Pipeline
by Brian Aldiss
The August celebration of Brian Aldiss’s eightieth birthday is only one event in a very busy year. Brian tells us that the music for his opera, Oedipus on Mars, has been composed by a wizard in Santa Monica. The movie of his book, Brothers of the Head, screens in September nearly simultaneously with Tachyon Publications’ release of his short stories collection, Cultural Breaks. In “Pipeline,” Brian recounts the taut and fast-paced tale of an architect attempting a dangerous journey along the length of his brilliant creation.
* * * *
Carl Roddard paced up and down the chamber of the Interior Minister. The floor was tiled. The sound of his footsteps drowned out the screech of the noisy air-conditioning. The Interior Minister sat placidly behind his desk. He smoked a cigarette. Behind him hung an oil portrait of President Firadzov, smiling. He looked up at the ceiling of the chamber. Beyond his narrow window, the sun ruled over the city of Ashkabad. Ashkabad, the capital of the Central Asian republic of Turkmenistan, was where the pipeline began.
Roddard ceased his pacing and confronted the Minister across his desk. He said, “Minister, your position is untenable. You do not have it in your power to nationalize the pipeline. Particularly at this late stage.”
The Minister flicked ash. “We understand the pipeline is American. But it runs for the first seventy-two miles through territory that is Turkmenistan. Neither fact is under dispute. It is fitting that our forces protect this stretch from terrorism.”
A stale odor permeated the chamber, as if it smelt ancient deceits.
“You don’t have the fire power,” Carl told him. “You don’t control the air. Besides, our contract was drawn up nine years ago. This wild claim was not mentioned at that time. Why bring this difficulty up now?”
With a slight smile, the Minister replied, “There has been regime change since then.” He rose to his feet. “Now this meeting will close, Mr. Roddard. No oil will flow through the pipeline until this matter of sovereignty is resolved. My government will not permit me to turn on the tap till then. Good day.”
Carl’s auto was waiting in the shade of the Ministry. He told the driver to take him to the American quarter. Once through the blazing streets, and the various checkpoints, he went straight to the Embassy.
Carl was a big man who thought big. He had been in Central Asia, on and off, for nine years. He was Chief Architect of the Pipeline Project, and employed by Butterfield-Chou-Wolff, the biggest consortium on the face of the planet. Still he took his problems to the American Ambassador to Turkmenistan, Stanley Coglan.
Stanley was with his wife, Charlotte, and just finishing lunch. He stood up, wiping his mouth on his table napkin.
“Hi, Stan, Charlie! Sorry to break in.”
“Have a chair, Carl. Good to see you. You want something to eat? How was it with that snake of an Interior Minister?”
Carl drew up a chair. “Not good. They’ve set us up.” He told Stanley of his meeting. “The essence of it is their demand to nationalize the first two hundred miles of the pipeline. It’s meaningless—and they know it.”
Stanley looked thoughtful. “So what are they after, springing this on us? Can’t be money. Money is going to pour into this little tinpot state once the taps are turned. So why do they delay?”
“Search me. National pride?”
Charlotte looked over her shoulder to see that no servants were lingering. She said, “And what will they do with all the money? If precedents are anything to go by, they will not invest it on the infrastructure of the country, on much needed hospitals and better housing. No, it’ll go into explosives.”
Stanley told his wife, mildly, “Darling, these are not Arabs we’re dealing with. Central Asians are rather different.”
Charlotte shrugged. She poured Carl a glass of wine. He sipped it gratefully. The wine was imported from Italy, like many supplies in Turkmenistan.
The ambassador swiveled in his chair to stare out of the window. Beyond the small garden, a sentry stood armed and alert at the gate. “Have you spoken yet to the top brass at Butterfield-Chou-Wolff?”
“No. I drove straight here. BCW would probably want to give in. We can’t do that. Suoyue has to be in our hands from start to finish. It’s Security.” With a tinge of sarcasm, he had used Suoyue, the common Chinese name for the pipeline.
“Of course, Firadzov is behind this,” Charlotte said, thoughtfully. Firadzov, the President of Turkmenistan, was the victor of a coup earlier in the previous year.
“Not a cockroach moves without Firadzov’s say-so,” Stanley replied. He gazed at his wife.
“So?”
“Ziviad Haydor.”
Both men looked at her blankly.
“Ziviad Haydor,” Charlotte repeated. “That rare thing, a powerful Turkmen dissident. Funded by Moscow, naturally. Come on, guys, when Firadzov took over, and was gunning for him, Haydor ran here to us for sanctuary.”
Carl remembered. “Moscow has no use for Firadzov. They wanted the oil pumped north to Moscow, as in Soviet times, when they owned this dump. This guy Haydor was Moscow’s man. Where is he now? Syria?”
Stanley thumped the table. “He’s still here! One of our permanent lodgers. He lives in a couple of rooms in the annex. No one else will have him. Where can he go? The Arabs hate him even more than the Russkies, because they think he did a deal with us. Of course, Firadzov would kill Haydor if he got half a chance.”
Charlotte said quietly, “We could do a trade....”
The two men looked at each other. Then they both grinned.
Carl Roddard had himself driven to the offices of Butterfield-Chou-Wolff on the edge of town. Big initial letters BCW loomed on the façade of a square concrete building. It was ringed with a double protective fence. Nearby, the road led to a spot where the city abruptly stopped. A red-and-white painted metal pole was down. Beyond it, the great desert began, stony and drab. The barrier kept out various camels, who stood hopelessly, staring in at this outpost of civilization.
