Текст книги "Rage"

Автор книги: Wilbur Smith

Соавторы: Wilbur Smith
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So she rose. 'You know how I feel, we don't have to discuss it. I'm going to bed. Excuse me." 'Yes, of course." He stood up courteously. 'I'll be working for the next few hours. I have to go over my notes for my meeting with Littleton and his team tomorrow afternoon, so don't worry about me." Tara checked that Isabella was in her room and asleep, before went to her suite and locked the door. She changed out of her lc dress and jewellery into jeans and a dark sweater, then she made cannabis cigarette and while she smoked it, she waited fifteen minu by her watch for Shasa to settle down to his work. Then she switch off her lights. She dropped the cigarette butt into the toilet a: flushed it away, before she let herself into the passage once ago locking her suite against the unlikely chance that Shasa might cot up to look for her. Then she went down the back stairs.

As she crossed the wide stoep, keeping against the wall, staying the shadows and moving silently, a telephone rang in the libra wing and she froze involuntarily, her heart jarring her ribs. Then s] realized that the telephone must be Shasa's private line, and she w, about to move on, when she heard his voice. Although the curtail were drawn› the windows of his study were open and she could s.

the shadow of his head against the drapes.

'Kitty!" he said. 'Kitty Godolphin, you little witch. I should ha guessed that you'd be here." The name startled Tara, and brought back harrowing memorie but she could not resist the temptation to creep closer to the curtaine window.

'You always follow the smell of blood, don't you?" Shasa said, an chuckled at her reply.

'Where are you? The Nellie." The Mount Nelson was simply th best hotel in Cape Town. 'And what are you doing now – I meal right this moment? Yes, I know it's two o'clock in the morning, bu any time is a good time – you told me that yourself a long time ago It will take me half an hour to get there. Whatever else you do, don' start without me." He hung up and she saw his shadow on the curtaiI as he stood up from his desk.

She ran to the end of the long stoep and jumped down into th hydrangea bed and crouched'in the bushes. Within a few minute, Shasa came out of the side door. He had a dark overcoat over his smoking-jacket. He went down to the garages and drove away in the Jaguar. Even in his haste he drove slowly through the vineyards so as not to blow dust on his precious grapes, and, watching the headlights disappear, Tara hated him as much as she ever had. She thought that she should have grown accustomed to his philandering, but he was like a torn cat in rut – no woman was safe from him, and his moral outrage against Sean, his own son, for the same behaviour, had been ludicrous.

Kitty Godolphin – she cast her mind back to their first meeting and the television reporter's reaction to the mention of Shasa's name and now the reason for it became clear.

'Oh God, I hate him so. He is totally without conscience or pity.

He deserves to die!" She said it aloud, and then clapped her hand over her mouth. 'I shouldn't have said it, but it is true! He deserves to die and I deserve to be free of him – free to go to Moses and my child." She rose out of the hydrangea bushes, brushed the clinging soil from her jeans and crossed the lawns quickly. The moon was in its first quarter, but bright enough to throw her shadow in front of her, and she entered the vineyard with relief and hurried down the rows of vines that were heavy with leaf and grape. She skirted the winery and the stables and reached the servants' cottages.

She had placed Moses in the room at the end of the second row of cottages and his window faced out on to the vineyard. She tapped on his window and his response was almost immediate; she knew he slept as lightly as a wild cat. 'It's me,' she whispered.

'Wait,' he said. 'I will open the door." He loomed in the doorway, naked except for a pair of white shorts, and his body shone in the moonlight like wet tar.

'You are foolish to come here,' he said, and taking her arm drew her into the single room. 'You are putting everything at risk." 'Moses, please, listen to me. I had to tell you. It cannot be tomorrow." He stared at her contemptuously. 'You were never a true daughter of the revolution." 'No, no, I am true, and I love you enough to do anything, but they have changed the arrangements. They will not use the chamber where you have set the charge. They will meet in the parliamentary dining-room." He stared at her a second longer, then he turned and went to the narrow built-in cupboard at the head of his bed and began to dress in his uniform.

'What are you going to dot she asked.

'I have to warn the others – they also are in danger." 'What others'?." she asked. 'I did not know there were others." 'You know only what you have to know,' he told her curtly. 'I must use the Chev – is it safe?" 'Yes, Shasa is not here. He has gone out. Can I come with you."?" 'Are you mad?" he asked. 'If the police find a black man and a white woman together at this time of night–' he did not finish the sentence. 'You must go back to the house and make a phone call.

