DETECTIVES
- Episode 3
THE BANK
Sep left
Immalda's room well after
After he
woke up he tried to telephone Immalda but his Padzan cell phone didn't work in
Dibadi: the respective networks are not interconnected. There was an
old-fashioned black telephone set on the table, but it was useless to him. When
he tried to dial Immalda's number nothing happened. When he dialled zero, a
seemingly monolingual Dibadian-speaking woman answered the phone, and however
hard he tried he couldn't get her to understand what he said. After several
minutes he gave up, shaved and took a shower.
Then the
phone rang. It was Deisee, the diminutive cyborg interpreter.
"It's
"I
haven't had my breakfast yet, and I think that Immalda hasn't either" Sep
replied.
"Can I
have my breakfast with you and Immalda? I'm presently in the hotel lobby."
Sep
accepted. Ten minutes later the three of them were in the roomy self-service
restaurant on the second floor of the hotel, standing in line with dozens of
other clients waiting for their breakfasts.
"It
seems that everyone speaks Dibadian in this hotel" Sep said "Where
are the other foreign tourists?"
"It
isn't only a hotel" Deisee replied with a smile. "There are very few
foreigners here."
"If it
isn't only a hotel, what is it, then?"
"It's
a government-owned, cheap residence for newcomers in the city. They come with
little money and they stay here until they find a job. The residents pay a
daily or weekly amount for cold and hot water, electricity, telephone service,
and to have their rooms cleaned everyday. They also pay to have soap, towels
and toilet paper in their bathrooms. It's very cheap, as you'll notice. The
residence, which we call a hotel, earns a little money from occasional change
operations, the restaurant, and the shops in the lobby."
"Now I
understand why Budai wrote in his memoirs that he paid only thirty five ducats
for a week in a hotel, whereas a map of a portion of Dibadi was twelve ducats,
and a short trip in a cab was ten ducats!" Sep exclaimed.
"I've
read Budai's memoirs, too" Deisee said. "And I remember how he
eventually became a tramp. The militia and the police ignore the homeless until
there are too many of them and they become a public nuisance. Authorities react
when the number of homeless rises above one percent of the population. It
doesn't look like much, but it's a lot of people in a city as big as this one,
and since they are on the streets all the time they are very visible. The
militia and the police round up as many tramps and beggars as they can and send
them for life to internment camps in the countryside. Budai was lucky to be
rescued by a visiting Red Cross delegation. His life must have been terrible in
the camp, with all those human wrecks..."
"Dibadi
doesn't look so bad, especially in this century of scarcity" Sep said.
"Public housing and staple foods are extremely cheap. Health care and
primary education are free. I noticed that many people wear the same type of
cheap, brown clothes. I guess that those garments are subsidized by the
government. The only things that are truly expensive are those that are not
considered basic: books, maps, cars, cabs... Isn't that true?"
"Oh
yes, yes. Like health care, public housing is free in Dibadi. If you want something
better, a larger flat, or a house, you must give money for it. Similarly, if
you want state-of-the-art medical care, you must be able to afford it"
Deisee said.
She ate a
roll of bread, and then she spoke again:
"Sometimes,
the poor can't stand poverty anymore, and they go berserk. They riot. When the
police and the militia can't handle the situation, the cyborg army intervenes.
They are the soldiers with the white uniforms and the camouflaged helmets.
Hundreds or even thousands of people are arrested and sent to internment camps
after hasty trials."
"There
are affluent people in Dibadi" Sep objected. "All those cars
And
some houses look really nice."
"Oh
yes, Niemelaga is rich. We export electricity and food. We recycle the rest. We
keep the bulk of the population busy assembling the machines, cars and
appliances we import and giving them Dibadian brand names. That's why all the
makes of cars you see on the streets of Dibadi don't exist elsewhere. The
imported parts are assembled in Dibadian factories and the external appearance
of the cars is modified. Even cameras and computers are assembled in Dibadian
factories and given Niemelagan brand names, but the technology is foreign"
Deisee said.