After thrusting his biometric card in the entry-slot to the building, Carl took the elevator to his offices on the fourth and top floor. It was blessedly cool in BCW, where the air-cond unit worked. His assistant, Ron Deeds, greeted him. Preoccupied, Carl went to study the map of the area on the far wall.
A silver marker pen depicted the pipeline running a thousand miles from East to West. It started just outside Ashkabad, to cross the frontier with Northern Iran at the town of Gifan. At the frontier was a fortified pumping station, marked as at Milestone 72.
Ron came over, looking serious, tousling further his untidy fair hair. “The BCW committee met this morning,” he said in a low voice. “It’s looking not good. The world is waiting for the opening of the pipeline next week. BCW don’t want hitches. They were on the air to Washington and Beijing this morning, saying they would accede to Firadzov’s demand for nationalization of the first stretch of pipeline. They will take over control. We’ll just have a watching brief.”
Carl scowled. “We can’t let it happen. Look, Ron, we’re going to do a trade. We think it will work. I need your help, okay?”
“Sure. What can I do?”
“We buy Firadzov off with a well-known dissident in our keeping. This nationalization idea is just a bluff. We’ll call their bluff. We give Firadzov the dissident, he stops this nonsense. After all, Firadzov needs the oil flowing as much as we do.”
“What do I do?”
Carl began wagging his finger as if counting. “One, we can’t let anyone know the Embassy is involved in this deal. Two, we need you because you are British. Three, you drive around tonight and we have everything ready. Four, you take the dissident, whose hands will be tied and whose legs will be shackled, to the gates of the Interior Ministry. Tanks and major firepower will be there to protect you. Five, you speak over the intercom to the Interior Minister offering him the deal. Call off this nationalization ploy immediately and you hand over the dissident they want like mad. Okay? Will you do it?”
Ron had begun to look dubious during this speech. “Very dicey. Who is this dissident guy anyway?”
“His name’s Haydor, Ziviad Haydor.”
Ron let out a whistling breath. “Him? Carl, you can’t hand Haydor over to that bastard Firadzov! Haydor is a hero of the people. It was Haydor who represented the chance of a better life for everyone. Firadzov would torture him to death!”
“Look, Ron, Haydor is a spent force. That issue’s closed, okay? It’s worth one life to get the damned oil flowing, isn’t it?”
Ron stuck his fists in his jeans and turned his back. “It’s treachery, Carl. We swore to protect Haydor only a year ago. Sorry, I want no part of it.”
Carl grabbed Ron’s shoulder. “Can’t you see what’s involved? This is no time for scruples!”
“Take your hand off me,” Ron said. “I can’t do it.”
“Fuck you! Then I’ll do it myself!”
He did it himself. It worked. Carl Roddard was hooded as he handed over his prisoner to the Interior Ministry. Ziviad Haydor disappeared into the regime’s torture chambers. Next morning, President Firadzov himself spoke on television. He stated, “Regrettably, an attempt was recently made by unreliable elements to seize control of the oil pipeline. We of course recognize the legitimacy of the present international construction company to operate the pipeline for the benefit of all concerned. I have personally supported this great international venture, which affirms the greatness and importance of our dear nation, Turkmenistan.
“Unreliable elements involved in this attempted illegal appropriation of property have been arrested, including the Minister for the Interior. They will stand trial at a future date.”
Stanley Coglan and Mr. Freddie Go from the Chinese Embassy shook hands with Carl in a brief ceremony. After which they toasted each other in champagne.
“We must reward you somehow, Carl,” said Freddie Go, his face crinkling in the friendliest of smiles.
“I didn’t want anyone to adopt my baby,” said Carl, thus mystifying his Chinese friend. “My marriage has collapsed, Freddie. Margie refused to live here in Ashkabad with me. She’s in England now. I’m hoping to patch things up, now that the oil is at last about to run.”
“Okay,” said Stanley. “We’ll charter you a special plane right into London Heathrow—with our best wishes.”
Carl, smiling, shook his head. “A bigger favor even than that, Stan, and Freddie. I want to be the first guy ever to drive along the whole length of Suoyue, all the way to the Med.”
“Do we let him?” Stanley asked Freddie.
Freddie pretended a sigh. “Can we stop him?”
Carl Roddard shook hands with his Chief Engineer in farewell before climbing into his car. Behind them lay the first pumping station and the opening stretch of pipeline. The all-steel pipe had cathodic protection—the negative electric charge running throughout the length of the pipe. The pipeline and its associated roads stretched for over one thousand miles, covering some dangerous territory.
Carl left Ashkabad, the capital city of Turkmenistan, early that morning. He kept himself well-armed, and tucked a revolver into the auto’s front compartment. The Pipeline Road began outside Ashkabad on its long journey westward. Carl had programmed his car accordingly, and was traveling at an average of ninety miles per hour.
With him in the car was Donna Khaddari. Donna had taken a Luckistryke and was sitting quietly, smiling to herself. Carl’s secretary was ill; she had sent her sister Donna instead. A pretty girl, thought Carl, approvingly. They had passed Gifan, where they crossed the frontier between Turkmenistan and Iran.
To the right of the speeding vehicle—to the north—the coast of the Caspian Sea was visible. Dead ships lay there aslant, stranded, beached for all time, bones merely of boats that had once sailed from Baku in Azerbaijan to Bandar-e Shah in Iran. Now the sea itself, whose waters had been siphoned off in the construction of the pipeline and its attendant highways, was wan, white, waveless, shrinking from its forsaken shore.