Here is the number. A woman will answer, and you will say only "Cheetah is coming – he will be there in thirty minutes." That is all you will say and then you will hang up." Moses threaded the Chev through the maze of narrow streets c District Six, the old Malay quarter. During the day this was colourful and thriving community of small stores and businesse..

General dealers and tailors and tinsmiths and halaal butcherk occupied the ground-floor shops of the decrepit Victorian building while from the cast-iron fretwork of the open balconies above him a festival of drying laundry, and the convoluted streets were clarr.

orous with the cries of street vendors, the mournful horns of itinerar fishmongers and the laughter of children.

At nightfall the traders shuttered their premises and left the streel to the street gangs and the pimps and the prostitutes. Some of th more daring white revellers came here late at night, to listen to th jazz players in the crowded shebeens or to look for a pretty coloure, girl – more for the thrill of danger and discovery than for any physJ cal gratification.

Moses parked the Chev in a dark side street. On the wall were th graffiti that declared this the territory of the Rude Boys, one of th most notorious of the street gangs, and he waited only a few second before the first gang member materialized out of the shadows, all urchin with the body of a child and the face of a vicious old man.

'Look after it well,' Moses flipped him a silver shilling. 'If th tyres are slashed when I come back, I'll do the same for your back side." The child grinned at him evilly.

He climbed the dark and narrow staircase to the Vortex Club. t couple on the landing were copulating furtively but furiously agains the wall as Moses squeezed past. The white man turned his fac away but he never missed a beat.

At the door to the club somebody studied him briefly through th peephole and then let him enter. The long crowded room was haz with tobacco smoke and the sweet smell of cannabis. The clientel included the full spectrum from gang members in zoot suits an( wide ties to white men in dinNer-jackets. Only the women were all coloured.

Dollar Brand 'and his Quartet were playing a sweet soulful jaz and everybody was still and attentive. Nobody even looked up a Moses slipped down the side wall to the door at the far end, but th man guarding it recognized Moses and stood aside for him to enter In the backroom there was only one man sitting at a rounc gambling table under a green shaded light. There was a cigarette smouldering between his fingers, and his face was pale as putty, hi, eyes implacable dark pits.

'You are foolhardy to call a meeting now,' said Joe Cicero, 'with.

out good reason. All the preparations have been made. There is nothing more to discuss." 'I have good reason,' said Moses, and sat down on the empty chair, facing him across the baize-covered table.

Joe Cicero listened without expression, but when Moses finished, he pushed the lank hair off his forehead with the back of his hand.

Moses had learned to interpret that gesture as one of agitation.

'We cannot dismantle the escape route and then set it up again later. These things take time to arrange. The aircraft is already in position." It was an Aztec chartered from a company in Johannesburg, and the pilot was a lecturer in political philosophy at Witwatersrand University, the holder of a private pilot's licence and a secret member of the South African Communist Party.

'How long can he wait at the rendezvous?" Moses asked, and Cicero thought about it a moment.

'A week at the longest,' he replied.

The rendezvous was an unregistered airstrip on a large droughtstricken ranch in Namaqualand which was lying derelict, abandoned by the discouraged owner. From the airfield it was a four-hour flight to Bechuanaland, the British protectorate that lay against the northwestern .border of the Union of South Africa. Sanctuary had been arranged for Moses there, the beginning of the pipeline by which most political fugitives were channelled to the north.

'A week must be enough,' Moses said. 'Every hour increases the danger. At the very first occasion that we can be sure Verwoerd will take his seat again, I will do it." It was four o'clock in the morning before Moses left the Vortex Club and went down to where he had parked the Chev.

Kitty Godolphin sat in the centre of the bed, naked and crosslegged with all the shameless candour of a child.

In the years Shasa had known her, she had changed very little physically. Her body had matured slightly, her breasts had more weight to them and the tips had darkened. He could no longer make out the rack of her ribs beneath the smooth pale skin, but her buttocks were still lean as a boy's and her limbs coltishly long and slim.

Nor had she lost the air of guileless innocence, that aura of eternal youth which so contrasted with the cynical hardness of her gaze. She was telling him about the Congo. She had been there for the last five months and the material she had filmed would surely put her in line for her third Emmy and confirm her position as the most successful television journalist on the American networks. She was speaking in the breathless voice of an ingdnue.

