militia fighters was wearing the blue helmet or beret. Fire-fights still shook the night sky, but the bursts of gunfire seemed more isolated.

'Ryan, it's scarcely credible,' Dr Edwards told him when they met at the UN post near the harbour. He pointed to the map marked with a maze of boundary lines and fortified positions. 'Today there hasn't been a single major incident along the Green Line. North of the airport there's even a de facto ceasefire between the Fundamentalists and the Nationalists.'

Ryan was staring at the sea, where a party of Christian soldiers were swimming from a diving raft. The UN guard-ships were close inshore, no longer worried about drawing fire. Without meaning to dwell on the past, Ryan said: 'Angel and I went sailing there.'

'And you'll go sailing again, with Nazar and Arkady.' Dr Edwards seized his shoulders. 'Ryan, you've brought off a miracle!'

'Well...' Ryan felt unsure of his own emotions, like someone who has just won the largest prize in a lottery. The UN truck parked in the sun was loaded with crates of blue uniforms, berets and helmets. Permission had been granted for the formation of a Volunteer UN Force recruited from the militias. The volunteers would serve in their own platoons, but be unarmed and take no part in any fighting, unless their lives were threatened. The prospect of a permanent peace was at last in sight.

Only six weeks after Ryan had first donned the blue helmet, an unbroken ceasefire reigned over Beirut. Everywhere the guns were silent. Sitting beside Captain Gomez as they toured the city by jeep, Ryan marvelled at the transformation. Unarmed soldiers lounged on the steps of the Hilton, groups of once-bitter enemies fraternised on the terrace of the Parliament building. Shutters were opening on the stores along the Green Line, and there was even a modest street market in the hallway of the Post Office. Children had emerged from their basement hideaways and played among the burnt-out cars. Many of the women guerrillas had exchanged their combat fatigues for bright print dresses, a first taste of the glamour and chic for which the city had once been renowned.

Even Lieutenant Valentina now stalked about in a black leather skirt and vivid lipstick jacket, blue beret worn rakishly over an elegant chignon.

As they passed her command post Captain Gomez stopped the jeep. He doffed his blue helmet in a gesture of respect. 'My God! Isn't that the last word, Ryan?'

'It certainly is, captain,' Ryan agreed devoutly. 'How do I even dare approach her?'

'What?' Gomez followed Ryan's awestruck gaze. 'Not Lieutenant Valentjna - she'll eat you for breakfast. I'm talking about the soccer match this afternoon.'

He pointed to the large poster recently pasted over the cracked windows of the nearby Holiday Inn. A soccer match between the Republican and Nationalist teams would take place at three o'clock in the stadium, the first game in the newly formed Beirut Football League.

"Tomorrow - Christians versus Fundamentalists. Referee-Colonel Mugabe of the International Brigade." That should be high-scoring...' Blue helmet in hand, Gomez climbed from the jeep and strolled over to the poster.

Ryan, meanwhile, was staring at Lieutenant Valentina. Out of uniform she seemed even more magnificent, her Uzi machine-pistol slung over her shoulder like a fashion accessory. Taking his courage in both hands, Ryan stepped into the street and walked towards her. She could eat him for breakfast, of course, and happily lunch and supper as well.

The lieutenant turned her imperious eyes in his direction, already resigned to the attentions of this shy young man. But before Ryan could speak, an immense explosion erupted from the street behind the TV station. The impact shook the ground and drummed against the pockmarked buildings. Fragments of masonry cascaded into the road as a cloud of smoke seethed into the sky, whipped upwards by the flames that rose from the detonation point somewhere to the south-west of the Christian enclave.

A six-foot scimitar of plate glass fell from the window of the Holiday Inn, slicing through the football poster, and shattered around Gomez's feet. As he ran to the jeep, shouting at Ryan, there was a second explosion from the Fundamentalist sector of West Beirut. Signal flares were falling in clusters over the city, and the first rounds of gunfire competed with the whine of klaxons and the loudspeakers broadcasting a call to arms.

Ryan stumbled to his feet, brushing the dust from his combat jacket. Lieutenant Valentina had vanished into the strongpoint, where her men were already loading the machine-gun in the barbette.

'Captain Gomez... The bomb? What set it off?'

'Treachery, Ryan - the Royalists must have done a deal with the Nats.' He pulled Ryan into the jeep, cuffing him over the head. 'All this talk of peace. The oldest trap in the world, and we walked straight into it...'

More than treachery, however, had taken place. Armed militia men filled the streets, taking up their positions in the blockhouses and strongpoints. Everyone was shouting at once, voices drowned by the gunfire that came from all directions. Powerful bombs had been cunningly planted to cause maximum confusion, and the nervous younger soldiers were firing into the air to keep up their courage. Signal flares were falling over the city in calculated but mysterious patterns. Everywhere blue helmets and berets were lying discarded in the gutter.