Standard,
international breakfasts were available: tea, coffee, chocolate or milk with
bread, butter and several types of jam. Sep and Deisee took tea but Immalda,
who was still sleepy, took a large bowl of coffee. They paid with coins to the
cashier at the end of the line and took their trays to a round table, where
they sat.
Sep had
other questions to ask:
"In
his memoirs Budai wondered why in his hotel many people checked in but no one
seemed to check out."
Deisee
replied patiently:
"This
place and others like it aren't actually hotels, as I said. When people leave,
their luggage is taken to their new location by a removal company. In order not
to inconvenience the clients the removal men use the backdoors, not the front
door."
"My
coffee isn't too good" Immalda said. "It tastes as if the stuff grew
in a greenhouse."
"It
certainly grew in a greenhouse" Deisee said. "We grow all we can in
Niemelaga. We export food, we don't import any. People here enjoy the coffee
they can get. I prefer tea. It grows in greenhouses, too, but it tastes really
good with mint and a little milk."
"Deisee,
I wonder how, being a cyborg, you can eat and drink like us? Isn't your body
artificial?" As often when she was tired, Immalda was on the brink of
verbal clumsiness.
"Most
of my energy is stored in yeksooch batteries. I reload them by plugging an
electric cable in my body. But I am human, too, and I can socialize with
biological people by eating and drinking with them, which is an important part
of our social life. Some of the energy I use comes from food."
"How
is that possible?" Immalda asked.
"My
stomach is, as we say in Dibadian, a quatin mawich. A sexless, hairless,
legless, toothless, blind and deaf, nearly brainless animal, which is the
result of surgery and genetic manipulations. The quatin mawich enables me to
eat, drink, digest and excrete like a biological person. When it dies, I go to
a cyborg clinic to have it removed from my body before it rots and have a new
one inserted. When my quatin mawich is hungry or thirsty I feel it squirm
inside me and I hear its cries of anguish. When it is full up it groans and
purrs. Alcohol makes it snore. Several tubes are attached to the veins and
arteries of the quatin mawich to allow its blood to flow to fuel cells that
convert glucose and hydrogen to electricity, which I store in my yeksooch
batteries. After the blood flows in from the arteries to the fuel cells it
flows out again through the veins."
"Ah,
yes, I see" Immalda said. "But how can you taste food?"
"I
have electronic sensors in my nose and mouth. I also perceive my quatin
mawich's reactions. If the food is poisonous or truly indigestible the quatin
mawich will retch or writhe in pain."
"From
what animal is the quatin mawich derived?" Sep asked.
"The
rat, as far as I know, or some closely related species. Rats can eat everything
human beings can eat, and they can feed on things which would poison human
beings. Besides, they reproduce rapidly, which is essential to test the effects
of genetic manipulations" Deisee replied.
Sep and
Immalda could hardly believe their ears. They had never been in Niemelaga
before and although they had heard of the cyborgs they had never met one. Or,
rather, they had never met someone they knew was a cyborg. Short, elderly,
plain-looking, friendly Deisee Kashal was certainly not their idea of a member
of a half-human, half-machine ruling caste. She was only an interpreter for the
militia and her social status was visibly rather low.
When they
had finished their breakfasts Sep and Immalda went to Sep's room to fetch his
briefcase while Deisee waited in the lobby.
"I
feel like staying several days more" Sep said in the elevator.
"But I
don't, and I'm your boss" Immalda replied sullenly. "If you don't
resume your work in Padza when you're told to do so, that's dereliction of
duty, and you know what it means."
She kissed
him lightly on the lips. "Don't be a fool, darling" she said. "I
love you, and I'll give your career a boost. When we're back in Padza, you'll
have two women just for you: your girlfriend and me."
"I
intend to deposit my money here, in Dibadi" Sep whispered in her ear.
"Whatever I do, please don't interfere. If something goes wrong, I'll take
all the responsibility. I know what I'm doing, right?"
In the
lobby Deisee welcomed them back with a smile. "Now we can go to the
bank" she said.
