Life in the West. Brian Aldiss

along the fast Nicholl Highway in dense traffic. The sun is going down. The city lies in front of us, suddenly insubstantial as sunset brightens behind it.

      1

      The International Congress

      Ermalpa, September 1978

      Two men were walking in Mediterranean sunlight only four blocks from their hotel.

      An observer following behind them would have learnt much from their backs. One was a comparatively small-built man, with thick heels on his shoes to compensate for a lack of height. He was thin almost to the point of being emaciated, so that, as he talked, which he did with a wealth of gesture, his shoulder blades could be seen moving beneath his jacket like two ferrets working back and forth in a cage.

      He wore a brown suit with a faint yellow stripe, a neat suit light enough in weight for the climate, but somewhat worn. It was shiny round the seat. It was an expressive suit, the jacket flapping slightly as its owner vigorously demonstrated a point, or looked up sharply laughing, to see if his companion was also enjoying the joke. This sideways glance would have enabled an observer to catch a glimpse of a thin yellowish cheek belonging to a man slightly on the shady side of forty, and a neat beard shot through with grey.

      The feature that announced the man in most companies, however, was his flow of copper hair. As if to compensate for the meagreness of his stature, the colourlessness of his cheek, his hair blazed. He wore it amply, down to his collar. In the sixties, it had trailed considerably further down his backbone. Now as then, it showed no white hairs.

      The hands, when they appeared, were small and sharp, more useful in debate than games. They were the chief illustrators of gesture, and scattered words rather than spreading them evenly. Their possessor was a Frenchman by the name of Jacques d’Exiteuil, the chairman of the conference.

      D’Exiteuil’s companion was taller and more solidly built than he, and stooped slightly, although he was at present walking briskly and with relish, smiling and nodding his head in a genial manner at d’Exiteuil’s remarks. The observer would not have seen a slight developing paunch, although he would certainly have noticed the bald spot below the crown of the head. The surrounding hair was decidedly sandy, with a crisp dry curl to it. The white hairs in it were no more plentiful than d’Exiteuil’s, though the latter was the younger of the two men by some eight or nine years.

      The taller man wore slacks of light brown colour and fashionable cut, with a neat Scandinavian canvas jacket patterned with vertical stripes of red, brown, and white. The jacket fitted smoothly across strong shoulders. This man also gesticulated as he spoke, but his gestures, like his walk, were looser than his companion’s and less precisely aimed. When he turned his head, a powerful countenance was revealed, tanned of cheek, with heavy lines – not necessarily misanthropic – running from nose to chin, bracketing a full, square mouth.

      He was guest of honour at the conference, and he signed his cheques Thomas Squire or, more impressively, Thomas C. Squire.

      Although the scene and the city were strange to them, neither Squire nor d’Exiteuil paid much attention to their surroundings, beyond stepping out of the way of the occasional more aggressive pedestrian who refused to move out of their path. They were discussing the state of the world, each from his own point of view. Both had strong and opposed beliefs, and blunted some of the force of what they had to say in order to proceed without undue argument.

      The first day’s business of the conference was about to start. The two men worked in different disciplines. D’Exiteuil was primarily an academic, with a good position in the Humanities Faculty of the Sainte Beuve University in Paris. He and his wife Séverine d’Exiteuil had made several experimental films. Squire was a small landowner, a director of a London insurance firm, and an exponent of popular aesthetics. He had become something of a national hero in the late sixties, when he planned and executed the Hyde Park Pop Expo in London. For that spectacular event, he had received the CBE. His more recent television work had reinforced his success.

      The conference was d’Exiteuil’s brainchild.

      D’Exiteuil and Squire had known each other for many years. They corresponded irregularly and met occasionally – the previous New Year at Squire’s publisher’s home outside London, or at conferences or symposia, once in San Francisco, once in Stockholm, once in Poland, and twice in Paris.

      Though they were in some respects enemies, they shared close common interests. The Frenchman recognized in the Englishman knowledge and wit; the Englishman recognized in the Frenchman integrity and application. All these qualities both admired. Because they could also be useful to each other, they had discovered a way to talk to each other, which seemed, over the years, to function effectively.

      The relationship, while not a friendship, had proved more durable than many friendships, and was valued by both men.

      When they came to the bottom of the side street down which they had been progressing, they reached an entry to the harbour. Before them stood a low double wall, in the middle of which had been planted bedding plants and cacti. The two men stood by the wall, looking across at a desolate area which stretched between them and the water; it was given over mainly to cracked concrete, grass, and dull square concrete buildings left over from Cubist paintings. An old lorry moved slowly among cranes. In the distance were warehouses, wharves, warning notices. Then the sea, or a section of it, tamed by a confining wall which terminated in a lighthouse. Beyond that wall lay the Mediterranean.

      ‘Looks promising,’ Squire said.

      ‘I don’t mind sitting on a beach with a book,’ d’Exiteuil said, ‘but I can’t bear going on or in the sea. Are you a yachtsman?’

      ‘Not really, but I did once sail right round Sicily with a couple of friends. I wouldn’t mind doing it again. Shall we go and stand at the water’s edge?’

      D’Exiteuil looked smartly at his wrist watch.

      ‘We’d better go back to the hotel. It is fourteen minutes to nine o’clock. You and I have to set a good international example, Tom. On the first day, if not later.’ His English was fluent and almost without accent.

      ‘As you say.’ A headland crowned with palm trees stretched out into the sea to one side of the harbour, and there a white sail could be seen.

      As they turned away, a boy ran up carrying newspapers. D’Exiteuil bought a copy and scanned the front page.

      ‘The Pope sends a message to the peoples of Poland.’ He ran a finger further down the page. ‘Scientists forecast 20,000 cool years ahead. The glaciers retreated to their present positions about 11,000 years ago, but now the cooling is beginning again. During the next 20,000 years, we can expect that considerable depths of ice will build up over the Northern Hemisphere. They could reach as far south as Milan. The cause is irregularities in the Earth’s orbit.’

      He looked up, grinning.

      ‘So says Oggi in Ermalpa. It means the end of England.’

      ‘Yes, and France. Not a political collapse but a geophysical one.’

      They walked briskly up a side street, where men in aprons were sweeping shop fronts, brushing water into the gutter. The first side street they had tried was entirely blocked by parked Fiats, beached like whales on either pavement as well as down the centre of the roadway. The street they were traversing held a mixture of offices, apartments, shops, and a restaurant or two. Outside one of the restaurants, men in shirt-sleeves were unloading containers of fish from a cart. They paused to allow the two visitors to pass.

      The top of the street formed an intersection with the broad Via Milano. The Via Milano divided its opposing traffic flows with narrow islands of green on which palm trees grew. Traffic was thick at this hour.

      A short distance along on the other side of the road, the Grand Hotel Marittimo faced them. It had a heavy facade of lichenous stone, with a high portico imitating a grander structure. It was set back only slightly from the uproar of the road. Despite its name, it offered its guests no glimpse of the sea from its old-fashioned bedroom