To the south of the highway, the Elburz Mountains rose, their rainy slopes thickly forested, except where new roads had cut fresh scars through the trees.
Carl, vacationing from his engagement to contractors Butterfield-Chou-Wolff, kept his eyes on the highway ahead. It curved little, it swerved little, it climbed on gentle inclines, only to dip again, always following beside the armor-plated oil pipeline. Where the pipeline went, monstrous, shining metal-black, there the road went. Where the road went, there sped Carl’s auto, streamlined as a fish. And on the north side of the great pipe, there a twin road went, designed to carry traffic eastward.
At present, though, the twin routes were empty of traffic. The great highways were not yet officially open. Only Architects-in-Chief traveled them, together with a few military vehicles. Carl concentrated on recalling details of his conversation with Coordinator Mohamed Barrak before he left Ashkabad. He had voiced a complaint that the consortium to which he belonged was filling the pockets of the dictator, Firadzov.
He regarded Barrak as yet another corrupt native official, one of a kind with which BCW had become used to dealing. Barrak had grown distant and formal. He clasped his hands over his white jacket and his ample stomach. The vodka was getting to him.
He spoke of historic necessity. The need of the West to draw on Central Asian oil overrode other considerations. Yes, Firadzov was rather—shall we say, overbearing?—well, dictatorial; but he controlled a country that floated on oil, and those vast reservoirs were needed to sustain the greedy West. A West, Barrak might say, also dictatorial. When the oil was flowing, the West would no longer have need of oil from Saudi Arabia and other Arab states, such as Iraq and Kuwait.
Then Barrak had abruptly changed the subject, demanding to know why Carl Roddard suddenly needed leave to go to England.
“My ex-wife has moved to England from Savannah. She lives with her brother in Oxford. I need to see her again.”
“You are planning to remarry?”
“That remains to be seen.” None of your business. He disliked Barrak and his pompous manner. Barrak liked to speak of the pipeline as “this great engineering achievement,” as if he had built it himself.
Carl Roddard had broad shoulders and a broad base. He sat hunched in a narrow chair, saying nothing. He was drinking vodka with Barrak in a more-or-less westernized tea house in the European quarter of Ashkabad. Although the Turkmen were Muslim, or faintly Muslim, their seventy years under Russian domination had taught them to drink vodka like Cossacks. Carl did not tell the other man he had two young sons wandering about somewhere in the Eastern United States, kicking up hell.
Barrak had not inquired why Carl wished to drive the length of the pipeline road instead of flying. Everyone involved in the grandiose project desired to drive the whole length of it one day. Perhaps even Barrak felt the itch.
The car sped ever on. Carl’s great tanned face was immoveable as he half-listened to a remastered ribbon of music from the long-dead Django, cool as a dingo in December. Donna appeared to be listening. She sat close to Carl, saying nothing.
He gazed at the landscape he had helped forge. The highway undulated over northbound rivers pouring down from the mountain slopes. It followed the great coffin of the oil pipeline, by far the strongest feature of the moribund natural scene. Haze overhead filtered sunlight down evenly, shadowlessly; as the distance-indicators flashed by; the scene resembled a computer playscene.
The pipeline would, in a sense, unite East and West. Yet it was Carl’s absorption in the mighty project that had broken up his marriage to Margie. That could be put right, maybe. He would try. He regarded himself as a good fixer. Results were in the lap of the gods.
Gigantic yellow-painted Chinese constructors toiled along in parallel with the pipeline. They were preparing to build a third lane on the westbound route. The great project was yet to be completed. High overhead, geostationary satellites saw to it that the project was not interfered with.
The auto map was signaling fifty miles to Amol-Babol when Donna said, “I need a coffee.”
“Right behind you.”
“No, I need to stretch my legs. I have long legs, you know.”
“I have noticed.”
“Stop at Amol-Babol, please, Carl.”
Amol-Babol was the first stop after Ashkabad, the site of a big pumping station. As they had had to show their biometricards to enter the pipeline road, so they had to show their biometricards to get off it. The barriers swung up, the steel teeth sucked themselves down into the roadway and they drifted through.
After the auto was douched with germicidal wash, it parked itself and the couple were free to walk.
Amol-Babol was situated on the coast. Ships maneuvered in the overcrowded harbor. Tehran was no more than sixty miles away, south over the Elburz Mountains. Amol-Babol was a newly compounded city, a transitory refuge for many of the men and women of all nationalities who worked on the pipeline. They included American, Australian, French, Spanish, English, Kurdish, Japanese, and certainly Chinese. Many were soldiers, clerks, prostitutes, thieves, adventurers.
* * * *
The chaos of Amol-Babol was preferable to the deadness of Firadzov-ruled Ashkabad.
At least Firadzov had cooperated with the constructors of the gigantic pipeline. The gross egotist he was regarded the pipeline as his memorial. He already had a pipeline, but it ran northward to Moscow, and Moscow paid peanuts compared with what the West would pay. Everything was a question of money.
* * * *
A big transporter aircraft was thundering down on the Amol-Babol airport even now, bringing in more workers, more machinery.
The permanent civilian population consisted of a small clique of Iranian, Indian, and Chinese bureaucrats, sitting at the top of the pile, then mainly of Kurds and other Iranians, with a scattering of Afghans. These latter, the poor, had set up stalls and markets through which Carl and Donna now strolled. Here were the world’s electronic gadgets, blinking, winking, chirruping, together with bright cheap Chinese-manufactured toys and clothes. Oriental music shrilly played. Donna bought a deep blue T-shirt bearing the elegantly complex Chinese symbol, Suoyue, for “Pipeline.” At another stall they sat and drank a rich Sumatra coffee. No alcohol was permitted anywhere along the course of the pipeline; it was a condition on which the Chinese had insisted.