'They caught these three Simba agents and tried them under th mango trees outside the burnt-out hospital, but by the time they ha sentenced them to death, the light was too bad for filming. I gave th commander my Rolex watch, and in return he postponed the executions until the sun was up the next morning so that Hank could filr It was the most incredible footage. The next morning they paraded th condemned men naked through the market-place and the local wome bargained for the various parts of their bodies. The Baluba have always been cannibals. When they had sold all three of them, they too] them down to the river and shot them, in the head, of course, so a not to damage the meat, and they butchered them there on the rive bank and the women queued up to claim their portions." She wa trying to shock him, and it irritated Shasa that she had succeeded.

'Where do you stand, my love?" he asked bitterly. 'One day yol are sympathetically interviewing Martin Luther King, and the nex you are portraying all the grossest savagery of Africa." She laughed, that throaty chuckle that always roused him. 'Ant the very next day I am recording the British imperialist makin bargains with your gang of bully boys while you stand with a loo on the neck of your slaves." 'Damn it, Kitty. What are you – what are you trying to do?" 'Capture reality,' she told him simply.

And when reality doesn't conform to your view of it, you bribe somebody with a Rolex watch to alter it." 'I've made you mad." She laughed delightedly, and he stood UlC from the bed and crossed to where he had thrown his clothes ovel the back of the chair. 'You look like a little boy when you sulk,' she called after him.

'It will be light in an hour. I have to get back home and change,' he said. 'I've got an appointment with my Imperialist slave-masters at eleven." 'Of course, you've got to be there to hear Supermac tell you how much he wants to buy your gold and diamonds – and he doesll't care whether they are dripping with the sweat and blood–' 'All right, sweetness,' he cut her off. 'That's enough for one night." He stepped into his trousers, and as he tucked in his shirt, he grinned at her. 'Why do I always pick screaming radical females?" 'You like the stimulation,' she suggested, but he shook his head, and reached for the velvet smoking-jacket.

'I prefer the loving – talking of which, when will I see you again?" 'Why, at eleven o'clock at the houses of parliament, of course.

I'll try to get you in the shot, you are so photogenic, darling." He went to the bed and stooped over her to kiss that angelic smile on her lips. 'I can never understand what I see in you,' he said.

He was still thinking of her as he went down to the hotel carpark and wiped the dew off the windshield of the Jaguar. It was amazing how she had been able so effortlessly to hold his interest over all these years. No other woman, except Tara, had ever done that. It was silly how good he felt when he had been with her. She could still drive him wild with erotic desire, her tricks still worked on him, and afterwards he felt elated and wonderfully alive – and, yes, he enjoyed arguing with her.

'God, I haven't closed my eyes all night, yet I feel like a Derby winner. I wonder if I am still in love with the little bitch." He took the Jaguar down the long palm-lined drive from the Mount Nelson Hotel. Considering the proposition and recalling his proposal of marriage and her outright rejection, he went out through the hotel gates and took the main road that skirted the old Malay quarter of District Six. He resisted the temptation to shoot the red of the traffic lights at the foot of Roeland Street. It was highly unlikely there would be other traffic at this time of the morning, but he braked dutifully and was startled when another vehicle shot out of the narrow cross street and turned in front of his bonnet.

It was a sea-green Chevrolet station wagon, and he didn't have to check the number plate to know that it was Tara's. The headlights of the Jaguar shone into the cab of the Chev and for an instant he had a full view of the driver. It was Tara's new chauffeur. He had seen him twice before, once at Weltevreden and once in the House of Assembly, but this time the driver was bare-headed and Shasa could see the full shape of his head.

As he had on both the previous occasions, Shasa had a strong sense of recognition. He had definitely met or known this man before, but the memory was eroded by time and quickly extinguished by his annoyance. The chauffeur was not permitted to use the Chev for his own private purposes, and yet here he was in the small hours of the morning driving around as though the vehicle belonged to him.

The Chev pulled away swiftly. The chauffeur had obviously recognized Shasa and the speed was proof of his guilt. Shasa's first instinct was to give chase and confront the man, but the traffic light was still red against him and while he waited for it to change, he had time to reflect. He was in too good a mood to spoil it with unpleasantness, besides which any confrontation at four in the morning would be undignified, and would inevitably lead to questions about his own presence at the same hour on the fringes of the city's notorious redlight area. There would be a better time and place to deal with the driver, and Shasa let him go, but he had neither forgiven nor forgotten.