When Ryan reached his aunt's apartment he found Dr Edwards and two UN guards waiting for him.

'Ryan, it's too late. I'm sorry.'

Ryan tried to step past to the staircase, but Dr Edwards held his arms. Looking up at this anxious and exhausted man, Ryan realised that apart from the UN observers he was probably the only one in Beirut still wearing the blue helmet.

'Dr Edwards, I have to look after Louisa and my aunt. They're upstairs.'

'No, Ryan. They're not here any longer. I'm afraid they've gone.'

'Where? My God, I told them to stay here!'

'They've been taken as hostages. There was a commando raid timed for the first explosion. Before we realised it, they were in and out.'

'Who?' Confused and frightened, Ryan stared wildly at the street, where armed men were forming into their platoons. 'Was it the Royalists, or the Nats?'

'We don't know. It's tragic, already there have been some foul atrocities. But they won't harm Louisa or your aunt. They know who you are.'

'They took them because of me...' Ryan lifted the helmet from his head. He stared at the blue bowl, which he had carefully polished, trying to make it the brightest in Beirut.

'What do you plan to do, Ryan?' Dr Edwards took the helmet from his hands, a stage prop no longer needed after the last curtain. 'It's your decision. If you want to go back to your unit, we'll understand.'

Behind Dr Edwards one of the observers held Ryan's rifle and webbing. The sight of the weapon and its steel-tipped bullets brought back Ryan's old anger, that vague hatred that had kept them all going for so many years. He needed to go out into the streets, track down the kidnappers, revenge himself on those who had threatened his aunt and Louisa.

'Well, Ryan...' Dr Edwards was watching him in a curiously distant way, as if Ryan was a laboratory rat at a significant junction in a maze. 'Are you going to fight?'

'Yes, I'll fight...'Ryan placed the blue helmet firmly on his head. 'But not for war. I'll work for another ceasefire, doctor.'

It was then that he found himself facing the raised barrel of his own rifle. An expressionless Dr Edwards took his wrists, but it was some minutes before Ryan realised that he had been handcuffed and placed under arrest.

For an hour they drove south-east through the suburbs of Beirut, past the derelict factories and shantytowns, stopping at the UN checkpoints along the route. From his seat in the back of the armoured van, Ryan could see the ruined skyline of the city. Funnels of smoke leaned across the sky, but the sound of gunfire had faded. Once they stopped to stretch their legs, but Dr Edwards declined to talk to him. Ryan assumed that the physician suspected him of being involved with the conspirators who had broken the ceasefire. Perhaps Dr Edwards imagined that the whole notion of ceasefire had been a devious scheme in which Ryan had exploited his contacts among the young...?

They passed through the second of the perimeter fences that enclosed the city, and soon after approached the gates of a military camp built beside a deserted sanatorium. A line of olive-green tents covered the spacious grounds. Arrays of radio antennae and television dishes rose from the roof of the sanatorium, all facing north-west towards Beirut.

The van stopped at the largest of the tents, which appeared to house a hospital for wounded guerrillas. But within the cool green interior there was no sign of patients. Instead they were walking through a substantial arsenal. Rows of trestle tables were loaded with carbines and machine-guns, boxes of grenades and mortar bombs. A UN sergeant moved among this mountain of weaponry, marking items on a list like the owner of a gun store checking the day's orders.

Beyond the arsenal was an open area that resembled the newsroom of a television station. A busy staff of UN observers stood beneath a wall map of Beirut, moving dozens of coloured tapes and stars. These marked the latest positions in the battle for the city being screened on the TV monitors beside the map.

'You can leave us, corporal. I'll be in charge of him now.' Dr Edwards took the rifle and webbing from the UN guard, and beckoned Ryan into a canvas-walled office at the end of the tent. Plastic windows provided a clear view into an adjacent room, where two women clerks were rolling copies of a large poster through a printing press. The blown-up photograph of a Republican atrocity, it showed a group of murdered women who had been executed in a basement garage.

Staring at this gruesome image, Ryan guessed why Dr Edwards still avoided his eyes.

'Dr Edwards, I didn't know about the bomb this morning, or the surprise attack. Believe me--'

'I believe you, Ryan. Everything's fine, so try to relax.' He spoke curtly, as if addressing a difficult patient. He laid the rifle on his desk, and released the handcuffs from Ryan's wrists. 'You're out of Beirut for good now. As far as you're concerned, the ceasefire is permanent.'

'But... what about my aunt and sister?'

'They've come to no harm. In fact, at this very moment they're being held at the UN post near the Football Stadium.'

'Thank God. I don't know what went wrong. Everyone wanted the ceasefire...' Ryan turned from the atrocity posters spilling endlessly through the slim hands of the UN clerks. Pinned to the canvas wall behind Dr Edwards were scores of photographs of young men and women in their combat fatigues, caught unawares near the UN observation posts. In pride of place was a large photograph of Ryan himself. Assembled together, they resembled the inmates of a mental institution.