Carl took Donna to the Pipeline Consortium H.Q. in A-B Square, to say hello to his friend and colleague, Wang Feng Ling. Ling embraced Carl, kissed Donna’s hand, and ordered tea to be brought. Ling as ever was neatly dressed in a well-tailored suit. His hair was immaculate. He wore a gold ring on one of his long artistic fingers. His smile was warm and sincere.
“How is life in Ashkahbad, Carl, dear chap?” he asked. “Dear chap” was his favorite form of address.
“Dull as ever. Even the camels are bored.”
“With that particular time-expired Central Asian dullness?” Ling smiled at the recollection.
“The new dictator is slightly better than the old dictator. Firadzov accepts bribes with a better grace....”
Ling nodded his sympathy. “Unfortunately the new dictator in Uzbekistan is not slightly better than the old dictator, dear chap. However, we maintain long and tedious talks.”
Carl gave a short laugh. “You still have hopes, then.” He had learnt to talk obliquely to Ling.
Ling raised his cup and smiled at his friend. “Hopes? You mean plans? Certainly the Suoyue can be key to both East and West.”
Indeed, even the Westerners on the pipeline road referred to it as the “Suoyue,” the Chinese word for “Key.” Westerners were interested only in piping the oil of Central Asia to the West, bypassing the Arab states; but the Chinese were major players here, and the Chinese had plans to extend the Suoyue eastward, beyond Turkmenistan to China itself.
As had always been the case, Chinese intentions were not clearly understood in the West.
“Any problems on your stretch of the pipe, Ling?”
“Your president, Julian Caesare, may cause problems, dear chap, if he continues to exacerbate Islamic problems in Iran.”
“Well, the Consortium has a century’s concession on this coastal strip.”
“Religion always has contempt for any concession.”
“You’re right there.”
As usual—thought Carl, shaking hands on leaving—Ling was so frequently right. Staunch nationalist though he was, he had begun to believe that the Chinese were actually a superior race. The superior race.
He did not say as much to Donna when they reentered the bazaar. Or when they climbed into their auto. Or when they were once again traveling on their way westward on the Suoyue. The great pipeline in its protective casing appeared to go on forever. Every so often, a pumping station straddled the pipe. Dominating the stations were small strongholds, bristling with masts and fully manned, fortified against those enemies of the West who would seek to block the flow of oil.
Carl remembered he had visited Hadrian’s Wall in the North of England, stretching from East coast to West coast, where he studied how the Romans had attempted to keep out the barbarians. The Suoyue might bear a Chinese name, but the essential elements of its design lay in the West, and had their links with ancient Rome.
The Caspian fell away, leaving its lassitudes behind them. Climbing, they crossed the forty-ninth line of latitude. Kurd patrols were in evidence here, driving U.S. army vehicles with Kurdish flags attached to their aerials. The aerials whipped in the wind. The Kurds had been paid off; the patrol now fired their Kalashnikovs into the air by way of greeting to the speeding car.
The weather became colder and an inclement wind blew. Clouds were torn to shreds. The climate remained mild inside the auto. Carl and Donna sat close, elbows all but touching. Pilotless planes, controlled from Diyarbakir, screamed overhead, low to the ground. Higher overhead, they occasionally saw the heavyweight BWA, the Broad Wing Aircraft that also kept up a continuous patrol.
“It’s like living in a sci-fi dream,” Carl remarked to Donna.
They passed the ruins of a village that had been demolished to make way for the pipeline. Only a minaret remained standing, a sentinel to a vanished way of life.
As the landscape grew wilder, dusk became thicker. When night encompassed the solitary vehicle, Carl followed an old life-saving habit, lowered his seat, opaqued the windows and went to sleep.
Once he was soundly asleep, Donna deopaqued the windows again to watch an electric storm over the mountains ahead. No thunder accompanied the flashes. Great sheets of lightning appeared and disappeared silently, ghosts of the stratosphere. Their reflected light ran off the sides of the pipeline armor like water spray.
She too slept, waking when the hitherto unnoticed tone of the auto changed. The car traveled on electromagnetic force; although it was without wheels, a new resonance suggested new conditions.
From the windows, Donna saw a glitter of water on both sides far below them. The sky had cleared. The night was now comparatively cloudless, and a crescent moon shone on the water. She woke Carl.
“Where are we? What’s this?”
He glanced at the auto map to confirm his understanding.
“We’re crossing Lake Urmia. It’s a lovely spot, about forty miles wide in places. Lots of geese and water birds here.”
“We’re crossing on a bridge, are we?”
He heard the nervousness in her voice, and was surprised.
“Yes, we’ve just avoided a high mountain. I forget its name. Some people would say we were in the middle of nowhere.”
“But I can see lights down below. A long way down there!” She was half-standing, to peer below the bridge.
“The people down there are also in the middle of nowhere, even if they don’t realize it. There are quite a few islands in the lake. Relax, Donna!”
To calm her, he said, “I went fishing with Ling off one of the islands, once, in the early stages of construction. The supports of this bridge are founded on some of those islands. The people got paid for the disruption to their lives. They went and built a new mosque with the money, instead of a new hospital. They think like that.”
“So we are still in Iran, or where?”