Shasa parked the Jaguar in the garage at Weltevreden, and the green Chev was in its place at the end of the line of cars, betwee Garry's MG and Shasa's customized Land-Rover. As he passed i he laid his hand on the bonnet of the Chev and it was still hot, t metal ticking softly as it cooled. He nodded with satisfaction an went on up to the house, amused by the necessity to creep up to hid own suite like a burglar.

He still felt light and happy at breakfast and he hummed as loaded his plate with eggs and bacon from the silver chafing dish o the sideboard. He was the first one down but Garry was only minute behind him.

'The boss should always be the first man on the job, and tl last man off it,' he had taught Garry, and the boy had taken it t heart. 'No, no longer boy." Shasa corrected himself, as he studie Garry. His son was only an inch shorter than he was, but wid across the shoulders and heavier in the chest. Down the full lengt of the corridor Shasa had often heard him grunting over his hody building weights. Even though he had just shaved, Garry's jaw wa blue with beard that by evening would need the razor again, an despite the Brylcreem his hair was already springing up in unrul spikes.

He sat down beside Shasa, took a mouthful of his omelette an, immediately began talking shop. 'He just isn't up to the job an more, Pater. We need a younger man in that position, especiall with all the extra responsibility of the Silver River Mine coming o: stream." 'He has been with us twenty years, Garry,' Shasa said mildly.

'I'm not suggesting we shoot him, Dad. Just let him take his re tirement. He is almost seventy." 'Retirement will kill him." 'If he stays it will kill us." 'All right,' Shasa sighed. Garry was right, of course, the man hal outlived his usefulness. 'But I, will speak to him personally." 'Thanks, Dad." Garry's spectacles gleamed victoriously.

'Talking about the Silver River Mine, I have arranged for you to begin your stint up there just as soon as you have written your sup.

Garry spent more time at Centaine House than in his lecture room at business school. As a consequence, he was carrying one subjec for his Bachelor's degree in Commerce. He would write the supple mentary examination the following week and Shasa was sending bin up to work on the Silver River Mine for a year or two.

'After all, it has taken over from the old H'am now as th Company flagship. I want you to move more and more into th centre of things." He saw the glow of anticipation behind Garry'..

spectacles.

'Oh boy, am I looking forward to really starting work, after bashing the books all these dreary years." Michael came bursting breathlessly into the dining-room. 'Thank goodness, Pater, I thought I had missed you." 'Slow down, Mickey,' Shasa cautioned him. 'You'll burst a blood vessel. Have some breakfast." 'I'm not hungry this morning." Michael sat down opposite his father. 'I wanted to talk to you." 'Well, open fire then,' Shasa invited.

'Not here,' Michael demurred. 'I rather hoped we could talk in the gun room,' and all three of them looked grave. The gun room was only used on the most portentous occasions, and a request for a meeting in the gun room was not to be taken lightly.

Shasa glanced at his watch. 'Mickey, Harold Macmillan is addressing both houses–' 'I know, Pater, but this won't take long. Please, sir." The fact that Michael was calling him 'sir' underlined the seriousness of the request, but Shasa resented the deliberate timing.

Whenever Michael wanted to raise a contentious issue, he did so when Shasa's opportunity to respond was severely curtailed. The lad was as devious as his mother, whose child he indubitably was, spiritually as well as physically.

'Ten minutes, then,' Shasa agreed reluctantly. 'Will you excuse us please, Garry?" Shasa led the way down the passage and locked the gun-room door behind them.

'Very well." He took his usual place in front of the fireplace. 'What is it, my boy?" 'I've got a job, Dad." Michael was breathless again.

'A job. Yes, I know you have a part-time job as local stringer for the Mail. I enjoyed your report on the polo – in fact you read it to me. Very good it was,' Shasa grinned, 'all five lines of it." 'No, sir, I've got a full-time job. I spoke to the editor of the Mail and they have offered me a job as a cub reporter. I start the first of next month." Shasa's grin faded into a scowl. 'Damn it, Mickey. You can't be serious – what about your education? You have two more years to go at university." 'I am serious, sir. I will get my education on the paper." 'No,' Shasa raised his voice. 'No, I forbid it. I won't have you leaving university before you are capped." 'I'm sorry, sir. I've made up my mind." Michael was pale and trembling, yet he had that obstinate set expression that infuriated $hasa even more than the words – but he controlled himself.