Goquok had
an account in the
Sep,
Immalda and Deisee took the underground train. First the yellow line, then the
mauve one and the green one. The journey took an hour, in crowded passenger
cars.
The bank
was located in the old downtown area, in a block of offices facing a large
public square with a stone elephant in the middle. Electric cars, busses, vans
with enigmatic writings on their sides, whirled around the square.
They
stepped into the bank, where about fifty people were standing patiently in
line. Half a dozen clerks sat behind a long counter. Deisee pulled her cell
phone out of her handbag and made a call. She spoke for about five minutes, in
precise but rapid Dibadian. Sep understood only the name "Elwass".
Several minutes later a young woman with long brown hair, clad in a gray suit,
walked towards them and whispered something to Deisee.
"The
branch manager is awaiting us in his office" Deisee said.
The young
woman led them through a security vestibule, up a flight of steps and into a
sparsely furnished office.
The manager
was a short, skinny man who wore the standard gray suit of Dibadian bankers. He
offered tea to Sep, Immalda and Deisee. They sat down while the long-haired
young woman fetched computer printouts concerning Goquok's account.
The
conversation went on rather slowly as Deisee translated into French what the
manager said and into Dibadian what Sep said.
Sep put the
printouts in his briefcase, and, still sipping his tea, he asked the manager:
"Is it
possible for a foreigner like me to open an account here?"
"Sure.
Chetenche Goquok did. You have to deposit a little money first. I can
help you open an account."
"I
have money, lots of money. Two hundred and fifty thousand Padzan sequins,
imagine that! But I have no Niemelagan identification, just a Padzan passport.
And I have no address in Dibadi."
The manager
looked nervous. He wasn't used to foreigners, especially foreigners who were
Padzan officers and who asked weird questions. If a cyborg hadn't been present
he would have suspected something fishy.
He tried to
sound as professional as he could:
"We
require no identification, and citizenship means nothing in this country, we're
all residents. You don't need an address either. If you want information on
your account, you pay a visit to a local branch of the bank. If you had an
address in Niemelaga we would send you your bank reports by mail, but since you
don't, you'll have that information in any branch of this bank. When you want
to deposit or withdraw money, you just walk into a bank and state your full
name. The clerk will check your identity and perform your bidding."
"I
see. Is it possible to have online information on my account?"
"Only
if you give us an e-mail address."
Sep wrote
his e-mail address on a sheet of paper and handed it to the manager. "I'd
like to open an account. This is my e-mail address."
The manager
took the paper and looked ill at ease. "We don't use foreign alphabets
here, only
"No
problem."
The manager
seemed to relax slightly. He typed something on the keyboard of his computer,
and he said to Sep:
"Put
your right hand on the fingerprint reader on my desk... here... now look
straight into the camera... fine. Now let's wait until the data is sent for
identification to the Ministry of Population. It will take less than a minute.
Umm, there's something wrong. Your fingerprints are unknown to the Ministry of
Population."
"It
could hardly be otherwise. I'm foreign."
"I can
create a file for you. What's your name, sir?" the manager asked with a
grin. In Dibadian, it came out as "Chetenche tlėt me shub iszta"
which means, literally, "Citizen your name is what." The manager was
a true Dibadian: the sentence came out as a hurried growl, as if the man tried
to speak while munching hot food. He spoke in an even, gruff tone which sounded
assertive rather than interrogative. Dibadians have no distinct intonation for
questions and statements. It is a peculiarity of their language which sometimes
confuses foreigners.
Sep was
glad to understand directly what the manager had said. "Nai me shub Sep
Clavis" (My name is Sep Clavis) he replied.
"I
can't enter a Padzalander name in the computer, chetenche. The Ministry of
Population accepts names in the Dibadian language only. We can't pronounce your
surname in Dibadian. It is Sep Tlawis for us."
"Fine
with me."
The manager
typed things on his computer for several minutes, occasionally shaking his
head. Eventually, he said:
"There's
another problem, chetenche. There's someone else called Sep Tlawis in
Niemelaga. His fingerprints and his face are different from yours. The Ministry
of Population wants every resident to have a unique and distinct name. Do you
have a middle name?"