He was looking down at the village lights, small below, remembering the immense pike he and Ling had caught. They had spitted it, cooked it over their fire, and ate it. He remembered the taste of it.
“We’re traveling a dramatic stretch of northern Iran. Some way to our north there’s Azerbaijan and Armenia. It’s earthquake country. The Suoyue runs on shock absorbers over this stretch.”
Donna remarked that for once she could see the ribbon of the parallel road running eastward.
He said that the roads here were built on separate bridges for safety reasons.
She fell silent, perhaps awed by the magnitude of the engineering feat that had built Suoyue. Nor was she unaware of the years of political discussion, contrivance, and bribery that had gone into the groundwork before building started. The pipeline project had ruined her life and her family’s. Only when China had signed on to play a major role in the construction had the consortium Butterfield-Chou-Wolff gained the financial incentive to function.
Her family had been one of those that lost out in the wheeler-dealing. Donna’s father, Awal al-Khaddari, had lost his home and his business and had committed suicide. Donna had had to work for the negotiators throughout the desperate years, and had gone to bed with some of them, in order to keep her family in bread.
The structure, despite furious Arab protests, was hailed as a great advance in world trade. It was touted as a unifying force, whatever had happened to Donna’s and other families. Still the West remained worried about Chinese motives. Some things never changed.
The car was slowing. They were moving through dense forest. The replay on the auto map showed that they had passed along the northern frontiers of Iraq. Barriers protecting the pipeline road itself had gone down when they crossed the next national frontier. They were now about to enter Diyarbakir.
Turkey had become a member country of the European Community some years ago, despite its murky reputation regarding human rights. The feeling was inescapable that they were now in more friendly territory. Turkey was a secular state, despite its numerous Muslim inhabitants. So it had been since the day of Kemal Attaturk.
But at the feed road, when they slotted their biometricards into the gate computer, the gate did not open. Carl spoke over the phone.
“Please be patient. Please remain where you are,” said a recorded message. “Your needs will be attended to as soon as possible.”
“Oh shit,” Carl exclaimed. “A certain lack of information there....”
“There’s a problem.... “Donna was increasingly nervous.
Above them, the armor-encased pipe ran into the base of a towering metal structure as big as an aircraft carrier. Diyarbakir was the last and largest pumping station before Suoyue ended its monstrous length at the new Turkish terminus port of Mersin.
Three police on armored motorbikes appeared, sirens screaming. They wore blue helmets. They halted on the other side of the gate and the lead police officer spoke over the barrier. Carl showed his identification.
The officer apologized with more formality than warmth.
“What’s the problem?” Carl asked.
“A strike twenty-five kilometers from here, sir. The road’s out.”
“How’s that?”
“Shell or mortar fire. Maybe nuclear. One of these Islamic terrorist groups.”
“Bastards!”
The officer ignored the remark. He had other problems. “You have to wait here for a while.”
“Take me to Chief of Suoyue Police, Tinkja Gabriel.”
The mention of the Police Chief produced smart action. Carl and Donna were escorted immediately into the fortress. The very name of Tinkja Gabriel was a passport. Carl said to Donna, “I’ll be a while with Tinkja. Can you keep yourself amused?”
“I’ll try.” She gave him a sly contemplative smile. Carl had once had a brief but passionate affair with Tinkja. Donna, he knew, had a cousin in Diyarbakir, working in the Logistics Division. Under all the militaristic activity of the project lay human affection, human relationships, human need.
They parted. Carl took an elevator to the police control tower. He was stopped and body-searched before getting into the express elevator and when leaving it on the ninety-first floor—as if he could have made himself a bomb on the way up.
As he entered the great circular office, he saw Tinkja immediately, and drank in her appearance, her long dark hair swept back and knotted at the nape of her slender neck, her high-nosed hawkish profile. She was wearing a khaki uniform, looking severe, leaning slightly forward to speak into a microphone, despite the body mike dangling round her elegant neck. She saw him immediately. Her dark eyes flashed. She gestured toward her inner office. She went on talking.
The room was crowded. People at desks spoke quietly to their screens, machines clattered. On one wall was an electronic map of the entire Suoyue with its sweep of roads, from Ashkabad to Mersin on the northeastern corner of the Mediterranean. LCDs indicated the whereabouts of items of traffic, of the pilotless strike planes and of the BWA drifting above the pipeline.
He waited in Tinkja’s office. Tinkja was an Israeli of German-Romanian extraction, with royal blood on the Romanian side. Carl and she had met in France, when he was seconded to an EU architectural partnership. They had fallen in love and taken a brief—all too brief!—holiday in the Auverne. Never had conversation, never had love-making, been sweeter. A time of unbelievable empathy. Never had he been so close to another human being. Carl allowed himself to recall those times as he looked about the room. It was in apple pie order. On one wall hung two framed lines of verse from a poem called “Gates of Damascus”:
Postern of Fate, the Desert Gate, Disaster’s Cavern, Fort of Fear,
The Portal of Baghdad am I, the Doorway of Diyarbekir
He smiled to himself. He had once claimed that this was the only occasion Diyarbekir had been mentioned in English poetry. Evidently Tinkja had not forgotten.
From the window, the great forward organizations of the revolutionary Suoyue project could be seen. Miles of barracks and stores and yards and linking roads contained moving vehicles and personnel. A nearby services restaurant flew the flags of many nations. More distantly, a newly built railway linked the center with distant Angora, the Turkish capital.
Tinkja entered the room briskly. “Sometimes I could nuke Washington,” she said. She spoke as if she had only just left the room and Carl Roddard.