Two orderlies passed the doorway of the office, wheeling a trolley loaded with assault rifles.

'These weapons, doctor? Are they confiscated?'

'No - as it happens, they're factory-new. They're on their way to the battlefield.'

'So there's more fighting going on outside Beirut...' This news was enough to make Ryan despair. 'The whole world's at war.'

'No, Ryan. The whole world is at peace. Except for Beirut - that's where the weapons are going. They'll be smuggled into the city inside a cargo of oranges.'

'Why? That's mad, doctor! The militias will get them!'

'That's the point, Ryan. We want them to have the weapons. And we want them to keep on fighting.'

Ryan began to protest, but Dr Edwards showed him firmly to the chair beside the desk.

'Don't worry, Ryan, I'll explain it all to you. Tell me first, though have you ever heard of a disease called smallpox?'

'It was some sort of terrible fever. It doesn't exist any more.'

'That's true - almost. Fifty years ago the World Health Organisation launched a huge campaign to eliminate smallpox, one of the worst diseases mankind has ever known, a real killer that destroyed tens of millions of lives. There was a global programme of vaccination, involving doctors and governments in every country. Together they finally wiped it from the face of the earth.'

'I'm glad, doctor - if only we could do the same for war.'

'Well, in a real sense we have, Ryan - almost. In the case of smallpox, people can now travel freely all over the world. The virus does survive in ancient graves and cemeteries, but if by some freak chance the disease appears again there are supplies of vaccine to protect people and stamp it out.'

Dr Edwards detached the magazine from Ryan's rifle and weighed it in his hands, showing an easy familiarity with the weapon that Ryan had never seen before. Aware of Ryan's surprise, he smiled wanly at the young man, like a headmaster still attached to a delinquent pupil.

'Left to itself, the smallpox virus is constantly mutating. We have to make sure that our supplies of vaccine are up-to-date. So WHO was careful never to completely abolish the disease. It deliberately allowed smallpox to flourish in a remote corner of a third-world country, so that it could keep an eye on how the virus was evolving. Sadly, a few people went on dying, and are still dying to this day. But it's worth it for the rest of the world. That way we'll always be ready if there's an outbreak of the disease.'

Ryan stared through the plastic windows at the wall map of Beirut and the TV monitors with their scenes of smoke and gunfire. The Hilton was burning again.

'And Beirut, doctor? Here you're keeping an eye on another virus?'

'That's right, Ryan. The virus of war. Or, if you like, the martial spirit. Not a physical virus, but a psychological one even more dangerous than smallpox. The world is at peace, Ryan. There hasn't been a war anywhere for thirty years - there are no armies or air forces, and all disputes are settled by negotiation and compromise, as they should be. No one would dream of going to war, any more than a sane mother would shoot her own children if she was cross with them. But we have to protect ourselves against the possibility of a mad strain emerging, against the chance that another Hitler or Pol Pot might appear.'

'And you can do all that here?' Ryan scoffed. 'In Beirut?'

'We think so. We have to see what makes people fight, what makes them hate each other enough to want to kill. We need to know how we can manipulate their emotions, how we can twist the news and trigger off their aggressive drives, how we can play on their religious feelings or political ideals. We even need to know how strong the desire for peace is.'

'Strong enough. It can be strong, doctor.'

'In your case, yes. You defeated us, Ryan. That's why we've pulled you out.' Dr Edwards spoke without regret, as if he envied Ryan his dogged dream. 'It's a credit to you, but the experiment must go on, so that we can understand this terrifying virus.'

'And the bombs this morning? The surprise attack?'

'We set off the bombs, though we were careful that no one was hurt. We supply all the weapons, and always have. We print up the propaganda material, we fake the atrocity photographs, so that the rival groups betray each other and change sides. It sounds like a grim version of musical chairs, and in a way it is.'

'But all these years, doctor...' Ryan was thinking of his old comradesin-arms who had died beside him in the dusty rubble. Some had given their lives to help wounded friends. 'Angel and Moshe, Aziz... hundreds of people dying!'

'Just as hundreds are still dying of smallpox. But thousands of millions are living - in peace. It's worth it, Ryan; we've learned so much since the UN rebuilt Beirut thirty years ago.'

'They planned it all - the Hilton, the TV station, the McDonald's...?'

'Everything, even the McDonald's. The UN architects designed it as a typical world city - a Hilton, a Holiday Inn, a sports stadium, shopping malls. They brought in orphaned teenagers from all over the world, from every race and nationality. To begin with we had to prime the pump - the NCOs and officers were all UN observers fighting in disguise. But once the engine began to turn, it ran with very little help.'