"No."
"You
need one. People are always identified by their names in this country. We never
use numbers to identify people. If your name is identical to someone else's,
the Ministry of the Population wants you to add one or several middle
names."
"OK.
Let us say... uh... Sep Theodore Clavis."
"Sep
Teodol Tlawis, in Dibadian" the manager corrected.
"Sep
Teodol Tlawis sounds all right to me" Sep said.
The manager
concentrated on his keyboard again. Then he said:
"You
must make a deposit to open an account."
Sep opened
his briefcase and put two hundred thousand sequins on the cluttered desk.
The manager
took a few banknotes at random and looked at them. Then he telephoned. A
dark-skinned, black-haired man came in, examined the banknotes, and said that
they were dilet (straight, correct, genuine).
Immalda
looked at Sep with angry eyes. Sep scribbled a note on a piece of paper and
handed it to her:
"It's
mine and you didn't even know it existed, OK?"
She read
the note and nodded glumly. Sep took the piece of paper back from her. Immalda
would have been foolish enough to leave it on the manager's desk.
Ten minutes
later, Sep, Immalda and Deisee left the bank. Sep now had a bank account in
Dibadi, and two hundred and fifty thousand ducats on it: the Padzan sequin and
the Niemelagan ducat are the same currency with different names. It goes with
Niemelaga being a protectorate of Padzaland. Niemelagan authorities had his
Dibadian name, his fingerprints, and his picture. He didn't like it, but he had
willingly taken the risk.
It was
"Now
we can go home" Immalda said. "Deisee, this is the end of our
mission. Sep and I, we'll go back to the hotel, check out, and take a train
back to Padza."
"Yes"
Sep said. "There are many things I'd like to see in Dibadi but I have to
learn the language first."
"You
must buy a few books and records, then" Deisee said. "Look, I know a
bookshop in a street close to your hotel. We can have a look there, can't we?"
"One
hour to go there by public transit, and we can have lunch at the hotel. Then we
pack up, we check out, and we catch the train to Padza at
In the
passenger car, Sep noticed that Immalda looked sick. "Are you ill?"
he asked.
"I
need my tablets" she mumbled. "I thought I could do this mission
without them, but it's hard. I must go home."
Several
seated passengers left the car at the next stop. Sep and Deisee helped Immalda
seat herself. Sep sat next to her and Deisee sat facing him.
Immalda
rested her head on Sep's shoulder and closed her eyes. He felt both embarrassed
and happy. Immalda was a demanding, authoritarian boss, who was disliked by her
subordinates because she concealed her notorious incompetence behind a mask of
bogus hyperactivity. Now the mask had fallen. There was just a sexually and
emotionally deprived human being who couldn't work without chemical
stimulation. Sep had been the one who had been actually in charge of the
investigation, and he had also been the one who had decided to accept Goquok's
money. Combined with the stress of having an illicit affair with a subordinate
and being away from her drugs, it was too much for Immalda.
Deisee
looked straight into Sep's eyes. "Nėsai shubkaph u tlėt, quokhag eumgo
kėltės" she said.
Sep didn't
understand. Deisee pulled a small black notebook out of her handbag and wrote
the sentence on a blank page, which she showed to Sep. As he still didn't seem
to understand, she wrote the translation on the same page:
We can
use you, but the woman is useless.
Sep let the
meaning of the statement sink into his consciousness.
"What
do you mean, 'use'?" he whispered in the distracting background noise of
the passenger car.
Deisee
wrote a single word in her notebook for Sep to read:
ESPIONAGE
"I was
a fool" Sep said.
Immalda
opened her yes and raised her head. "What are you talking about?" she
asked.
Deisee put
her notebook hastily back in her handbag. Her reply was sharp:
"Sep
will tell you later. Sep, we can't have a detailed conversation here, in this
train car. All you have to know is that we know. Someone will contact you in
the future" Deisee said.
Immalda
startled.