By way of greeting, she went to Carl, shook his jacket roughly, clasped him, snapped a smile, and then turned away.
She stalked over to a speaker system and said, “Hospital Emergency Service. Ron Habland, report to me please. Ron Habland.” Then she looked at Carl, arms folded across her chest, her tense expression relaxing only slightly.
“I hear the road has been blown,” he said, in an equally no-nonsense way. “How did that happen?”
“We want to know who blew it,” she said. “The strike occurred only at 13.05 hours. I have no time to stand here and chat, sorry. Washington is already bleating. Beijing will be next.”
He glanced at his watchputer. It was 15.15. “Can I help?”
“Of course not.” She said again, as if to herself, “We must know who blew it. There’s no Arab nation that doesn’t hate the Suoyue. Or it could be a local group of disaffected Turks, displaced by the pipeline. Or the damned Kurd dissidents. We have to know what we’re up against.”
Carl said, “We’re up against most of the men in the Middle East. So, the road’s already being rebuilt?”
“Whoever they were, they had possession of field nuclear weapons. Yeah, they’re fixing your precious road.”
An arbitrary tap at the door and a small man with well-greased hair, wearing green coveralls, came in. This was Ron Habland from the hospital emergency services. “Ron runs the morgue,” she said in a brusque aside to Carl. She did not make an introduction.
Habland regarded Carl suspiciously. In fact, Carl had met Habland two years ago, in Ashkabad, but the man failed to recognize him, so tense was he. He bore the not unfamiliar air of those who thought that, in a region that had never known democracy, no one could be trusted.
Tinkja addressed the grim-faced newcomer. “Ron, you probably know already that one of our pilotless planes immediately strafed the terrorists. They were up in the hills, not a kilometer away. It’s too bad. We needed at least one of them alive for questioning.”
“Those planes are too damn efficient,” said Ron. “We need troops on the ground. Even Spanish troops would do.”
He pulled a face and turned a thumb down.
“I need you to get a contingent to go and collect up anything you can find of their bodies or parts of bodies. Toes, even. Legs. Heads. Clothing. Weapons. Support gear. The route they came from. Anything they dropped on the way. Go with the contingent.”
“Glad to,” said Ron, with a slight bow.
“Anything you can find. Back here soonest.”
He said, “Once the oil starts to flow, the Arabs can go back to their lousy camels.”
“My sentiments exactly.” Tinkja gave Ron a grin as he departed, before she turned to switch over a TV screen.
“A bitter little man,” she commented. “Lost a leg three years back, though you wouldn’t think so to look at him.”
“I’d think he was on the brink of a breakdown.”
“Let’s hope not today....”
Looking over Tinkja’s shoulder, Carl saw the scene at the damaged road, filmed from one of the satellites. A missile crater was surrounded by rubble and twisted metal for a distance of perhaps two miles. Wrecking and repair vehicles were already at work, clearing the site, re-laying foundations. The pipeline and its casing appeared to be unharmed.
“At least they missed the pipeline.”
She said, “Yeah, that’s what they would have aimed for. The shits probably believe that oil is already coming through.... Now I have to call Beijing. Sorry, Carl, I have no time for you. You better scram.”
“Okay.” He thought, She’s glad to have an excuse. Of course she has another lover by now. She would never be without a man for long, not a woman like this. He sighed. At least she had once been his. And he hers.
“Your road will be fixed soonest—open again maybe by eighteen hours. Not too much delay. ‘Bye.” She turned and began to make her Beijing call. Carl quit without saying good-bye.
It was 15.50. As Carl approached his auto, Donna emerged from a nearby archway, accompanied by a dark slender man in a worn grey suit. Carl was immediately alert at the sight of a stranger. This stranger, though seemingly young, had a deeply lined face. He wore a thin black moustache over thin lips.
Donna was neatly dressed and composed, although there was something about her body language Carl mistrusted.
He said as she approached, “You’ve heard about the strike on the road. Why do they hate us so much?” She made no answer to his remark.
“You look like shit. What’s up, apart from the road?”
It was not the sort of comment she usually dared to make.
“Oh, the past—the past remains. Who’s this with you?”
They were having one of their conversations....
As she gave a half-smile, her teeth very white in her black face. “He doesn’t have a name, Carl.”
The thin man came close and stuck a gun in Carl’s ribs.
Subdued Chinese music played somewhere in the background.
Carl delivered a swift knee to the man’s testicles, but the man was alert, chopping the knee down. He gave a hard jab with his free hand to Carl’s midriff, which winded him with pain. It was hard to credit that this was happening in the police precinct. A previous thought came back to him: in a region that had never known democracy, no one could be trusted. At some level there was police connivance involved here.
“Walk!” the thin man commanded.
As they went toward the side of the building, Carl looked about for CCTV. The nearest camera was plastered over with spray paint, still dripping. Then they were round the corner.
Still breathless, he asked Donna, “This is your cousin? What do you hope to get out of this?”
“Shut up and walk,” she said.
The thin man punched Carl again. “You, fucker, you give Ziviad Haydor to the enemy, to your fucking friend Firadzov. Now you pay.”
They were walking fast. It was hard to believe that this had happened in the police precinct.
Cops were everywhere, mainly men hurrying to get into wheeled cars. There was a crisis on the pipeline road. So the thin man and his prisoner slipped away. No one took any notice of them.
They reached a fast road crossing. On the other side, Carl was pushed into a tall building with an ancient crumbling façade. Sweet smell, not pleasant, greeted them inside. They started down a flight of steps, some rather broken. Carl turned suddenly, striking the thin man across the face with a violent blow.