'Just a few atrocity photographs...' Ryan stood up and began to put on his webbing. Whatever he thought of Dr Edwards, the reality of the civil war remained, the only logic that he recognised. 'Doctor, I have to go back to Beirut.'

'It's too late, Ryan. If we let you return, you'd endanger the whole experiment.'

'No one will believe me, doctor. Anyway, I must find my sister and Aunt Vera.'

'She isn't your sister, Ryan. Not your real sister. And Vera isn't your real aunt. They don't know, of course. They think you're all from the same family. Louisa was the daughter of two French explorers from Marseilles who died in Antarctica. Vera was a foundling brought up by nuns in Montevideo.'

'And what about...?'

'You, Ryan? Your parents lived in Halifax, Nova Scotia. You were three months old when they were killed in a car crash. Sadly, there are some deaths we can't yet stop..

Dr Edwards was frowning at the wall map of Beirut visible through the plastic window. A signals sergeant worked frantically at the huge display, pinning on clusters of incident flags. Everyone had gathered around the monitor screens. An officer waved urgently to Dr Edwards, who stood up and left the office. Ryan stared at his hands while the two men conferred, and he scarcely heard the physician when he returned and searched for his helmet and side-arm.

'They've shot down the spotter plane. I'll have to leave you, Ryan - the fighting's getting out of control. The Royalists have overrun the Football Stadium and taken the UN post.'

'The Stadium?' Ryan was on his feet, his rifle the only security he had known since leaving the city. 'My sister and aunt are there! I'll come with you, doctor.'

'Ryan... everything's starting to fall apart; we may have lit one fuse too many. Some of the militia units are shooting openly at the UN observers.' Dr Edwards stopped Ryan at the door. 'I know you're concerned for them, you've lived with them all your life. But they're not-'

Ryan pushed him away. 'Doctor, they are my aunt and sister.'

It was three hours later when they reached the Football Stadium. As the convoy of UN vehicles edged its way into the city, Ryan gazed at the pall of smoke that covered the ruined skyline. The dark mantle extended far out to sea, lit by the flashes of high explosives as rival demolition squads moved through the streets. He sat behind Dr Edwards in the second of the armoured vans, but they could scarcely hear themselves talk above the sounds of rocket and machine-gun fire.

By this stage Ryan knew that he and Dr Edwards had little to say to each other. Ryan was thinking only of the hostages in the overrun UN post. His discovery that the civil war in Beirut was an elaborate experiment belonged to a numb area outside his mind, an emotional black hole from which no light or meaning could escape.

At last they stopped near the UN post at the harbour in East Beirut. Dr Edwards sprinted to the radio shack, and Ryan unstrapped his blue helmet. In a sense he shared the blame for this uncontrolled explosion of violence. The rats in the war laboratory had been happy pulling a familiar set of levers - the triggers of their rifles and mortars - and being fed their daily pellets of hate. Ryan's dazed dream of peace, like an untested narcotic, had disoriented them and laid them open to a frenzy of hyperactive rage...

Ryan, good news!' Dr Edwards hammered on the windscreen, ordering the driver to move on. 'Christian commandos have retaken the Stadium!'

'And my sister? And Aunt Vera?'

'I don't know. Hope for the best. At least the UN is back in action. With luck, everything will return to normal.'

Later, as he stood in the sombre storeroom below the concrete grandstand, Ryan reflected on the ominous word that Dr Edwards had used. Normal...? The lights of the photographers' flashes illuminated the bodies of the twenty hostages laid against the rear wall. Louisa and Aunt Vera rested between two UN observers, all executed by the Royalists before their retreat. The stepped concrete roof was splashed with blood, as if an invisible audience watching the destruction of the city from the comfort of the grandstand had begun to bleed into its seats. Yes, Ryan vowed, the world would bleed The photographers withdrew, leaving Ryan alone with Louisa and his aunt. Soon their images would be scattered across the ruined streets, pasted to the blockhouse walls.

'Ryan, we ought to leave before there's a counterattack.' Dr Edwards stepped through the pale light. 'I'm sorry about them - whatever else, they were your sister and aunt.'

'Yes, they were..

'And at least they helped to prove something. We need to see how far human beings can be pushed.' Dr Edwards gestured helplessly at the bodies. 'Sadly, all the way.'

Ryan took off his blue helmet and placed it at his feet. He snapped back the rifle bolt and drove a steel-tipped round into the breech. He was only sorry that Dr Edwards would lie beside Louisa and his aunt. Outside there was a momentary lull in the fighting, but it would resume. Within a few months he would unite the militias into a single force. Already Ryan was thinking of the world beyond Beirut, of that far larger laboratory waiting to be tested, with its millions of docile specimens unprepared for the most virulent virus of them all.

'Not all the way, doctor.' He levelled the rifle at the physician's head. 'All the way is the whole human race.'