"Don't
worry, Immalda, you're not involved in this business. Please do as if this
conversation never took place" Deisee told her in a very matter-of-fact
voice.
The train
stopped at Phalang station. Immalda seemed to regain her composure and the
three of them walked out in the open. Deisee, who had taken the initiative,
asked Immalda if she wanted to accompany them to the bookshop or rest at the
hotel.
"I'll
accompany you" Immalda said "I can't speak the language of this
country and I don't want to be alone."
The
bookshop was located in a narrow street. Sep noticed the name of the street,
painted in black on a yellow plaque: TLUN ELIPLET. "The
three priests" in Dibadian. Wehat, the word for street, road or
avenue, is never written on street signs. But Deisee called the street Tlun
eliplet wehat in conversation.
They
stepped into the crummy old shop. Thousands of books, of all types and sizes,
were displayed on shelves running from wall to wall. Customers leafed through
the books and chatted among
themselves.
"All
the books are in the Dibadian language, there is no foreign section or
bilingual editions, but I'll help you find Dibadian translations of books
available in Padzaland" Deisee said.
"Do
you mean that nobody in this town learns French or English, or any other
foreign language? Even teenagers in schools?" Sep asked.
"Only
cyborgs do" Deisee replied. "Dibadi isn't an ordinary city."
After five
minutes, she came back with a local edition of Bilbo the Hobbit, a compact disk
and what looked like a slim schoolbook.
"Just
what you need" she said. "The disk is a reading of Bilbo the Hobbit
by Dibadian actors. You'll become familiar with the sounds of the Dibadian
language. Comparing the Dibadian translation with the same text in your native
tongue will make you learn thousands of Dibadian words. The Dibadian grammar is
very simple. All you need to know is that the prefix e is the definite
article and the suffix da is the plural ending, all the rest is
vocabulary as we say here. Nevertheless, I've also bought a little grammar book
made for elementary school pupils. You'll have to use your dictionary to read
it, but it will help you understand how the language works."
"I
can't be so simple" Sep said with a smile.
"Well,
Dibadian has retained one or two peculiarities from its Amerindian ancestors.
The adjectives are verbs, for instance. We say hayash go, a big man, but
ego hayash, the man is big. Think of hayash as meaning both
"big" and "to be big". When you've read a few texts it will
be natural to you. The syntax is very easy. You put the adjective before the
noun, and word order is subject-verb-object. The alphabet is simple and
phonemic and it has only twenty-eight letters. The original
"Budai
thought that there were several hundred characters in Dibadian" Sep
objected.
"Yes,
that's what he thought when he tried to count them. He was in a state of
temporary estrangement and he kept on copying the same letters again and again
without recognizing them. He also mentions the frequent ö and ü sounds of the
Dibadian language, whereas Dibadian only has open ö, as in the French word neuf
and the Dibadian pronoun tlėt, which Budai sometimes wrongly transcribes
as klütt. He also occasionally mistakes u for ü, for instance in the
number duti, which means first, as in duti pheli, the first day
of the week, Monday."
Sep bought
the books and the compact disk for twenty-eight ducats.
As they
walked back to the hotel, Deisee was still talking: "Another unusual
feature of the Dibadian language is its two sets of numbers: the ordinary one,
as in it kha, one house, moksut khada, two houses, and the one
for dates and time, as in duti pata gėlos san, etlets lėl, the second of
January, ten o'clock. Literally, it means first moon, second day, tenth
hour."
"This
is unique" Sep remarked.
"No,
several Amerindian languages which were spoken in the same region than Chinook,
the distant ancestor of Dibadian, have similar characteristics. There's also
Japanese, which has two sets of numbers, a native one and a Chinese one. By the
way, we use the common, universal calendar and the seven day week. Dibadi has
no culture of its own, except its language, alphabet and religion."
"Dibadian
is an exotic language" Sep said, laughing.