The gun went off. The bullet whistled past Carl’s ear. Donna chopped him across the neck with a sharp blow from the edge of her hand. He fell, and went tumbling down the remaining steps.
They were after him and on him. They hit and kicked him, cursing in their own language.
He was then frogmarched down a stone corridor. A side door was unlocked and he was kicked into darkness, so savagely that he sprawled on a damp and filthy floor. The door slammed behind him.
Carl lay there, groaning and breathing hard. After a while, he pulled himself up and leaned against a wall.
As his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness, he saw there was a choked grey light filtering from a grating in the corner of the cell. Calming his breathing, he listened. Someone or something was breathing nearby.
He moved. The cell was larger than he had at first assumed. In the far corner, away from the light, a man was hanging.
Cautiously, Carl stepped nearer.
“Hello!”
There was no reply, but the man raised his head slightly.
Carl now saw that he was suspended by his wrists by ropes attached to steel rings set in the stone ceiling.
“How long have you been here like this?”
The answer came faintly in a foreign tongue.
“You poor bugger, hang on and I’ll get you down.”
In their rage and anxiety, Donna and her cousin had not searched him. He drew the knife from the sheath strapped to his lower leg and, reaching upward, sliced through the ropes.
He caught the body as it fell, to lower it gently to the floor. He knelt by it. He gently massaged the injured wrists.
Again the man muttered something.
As Carl sheathed his knife, he reassured the man as best he could. The poor fellow had been forced to relieve himself and stank.
An idea struck him. He peeled off his outer jacket and forced the injured man into it. Taking the man by his shoulders, he dragged him into the darkest corner and propped him sitting against the wall. He then stood waiting alertly by the two severed ropes.
The minutes crawled by. His resolution did not fail. When he heard footsteps in the corridor outside, he leapt up and seized the ropes in his two hands. As the cell door was opened, he hung his head as if unconscious.
It was the thin man, Donna’s cousin, who had entered. He grunted as he took in the recumbent figure, before turning his attention to the hanging man. He came closer.
Carl threw himself on his captor. They fell together, the cousin striking his head on the floor. Carl slammed it again against the stone slabs. The cousin did not move.
With a quick look into the corridor, where a guard of some kind stood distantly, Carl dragged the unconscious man to a position under the grill in the wall. By standing on his chest, he could now gain leverage on the grill. Fragments of rust came away in his hands. He heaved and felt a slight movement.
“Rotten—like everything else in this damned place,” he said to himself.
He pushed hard, and pushed again. One of the bars crumbled away. He rattled the grating. It gave. He heaved it to one side. Clasping the sides of the hole, he made a mighty effort and heaved himself up into daylight. Once he had an elbow on the ground, he knew he had made it.
Another struggle, kicks against the inner wall, and he was free.
Breathing heavily, he stood up, having to lean for a moment against an ivy-clad wall to look about him.
He was in a neglected courtyard. Brambles and other weeds sprouted from among flagstones. At one end of the courtyard was a wrought iron gate, through which uniformed men could be seen. Ducking low, Carl sprinted to the opposite wall. He clutched at a thick woody stem of ivy and hauled himself up. Beyond the wall was a busy street with shops, restaurants, and a cinema. Many men, the majority wearing robes, strolled about, indolent in the heat.
Carl dropped down onto the road, picked himself up and walked rapidly away. His plan was to enter a restaurant and there call Tinkja—until he realized he was covered in filth, picked up from the floor of the prison cell.
As he was walking rapidly to the end of the street, a taxi eased slowly beside him, a decrepit old vehicle with a turbaned Sikh at the wheel.
“Taxi, sah?”
He trusted no one in Dyarbekir, but there seemed nothing for it but to get in. Besides which, he liked and trusted Sikhs and their religion. He climbed into the back of the vehicle and told the man to take him to police H.Q.
“I will leave you by the gate, sah.”
As he paid off the taxi driver in dollars, two black police cars came roaring from the yard and drove away down the road the taxi had taken.
He called Tinkja from reception. “I need a wash and some clothes.”
She sounded surprised. “You are still in the dissident prison.”
“No I’m not.”
“I sent cars for you.”
“I’m here in your reception area. How did you know about the prison anyway?”
She explained that she had planted a bug on him earlier, afraid he might meet with trouble. It was on his jacket, sticking like a burr. The jacket remained in the cell.
“I don’t do this for everyone,” she said. “But come on up.”
Now the crisis on the wrecked highway was under control, the elegant Tinkja actually escorted him in his new clothes down to where his auto was parked. She blew him a kiss with her neat, leathery hand.
“Don’t come back, Carl, okay?”
“You could say life is rather like a long long road,” he said lightly, as he climbed into the car.
“Except you can repair a long long road,” she said. Carl let her have the last word.
There were indications that the architect’s car had been searched. A rear-view mirror had been deflected, a seat had been reoriented. The revolver was still in place. There was also an elusive scent, which Carl recognized as coming from a fingerprint spray.
It was all a safety precaution, part of the life they led. He thought nothing of it. Trust was not in it. Once he had fed in his biometricard, the car moved slowly along the feed road to the pipeline highway. Still it ran slowly. Power had been reduced. He was traveling at fifty m.p.h.