'You know the rules,' Shasa said. 'I've made them clear to all of you. If you do things my way, there is no limit to the help I will giv you. If you go your own way, then you are on your own –' he too a breath, and then said it, surprised at how painful it was '– like Sean." God, how he still missed his eldest son.

'Yes, sir,' Michael nodded. 'I know the rules." 'Well?" 'I have to do it, Sir. There is nothing else I want to do with my lif I want to learn to write. I don't want to go against you, Pater, but simply have to do it." 'This is your mother's doing,' Shasa said coldly. 'She has put yo up to this,' he accused, and Michael looked sheepish.

'Mater knows about it,' he admitted, 'but it's my decision aloin sir." 'You understand that you will be forfeiting my support? You' not receive another penny from me once you leave this hous You'll have to live on the salary of a cub reporter." 'I understand, sir,' Michael nodded.

'All right, then, Michael. Off you go,' he said, and Michael looke.

stunned.

'Is that all, sir?" 'Unless you have some other announcement to make." 'No, sir." Michael's shoulders slumped. 'Except that I love yo very much, Pater, and I appreciate all that you have done for me." 'You have,' said Shasa, 'a most peculiar way of demonstratin that appreciation, if you don't mind me saying so." He went to th door.

He was halfway into the city, racing the Jaguar down the the highway between the university and Groote Schuur, before he re covered from his affront at Michael's disloyalty, for that is how Shas saw his son's decision. Now suddenly he began to think about news papers again. Publicly he had always disparaged the strange suicida impulse that gripped so manysuccessful men in their middle years t, own their own newspaper. It was notoriously difficult to milk a reason able profit from a newspaper, but in secret Shasa had felt th sneaking temptation to indulge in the same rich man's folly.

'Not much profit,' he mused aloud, 'but the power! To be able t, influence the minds of people!" In South Africa the English press was hysterically anti-government, while the Afrikaans press was fawningly and abjectly the slav of the National Party. A thinking man could trust neither.

'What about an English-language paper that was aimed at th, business community and politically uncommitted,' he wondered, a he had before. 'What if I were to buy one of the smaller weake papers and build it up? After the Silver River Mine's next dividend i declared, we are going to be sitting on a pile of money." Then he grinned. 'I must be getting senile, but at least I'll be able to guarantee a job for my drop-out journalist son!" And the idea of Michael as editor of a large influential newspaper had an increasing appeal, the longer he thought about it. Still, I wish the little blighter would get himself a decent education first,' he grumbled, but he had almost forgiven him for his treachery by the time he parked the Jaguar in the parking area reserved for cabinet ministers. 'Of course, I'll keep him on a decent allowance,' he decided. 'That threat was just a little bluff." A sense of excited expectation gripped the House as Shasa went up the stairs to the front entrance. The lobby was crowded with senators and members of parliament. The knots of dark-suited men formed and dissolved and re-formed, in the intricate play of political cross-currents that fascinated Shasa. As an insider he could read the significance of who was talking to whom and why.

It took him almost twenty minutes to reach the foot of the staircase for as one of the prime actors he was drawn inexorably into the subtle theatre of power and favour. At last he escaped and with only minutes to spare hurried up the stairs and down the passage to his suite.

Tricia was hovering anxiously. 'Oh, Mr Courtney, everybody is looking for you. Lord Littleton telephoned and the prime minister's secretary left a message." She was reading from her pad as she followed him into the inner office.

'Try to get the PM's secretary first, then Lord Littleton." Shasa sat at his desk, and frowned as he noticed some chalky white specks on his blotter. He brushed them away irritably, and would have given Tricia an order to speak to the cleaners, but she was still reading from her pad and he had less than an hour to tackle the main items on her list before the joint sitting began.

He dealt with the queries that Verwoerd's secretary had for him.

The answers were in his head and he did not have to refer to anybody in his department – and then Littleton was on the line. He wanted to discuss an addition to the agenda for their meeting that afternoon, and once they had agreed that, Shasa asked tactfully, 'Have you found out anything about the speeches this morning?" 'Afraid not, old man. I'm as much in the dark as you are." As Shasa reached across the desk to replace the receiver, he noticed another white speck of chalk on his blotter that had not been there a minute before; he was about to brush that away also, when he paused and looked up to see where it had come from. This time he scowled as he saw the small hole in his ceiling and the hair-line cracks around it. He pressed the switch on his intercom.