"Nobody
in this country would agree. The people know that Dibadian is derived from a
pidgin spoken several centuries ago for barter and elementary communication, on
another continent, by Amerindian natives and white settlers who are not their
ancestors. They know that the cyborgs chose the pidgin as the basis for their
own secret language, and they fear and loathe the cyborgs. They resent being
isolated from the rest of the continent by, among other things, the
"Why
did the cyborgs accept this?" Sep asked.
"They
wanted to give historicity to the language, make it authentic, a part of
recorded history. In Dibadian schoolbooks the history of the language is
explained at length: first, Old Chinook, and its relationships with other
Amerindian languages. Chinook Jargon and its regional varieties from
"It
looks like a great story" Sep said. "It isn't as if the language was
created yesterday by some guy sitting at a desk."
They
arrived in front of the hotel. "I must go now" Deisee said. She shook
hands with Sep and Immalda. Her hand was cold, for the plastic skin of the
cyborgs is always at ambient temperature, but its pressure was firm. Her face
and eyes evinced to emotion, only her usual manufactured bland look. Sep
remembered what he had read about cyborgs in a magazine: they do experience
emotions but they are never overwhelmed by them and their self-control is
perfect. When a cyborg looks emotional, it's always an act.
Deisee
looked Sep straight in the eyes. "We'll contact you very soon. We
certainly won't forget you" she said.
Sep leant
towards Deisee, expecting to smell the foul odor of a bloated, mutilated rat
coming out of her parted lips when she spoke, but he perceived only her
perfume. There must be a sphincter between the cyborg's throat and the
abdominal cavity where the quatin mawich sat, he thought. Besides, the food
swallowed by Deisee probably fell directly into the mouth of the animal.
Sep was
afraid of the cyborgs now, but his money was in a Dibadian bank. He had to come
back in order not to lose a quarter of a million ducats. "I'll come back
in a few months, when I can speak Dibadian, even just a little" he said.
Immalda
looked like she was about to slap Deisee's face. She stepped into the hotel and
Sep followed her.
In the
lobby Immalda faced Sep and shouted at him:
"Do
you realize what you've done? We'll go to jail because of you! That bitch has
understood everything and now the cyborgs will blackmail you! Look what you've
done!"
The lobby
was a very large rectangular room with shops on one side and round tables and
armchairs in the middle. There might have been fifty people in it, and Sep felt
their eyes on him and Immalda.
"I'm
the one being blackmailed, not you, and yet I'm not losing my temper, unlike
you, so please calm down" he said, doing his best to speak calmly and slowly.
"Besides, you're the boss. You're accountable for everything I did under
your authority. And you took half the money, remember."
Immalda
opened her mouth, as if she wanted to utter a vehement reply, but instead she
burst into tears before she could say a word.
A massive,
burly doorman came, and said something which Sep didn't understand.
"My
wife is sick" Sep said. The doorman looked at him, then at Immalda, who
was sobbing.
Immalda
took Sep in her arms and pressed her face against his chest.
The doorman
repressed a laugh and walked away.
The
elevators were at one end of the lobby. Sep tried to look as dignified as he
could, walking with a weeping, staggering woman by his side. First, to the
reception desk, to retrieve their bedroom keys. Then, to the elevators.
Immalda
clung to Sep, and they made love in her bedroom. Then they had just enough time
to pack up and check out. As Deisee had told them, the hotel was very cheap. Ten
ducats for both rooms. But was it possible to book a room from abroad? Sep
suspected it wasn't. Their rooms had been booked for them by the Dibadian
militia, and although the clients of the hotel were of all physical types
imaginable they all spoke Dibadian like the native speakers they were. The
Niemelagan government discourages tourism.
They rode
the subway to Ninekho station, where they had arrived from Padza the day
before.
They
arrived in advance and bought sandwiches and bottles of mineral water from a
cafeteria which was located in the station itself. Then they walked to the
platform, where they had to show their tickets to employees in dark blue
uniforms to be allowed on the train.
The train
left the station, heading towards Padza.
Immalda was
silent and distant. Sep understood that their affair was over. He wondered how
what had happened in Dibadi would affect their hierarchical, professional
relationship in Padza.
END OF
EPISODE THREE