At about Denghuo (or Station) Thirty—lights blazing because there was a drab overcast—the helicopters started hovering. They were painted wasp-colored: Chinese Suoyue Military. The auto moved still more slowly. Intense activity ahead. Gathered around a fair-sized crater demolishing the stretch of the road were huge BCW excavators, construction units, cranes, concrete-sprouters, and other vehicles, among which wheeled cars moved like beetles. Emergency cabins had been erected. On a mountain to the south of this activity there was also movement. Tanks had been called in, plus a large number of military personnel in a variety of colored helmets.
Carl stopped the vehicle. He took binoculars from the front locker and was about to get out when the machine said, “Do not leave your vehicle, Carl Roddard!”
But he did leave it.
Barely had he raised the glasses to his eyes, than a siren sounded and an armored vehicle came howling up. A Chinese captain jumped from it before it had stopped and came at Carl in a run, leveled carbine aimed at him.
“Hold it!” said Carl. He half-raised his hands. “I’m Architect-in-Chief of this entire road, Dr. Carl Roddard.”
The captain’s hostility was not relaxed. Still pointing the weapon, he said, “I don’t care who you are, sir, get back in your car!”
“Hey, I have every right to—”
“You have no right. Please get back in car fast!”
Increasingly angry, Carl said, “Lower your fucking gun, will you? I want to speak to your—”
“This is military area.” He came close, prodding Carl with the muzzle of his gun. “Please return into your car fast and right now.”
Carl did as he was told.
The captain became less confrontational. Staring down at Carl, he said, “Is radioactivity here. I want see your biometric details. Where is young lady you had earlier?”
“Locked up by now, I’d guess. Back in Dyarbekir.”
Carl handed over his card for inspection. the captain scrutinized it for several seconds, before processing it through a hand-held checker. He nodded, handed it back. When he spoke again, his tone was more moderate.
“We have an accident here. The road is down. You must go by temporary road. You will follow this military vehicle along. Do not deviate.” He indicated a car just behind his car.
“Follow? For how far?”
The captain managed a rictus of a smile. He slung his carbine over a shoulder. “Not too far. Do not attempt to deviate. Then you get back on the proper Suoyue road. Other people coming here we turn away. You officials are lucky.”
“What, you mean lucky to be nearly fucking shot?”
“Get on your way, sir. Never lose your temper.”
The captain nodded curtly, and returned to his vehicle. A second vehicle pulled out and signaled Carl should follow. A large red sign on its rear announced LEADER VEHICLE, just so there should be no mistake. Carl followed.
The leader vehicle led on to an improvised road, which skirted the disaster site in a wide bow. Carl watched guys in radiation suits climbing from the crater. No doubt they checked on the kind of missile that had been fired, on its composition and where it has been manufactured.
They had to halt. A signal was against them. The driver of the other vehicle came back and had a word with Carl, seeming curious about him.
Carl said to the newcomer, “We may be witnessing the beginning, not the end, of a crisis. This bunch of terrorists got themselves killed. You can bet others will come along.”
“Just as well you’re going on leave, then,” replied the man.
“What do you know about that?”
“It’s not only oil that travels along this here pipeline.” He added that he had been told Carl would meet a reception when he arrived at the terminal in Mersin.
The Go signal came through.
It was a slow ride. Night was coming on. But once they left the site of the nuclear strike behind, the Leader Vehicle brought Carl back to the proper highway. The driver gave him a cheerful wave and departed back the way he had come.
Ordinary civilian police directed him onto the pipeline road. Once again he was speeding through Turkey westward. Now there were military patrol cars parked or bumping along beside the highway.
* * * *
Carl stared out indifferently at the barren landscape. Beggars, ragged men and women, gesticulated to him or simply stood inert, some holding out begging bowls.
“Fat chance you’ve got!” Carl exclaimed. Yet Turkey had benefited greatly from joining the EU; of course, that would apply only to the big cities.
An ambulance was loading a prostrate woman and baby on a stretcher into the rear of the vehicle. Then he had flashed past. The tiny cameo of drama and fate was lost far behind. In no time, they were approaching a well-lit bridge. Together with the pipeline, they crossed the youthful River Firat, once known as the Euphrates.
In just over three hours, Carl’s auto descended to Turkey’s southern coastal plain. The waters of the Mediterranean appeared, flat, faintly gleaming. From here on to its terminus at Mersin, the great armored pipeline ran on reinforced stilts, and the two motorways, the eastbound and the westbound, ran together in parallel.
The newly constructed airport was at Mersin, on the outskirts of the growing city. This was where the great thousand-mile thrust of metal ended. Carl would soon be seeing his ex-wife again; that matter would certainly need some sorting out. Either she would see sense or she wouldn’t.
Although it was midnight, Mersin was still extremely busy, preparing for the moment when the pumping station began operations and Central Asian oil began to pour into waiting Western tankers, to quench the inexhaustible Western thirst for oil and more oil.
He climbed from the car. He could see an Allied American plane gleaming under searchlights on the runway. The Stars & Stripes were flying. They were symbols of home. An official welcoming party clustered behind the barrier, waiting for him, holding flags and placards. One placard read, “LESSEPS WAS A PIKER COMPARED TO U.” He felt only fatigue, not elation. He had had a job to do. Another job lay ahead.
As he approached the crowd, a woman called out shrilly, “Come back safe, Carl.”
He gave her a grin. A nice-looking young woman.
She clutched his arm as he pushed by. Perhaps she sensed his skepticism. “Maybe things will be better when you return.”
He grinned into her smiling face and said, “And by then, if I can quote a friend, ‘The Arabs may be going back to their lousy camels.’”

Copyright © 2005 by Brian Aldiss.