'Tricia, please come in here a moment." When she stood in the doorway, he pointed at the ceiling. 'What do you make of that?" Tricia looked mystified and came to stand beside his chair. They both peered at the damage.

'Oh, I know,' Tricia looked relieved, 'but I'm not supposed to tell you." 'Spit it out, woman!" Shasa ordered.

'Your wife, Mrs Courtney, said she was planning some renovations to your office as a surprise. I suppose she has asked Maintenance to do the work for her." 'Damn!" Shasa didn't like surprises which interfered with the comfortable tenor of his existence. He liked his office the way it was and he didn't want anybody, particularly anyone of Tara's avant garde taste, interfering with something that worked extremely well as it was.

'I think she is planning to change the curtains also,' Tricia added innocently. She didn't like Tara Courtney. She considered her shallow, insincere and scheming. She didn't approve of her disrespectful attitude to Shasa, and she wasn't above sowing a few seeds of dissension. If Shasa were free, there was just a chance, a very small and remote chance that he might see her clearly and realize just how much she, Tricia, felt for him, 'And she was talking about altering the light fittings,' she added.

Shasa jumped up from his desk and went to touch his curtains. He and Centaine had studied at least a hundred samples of fabric before choosing this one. Protectively he rearranged the drapes, and then he noticed the second hole in the ceiling and the thin insulated wire that protruded from it. He had difficulty controlling his fury in front of his secretary.

'You get on to Maintenance,' he instructed. 'Talk to Odendaal himself, not one of his workmen, and you tell him I want to know exactly what is going on. Tell him whatever it is, it's damned shoddy workmanship and that there is plaster all over my desk." Tll do that this morning,' Tricia promised, and then, placatingly, 'It's ten minutes to, Mr Courtney – you don't want to be late." Manfred De La Rey was just leaving his own office as Shasa came down'the passage, and they fell in side by side.

'Have you found out anything?" 'No – have you?" Manfred shook his head. 'It's too late anyway– nothing we can do now." Shasa saw Blaine Malcomess at the door of the dining-room and went to greet him. They filed into the panelled dining-room together.

'How is Mater?" 'Centaine is fine – looking forward to seeing you for dinner tomorrow evening." Centaine was holding a dinner party in Littleton's honour out at Rhodes Hill. 'I left her giving the chef a nervous breakdown." They laughed together and then found their seats in the front row of chairs. As minister and deputy leader of the opposition, they both warranted reserved seats.

Shasa swivelled in his seat and looked to the back of the large hall where the press cameras had been set up. He picked out Kitty Godolphin, looking tiny and girlish beside her camera crew, and she winked at him mischievously. Then the two prime ministers were taking their places at the top table and Shasa leaned across to Manfred De La Rey and murmured, 'I hope this isn't all a boo-ha over nothing – and that Supermac has really got something of interest to tell us." Manfred shrugged. 'Let's hope it isn't too exciting either,' he said.

'Sometimes it's safer to be bored –' but he broke off as the Speaker of the House called for silence and rose to introduce the prime minister of Great Britain and the packed room, filled with the most powerful men in the land, settled into attentive and expectant silence.

Even when Macmillan, tall and urbane and strangely benign in expression, rose to his feet, Shasa had no sense of being at the anvil while history was being forged and he crossed his arms over his chest and lowered his chin in the attitude of listening and concentration in which he followed all debate and argument.

Macmillan spoke in an unemotional voice, but with weight and lucidity, and his text had all the indications of having been carefully prepared, meticulously polished and rehearsed.

'The most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London a month ago,' he said, 'is the strength of this African national consciousness. In different places it may take different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact. Our national policies must take account of it." Shasa sat up straight and unfolded his arms, and around him there was a similar stirring of incredulity. It was only then that Shasa realized with a clairvoyant flash that the world he knew had altered its shape, that in the fabric of life that had held together their diverse nation for almost three hundred years, the first rent had been torn by a few simple words, a rent that could never be repaired. While he attempted to grasp the full extent of the damage, Macmillan was going on in those plummy measured tones.